Mercy comments on Should I be afraid of GMOs? - Less Wrong

10 Post author: Pavitra 19 May 2011 01:29AM

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Comment author: [deleted] 15 October 2011 11:21:56AM *  0 points [-]

Note the problem on biosafety is more that good GMOs will be banned because they'd spread pesticide resistance to weeds without terminator tech, not that they will be introduced illegitimately and spread pesticide resistant genes to weeds.

How exactly would pesticide resistant genes transfer to weeds? Unless the your GMO plant interbreeds with weeds, witch is not very likely based on the fact that you do not often stumble upon tomato-dandelions (if I'm terribly misinformed here please tell me). And horizontal gene transfer, have not been observed to any large extent in multicellular organisms.

Comment author: Mercy 14 November 2011 04:33:59AM 0 points [-]

Sorry I missed this reply before, note sure if it's worth replying but briefly yes, narrow-band pesticides take care of the most distantly related weeds so your biggest problems are "volunteers" from the previous crop rotation, and wild relatives of whatever crops you are planting. That's why you have to modify the crop, rather than the pesticide.