What are GMOs and Are They Dangerous?
Nowadays, you can’t make it through one aisle of a supermarket without being bombarded by promises of “GMO free!” “No GMOs!” and the like. What are GMOs? Should we be trying to avoid them?
Today, I will talk about some of the general science behind GMOs. There’s a huge amount of information out there, so I’ll try to simplify it. I’ll save discussion about specific food items and companies for another time.
GMO stands for genetically-modified organism. Scientists can take a gene for a particular trait and put it into the genome of a plant. The gene is usually one that can make the plant more nutritious or hardier. These genes can come from other plants, or from animals, bacteria, or viruses. They have also been dubbed “frankenfoods”, which is a pretty cool name, but also sounds a little scary.
Possible Advantages
Nutrition: plants can be modified to include additional vitamins. For example, golden rice has a gene that makes it produce Vitamin A, to combat Vitamin A deficiencies in countries where people eat rice-heavy diets.
Hardiness: plants can be modified to require less water or fertilizer, to withstand hotter/cooler temperatures, or to be immune to certain plant diseases
Reduction of Pesticides/Fertilizers: plants can be modified to produce their own pesticides (harmful to pests, but not harmful to humans), which can make plants less expensive to grow and reduce pollution
Possible Disadvantages
Allergies: if plants are producing new substances, we don’t know how this will affect folks with allergies
Long-term questions: since this is a relatively new technology, we don’t have evidence that it’ll be safe to eat GMOs for, say, 50 years (although we don’t have evidence that it’s dangerous, or reason to believe it will be)
Proprietary challenges: companies can now patent certain plant strains, which can make all sorts of things more expensive for all sorts of people
Genetic diversity: genetic modification has the potential to create huge populations of plants that are genetically identical, which means they are more susceptible to diseases and environmental changes
In summary, GMOs are probably not harmful and could be pretty cool. We should be careful about patent and genetic diversity issues. I will continue to be excited about these technological advances and eagerly read new research as it comes out.
Sources:
http://www.goldenrice.org/