Re:Stop Bashing G.M.O. Foods, More Than 100 Nobel Laureates Say
by JPKab on Friday July 01, 2016 @10:24AM
(#12016237)
FYI, the whole Kudzu thing is completely overblown. It's mostly a myth.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/true-story-kudz...
It was specifically planted in many visible areas like highway banks etc, so people's perception is wrongly skewed towards it being everywhere, when it's really not.
Re:Stop Bashing G.M.O. Foods, More Than 100 Nobel Laureates Say
by Chathamization on Friday July 01, 2016 @10:39AM
(#12016351)
Thanks, though that doesn't seem to be saying that kudzu being a problem is a myth, but rather that there have been myths exaggerating the problems with kudzu (“I thought the whole world would someday be covered by it, that it would grow as fast as Jack’s beanstalk, and that every person on earth would have to live forever knee-deep in its leaves"). There does seem to be a consensus that kudzu is a problem (you can look at the USDA page about it), and the article doesn't dispute it.
Yes, but there very well may be other downsides. A lot of the utopian ideas for GMOs basically involve creating invasive species. We here about the potential of making species that can easily grow in areas where they couldn't grow at all before. But doing so could well pose an environmental risk (if these end up growing so well in areas that they end up disrupting the ecosystem).
It might seem strange to think that too many edible plants could cause a problem, but it wouldn't be the first time (Kudzu is a good example). We're also not nearly at that point yet with current GMOs, but it seems to be what a lot of people are advocating. It'd be nice if we thought of the environmental downsides ahead of time, so that we don't keep saying "we now understand the environmental downsides of the tech we were using 30 years ago; but this new tech should be just fine" every few years.