Genetically modified food

Almost nothing you eat is truly natural: corn, rice, wheat, potatoes, apples, bananas (and, of course, cows and chickens), and so on, are already all very different than they would be if it weren't for us meddling humans. Over the centuries, we have altered all of these foods by selectively eating, breeding, and planting them; by hybridizing them; and/or cloning them (or their parent plants). Domestication is tantamount to genetic engineering, and we've been doing it for thousands of years.

This observation should suggest that genetically modifying a food crop does not automatically make it less fit for consumption, as many people seem to believe; and indeed, that it can sometimes be a good thing in terms of human nutrition.

But modern genetically modified organisms ("GMOs") are a novel biological phenomenon in several ways. For instance:

• we can now swap genes between wildly different organisms, like plants and animals, and 
• we can effect more dramatic genetic changes much more rapidly than ever before. 

A fear of the consequences these differences might result in has caused many to be suspicious of the whole idea of GMOs. Greenpeace's position (evident from this short video) is that genetic engineering is just too unpredictable, unethical, and/or dangerous to justify. On the other hand, GMOs are also considered to have played a role in the "green revolution", an event which is credited with having saved millions, if not billions, of human lives; and they could conceivably help us save even more lives into the future. So if Greenpeace is right, GMOs must be really bad news.

Although the majority of American soybeans and corn are already genetically modified, public disapproval has proved a major obstacle to the utilization of other GM crops. Are there really good biological reasons to just "say no to GMO"? Or does their unpopularity stem from irrational concerns?

Transgenic Foods: The "Tomato-fish"

Tomatoes are so expensive right now that my school cafeteria has altogether stopped serving them. And apparently this is because an unusually cold January just wiped out approximately 70% of Florida's crop.

Tomatoes are vulnerable to freezing because their flesh, like your flesh, is mangled by ice crystals when it freezes. Flounders, however, like many other cold water-dwelling animals, have solved this problem by producing proteins that lower the freezing point of their bodies: basically, natural antifreeze. So, theoretically, if tomato plants were given the flounder's "antifreeze-producing" gene, I would still be able to order them from my school cafeteria. Perhaps equally importantly, many future tomatoes would be saved from ruin, and the tomato's growing season might be significantly extended.

But such dramatically "transgenic" organisms (GMOs that possess genetic material copied from an unrelated species) are distinctly unpopular; and to many people, especially strict vegetarians, the thought of eating a tomato that contains "flounder genes" is often less than appetizing. Consequently, as the above banana-fish image suggests, transgenic organisms provide a good rallying point for those seeking to incite opposition to GMOs.

Personally, I think it can be helpful to remember that, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a "flounder gene", because genes are not species-specific. Countless organisms effectively share genes as a result of common ancestry; convergent evolution; or even interspecific hybridization, which is an entirely natural phenomenon. Left to their own devices, plants sometimes pollinate the "wrong" species and give rise to a viable hybrid; and even animals will engage in inter-species mating (not just in North Carolina), and sometimes productively.

In fact, tomatoes no doubt already share genes with flounders. Moreover, you, like all humans, share genes with trees. That does not make you "part tree", and it certainly doesn't mean that you are any less edible than you would be otherwise. In short, individual genes do not in any way confer the "essence" of the organism from which they have been copied. In a limited sort of way, plant and animal species can be thought of as very long words, in that inserting letters from one word into another does not cause their respective definitions to converge.

Would the antifreeze proteins effect the nutritional value or taste of the actual tomato fruit? 

I don't know - but, like all GMOs, their nutritional value could be experimentally determined. And it is worth noting that the presence of the proteins certainly doesn't seem to be stopping anyone from consuming flounders.

But what if the tomato-fish genes "escape" into the wild via accidental cross-pollination?

Unforeseeable Ramifications: "Genetic Pollution"

The speed at which genetic changes can now be made has caused many people to fear that GMOs could result in ecological disaster. Greenpeace has made this concern central to their argument against GMOs. On their website, they accuse GMOs of constituting "genetic pollution" and warn of its "unforeseeable" consequences, eloquently concluding that:

"GMOs should not be released into the environment since there is not an adequate scientific understanding of their impact".

To be sure,  the possible effects of GMOs on the environment should not be taken lightly. After all, ecosystems are notoriously unpredictable, and small changes to them can sometimes have disastrous results. Nonetheless Greenpeace's argument is misleading, and the dangers posed by "genetic pollution" are heavily overstated. To begin with, an alleged "not adequate understanding" is a terrible reason to stand against GMOs in principle, as Greenpeace does: it just calls for further research. A much better argument would be something like: "... we cannot feasibly gain an adequate understanding of their potential environmental impacts, until it is too late."

But even in the face of this improved argument, it is still important to remember that there are environmental consequences to our inactions, as well as our actions. For example, "Bt corn" can be grown using fewer applied pesticides. In addition, starving masses of  people have no time for luxuries like sustainability, and tend to be much harder on their natural surroundings. So by turning our backs on a way to potentially better feed them, we risk incurring damage to the environment anyway. Key differences between the environmental risks posed by "genetic pollution" and masses of malnourished people are that the former is hypothetical, highly circumstantial, and also within our ability to possibly control.

(Perhaps ironically, the use of the so-called "terminator gene" [which destroys the viability of a plant's seeds] could be a useful way to help preclude the escape of GMO genes into the wild - yet pressure from groups like Greenpeace has compelled Monsanto to publicly pledge not to commercialize terminator technology.)

And while it could be due to my lack of botanical savvy, the idea that a GMO tomato plant hybrid (for example) could give rise to some kind of new frost-resistant invasive species strikes me as being a highly questionable concern, not least of all because our food crops have been "engineered" to be high-yield and nutritious, not reproductively competitive in the wild.

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GMOs represent a complex issue that I cannot hope to comprehensively address here. In addition to the myriad of good biological questions about their effects on nutrition and the environment, they also pose several ethical dilemmas that can understandably exert a profound influence on one's opinions regarding GMOs. But at the risk of sounding callous, these strike me as the result of technological progress and fundamental societal change, not genetic engineering per se. 

However, my main point is that, from a purely biological perspective, there is simply nothing inherently bad about tinkering with the genes of our food stuffs. Whether you are for the use of GMOs or against it, this point should at least be accepted, because to do otherwise risks needlessly condemning real people to malnutrition and starvation. A good possible example of this is provided by the GMO known as "golden rice", which was designed to provide beta-carotene to the millions in the developing world who suffer from a deficiency in Vitamin A. According to Wikipedia, 250,000-500,000 children go blind each year due to vitamin A deficiency, and half of these die within the next year. Theoretically, if the rice many of these kids eat everyday contained beta-carotene, their bodies would then be able to synthesize the Vitamin A they so badly require. 

But the unrelenting opposition of environmentalist groups like Greenpeace has helped stall the distribution of golden rice to the millions it could possibly benefit. You would hope that, at the very least, they would come up with a decent argument for their position (further dismantled by this Skeptoid podcast), and then state it in reasonably coherent English.