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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.

2 of 432 comments (clear)

  1. Why would I assume it has been settled? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    In a world where shit like aspartame is railroaded through approval because of political connections, why in the fuck would I assume anything is "settled", just because it is commonly sold and used?

  2. Re:oooh GMO is to oscary u guys! by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Interesting

    it's not too unlikely that pest plants will eventually pick up glyphosate resistance anyway

    Plenty of weeds have already done that. So far, all of these weeds resist glyphosate via a completely different mechanism from the way GMO plants do it.