Re:50 Years Ago, Sugar Industry Quietly Paid Scientists to B...
by Ma8ee on Saturday February 13, 2021 @05:47PM
(#26127719)
The most common use of the concept GMO exclude simple breeding, which is what we have done for thousands of years. We didn’t use to transfer genes between species or even between kingdoms.
I’m not that worried, but I’m not that fast to exclude the possible that something goes dangerously wrong somewhere, say some crop with new genes that make it spread uncontrollable through a whole ecosystem, in the same way invasive species sometimes do.
And then of course the issues you bring up in your last paragraph. The technique is in general not used to help humankind or the world, but to maximise revenue for the corporations. At least in the industrialised world, it is now more important to increase biodiversity than to maximise yield.
Re:50 Years Ago, Sugar Industry Quietly Paid Scientists to B...
by arrosenberg on Saturday February 13, 2021 @08:48PM
(#26128939)
> say some crop with new genes that make it spread uncontrollable through a whole ecosystem, in the same way invasive species sometimes do.
You don't need to worry about GMOs for that. We already have Kudzu vines.
There is nothing inherently dangerous about doing this, and it has the potential to do a lot of good for humanity. It's important not to conflate the demagoguing of massive agricorps with a useful scientific technique.
The bigger scam is that, despite producing more calories than we could possibly use, they've continued modifying crops for calorie yield and chemical resistance, which has made a lot of crops less nutritious (per kg eaten), less tasty, and more dependent on advanced human intervention to successfully grow.