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This is the kind of GMO that's generally considered fairly benign as they're only increasing the expression of genes already found in the plant, not doing weird

This is the kind of GMO that's generally considered fairly benign as they're only increasing the expression of genes already found in the plant, not doing weird stuff like putting fish antifreeze genes in strawberries. You still have to be careful in some cases (for example, humans have bred toxins out of many food crops by reducing expression levels over generations; the genes for toxins might still be there, i.e. potatoes, so you'd not want to trigger their expression accidentally). As far as nitrogen use, the claim is that these plants utilize nitrogen more efficiently than wild-type, so that you'd actually have to apply less nitrogen fertilizer and thus there'd be less nitrogen runoff from fields into lakes/streams etc. From the materials and methods: > "For nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) measurement, rice plants were grown in three independent field blocks supplied with 0, 100, or 200 kg N/ha. The study was performed in the Experimental Station of the Institute of Crop Science, CAAS, in Beijing from May to October, 2021. The N fertilizer was applied as urea at two stages: 40% at the tillering stage and 60% at the heading stage. Each line was cultivated in randomized plots with 20 cm spacing between rows and plants, and each plot contained at least 50 plants per line." Oddly enough, the publisher makes materials and methods freely available but not results and discussion, go figure.

msla 4y ago
> not doing weird stuff like putting fish antifreeze genes in strawberries. Oooh! Weird! Modifying my immune system to be able to fight cancer is "weird" too, right? Is there a good reason to use "weird" as a criterion in any of this? Because I like being a GMO organism who isn't dying of cancer, and people using "weird" as a metric make me a bit uneasy about how much longer such treatments are going to be allowed. Remember: GMO isn't just about the "Organic" aisle at Amazon Whole Foods.
- matthewdgreen 4y ago
  I think “weird” here means “things that may have unexpected side effects.” Cancer treatments have loads of those but we put up with them because death is worse. Eating strawberries and rice maybe exists at a different point on the risk continuum.
  - d4mi3n 4y ago
    This is true up to the point of food scarcity. Between geopolitical conflict and crop failures around the world this year due to severe heat waves, we’re looking at a rough few years ahead of us for the global food supply.
    - tsimionescu 4y ago
      So instead of stopping the wars and the global warming which increases the chance of the heat waves, we should jump straight to genetic engineering? Is that the better solution?
      - goatlover 4y ago
        More realistic as stopping wars and climate change are much harder. The war in Ukraine hasn’t ended despite the West’s efforts. And CO2 emissions continue on a large scale despite all warnings.
        tsimionescu 4y ago
        The West's efforts have been to continue the war, not to stop it. When you're supplying arms, you're not acting to stop a war. Not saying that Ukraine didn't have a right to be defended, but it should be pretty objectively obvious that the war would have stopped long ago had the West not intervened. This would have been unjust and a massive slap to the people of Ukraine, and arguably worse for the world in other ways - so I'm not saying that we shouldn't have supplied them. But we also can't claim we are doing what we can to stop the war: we're (at best) doing what we can to help the right side to win, while prolonging the war.
        kortilla 4y ago
        >The West's efforts have been to continue the war, not to stop it. When you're supplying arms, you're not acting to stop a war. The lazy “military industrial complex” take. Tell me, how do you propose that the US should support stopping the war that doesn’t involve Ukraine ceasing to be independent and losing its leaders? Your comment is basically the same as, “The west’s efforts have been to prolong hunger, not to stop it. When you’re suppling food you’re not acting to stop hunger. It should have been objectively obvious that the hunger would have stopped long ago had we just let people starve to death.”
- brigandish 4y ago
  Is there another situation where the words "fish", "antifreeze" and "strawberries" are used together to describe it and it doesn't sound weird? I'd be surprised if there were.
  - jonplackett 4y ago
    “I’m just popping down to the shops do you need anything?” “Yes, could you get some fish and strawberries? Oh and some antifreeze, I hear it’s going to snow tomorrow” Seems totally normal to me. Nothing to worry about here…
    - leeoniya 4y ago
      reminds me of http://img0.joyreactor.com/pics/post/funny-pictures-meme-fish-plastic-bag-5267399.jpeg http://img0.joyreactor.com/pics/post/funny-pictures-meme-fis...
    - brigandish 4y ago
      If you think it's normal to put those three things together on a shopping list then I have a bridge to add to it. Edit: I think this reads as if I'm disagreeing, whereas I'm piling in together!
      - Turing_Machine 4y ago
        Are you not from the United States? Here, it's very common to find all of those things in one "super store". Walmart, Meijer in the Midwest, Fred Meyer in the Pacific Northwest, no doubt others in other regions of the country...
        brigandish 4y ago
