I found this article to be interesting:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/ ... s-of-doubt

I came away from the article thinking that Vandana Shiva (who I had never heard of, but is apparently quite famous) is probably doing more harm than good.

I think she's very passionate and most likely well-intentioned, but a lot of her stances just aren't backed up with much science. This kind of rhetoric, in particular, seems dangerous to me:

“There are two trends,” she told the crowd that had gathered in Piazza Santissima Annunziata, in Florence, for the seed fair. “One: a trend of diversity, democracy, freedom, joy, culture—people celebrating their lives.” She paused to let silence fill the square. “And the other: monocultures, deadness. Everyone depressed. Everyone on Prozac. More and more young people unemployed. We don’t want that world of death.”

The author points out (and this much I knew) that of course just about everything we eat, or see in a supermarket, is "genetically modified" in the sense that humans have been breeding fruits and vegetables (and even livestock) for certain traits for almost as long as we've been cultivating.

Much of the anti-GMO camp seems to draw a line between inter-species breeding, and what's going on now, which the splicing of DNA from one species into another. This seems like a logical thing to be wary of, though the author points out this line may in fact be somewhat arbitrary:

When it comes to medicine, most Americans couldn’t care less about nature’s boundaries. Surgeons routinely suture pig valves into the hearts of humans; the operation has kept tens of thousands of people alive. Synthetic insulin, the first genetically modified product, is consumed each day by millions of diabetics. To make the drug, scientists insert human proteins into a common bacteria, which is then grown in giant industrial vats. Protesters don’t march to oppose those advances. In fact, consumers demand them, and it doesn’t seem to matter where the replacement parts come from.

I thought it was a very well-written article, and to me the hardest question to answer, and the most interesting part of this issue, is about patents/IP law.

Morally speaking, should big companies be able to patent crop varieties that could potentially save lives? But, of course, what is the incentive to pour money into R&D if there isn't money to be made from the innovation?

Well, of course, the anti-GMO crowd are fanatics, rather than rational thinkers. They tend to believe the world would be better off if everybody went back to subsistence farming, which is really getting by in a good year. That' s a great way to feed the world, isn't it? Then again, perhaps the anti-GMO crowd are latent Malthusians at heart.

It's always wise to be very, very careful when you play around with chemicals, of course. Nature is not a good forgiver. Otherwise, you might wind up another Octo-Mom, a national embarrassment and laughingstock. But time only moves one way and tools have to be produced to deal with ongoing and future needs.

The anti-GMO movement will ultimately end up being guilty for the premature deaths of millions of people around the world, almost all of whom will come from the poorest and most vulnerable sectors. Take a look at the way Greenpeace and their friends are campaigning to block the introduction of golden rice, which has been developed on a charitable basis with no patent and could potentially save thousands of children a year from the onset of blindness caused by vitamin A deficiency. Greenpeace would sooner see thousands of poor children go blind than allow some positive PR for genetically modified food. Pathetic.

Sassenach wrote:The anti-GMO movement will ultimately end up being guilty for the premature deaths of millions of people around the world, almost all of whom will come from the poorest and most vulnerable sectors. Take a look at the way Greenpeace and their friends are campaigning to block the introduction of golden rice, which has been developed on a charitable basis with no patent and could potentially save thousands of children a year from the onset of blindness caused by vitamin A deficiency. Greenpeace would sooner see thousands of poor children go blind than allow some positive PR for genetically modified food. Pathetic.

Correct! I was originally going to go into more detail about this, but figured somebody else would make the point. So, well done. It's really amazing how phobic some people are about this. As was already pointed out, we redesign all kinds of things that help us, including medicines that we all depend upon. Why should food be different and why should a small percentage of people control what a larger population of people would benefit from? Like I said - they are Malthusians, and probably happy to see the population dip by a few billion. As long as it isn't them, of course.