The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

Swiss ponder the 'dignity of plants'

Biotech guidelines tackle thorny issue

Cloud storage: Lower cost and increase uptime

A Swiss government ethics committee has issued guidelines on the thorny issue of the "dignity of plants" in relation to biotech research after the country's 2004 Gene Technology Law declared that "the dignity of creatures" should be considered in any grant-funded research.

According to Nature, while this phrase attracted plenty of flak for its "general woolliness", it certainly includes plants. The powers that be therefore mandated the committee two years ago to clarify the matter.

Member Markus Schefer, a constitution lawyer at the University of Basel, said: “My first reaction was - what the heck are we doing considering the dignity of plants. But this very broad provision exists, and we have to help to prevent a legal mire.”

He added: "At the moment not even authorities who decide on grants know what the 'dignity of plants' really means. That's why we were asked to deliberate.”

The upshot of the deliberations is that "all plant biotechnology grant applications must now include a paragraph explaining the extent to which plant dignity is considered".

Specifically, the committee has issued a "decision tree presenting the different issues that need to be taken into account for each case".

It has also presented "concrete examples of what type of experiment might be considered an unacceptable insult to plant dignity". While it has conceded that GM modification of plants doesn't automatically offend said dignity, experiments which caused them to "lose their independence" would do so.

This independence might be exemplified by the ability to reproduce - the removal of which would breach the guidelines. Nonplussed biologists have pointed out this is at odds with "traditional plant-hybridization technologies, for example in roses, which require male sterility, and the commercial development of seedless fruits". ®

Customer Success Testimonial: Recovery is Everything

Latest Comments

Classless Plant Democracy

I firmly beleive that plants should be able to vote, and that the class system which cannabis is enmired, should be abolished.

Paris Hilton because it is undignified for vegetables to wear clothes.

0
0

wait a minute... plants or veg?

The genus Cannabis is, after all, NOT LETHAL. Was it not recently subject to an unmitigated onslaught of unsubstantiated rumours, found guilty without a trial (even by it's peers) and finds itself now languishing in "ClassB" status when it's only crime was to spread a little hippiness.

0
0

euthanasia

All plants used in this movie went to dignitas of their own free will after buying a one way ticket.

0
0

More from The Register

Boffins find evidence Atlantic Ocean has started closing
'Embryonic subduction zone' that flattened Lisbon headed for Blighty
Google launches broadband balloons, radio astronomy frets
A careless Loon could blind the square kilometre array
 breaking news
You've seen the Large Hadron Collider. Now comes the HUGE Hadron Collider
International Linear Collider ready to rock and roll
Headbangers have a gas, gas, gas in mosh pits
Boffins say heavy metal crowds behave like The Vapours
Hubble spies unlikely planet being born in hostile neighborhood
Hoovering a cloud of sand 7.5 billion miles from a tiny star
 breaking news
Jaguar to open new car-making factory in Blighty (virtually)
Britain still makes stuff, it's just not real any more...
New material enables 1,000-meter super-skyscrapers
Before you read on, see if you can guess how the new stuff will be used
 breaking news
China's second woman 'naut blasts off for coupling in HEAVEN
Wang and pals test the cosmic waters for Chinese space station
Scientists investigate 'dark lightning' threat to aircraft passengers
One stormy flight could give lifetime radiation dose
 breaking news
Chinese 'nauts prep for next coupling in Heaven, clear way for new station
Second woman taikonaut and pals test tech for China's own orbiting platform