        I'm not from the United States and it's not strange to find those things in one store in many places, but it's also weird to find them as the three things on a shopping list. We could play this game all day but I'm not going to shift from: a) those three objects together are going to sound weird in pretty much any situation b) regardless of the effectiveness, mixing genes from a list of things that sound like they would never mix under natural circumstances in any other way than a lab sounds weird
- vostok 4y ago
  When I've talked to anti-GMO people in real life, they seem to (1) be anti-Roundup and similar pesticides more so than literally anti-GMO or (2) be anti-IP laws that won't allow farmers to use seeds from their last crop.
  - photochemsyn 4y ago
    Yes, the opposition is as much about things like patents on seeds and refusing to allow farmers to harvest seeds for their next planting season. There's also the problem of making plants resistant to herbicides, then applying more herbicides, so you get lots of herbicide runoff into lakes and streams. This is really more about upping sales for the chemical manufacturer. Also there are better methods for getting rid of weeds, I particularly like these field-crawling robots that identify weed seedlings with AI-vision and blast them with IR lasers.
    - vostok 4y ago
      That's a great point. I forgot to mention the IP issues. I hope you don't mind that I've edited my comment to include them.
  - Turing_Machine 4y ago
    The overwhelming majority of farmers haven't "used seeds from their last crop" for well over a hundred years.
    - aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
      And why is that? Actually?
      - Turing_Machine 4y ago
        Because modern hybrid seeds give much more productivity, but do not breed true. Corn variety 1 + Corn variety 2 -> Hybrid with high productivity, disease-resistance, or some other desirable trait (or a combination of desirable traits). However, the seeds from the hybrid will not be the same as the hybrid. Classically, you'll get some seeds that are more like CV1, some seeds that are like CV2, and some that are like the hybrid (in practice the genetics can be more complicated than that, but that's basically what's going to happen). If CV1 is resistant to devastating disease D1, and CV2 is resistant to devastating disease D2, the hybrid might be resistant to both D1 and D2. Great! But the seeds from the hybrid are different. 1/4 the seeds from the hybrid will be susceptible to D#1 and 1/4 will be susceptible to D#2, and 1/2 will still be resistant to both. That means that "saving your seeds" = 50% crop loss to disease, if both diseases are present.
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  Well, your immune system is already capable of identifying and deleting cells that have escaped the normal cell cycle control and have become cancerous, but if there's damage to your immune system then it can lose that capability. Immune system damage can occur by many means: viral infections, chemical carcinogens, ionizing radiation, etc. Using gene editing technology to repair your immune system using a human template wouldn't be transgenic technology and is probably a relatively safe use of CRISPR gene editing, for example. Throwing in some shark genes to see what happened, because some species of sharks don't seem to get cancer IIRC, that would not be such a great idea I don't think.
- puchatek 4y ago
  You and your clones are not gonna be spread around in nature and multiply uncontrollably. Also you and your clones are not gonna be eaten by predators and affect them in unforeseeable ways (i hope). Those differences matter to the people who worry about GMO technologies. The fact that the development is spearheaded by for-profit companies does not help either.
  - justinpowers 4y ago
    Well some ancient ape’s “clones” have already spread around and multiplied uncontrollably. Who’s to stay that this one’s won’t either?
    - krageon 4y ago
      Apes do not clone themselves, now or in the past. Unless you believe in fairy tales :)
      - justinpowers 4y ago
        It was a jo…oh never mind. Forgot where I was.
- undersuit 4y ago
  Your immune system already fights cancer. Strawberries don't need to prevent their blood from freezing in the arctic.
  - echelon 4y ago
    Frost resistance genes make for more arable land and greater crop yields. It's a desirable trait.
    - undersuit 4y ago
      Yes, and many plant species with berries evolved a natural resistance to frost without getting a boost from fish proteins. Why not use genes from plants that already grow in colder latitudes like gooseberries or huckleberries?
      - aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
        Selective breeding is far more stable and proven than editing. And honestly doesn't get the credit it deserves for its current position in food security — because you can't patent cooperating with nature.
  - krageon 4y ago
    Strawberries don't need to exist in the first place. Nothing does. That doesn't mean we don't want to cultivate them in places that may have a cold climate.
    - undersuit 4y ago
      Fine your immune system doesn't need to exist either.
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  > Modifying my immune system to be able to fight cancer is "weird" too, right? By adding genes? Definitely! > people using "weird" as a metric make me a bit uneasy about how much longer such treatments are going to be allowed. It shouldn't. This is at most a concern for inheritable modifications.
  - krageon 4y ago
