What's the danger of genetically modified foods?

Great Debates
1

I put it in GD because I expect it to wind up here, but for me it’s really more of a simple question: What are the perceived dangers of genetically modified food? To me it doesn’t make much sense. If I eat a bag of corn chips made from ordinary corn, I don’t worry that the DNA of the corn that went into those chips is somehow going to interact with my own DNA and cause terrible problems. So why should genetically modified corn be any different? It’s still corn.

That’s not to say that I approve of all the things that have been done by the companies that promote these products. For example, I believe it was wrong of Monsanto to develop crops that won’t produce viable seed, forcing farmers to buy next year’s seed from them. But as a health issue, I don’t understand what this debate is all about. Judging by the fact that anti-GM-food protests draw way, way fewer participants than anti-globalization protests, it would appear that I’m in the majority. But majorities have been known to be wrong. So please enlighten me.

2

It could turn you into a newt. It did me.

Got better though.

3

There are a few concerns.

First off, as you note, there are concerns about what it means to land ownership. GM foods are often capital-intensive: they work in conjunction with expensive pesticides, or they prevent farmers from collecting their seeds to re-sow crops year to year. There’s a fear that poor subsistence farmers will find themselves outcompeted by wealthy farmers (who can afford the new capital-intensive crops) and will be forced to sell their small plots of land, concentrating land ownership. A lot of folks consider this a bad thing: it takes resources from some poor people. (The flip argument is that non-land-owning poor people find that the cost of their food drops, and so it indirectly gives resources to other poor people).

Secondly, there’s an ecological concern. If GM crops are extremely competitive even in the short run, they’ll probably replace all kinds of unique local variations of crops: rather than finding a thousand different varieties of rice growing in India, you’ll find one GM variety. If it turns out that the GM variety is vulnerable to a specific pest or disease, it can be devastating to the nation’s food supply. A diversity of crops is far more resistant: even if one variety is vulnerable to a specific threat, you’ll have plenty of other varieties that are not.

Third, there’s the competition-with-organic-pesticides concern. Organic farmers often use BT (a bacterium) as an insecticide on their crops: few insects are resistant to the toxins it produces. Monsanto, however, has engineered crops that produce the BT toxin and marketed them widely. Organic farmers fear that with the wide application of this toxin, insects will evolve resistance to it much more quickly, taking away on of the organic farmers’ most effective anti-insect tools.

Finally, there are health concerns. Currently, there’s no research (at least, none that I’ve seen) suggesting that these health concerns are legitimate. However, some folks ascribe to what they call the Cautionary Principle: better safe than sorry, they say, and they’d like any new crop to undergo tests roughly equivalent to tests for new pharmaceuticals before they’re released on the open market. Personally, I consider this the weakest objection to GM foods; it is, however, the one with the most selfish appeal (i.e., rather than threatening Third World farmers, it threatens your own health), and so I think it gets the most publicity.

Daniel

4

Glad to hear of your recovery, Coll.

The reason I am wary of GM foods is basically that the consequences of introducing them to the environment aren’t well-known, simply because there is no laboratory the size of Earth other than, well, Earth. If there are long-term effects of eating GM foods, or long-term effects of eating exclusively GM foods, we don’t know them. Now, for instance, it’s pretty much impossible to get canola that is GM-free in Canada, and if it turns out fifty years down the line to be really bad for us, it will be much too late to do anything about it.

Similarly, if it turns out to be bad for the environment, it will also be too late. Imagine if GM canola mutates into something that prevents wheat from growing - there are no natural predators to the GM stuff, so it would be awfully hard “protect” the wheat from it.

I just don’t like my planet (my home and my source of food) being used as a giant laboratory for a company to test their own private profit-making endeavour. I mean, how often have companies turned out to be wrong about the safety of the food and drugs that they have sworn up and down are fine? If they turn out to be wrong about this, it will be too late.

