Should I be afraid of GMOs?

Pavitra

I was raised to believe that genetically-modified foods are unhealthy to eat and bad for the environment, and given a variety of reasons for this, some of which I now recognize as blatantly false (e.g., human genetic code is isomorphic to fundamental physical law), and a few of which still seem sort of plausible.

Because of this history, I need to anchor my credence heavily downward from my sense of plausibility.

The major reasons I see to believe that GMOs are safe are:

I would probably think they were dangerous even if they were safe, due to my upbringing.
In general, whenever someone opposes a particular field of engineering on the grounds that it's unnatural and dangerous, they're usually wrong.
It's not quite obvious to me that introducing genetically-engineered organisms to a system is significantly more dangerous than introducing non-native naturally-evolved organisms.

The major reason I see to believe that GMOs are dangerous is:

I might believe they were safe even if they were dangerous, due to "yay science" (which was also part of my upbringing).
We are designing self-replicating things and using them without reliable containment, thereby effectively releasing them into the wild.

So: green goo, yes or no?

Because of this history, I need to anchor my credence heavily downward from my sense of plausibility.

The major reasons I see to believe that GMOs are safe are:

I would probably think they were dangerous even if they were safe, due to my upbringing.
In general, whenever someone opposes a particular field of engineering on the grounds that it's unnatural and dangerous, they're usually wrong.
It's not quite obvious to me that introducing genetically-engineered organisms to a system is significantly more dangerous than introducing non-native naturally-evolved organisms.

The major reason I see to believe that GMOs are dangerous is:

I might believe they were safe even if they were dangerous, due to "yay science" (which was also part of my upbringing).
We are designing self-replicating things and using them without reliable containment, thereby effectively releasing them into the wild.

So: green goo, yes or no?

I'm concerned about allergies-- for example, fish genes being put into tomatoes for cold resistance, though I just found out that it was never commercially produced. Some people can literally die from eating a small amount of fish, and I don't know whether any of the dangerous fish proteins were in the tomatoes.

Even if you're talking about less drastic engineering, moving genes around could make life a lot harder for people who need to know which foods are safe for them.

From the WHO article:

Allergenicity. As a matter of principle, the transfer of genes from commonly allergenic foods is discouraged unless it can be demonstrated that the protein product of the transferred gene is not allergenic. While traditionally developed foods are not generally tested for allergenicity, protocols for tests for GM foods have been evaluated by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and WHO. No allergic effects have been found relative to GM foods currently on the market.

4virtualAdept15y

Food allergies tend to be a response to one compound, or a very small set of compounds. With respect to using genes from one organism to confer hardiness on another, the chances of conferring the production of a deadly allergen are diminishingly slim, but you'd better believe that if such a thing was to be done, the FDA (or analogous organizations outside the US) would have warnings plastered all over the derivative organism. The level of justification and background research showing how you're NOT going to destroy the world that is required to even get funding for this sort of thing is.... large.

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Should I be afraid of GMOs?

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Should I be afraid of GMOs?

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