    > By adding genes? Definitely! It might be weird, but it works and it cures people of cancer. You quite simply cannot convince me that's not a positive result for everyone.
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      Did I say or imply I wanted to do that? Is the last line of my previous comment not clear enough? It's weird but there's no concern.
- ALittleLight 4y ago
  If you were dying of cancer and told your doctor you planned on drinking a lot of tea I assume your doctor would be like "Yeah, sure - couldn't hurt." Drinking tea is not weird, lots of people do it, and there are no real risks because you're dying anyway. On the other hand, if you were like "I'm a biohacker, I'm going to genetically modify a virus to infect me and alter my immune system." Then I assume the doctor would say "Hey, let me get some people to take a look at that." Because that is weird and there are risks. "Weird" doesn't mean good or bad, it means unusual. Unusual things have the property that we don't do what they will cause, because they haven't been done much, because they are unusual. Genetic biohacking probably does have a greater chance of saving your life, or increasing your farm yields, but there are possible downsides to it that are not present in more mundane interventions.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
kaiusbrantlee 4y ago
> This is the kind of GMO that's generally considered fairly benign not by me. The rpecautionary principle is not followed in any GM process so invasive. Even breeding, which is a far less invasive form of genetic manipulation, has caused serious issues. The vast majority of commercial produce has had a lot of its nutrition bred out of it, for example. These kinds of long arc problems for the consumers of the food are not possible to track over anything but multiple generations (generations of the consumers of the food, not generations of the plants). They become all but impossible to track when the incentives of the systems at play essentially guarantee fuckery with regards to the gathering, interpretation, and dissemination of data that jepordizes profits.
- bparsons 4y ago
  Imagine if the precautionary principal had to be used for any other technology. We wouldn't have electricity, cell networks, airplanes or antibiotics. It is an impossible standard.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  > The [pr]ecautionary principle is not followed in any GM process so invasive. While that is true, the precautionary principle is also not followed in any other process. It can't be, because the precautionary principle is nothing more than the statement "never do anything, not under any circumstances".
  - inkblotuniverse 4y ago
    "Let other people put this stuff in their bodies, and see what happens to them".
    - thereisnospork 4y ago
      That is a perfectly fine personal position to take, but an awful position to take as a society.
    - jiggawatts 4y ago
iroh2727 4y ago
“Generally considered” may not be good enough given that that general considerment is corporately influenced (in terms of research funding, media, narratives inside the industry, etc.). I mean, I’m not an expert, but altering the expression of genes already present could be hugely dangerous in theory. These expressions are based on extremely precise feedback loops and interrelationships. I guess we could use a coding analogy: if you’re using a statically compiled language and you make a code change that compiles and makes the unit tests you have in place pass, it probably works. But it might not… and in this case, what are the risks of the “might not,” especially when we’re layering these modifications on top of each other? And do we need to take such risks?
- scoopdewoop 4y ago
  I'm really not a fan of Round-Up Ready GMOs, but breeding plants already alters their genes and gene expression. Horticulture has radically altered every food we eat. The natural world already can't sustain 7 billion people, there simply isn't enough nitrogen in the soil. Fertilizer is the reason you and I are alive right now, and its a huge source of greenhouse gasses, so yes, we do need to take such risks. A better coding analogy would be genetic algorithms versus intelligent fuzzing and manually patching.
- Gatsky 4y ago
  This is an oddly anti-scientific view. We can test and evaluate the safety of the resulting GMO product. Some of the most important and useful pharmaceuticals are GMO products, produced by genetically modified cells in bioreactors. Do you have an issue with those? There is also the fact that we allow rampant and unregulated frankenfood production which is obviously harmful and purely profit driven (ie modern processed food production). But when it comes to GMO crops, which would improve the nutrition of the hungriest populations, suddenly it is too dangerous and must be banned. A privileged double-standard if there ever was one.
  - iroh2727 4y ago
    Yeah I'm definitely not an expert here, just raising the question. I guess compared to pharmaceuticals which are something we'd take only as a last resort/backup plan, is there extra danger in modifying the most basic of our food sources? Any unintended side effects that could happen or limitations to our tests? (I'm definitely am in favor of regulation to prevent overprocessing of food too. So no double standard from my end there.)
ramraj07 4y ago
If you’re from the field the only crucial pieces of info you need from a paper would be the abstract and materials section. You can pretty much impute everything else at least to replicate the work. So maybe that’s the reason.

