Skip to main content

GMOs: Does Regulation Ensure Safety?


"Let me just share my two cents on this mode of thinking: first off, nothing about our lives is “natural”. We build things out of reinforced steel and other metals that never occur naturally. Houses never form in the wild, nor do clothes. X-ray machines don’t occur spontaneously, nor do heart transplants. So if you’re really dedicated to living naturally, you’ve got to rethink a lot more than GMOs. Secondly, we have been messing with creatures’ genetics and “playing God” for centuries. Over 50 million of us worldwide proudly own the products of this genetic manipulation – you might call them pets. Dogs, for example, have more physical variation within their species than there is in the entire rest of the order of carnivores. In other words, a pug’s skull is more different from a pit bull’s than a mouse’s is from a bear’s. If that’s not some serious genetic manipulation, I don’t know what is. We’ve bred not just different varieties of one species to create ideal plants, we’ve bred together different species, and long before we could do it with genetic engineering. Changing creatures’ genetics to suit our desires is nothing new. Thirdly, the transfer of genes from one organism to a wholly unrelated organism isn’t unnatural. Yeah, I know, the way we do it is, but it’s not like it’s never happened before in nature. Viruses and bacteria donate their genes to other creatures all the time – that’s why their machinery is often used to do genetic engineering. Even the transfer of genes between higher-order animals isn’t unheard of. We’ve found plant genes in sea slugs, for example – which is really, unbelievably cool, by the way.

 I’m not saying that we should all just go out and blindly trust Monsanto and the other GM producers. We shouldn’t just shovel GMOs down our throats and presume they’re safe and better for us. That’s what science is for – to test this kind of thing. Have the lawmakers make stricter regulations regarding the safety evaluation of GMOs. Let scientists study and debate GMOs until they feel like they’re beating a dead FrankenHorse. Let it take years and years for these products to be tested, evaluated, and released. But don’t stop them from being created. Don’t make laws that outlaw the GMOs that are so vital to biomedical research because of fear. The reason Monsanto has a near-monopoly is because we stifle smaller companies and universities from competing with them, competition which is not only healthy but necessary – and we can fix that. In the end, the global benefits of the GMOs of the future are too great to be prevented by idealized notions of a natural world, and this is coming from an ecologist. Progress isn’t a dirty word, no matter what you hear, and we should be excited about the amazing possibilities that ever advancing technologies afford us." -Christy Wilcox (Lead science correspondent -
 Nutrition Wonderland)
http://nutritionwonderland.com/2010/02/gmos-does-regulation-ensure-safety/

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

GMOs not poison, however they may not be all the good they're cracked up to be either. According to a report published by the Union of Concerned Scientists That promise has proven to be empty, according to Failure to Yield, a report by UCS expert Doug Gurian-Sherman released in March 2009. Despite 20 years of research and 13 years of commercialization, genetic engineering has failed to significantly increase U.S. crop yields. Failure to Yield is the first report to closely evaluate the overall effect genetic engineering has had on crop yields in relation to other agricultural technologies. It reviewed two dozen academic studies of corn and soybeans, the two primary genetically engineered food and feed crops grown in the United States. Based on those studies, the UCS report concluded that genetically engineering herbicide-tolerant soybeans and herbicide-tolerant corn has not increased yields. Insect-resistant corn, meanwhile, has improved yields only marginally. The increa...
Post a Comment
Read more

Why buying Organic isn't all that superior

"The USDA, which oversees the foods labeled as “Certified Organic”, states quite clearly on its website about its role in organic, that “Our regulations do not address food safety or nutrition.” Foods labelled “Certified Organic” must adhere to certain rules and regulations but aren’t endowed with any particular nutritional or safety features. However, many consumers believe that the Organic label means the food has superior nutrition and is safer, especially in regard to pesticide residues. This is not true. Studies have shown no appreciable difference in nutrition between crops grown either organically or conventionally." "Organic farmers also use pesticides, and the products they are allowed to use are constrained with few exceptions by whether they can be considered “natural.” That is not a safety standard since many of the most toxic chemicals known are “natural.” Like all pesticides, these natural options are subject to EPA scrutiny, and so the pesticides that ...
Post a Comment
Read more