I am a geneticist/molecular biologist who has performed laboratory research in this area for over 20 years (I just happen to like tractors and farming as well). This has included generating transgenic animals for research purposes. Over this time, I have become increasingly uncomfortable with the current rhetoric surrounding GMO's, and the incredibly strong push to have society accept them as just any other technology. It is not just another new technology; it is altering the genetic control system of a living system, which can then reproduce.
Several posts below have suggested that creating GMO's is just a way of speeding up traditional cross-breeding procedures. This is simply not true, since we can create new gene combinations through genetic modification that can never appear through traditional methods. We can insert a unique gene from an organism such as the jellyfish into a plant. This is done a regular basis since a fluorescent protein produced in only jellyfish serves as a great marker to label plant cells under a microscope for research purposes. Such a GMO would not make it to the food chain, but it illustrates the power and non-traditional nature of the approach.
I am not an ardent anti-GMO activist. I have made my living doing research in this area for a long time. Eating a GMO per se is not necessarily dangerous; some are probably perfectly safe and others not. It depends on the genetic modification introduced in each case. However, we really need to exercise extreme caution on their introduction into the mainstream. Ecosystems are far too complex to fully predict any potential negative effects that may result. Once they are released, there is absolutely no looking back. We can clean up toxic spills, gather up cell phones and throw them out if we so desire, but we cannot remove genes from organisms in an ecosystem.
I think the point at which I really began to question the whole GMO in foods push was when I heard a Biotech company representative state that cross-pollination between GMO and non-GMO plants is not an issue as long as a 100 yard barrier is maintained around a field of GMO plants. They stated that numerous research studies had confirmed that pollen drift beyond this distance was not a problem (show me 20 scientific studies that support one opinion, and I can find you 20 others that support the contrary view). As I am sure every one on this board knows, pollen in plants has only one purpose, and that is to spread the genetic material of a parent plant from which it originated as far as possible from that plant. There are documented cases of pollen drifting several thousand miles from a plant of origin. So for a representative from a major company to make these statements without breaking a smile really made me question their motives. I haven't seen anything since that would make me change my mind.
I believe that GMOs can serve very valuable roles, and that it is a technology that will not and probably should not disappear. There are a lot of potential benefits I can see on the medical side as opposed to the food production side. However, every example I have examined to date is about relatively short term profit, and viable alternatives to the GMO are available if they had the economic backing to be properly developed.
Do I eat GMO foods? Not if I can help it (we raise all of our own food). And not because I necessarily think they are all inherently unsafe, but more because I do not agree with the way in which they are being pushed onto society, and the real lack of solid research with respect to the long term implications of the release of these organisms in our environment.
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