msla 4y ago

> not doing weird stuff like putting fish antifreeze genes in strawberries. Oooh! Weird! Modifying my immune system to be able to fight cancer is "weird" too, right? Is there a good reason to use "weird" as a criterion in any of this? Because I like being a GMO organism who isn't dying of cancer, and people using "weird" as a metric make me a bit uneasy about how much longer such treatments are going to be allowed. Remember: GMO isn't just about the "Organic" aisle at Amazon Whole Foods.

matthewdgreen 4y ago
I think “weird” here means “things that may have unexpected side effects.” Cancer treatments have loads of those but we put up with them because death is worse. Eating strawberries and rice maybe exists at a different point on the risk continuum.
- d4mi3n 4y ago
  This is true up to the point of food scarcity. Between geopolitical conflict and crop failures around the world this year due to severe heat waves, we’re looking at a rough few years ahead of us for the global food supply.
  - tsimionescu 4y ago
    So instead of stopping the wars and the global warming which increases the chance of the heat waves, we should jump straight to genetic engineering? Is that the better solution?
    - goatlover 4y ago
      More realistic as stopping wars and climate change are much harder. The war in Ukraine hasn’t ended despite the West’s efforts. And CO2 emissions continue on a large scale despite all warnings.
      - tsimionescu 4y ago
        The West's efforts have been to continue the war, not to stop it. When you're supplying arms, you're not acting to stop a war. Not saying that Ukraine didn't have a right to be defended, but it should be pretty objectively obvious that the war would have stopped long ago had the West not intervened. This would have been unjust and a massive slap to the people of Ukraine, and arguably worse for the world in other ways - so I'm not saying that we shouldn't have supplied them. But we also can't claim we are doing what we can to stop the war: we're (at best) doing what we can to help the right side to win, while prolonging the war.
        kortilla 4y ago
        >The West's efforts have been to continue the war, not to stop it. When you're supplying arms, you're not acting to stop a war. The lazy “military industrial complex” take. Tell me, how do you propose that the US should support stopping the war that doesn’t involve Ukraine ceasing to be independent and losing its leaders? Your comment is basically the same as, “The west’s efforts have been to prolong hunger, not to stop it. When you’re suppling food you’re not acting to stop hunger. It should have been objectively obvious that the hunger would have stopped long ago had we just let people starve to death.”
brigandish 4y ago
Is there another situation where the words "fish", "antifreeze" and "strawberries" are used together to describe it and it doesn't sound weird? I'd be surprised if there were.
- jonplackett 4y ago
  “I’m just popping down to the shops do you need anything?” “Yes, could you get some fish and strawberries? Oh and some antifreeze, I hear it’s going to snow tomorrow” Seems totally normal to me. Nothing to worry about here…
  - leeoniya 4y ago
    reminds me of http://img0.joyreactor.com/pics/post/funny-pictures-meme-fish-plastic-bag-5267399.jpeg http://img0.joyreactor.com/pics/post/funny-pictures-meme-fis...
  - brigandish 4y ago
    If you think it's normal to put those three things together on a shopping list then I have a bridge to add to it. Edit: I think this reads as if I'm disagreeing, whereas I'm piling in together!
    - Turing_Machine 4y ago
      Are you not from the United States? Here, it's very common to find all of those things in one "super store". Walmart, Meijer in the Midwest, Fred Meyer in the Pacific Northwest, no doubt others in other regions of the country...
      - brigandish 4y ago
        I'm not from the United States and it's not strange to find those things in one store in many places, but it's also weird to find them as the three things on a shopping list. We could play this game all day but I'm not going to shift from: a) those three objects together are going to sound weird in pretty much any situation b) regardless of the effectiveness, mixing genes from a list of things that sound like they would never mix under natural circumstances in any other way than a lab sounds weird
vostok 4y ago
When I've talked to anti-GMO people in real life, they seem to (1) be anti-Roundup and similar pesticides more so than literally anti-GMO or (2) be anti-IP laws that won't allow farmers to use seeds from their last crop.
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  Yes, the opposition is as much about things like patents on seeds and refusing to allow farmers to harvest seeds for their next planting season. There's also the problem of making plants resistant to herbicides, then applying more herbicides, so you get lots of herbicide runoff into lakes and streams. This is really more about upping sales for the chemical manufacturer. Also there are better methods for getting rid of weeds, I particularly like these field-crawling robots that identify weed seedlings with AI-vision and blast them with IR lasers.
  - vostok 4y ago
    That's a great point. I forgot to mention the IP issues. I hope you don't mind that I've edited my comment to include them.
