The people who object to biologically engineered foods seem to be missing the point. Bioengineered foods may or may not be unavoidably bad for you; that's just the technology, and it will eventually get better.
The problem is monocultures: a field of corn that all has the same DNA is insanely susceptible to the predations of ever-evolving parasites and pests. Monocultures caused the Great Potato Famine. And while the biotech companies can keep churning out new versions every time the bugs they're battling mutate, they're fighting a losing battle against hybrid stamina and natural selection. The farmers growing bioengineered plants and animals will have to keep upgrading to the next version to keep up with the bugs (this sounds familiar) and eventually the biotechnology companies will fall behind the parasites (which after all have nothing better to do with their time than breed new sorts of parasites) and have to declare defeat.
Genetic engineering *might* be directly dangerous, but from where I'm standing it just looks negligently stupid.
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The people who object to biologically engineered foods seem to be missing the point. Bioengineered foods may or may not be unavoidably bad for you; that's just the technology, and it will eventually get better.
The problem is monocultures: a field of corn that all has the same DNA is insanely susceptible to the predations of ever-evolving parasites and pests. Monocultures caused the Great Potato Famine. And while the biotech companies can keep churning out new versions every time the bugs they're battling mutate, they're fighting a losing battle against hybrid stamina and natural selection. The farmers growing bioengineered plants and animals will have to keep upgrading to the next version to keep up with the bugs (this sounds familiar) and eventually the biotechnology companies will fall behind the parasites (which after all have nothing better to do with their time than breed new sorts of parasites) and have to declare defeat.
Genetic engineering *might* be directly dangerous, but from where I'm standing it just looks negligently stupid.