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?

Resistance to herbicide doesn't present an obvious fitness benefit to a wild hybrid, but not being eaten by bugs certainly does. How would said pesticide affect bee populations if all the wild relatives of a given GMO crop now produced its own pesticide?

I agree that could become a problem.

Admitting that I am at best a fledgling rationalist, I think its unreasonable to believe that GMOs are safe. Why does one believe that they are? Because researchers paid by or funded by the company that own the products have yet to find that they are unsafe. I'm not suggesting a big conspiracy or anything, but cognitive biases are not trivial to overcome. But the belief that they are inherently safe because all we did was move some genes around is naive considering the current knowledge base of DNA.

What do you think is an potential health hazard? Since GMO DNA is not fundamentally different from any other DNA. On that level I dare say our understanding is quite suffice. What might pose as a potential health risk is if we introduce genes that are exotic in the respect that the code for something that have never occurred in a our diet and have strange properties.

How about looking at it this way, P(not eating GMO food is bad for me)=0, P(eating GMO food is bad for me)>=0. GMO offers me (personally) no utility (U=0)so is U
=0 )?

Yeah sure, I get your point. But that goes for anything you do in your life. That which you reap form GMO probably greater than that you reap just using breed plants (pun intended).

I was attempting to find an example of a generally accepted case of "too risky". My baby just had some shots, so vaccines were on my mind. I utterly failed to to come up with a number for the probability of contracting polio if you live in the US and have not been immunized against it. There hasn't been a case of someone in the US getting polio naturally in 30 years, the hundred or so cases (according to the CDC) in the last 30 years have all been from the live vaccine (which isn't given anymore in the US) or from contact with someone that had... (read more)

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Should I be afraid of GMOs?

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Should I be afraid of GMOs?

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