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- "engineered to be vulnerable to confidential substance" - EV Probably the biggest threat of GMOs is that if you can make them more resilient to a herbicide,
by deadowl 10y ago
- "engineered to be vulnerable to confidential substance" - EV
Probably the biggest threat of GMOs is that if you can make them more resilient to a herbicide, fungicide or what have you, that you can also make them more vulnerable to some substance that could then be later used to trigger famines.
Except you don't advertise that.
- nnq 10y agoLet's have at least some faith in humanity and not go that far, ok? :) 'cause if you're talking about what using bio engineering for war would mean (and what you're talking is in that category: a country damaged by such a tactic would instantly start a hot war!), this example is just the rosy tip of the iceberg...
- deadowl 10y agoA dead man switch on GMOs, in case there are any other unexpected consequences, has already been mentioned here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12015572 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12015572 And after reviewing that thread again, it appears such technology has already been commercially developed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_use_restriction_technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_use_restriction_techno...). Although in this instance it doesn't make the plant susceptible so much as it creates a food system dependency on the company that sells the GMO in order to grow the food in the first place.