I feel like there is a strong emotional component at play in these approval rates. There are many people who have been touched and directly impacted by disease, terminal or otherwise. It changes your life in a really stark and eye-opening way, whether you're the afflicted or it is someone you love or care about. While GMO's certainly draw concern and ridicule from swaths of the public, many aren't impacted by them in the same immediate (read:empirical I see it with my own eyes without a shred of doubt) way a serious disease is capable of. Probably part of the reason, anyway.