beigepajamas replied to your post:beigepajamas replied to your post:beigepajamas...
Honestly, after writing a term paper on GMOs, THE BUGGERS ARE SO STRICTLY REGULATED now that most environmental side effects seem unlikely, the bigger concern is resistant weeds and pests developing because we’re really just forcing evolution.
Yeah; I mean cross-pollination is always a thing with plants because for them the whole species barrier seems less like a barrier and more like a revolving door that occasionally gets a bit stuck, but really a lot of the concerns are kind of really overblown. And sure, okay, there's always the business ethics side of it like how okay is it for a company to hold the intellectual rights for a species or what have you and as someone who side-eyes a lot of copyright legislation I totally get that, but... it's not a reason to say no this field is totally off-limits we don't want any of it, is it?
I mean looking towards the future, looking at problems like diminishing bee populations (especially non-honey bees), at the continuously increasing human population and how we may just be tossing our environment into a bin... GM crops and GMOs in general might with time turn out to be one of our best solutions for many present and future problems.
And the silliest thing about this whole scare is that it's not like us modifying our environment or the organisms in it is in any way new. We've been doing all kinds of modifications through breeding and what have you since forever: some species like dairy cattle or the banana would not exist (and with the banana, could not even propagate) without our constant and continuous intervention. It's just another way of doing this same thing again, and one that is less random, potentially even safer, and could allow even better results.
And yet people toss around "unnatural" as if it has a consistent, coherent meaning. ;|