Neil deGrasse Tyson Tells GMO Critics to "Chill Out"

[mike_c]

71. that's a decent analogy...

...although I think the failure mode part breaks down a little bit. The most likely failures are always system failures, and they are amply guarded against by the transcription and translation machinery of cells themselves. Ironically, the anti-GMO movement was initially spawned by scientifically illiterate people who decried science "playing God," which has been echoed in the AL and AI communities too.

As for unintended consequences, we use Occam's razor and our knowledge of genetics, biochemistry, ecology, and so on to make informed choices. No, it's not a perfect system, and science improves by making mistakes, but that's an argument against nearly every human endeavor. Short of arguing that we should not do something because we don't know all the bad results that might happen whether there is any evidence that they will or not, the best we can do is to think things through and anticipate what we can.

As I've pointed out relentlessly in these discussions, the overwhelming consensus of scientific and medical professionals around the world is that GMOs are not materially different from non-engineered foods. The majority of people opposing GMOs reject that consensus on the basis of emotion and misinformation. Do you really think that the web bloggers at Natural News understand biology, genetics, and ecology better than the world's biologists, geneticists, and ecologists? If the anti-GMO movement is not patently anti-science, how else do we explain their outright rejection of knowledgeable scientific consensus in favor of internet quacks and charlatans?