- Turing_Machine 4y ago
  The overwhelming majority of farmers haven't "used seeds from their last crop" for well over a hundred years.
  - aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
    And why is that? Actually?
    - Turing_Machine 4y ago
      Because modern hybrid seeds give much more productivity, but do not breed true. Corn variety 1 + Corn variety 2 -> Hybrid with high productivity, disease-resistance, or some other desirable trait (or a combination of desirable traits). However, the seeds from the hybrid will not be the same as the hybrid. Classically, you'll get some seeds that are more like CV1, some seeds that are like CV2, and some that are like the hybrid (in practice the genetics can be more complicated than that, but that's basically what's going to happen). If CV1 is resistant to devastating disease D1, and CV2 is resistant to devastating disease D2, the hybrid might be resistant to both D1 and D2. Great! But the seeds from the hybrid are different. 1/4 the seeds from the hybrid will be susceptible to D#1 and 1/4 will be susceptible to D#2, and 1/2 will still be resistant to both. That means that "saving your seeds" = 50% crop loss to disease, if both diseases are present.
photochemsyn 4y ago
Well, your immune system is already capable of identifying and deleting cells that have escaped the normal cell cycle control and have become cancerous, but if there's damage to your immune system then it can lose that capability. Immune system damage can occur by many means: viral infections, chemical carcinogens, ionizing radiation, etc. Using gene editing technology to repair your immune system using a human template wouldn't be transgenic technology and is probably a relatively safe use of CRISPR gene editing, for example. Throwing in some shark genes to see what happened, because some species of sharks don't seem to get cancer IIRC, that would not be such a great idea I don't think.
puchatek 4y ago
You and your clones are not gonna be spread around in nature and multiply uncontrollably. Also you and your clones are not gonna be eaten by predators and affect them in unforeseeable ways (i hope). Those differences matter to the people who worry about GMO technologies. The fact that the development is spearheaded by for-profit companies does not help either.
- justinpowers 4y ago
  Well some ancient ape’s “clones” have already spread around and multiplied uncontrollably. Who’s to stay that this one’s won’t either?
  - krageon 4y ago
    Apes do not clone themselves, now or in the past. Unless you believe in fairy tales :)
    - justinpowers 4y ago
      It was a jo…oh never mind. Forgot where I was.
undersuit 4y ago
Your immune system already fights cancer. Strawberries don't need to prevent their blood from freezing in the arctic.
- echelon 4y ago
  Frost resistance genes make for more arable land and greater crop yields. It's a desirable trait.
  - undersuit 4y ago
    Yes, and many plant species with berries evolved a natural resistance to frost without getting a boost from fish proteins. Why not use genes from plants that already grow in colder latitudes like gooseberries or huckleberries?
    - aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
      Selective breeding is far more stable and proven than editing. And honestly doesn't get the credit it deserves for its current position in food security — because you can't patent cooperating with nature.
- krageon 4y ago
  Strawberries don't need to exist in the first place. Nothing does. That doesn't mean we don't want to cultivate them in places that may have a cold climate.
  - undersuit 4y ago
    Fine your immune system doesn't need to exist either.
Dylan16807 4y ago
> Modifying my immune system to be able to fight cancer is "weird" too, right? By adding genes? Definitely! > people using "weird" as a metric make me a bit uneasy about how much longer such treatments are going to be allowed. It shouldn't. This is at most a concern for inheritable modifications.
- krageon 4y ago
  > By adding genes? Definitely! It might be weird, but it works and it cures people of cancer. You quite simply cannot convince me that's not a positive result for everyone.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    Did I say or imply I wanted to do that? Is the last line of my previous comment not clear enough? It's weird but there's no concern.
ALittleLight 4y ago
If you were dying of cancer and told your doctor you planned on drinking a lot of tea I assume your doctor would be like "Yeah, sure - couldn't hurt." Drinking tea is not weird, lots of people do it, and there are no real risks because you're dying anyway. On the other hand, if you were like "I'm a biohacker, I'm going to genetically modify a virus to infect me and alter my immune system." Then I assume the doctor would say "Hey, let me get some people to take a look at that." Because that is weird and there are risks. "Weird" doesn't mean good or bad, it means unusual. Unusual things have the property that we don't do what they will cause, because they haven't been done much, because they are unusual. Genetic biohacking probably does have a greater chance of saving your life, or increasing your farm yields, but there are possible downsides to it that are not present in more mundane interventions.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