I am comfortable eating GM foods, it’s the long-term uncertainty, and the treatment of my planet as Monsanto’s playground, that I worry about.

And the other reason you point out, about manufacturing seeds that can’t propogate themselves, is a very good reason to be “against” GM foods. Companies wouldn’t invest so much time and money into something that they couldn’t somehow protect as their own intellectual property. Patenting strains, and ensuring that they aren’t grown without the proper royalties being paid, can’t be good for either the farmers or the food supply.

You must be in N American to comment that “most people feel the way you do.” Not so. In Europe, they are strongly against GM foods and refuse to trade with nations that may have “contaminated” supplies. African nations have been known to refuse food aid from countries with GM foods in their supplies for the same reason, and you would think they would be eager for all the food they could get. They don’t want to take the risk with their own crops.

5

Two reasons that have solid data behind them:

a)People allergic against the proteins encoded by the transferred genes risk ingesting these proteins without being aware of it.

b)The genes introduced into the GMO can and have cross over into wild or non-GMO plants.

Aside from that, potential cross-interactions between the new and old proteins in the plant are not only conceivable, but probable, and whether these, in turn, can have long-term effects on health is something that still needs to be studied.

The issue is not that the DNA in the corn will do something to you. Short of a virus, the DNA will, as a rule, not do anything to you. But the DNA isn’t in there for decoration. It’s there to encode for a protein. If you pick up some wild plant and eat it, you don’t worry about what the DNA in there is going to do to you, you worry about what the proteins in there might do to you, or other substances that the proteins have produced. When eating a death cap, its DNA is your least concern.

As such, talking about DNA interaction is really missing the point.

A straw argument, it has nothing to do with with GMOs. The same is true for modern hybrid seeds, and as such nothing unusual for high-yield crops.

Actually, in Europe, the vast majority of the population opposed GM food.

6

Modern agriculture in general can be capital intensive. As to the whole ‘re-sowing’ canard, use of modern non GM hybrids also entails the same thing, this whole romantic notion of seed saving is vastly oversold. Target market for GM seeds is not substantially different than that of modern hybrids.

Subsistance farmers already are out competed by a country mile by modern agriculture, and that is a good thing.

Micro plots of land and overly intensive usage of the soil lead to permanent soil exhaustion. It’s better in the long run for transition to higher yield and higher efficiency agriculture, from environmental and economic perspectives, however painful that transition inevitably will be.

Further to that, depending on the country, micro plots are often share cropped regardless, so the ownership issue realy is entirely unconnected to GM crops.

The balance of the argument is in fact bankrupt.

This however is a valid issue and should be addressed, ideally through funding to seed preservation efforts.

Not just Monsanto. A number of firms, including my former firm. I worked on that project.

It should be noted that the ‘toxin’ produced by B.T. is a gut binder for a limited range of boring larval forms.

I am sympathetic to the resistance management issue, although this is a limited scope of the universe of genetic modifications possible.

Agreed.

7

I’d be happier if baseless fears to genetic engineering would go away. The newt thing wasn’t so bad, although I did need a lot of water.

Oh what complete and utter rubbish.

Most of the modification work is not substantially different from simple hybridization which already goes on. The fears about “genetic modification” largely stem from half understood Sci Fi imagery and general sci. illiteracy.

My wonderful Swiss Masters and myself ran a tight ship in all our experimental sites, and the whole fear mongering on this subject is wildly exagerated.

Baseless fearmongering. What do you think you’re going to turn into a newt?

B.t. is already well understood as a substance, the resistance gene to round up ready really is nothing fancy. It’s not fucking Mad Science children, simple principals.

Imagine if I grew a 3rd eye.

Bother, baseless scaremongering.

8

Collounsbury, that is simple, plain, and unadulterated boasting.

Making such a claim implies complete knowledge of the molecular physiology of all systems involved, the GMO and the human, which is about the highest degree of hubris you can have.

