-
Asked by to Ian, Zena, Vicky, Sergey, Claire on 17 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
-
Sergey Lamzin answered on 17 Jun 2014:
There is only one reason why there has been controversy: modern journalists have nothing to do, so they write bad press about us scientists in order to sell the Daily Mail.
Plant modification has been around since the 50s. Just no one was told we were doing it. And everyone was happy. The less you know the better you sleep.
What is being done was in no way harmful. For the most part biologists take existing genes from one plant and put them into another plant. This is the most frequently used technique to transfer disease immunity from one species to another. Do you want bread wheat that is immune to diseases or not?
-
-
Ian Simpson answered on 18 Jun 2014:
My view is that it is essential, but that it needs to be properly regulated.
The increasing gap between food production and consumption around the world that is only going to widen as the global population increases and global warming kicks in is a very real problem. We need to increase food production and traditional methods are not currently able to keep up with demand. No doubt there are a whole raft of measures that could be looked at to help address this, but there is a growing realisation that GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms) need to be part of the solution.
That’s simply a food security argument. As Sergey mentions there are other reasons too, mainly relating to human health.
For example, about 3 billion people around the world are dependent on rice to survive. Rice does not have the nutritional requirements needed to stay healthy. You may have heard of “golden rice” a GM rice that expresses beta-carotene and is a source of Vitamin A. Every year about 700,000 children under the age of 5 die from Vitamin A deficiency. It’s controversial, there are debates about the science, but over the last decade it has been shown to work.
On the animal side, many GM animals have been made, not many for food (yet), but to make therapeutics. One of the reasons for this is that animal systems can make these products very efficiently and in some cases are the only way that they can be made. An example would be ATryn an anti-coagulant (stops blood clotting) which reduces the likelihood of blood clots during surgery.
-
Claire Shooter answered on 24 Jun 2014:
Modifying plants so that they grow faster, produce better crops and are more disease resistant is really essential to the future of our planet. There are too many of us, and we are destroying too much land to use for growing crops. GMO crops need less land to grow more food and less pesticides and fertilizers which pollute our air and rivers. There is no threat to human health from eating these crops and we should be pouring as much research into it as possible. It is, of course, also important to be cautious before you introduce any new species into an ecosystem, so extensive checks and regulations to the industry are absolutely necessary. A good way people can control GMO crops is to make them infertile, meaning they can’t breed outside the lab and get out of control.
Comments