kaiusbrantlee 4y ago

> This is the kind of GMO that's generally considered fairly benign not by me. The rpecautionary principle is not followed in any GM process so invasive. Even breeding, which is a far less invasive form of genetic manipulation, has caused serious issues. The vast majority of commercial produce has had a lot of its nutrition bred out of it, for example. These kinds of long arc problems for the consumers of the food are not possible to track over anything but multiple generations (generations of the consumers of the food, not generations of the plants). They become all but impossible to track when the incentives of the systems at play essentially guarantee fuckery with regards to the gathering, interpretation, and dissemination of data that jepordizes profits.

bparsons 4y ago
Imagine if the precautionary principal had to be used for any other technology. We wouldn't have electricity, cell networks, airplanes or antibiotics. It is an impossible standard.
thaumasiotes 4y ago
> The [pr]ecautionary principle is not followed in any GM process so invasive. While that is true, the precautionary principle is also not followed in any other process. It can't be, because the precautionary principle is nothing more than the statement "never do anything, not under any circumstances".
- inkblotuniverse 4y ago
  "Let other people put this stuff in their bodies, and see what happens to them".
  - thereisnospork 4y ago
    That is a perfectly fine personal position to take, but an awful position to take as a society.
  - jiggawatts 4y ago

iroh2727 4y ago

“Generally considered” may not be good enough given that that general considerment is corporately influenced (in terms of research funding, media, narratives inside the industry, etc.). I mean, I’m not an expert, but altering the expression of genes already present could be hugely dangerous in theory. These expressions are based on extremely precise feedback loops and interrelationships. I guess we could use a coding analogy: if you’re using a statically compiled language and you make a code change that compiles and makes the unit tests you have in place pass, it probably works. But it might not… and in this case, what are the risks of the “might not,” especially when we’re layering these modifications on top of each other? And do we need to take such risks?

scoopdewoop 4y ago
I'm really not a fan of Round-Up Ready GMOs, but breeding plants already alters their genes and gene expression. Horticulture has radically altered every food we eat. The natural world already can't sustain 7 billion people, there simply isn't enough nitrogen in the soil. Fertilizer is the reason you and I are alive right now, and its a huge source of greenhouse gasses, so yes, we do need to take such risks. A better coding analogy would be genetic algorithms versus intelligent fuzzing and manually patching.
Gatsky 4y ago
This is an oddly anti-scientific view. We can test and evaluate the safety of the resulting GMO product. Some of the most important and useful pharmaceuticals are GMO products, produced by genetically modified cells in bioreactors. Do you have an issue with those? There is also the fact that we allow rampant and unregulated frankenfood production which is obviously harmful and purely profit driven (ie modern processed food production). But when it comes to GMO crops, which would improve the nutrition of the hungriest populations, suddenly it is too dangerous and must be banned. A privileged double-standard if there ever was one.
- iroh2727 4y ago
  Yeah I'm definitely not an expert here, just raising the question. I guess compared to pharmaceuticals which are something we'd take only as a last resort/backup plan, is there extra danger in modifying the most basic of our food sources? Any unintended side effects that could happen or limitations to our tests? (I'm definitely am in favor of regulation to prevent overprocessing of food too. So no double standard from my end there.)

ramraj07 4y ago

If you’re from the field the only crucial pieces of info you need from a paper would be the abstract and materials section. You can pretty much impute everything else at least to replicate the work. So maybe that’s the reason.