Mz Hedy wrote:I have a naive view of the operation of DNA in living tissue.
This is always a bad place to start when it comes to evaluating molecular biological techniques.
I think of it like a piece of humungously complicated software influencing the activity of a complex aggregation of machines.
... although that ^^ isn't a terrible analogy.
Within that model, I see gene editing (whether by addition or subtraction) as tinkering with the software at machine code level code without access to the design notes or source code.
... but this ^^ certainly isn't fair. They certainly have the source code. And the understanding of the mechanisms of the chemistry they're seeking to modify that corresponds to the design notes.
In IT they call this sort of thing a cludge
But you're suggesting that the mods go untested. They very much don't.
I'd hate to be an unwitting beta tester of someone's biological cludge.
I don't accept the 'cludge' premise, but by eating food from a GMO, you're not beta testing anything. As I said above, what do you imagine happens when you eat it?
The food is digested. The digestion process does not leave the genetic modification intact as it goes through the gut - all the large molecules are broken down into their constituent bits, which are metabolically indistinguishable from the unmodified plant.
And even if it did, there is no mechanism by which that DNA could be incorporated into yours.
There's no
food safety issue with GMOs, because digestion is digestion.
What might conceivably be an issue, and again, there's no evidence for this being a bad thing, even if it's a real effect, would be if somehow the GMOs displaced the non-GM equivalents in some kind of unpredicted way, by breeding more effectively and strangling out the less 'fit' variants.
However, GM crops are not like Japanese Knotweed. They're farmed, ie planted, cultivated and harvested. And I would guess that they're not different enough from the originals to suddenly spread across the world and replace all existing natural flora. The mods are very specific - introducing genes that confer disease resistance, pest resistance, or better water retention. And of course these genes already exist in other plants.
GMOs may also be safer in some ways - if they require less fertiliser, there'll be less run-off into rivers causing algal blooms that suck up the oxygen and kill all the fish, and if they require less insecticide, you and the bees will be eating less of that.
The Frankenstein fears of GMOs are based mostly on ignorance, I think.