10 realizations to change thinking about GMOs

When I first started learning about GMOs, my model was trans fats and vitamin supplements. We thought that we could engineer a food that was healthier than saturated animal fats and it blew up in our face. We thought that if eating vitamin rich foods conferred health benefits, then supplementation would be even better. Except in cases of malnutrition, that hasn’t proven to be the case. I wasn’t ideologically opposed to genetic engineering, I just figured that given our current understanding of nutrition and ecology, the technology wasn’t really ready for prime time.

It took a while to realize that was an incorrect model for thinking about GE breeding. There are a number of realizations that I went through before leaving that behind.

1. It’s a single gene (sometimes two or three) that is being transferred out of 10′s of thousands.

2. I share half my DNA with a banana. Half the genes in me are also in a banana.

3. The genes/proteins/traits for GE crops are very well thought out and chosen carefully.

Read the full, original article: The 10 minor realizations that flipped my thinking about GMOs

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