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Comment by projectileboy | Hacker News Reader

FWIW, this is why some people have fears around GMO foods. It's not that they can't appreciate the benefits, it's because they fear that we're testing systems in production that we don't fully understand.

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You can say that about all agriculture ever even more than you can about GMOs. We understand exact, precise genetic changes that have a much higher standards of testing than all of the genetic changes we've made to food using traditional techniques (mutagenesis, cross-breeding, selection) which modify dozens or hundreds of genes in highly unpredictable ways. We should be careful about all agricultural changes in a way proportional to what changes we made in the system, and not classify using modern science as always "too scary" to rely on.

If we're talking about Mendelevian use of alleles that exist in a species already, sure.

But have you seen those glow in the dark aquarium fish? Or the tomatoes that use flounder DNA to make them hardier in the freezer? How rigorously is it possible to test ramifications from those things?

GMO produce fetches about the same market price, and is produced at about the same efficiency as modern non-GMO produce, so I also can't appreciate the "benefits".

[ https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/30/business/gmo-promise-fall... ]

GMO is just a red herring that distracts people from the fact that most GMO crops are all about pesticide resistance. GMOs are almost definitely sprayed with pesticides, and continue to carry trace amounts into our food supply and habitat. The sprays themselves are blends of many different synthetic chemicals, not just, e.g. glyphosate, alone.

The entire western food system resembles some kind of BNW-esque intelligence test, where you have to wade through this web of lies, and if you can't figure it out, you're basically eating small amounts of poison that dull your thinking, sap your energy, and shorten your lifespan.

Good luck figuring it out!

Yes, it is so. Consider that corn was modified to be more resilient but its pollen may be compatible with nearby plants. Hybridization of transgenics with local flora may have unintended and far-reaching consequences. That's why the "Terminator" traits are typically outlawed. No one (eh...citation needed) desires a world where growing the food requires a proprietary compound. I doubt a civilization with a food supply like that could remain stable.

However! I read an interesting study that claimed Bt transgenics are better for food production & the environment because they kill crop pests but the carnivorous field fauna (spiders, horseflies, etc.) flourish with humankind's helping hand.

Whereas I typically purchase non-GMO foods, this revelation caused me to question, and to become ambivalent. No doubt pests would tolerate Bt with time, but in humans Bt is a non-toxic pesticide, and the germlines of the crop pests would probably never recover from the trait's proliferation. At the same time, the carnivorous "worker arthropods" which eat the crop pests would also experience a huge acceleration in their development.

Directed breeding in animals is an issue which has a tighter grip on my heart--some of the stuff that's been done to dogs and cats to "get them to look a certain way" is really messed up. Maybe some look at the fields the same way.

I do not know. It is not my choice. I am glad for that.

I think about this a lot with respect to society as a whole. Specifically, legalizing drugs, effects of social media, and universal basic income will affect the most complex system of all, 'society', in ways we can't possibly predict. Anyone who says these giant changes are definitely safe is naive.

Still, we need to try and make progress.

GMOs...It's that we've engineered something and have absolutely no idea of what a recall might look like. Ask Toyota is that's their understanding and experience with engineering. Obviously, Mother Nature is multiple orders of magnitude more complex than automobiles.

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