Black Swan Author: Genetically Modified Organisms Risk Global Ruin

KentuckyFC writes It's 20 years since the FDA approved the Flavr Savr tomato for human consumption, the first genetically engineered food to gain this status. Today, roughly 85 per cent of corn and 90 per cent of soybeans produced in the US are genetically modified. So it's easy to imagine that the scientific debate over the safety of genetically modified organisms has been largely settled. Not for Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan and several academic colleagues who say that the risks have been vastly underestimated. They say that genetically modified organisms threaten harm on a global scale, both to ecosystems and to human health. That's different from many conventional risks that threaten harm on a local scale, like nuclear energy for example. They argue that this global threat means that the precautionary principle ought to be applied to severely limit the way genetically modified organisms can be used.

Comments

oooh GMO is to oscary u guys!

[jeffmeden]

What they don't bother to put in TFS is that the 85% of corn and 90% of soybeans currently running modified genes are only modified to make them immune to glyphosate (aka "Roundup-ready"). There only real risk is that maybe by some huge stroke of bad luck, some other plant (a weed, say) picks up glyphosate resistance from these genes. The thing about that fear tactic is that it's not too unlikely that pest plants will eventually pick up glyphosate resistance anyway, and it's not really a scary prospect since glyphosate is only relied on for farming, and if it stops working they can move on to a different herbicide for us to debate over.

Making glyphosate resistant corn? Probably going to have 0 repercussions, and the worst-case scenario is not unlike the chemical resistance issues we face in almost every other area of biology (i.e. penicillin resistant bacteria). Making a corn-tomato-hemp hybrid that grows a foot a day and re-roots itself whenever it's cut down? OK maybe we should talk that one through a little more. Scare mongering with the "GMO will make our planet a Mad-Max wasteland of anarchy" is really unproductive.

Re:Nonsense. Again.

[mspohr]

Billions of times a day, natural processes substitute random genes from all different kinds of organisms.
Natural selection takes care of it.
We are not in a Frankenstein movie... more like Rube Goldberg.

Re:Monsanto is evil, but your anti-GMO screed is F

[tibit]

The first reference doesn't talk about evils of GMO, but about the evils of a particular herbicide. The second one talks about miRNA and how genetic material transfers directly from the food we eat into our bodies. This is not by itself pro- or anti-GMO, it's merely a strong point that supports proper testing of GMO foods - something that, admittedly, Monsanto has long argued unnecessary. Again, this doesn't make any particular GMO dangerous, it merely prompts at what should we look at when testing such organisms for consumption by humans and livestock. The third reference shows some fallout from RoundUp-resistance genes jumping from crops to weeds. Again, this doesn't show any danger ingerent in GMOs themselves, but in a particular modification. Just as software development techniques can be used for good and bad, the genetic modifications can be used for good and bad. We need to learn how to use them for good. DUH :)

Has Monstanto been demonstrably lying through its teeth to the public, repeatedly? Sure. There's no news here.