I’m a biochemist, and I’d feed GMOs to my kids all day if I had any. Or to my mom. They’re totally fine.
Putting cattle remains in cattle feed was fine until CJD was discovered, mass producing CFCs was fine until the chemisty of the ozone damage was understood. More chemists assured leaded petrol was fine and the few who complained were attacked... this list is huge. Its totally fine to mass produce plastics still. So to assure the generally well informed about the safety and wisdom of a technological proposition - you would need to be able to carry more detail than just adding 'I am a related professional - this is fine'
What evidence do you have that our understanding of CRISPR and genetic modification today is on par of our understanding of CFCs and CJD in the 20th century?
It's like saying that we shouldn't release any new drugs because of the thalidomide catastrophe.
My argument was not like saying "we should never do anything like this because of past grave accidents in comparable novel products and practices" It was to be measured and wary of bare professional and institutional assurances.
Regarding the characteristics of plants and animals that we should feed to our children and mass rear in our environment - I am of the mind that the characteristics should be as well evidenced by the long history of life as we can afford.
CRISPR-Cas9 (the method used here) was first successfully used seven years ago. According to the article, the meat may go to market in two years pending a safety review. So that's nine years from lab to table. How soon is too soon? What makes you think doing it now would be premature as opposed to ten years from now?
> It was to be measured and wary of bare professional and institutional assurances.
From where would you like to get assurances? Do you have to conduct the study yourself?
> Regarding the characteristics of plants and animals that we should feed to our children and mass rear in our environment - I am of the mind that the characteristics should be as well evidenced by the long history of life as we can afford.
That's all well and good till climate change reduces arable land and we have to extract as much as we can from the remainder.
Which is totally fine, but unfortunately that position is neither informed by any specific evidence, nor informed by a principled understanding of the technology in question (which is where deferral to expertise can come in handy).
You should note that there's a difference between an appeal to authority fallacy, and deferral to expertise, and while the former is fatal to any logical argument, the latter is an entirely appropriate and useful heuristic: https://thelogicofscience.com/2015/03/20/the-rules-of-logic-...
What determines the safety of any commercial application of technology is regulation. No technology is safe - don't lose contact with fundamental facts in the coarse of trying to maximize your argumentation and technological expertise.
So yeah, for what it's worth, zero potential conflict of interest whatsoever.
I think it’s important to distinguish that objection from health scares, technophobia and such: imagine if the public’s objections were targeted at the real problems instead, how much more productive it would be!
Not surprisingly, I've learned about this concept from the Russian government.
If you are going to use your credentials to explain why you do not have a problem with GMOs, but then put in a blanket "Everything is fine" vibe... that doesn't do justice to the problems.
Unfortunately, regulation of this sort of thing, at least in Canada and the US, is a complete joke and a confusing mess that doesn't serve anyone's best interests.
Or are you approving the chemicals that are sprayed on GMOs because they can survive them?
I think being opposed to the spraying of fields by whatever herbicide or pesticide is a legitimate position, but it's a distinct problem. Yes, I realize that they often come together, but that is not necessarily the case.
You can easily have a GMO that has nothing to do with pesticide or herbicide resistance, in fact there are plenty of those, and they unfortunately all get lumped into the same category in public discourse.
And even in the worst case, where a GMO's purpose is to be used alongside a herbicide such as glyphosate... It's not clear that the alternative is any better. In fact most other categories of herbicides are way more hazardous (note that I am not a herbicide expert, but I do know a thing or two about them). I don't want to defend any bad companies, and I don't know what the solution is, but one thing I know for sure: feeding everyone is actually super complicated.
In my opinion, health-wise and biochemically its fine
The patent situation, market capture, and change in biodiversity are issues secondary to the issues most are generally worried about when consuming and purchasing GMO foods and could be fixed with changes in law/regulation rather than having to do with whatever proteins the organism is expressing
Seriously though, biochemists seem to have more authority on this subject than a farmer. Some farmers study and are knowledgeable about genes and chemistry and whatnot. But without further information, just being a farmer doesn’t give you much more insight on the safety of GMO.