There are plenty of agents we know to have deleterious effects by as-yet undetermined physiological interactions. Many molecular pathways have only recently been discovered. Arrogant dismissals such as yours lack any and all justification and are irreconcilable with academic standards.

9

Boasting I grew a 3rd eye? Or that I got better after turning into a newt?

As for the rest, Oliver, you don’t know what you’re babbling on about.

10

That must have made moving to the Middle East a tough choice.

As fort the GM thing, I have no personal objection to eating GM food. There are a few issues that concern me with the business aspect of things.

  1. Resistant bugs make life difficult for GM competitors (organic folks, etc.)

  2. Cross-pollination. Organic producers should not have to worry about their crops being “contaminated” by GM pollen, which would cost them money because they no longer could put the organic label on their crops. Also, there are ownership issues - does a farmer who has his crops pollinated by neighboring GM varieties have an obligation to destroy his crops or pay a royalty or something to the developing organization for something that was not his fault? (This has probably been worked out, I just don’t know what happened)

  3. Loss of diversity, which is remedied by seed banks, etc. Still a concern, though. And not one limited to GM crops, but all agriculture. But it’s sort of related.

11

In my opinion there is strong evidence that genetic modification is resonably safe. Two things lead me to this conclusion.

Firstly ( and of lesser persuasive value ) genetic engineering has been around for about 25 years now, the first transformation experiments being done in the early 1980’s and late 70’s. Its almost unique in human scientific progess in that it is not possible to point to a single disaster or catastophe caused by it.

Sencondly genetic information is passed between species all the time in the world around us by a variety of methods, eg conjugation in bacteria and viruses, transposable elements, integrating retro viruses etc. Given that we have the whole of evolutionary history to tell us that the process of genetic modification as a general method is safe.

However, the use that we put such technolgy to is like any other tool. It can be used for good purposes and bad, we can make blight resistant potatos and design bioweapons.

PaulE

12

Nice try, Collonsbury. Obviously, your entire defense is restricted to insults, which is not surprising.

Coincidentally, I work in molecular physiology, at a top facility in the field, and hold graduate degrees in the discipline. I suggest rather than simply insulting other people, you actually read a little bit of literature in the field. You might know something about economics, but obviously, the only thing you can do in physiology is boast and spew insults. You just reduced yourself to the same level of credibility as tobacco lobbyists claiming that smoking is safe.

As one example, the molecular pathways by which dioxins and other arylhydrocarbons influence normally estrogen-regulated genes have only been unraveled over the last year (half-year when looking at publication dates).

That the protein Siah interacts with the Wnt signalling cascade through regulation of beta-catenin degradation is fairly new data. What role it precisely plays is as yet unknown. Since this pathway is involved in almost all colon cancers, there is plenty of potential for agents to cause colon cancer by molecular pathways we do not understand yet. Your claim of fearmongering requires that you can exclude that the gene products in question can interact, for example, via the Siah route in such a fashion that an increased risk of cancer is posed. If you can do that, I’d like to see your data. Cause it sure as hell ain’t published.

I would suggest doing your homework, rather than simply propagating company propaganda of the worst kind. Alternatively, stick to economy, and desist from claiming other people don’t know what they are babbling about if you know zilch about those people and zilch about the discipline you rant about.

13

You are oversimplifying the issue. Viruses can hardly be called safe -they frequently destroy those cells they integrate their genes in. It is also wrong to state that evolutionary history tells us that genetic transfer is safe. Gene transfer of the kind we are talking about is the exception, not the rule, and we have precious little solid data on actual gene transfer in evolutionary history. In some cases where viral DNA was originally thought to be the source of some stretches in higher order animal or human DNA, that conclusion is being reconsidered. In fact, from an evolutionary point of view, the kind of gene transfer we are talking about is highly unusual and normally actively selected against, unless it integrates in such a fashion that it does not produce a significant effect.

14

I believe you are misunderstanding my point. I am not arguing that viruses are safe or that genetic material crossing species bounderies is anything other than unusual. It however happens enough to be significant, and other than being completely random is in no way different from a transformation in a lab.

The point i am trying to make is that the process of genetic modification in its self dosnt produce any saftey implication. All GM food is not bad simpley because it is GM.

It is however possible to do some extremely dangerous/immoral things with genetic engineering if that is what you set out to do …

PaulE

15

Have you perhaps forgotten the deaths caused by ingestion of recombinantly produced Tryptophan ?
The fear of genetically modified foods is overblown, but it is NOT baseless. This is a NEW technology. Expectations that it will be all “beer and pickles” are every bit as naive as the claims that it’ll turn us all into newts. When you attempt to modify a biochemical system, the system attempts to compensate for the stresses brought on by the changes you’ve made. It’s called homeostasis, and in terms of real world consequences, it means “Shit happens.” It’d be nice if we took enough care in making these products to ensure that that shit, whatever it may be, does not happen to us !

16

You are mistaken. Transformations in a lab are a)contained, b)far from always safe for the organism in question and c)do not as a rule encode an protein that is actually expressed.

When proteins are actually being expressed, toxic effects for the host cell are far from unusual, but actually happen rather frequently. These are sometimes, but not always, the result of overexpression of the protein in non-physiological quantities. That can either happen -when stably integrated into the host genome- through so-called cis-effects, i.e. disruption of endogenous genes critical for survival by random integration, or, in every case, through so-called trans-effects, when the actual gene product somehow interacts with the molecular physiology of the host, interfering with its function by up- or downregulating critical signals, or gobbling up resources.

In some cases, an expressed protein is locked away by bacteria cells in so-called inclusion bodies, saving the bacteria cell from potentially deleterious effects. That road is not open to higher organisms.

That is not the case with GMOs. The genes introduced in these organisms are introduced with the specific intent of gene expression in such a way that the gene and its product fulfill their function -otherwise the effect would be next to nil. They are introduced in the belief that the desired effect is the only significant effect. That this is the case, however, is far from shown for each case, especially since we would have to watch for two entirely different kinds of trans-effects: Those in the organism, where the new gene might interfere with proper signal transduction, and those in the human body, where ingested proteins might invoke an undesirable effect -and if it is a simple allergic reaction.

17

I’m afraid part of this is just plain wrong. For starters lab transformations always include a protein that is expressed. Unless you have at least a marker ( usually an antibiotic resistance gene of some kind ) you have no way of knowing you have actually got your DNA into the organism.

I write this as someone who spent three years of post graduate reseach designing transformation techniques for the ascomycete fungus Gauemannomyces graminis var. triticii.

As for the downstream and upstream metabolic effects caused by modification you are of course correct, but i would like to add that any mutation that ablates or affects part of an organisms metabolic machinery can have effects like this.

Added to that in plants, at least, i believe whole chunks of DNA crossing species bounderies is actually quite common and many species contain multiple complete genomes from different sources. However i’ll have to check my sources on that as i am dragging it up from agrogenetics lectures i attended over ten years ago.
PaulE

18

You are correct. I was recalling the fact that when we had the WTO conference in Seattle, the protests drew an extraordinary level of participation. Yet for a similar conference on GM foods, the surrounding protests pretty much fizzled out. I concluded that more people can wrap their minds around issues of economic security than around environmental and nutritional issues, so the anti-WTO protests were a bigger draw.

Everyone’s raising some good points here, and mentioning some things I hadn’t considered. Thanks for the responses.

19

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There are a few valid concerns. The biggest concern to me would be the possible effects on the environment. For example what happens when GM crops cross pollinate with non-GM crops? What effect might a particular GM crop have on the local insect population?

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What’s wrong with that? It isn’t as if Monsanto is the only company that sells seed.

Marc

20

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I don’t know about your neck of the woods but subsitence farmers do not compete with anyone. By definition a subsistent farmer grows just enough to feed themselves.

Marc