I Used to Work as a Scientist with GMOs—Now I'm Having Serious Second Thoughts About The Risks

[modestybl]

156. Ad hominem attacks or industry propaganda does not make an argument...

The article you linked to is just as "out of date" ... and of course you are evading the point.

In principle, GE may have tremendous benefits for disease abatement and food nutrition. But that research is NOT being done. Over 99% of the GM food grown is for heavy herbicide (glyphosate) use or production of insecticide (Bt) in every cell of the GE plants. The utterly predictable result is a biological arms race resulting in superweeds or resistant bugs...

http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/07/09/198051447/as-biotech-seed-falters-insecticide-use-surges-in-corn-belt.

Why not simply practice long-established good sustainable agricultural practices, like rotating crops? Oh yeah, money....

There are cautionary problems that corporations completely ignore: 1) one gene controls many protiens and enzymes, not just the one of interest - how is the risk of the unintended consequences assessed? How are possible new allergens detected? That R&D is simply not done in the US (possibly under advice from the industry's legal counsel). 2) horizontal transfer of possibly unstable recombinant gene sequences... genes evolved over millions of years are stable by selection - and the mutations from the environment have been selected over generations. We simply don't know what happens, years after ingestion of GM foods to our gut flora. I, for one, would rather not be some agri company's science project and would avoid such food as much as possible.

As long as the FDA and the USDA are lousy with agribusiness execs, I expect nothing from them in the public interest. Their only interest is short term profits, they have no interest in the long term consequences of their products, to independent farmers or the public at large, nor in the heavy lifting that real R & D would entail ... to first order, only university studies amenable to corporate interests are funded.

Right now, geneticists critical of the agribusiness party line have a very slim career path... in many ways they are worse off than the scientists decades ago warning us of the effects of increased greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere.