It's great research like this that makes me wonder why some people are against genetically modified foods. I'm sure some modifications are bad, but how could ones like these do anything but help people survive that otherwise wouldn't?
Monsanto is a company that would probably love to have seeds that only are good for one generation and need to be purchased every planting season (they already do have these for some of their innovations, but I bet they'd love to have total control over the crop). Now, that's neither something that should spread into the wild nor something one company should have control over (closed-source, single-point-of-failure and all that).
One of their big cash cows in poor countries where they have a lot of influence is using their seeds to basically steal land. The seeds from one field that paid for them will blow into another and grow there next season. A Monsanto lawyer will then serve papers to the farmer next door who, through no fault of his own, has some Monsanto plants growing within his normal crop. Of course they sue him for some ridiculous amount he can't possibly pay and he ends up losing his land. Profitable business model.
but being anti-GM is being pro-starvation. The green revolution increased agricultural output dramatically last century, and we need it to continue if we're going to feed everyone. Its first-world boutique convenience versus third world life and death.
Thats only an option if you have enough money not to have to have enough children to support you in your old age. In much of the world, large families ensure the well-being of parents into old-age. You should be so lucky as to marry, have a ton of kids, mostly males, have them all live. Social security bling bling! This is why poverty and high rates of reproduction go together.
The thing I always like to point out to people who are against genetically modified foods is that breeding is genetic modification. Mankind has been genetically modifying plants for 10,000 years, to great effect, by performing artificial selection.
This is very disingenuous because people who campaign against GM are not against GM per se, they're against GM being introduced in an abrupt way with massive changes made to the genome in a short amount of time. The modifying of plants over 10,000 years has happened over 10,000 years, not 10 or 20 years as in the case of Monsanto!
Actually, most of the people I've met who campaign against GM are against it because they're scared of the concept of some mad scientist in a laboratory making abominable lettuce with "toxins" in it. Those are the people my "10,000" years argument is for. All I'm arguing for is the idea that GM is not bad per se. I fully agree that e.g. in the case of Monsanto that GM can be used for nefarious purposes.
This is not true. Breeding and genetic engineering are not that same. With breeding you can never add a new gene that was not there before, you can only pick the ones you want from the existing set.
That existing set has been "vetted" by thousands of years of the plant living, and people eating it.
You have no such knowledge with genetic engineering. You can only do a study and hope that any bad effects are not so subtle that you have a hard time finding them (i.e. subtle things can take decades before they are discovered).
