Anti-GMO movement lacks understanding
of technology ADVERTISING Anti-GMO movement lacks understanding
of technology After reading all the hysterical letters denouncing genetically modified organism technology, it seems obvious that the opposition lacks an understanding not only of genetic engendering but also
Anti-GMO movement lacks understanding
of technology
After reading all the hysterical letters denouncing genetically modified organism technology, it seems obvious that the opposition lacks an understanding not only of genetic engendering but also of traditional plant breeding.
Five hundred years ago there was no science of chemistry, only the art of alchemy. It took the enlightenment and the industrial revolution to create it. Before Dmitri Mendeleev set out the periodic table in 1869, the nature of the elements and their relationship to each other were basically guesswork.
Before Francis Crick and James Watson did the same thing in biology less than a century later with discovery of the structure of DNA, genes and their behavior were just as mysterious.
Since then an entire branch of science, biosynthesis, has emerged that has replaced the art of selective breeding.
Hybridization is a very inexact process that relies on probabilities; biosynthesis requires precise knowledge of which gene does what and where. Every vice attributed to a GMO plant can be said of a sexually propagated one, the only difference is one of scale.
An engineered plant might be toxic to humans or the environment? New hybrids are far more capable in terms of harm, but they are not scrutinized by the Food and Drug Administration.
No one can predict exactly what a GMO will do when it is released? The effects of new hybrids entering the environment are close to incalculable. The possible combinations of genes and their interaction are staggering.
No one has mentioned exactly how one identifies a genetically modified organism. There are bananas in Australia being engineered to resist the bunchy top virus. Hundreds of plants could be brought to Hawaii in a tissue culture flask. Bananas are sterile so there would be no cross-pollination, and the fruit would be chemically identical to what is already grown here. The only marker as to its presence would be its success relative to local varieties, and many other crops are being released into the public domain that will be as invisible.
The world’s population has reached its present size because of immunization, antibiotics and the “Green Revolution.” I find it telling that many in the anti-GMO movement also oppose these three brilliant achievements.
Brian Lievens
Holualoa
