Glow in the Dark Cats and Scorpion Cabbage

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Scorpion Poison Cabbage Experiments carried out between 1989 and 1993 by the Oxford Institute of Virology tested the effectiveness of cabbage infused with scorpion poison as a natural pesticide. Scorpion poison was trialled as a natural alternative to spraying the cabbages with chemical and artificial sprays, which may infect the cabbage and cause sickness in the people eating them, as well as doing damage to the environment. The scorpion poison was modified so as not to harm humans and only do damage to the insects that ate the cabbages. However, the study conducted to test whether the poison was able to be harmlessly ingested by humans was not tested on people or normal healthy cells, instead it was tested on breast cancer cells, which could lead to altered results and a false conclusion that the poison is actually harmless. The authors of the study had this to say about the effectiveness of the toxin on insects: “L]ow toxicity with an LC50 of 18.4 μM was recorded in artificial diet incorporation assay in which the toxin was consumed by the testing insect through feeding. We suggested that this might be a result of toxin degradation by digestion.” This suggests that infect, when ingested by the insects, the toxin may not actually be effective. Basically, the breaking down of the food by the natural processes of digestion may actually cause the poison to be totally useless as opposed to if it were directly applied like it is on a scorpion’s tail. This means that if the cabbages were to ever be infused with the scorpion poison, it is likely that they will still be sprayed with pesticide on top of this genetic modification, which could still lead to the same troubles caused by pesticides as well as the risk of humans becoming sick due to the scorpion toxin. Tests on normal, healthy cells or humans have yet to be carried out and it is unlikely that this

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