More than 100 Nobel laureates tell Greenpeace International: Stop opposing genetically modified foods that could improve nutrition around the world.
As a “scientist” I have a real problem with this – the problem being that I agree with Greenpeace and I completely disagree with the Nobel laureates. Here’s the issue. If a mutant organism comes into the world (naturally), first off it only comes along as one. Then it has to pass the survival test to see if it can get along with the rest of the environment, then it needs to reproduce and the offspring need to go through the same process. Taking a considerable length of time for a new organism to get established is a big safety valve for the rest of the environment.
Now you decide to plonk down a WHOLE FIELD of genetically modified crop. It hasn’t had to run the survival gauntlet where it is tested by Nature to see if it is o.k. to be let loose or not – and instead of just one mutant let loose, you are letting loose millions of mutants, and doing so in an incredibly short length of time.
The (Darwinian) evolutionary experiment has been running on this planet for billions of years, and it seems to be a pretty good way to test out any new organisms. Do these 100 Nobel laureates really have the gall to say that there will not be ANY way there can be ANY serious repercussions from letting loose a man-made mutation into the environment? Do they really know every possible permutation and combination of the ways the newly (man-made) mutated organism can interact with the WHOLE of the environment? Personally I don’t think they have a clue – clever as they are. If it has taken Nature billions of years to get into the present day state I think it is rather arrogant in the extreme to say that letting loose a huge number of mutated organisms overnight CANNOT have ANY possible (serious) consequences. That simply isn’t a very scientific comment to make.
