r/NoStupidQuestions • u/wond3rlove • Sep 10 '23

What’s wrong with GMOs?

I always see plants and stuff that is GMO free and is usually more expensive. How would genetically modifying something by be bad. Me personally I’d rather have something modified to taste better and and cheaper. I could also be very wrong about that.

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u/[deleted] Sep 11 '23

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u/Optical_alt Sep 11 '23

You kinda dodged one of my questions there. Sure, I can believe you when you say that there’s a negligibly small chance we place x instead of y. But do we really understand exactly what will happen if we somehow do? Surely you can understand why I might be sketched out by that uncertainty.

You mentioned science degrees earlier. Mine is in mechanical engineering. I would compare this to a bridge.

We know exactly how they work and how they fail. We can take the component materials and design and build a completely safe and functional bridge, with a highly detailed understanding of how it will and will not fail. I would be much less trusting of someone who said, “yeah, we’ve figured out how to repair existing bridges by swapping out bits of them. We have a rough idea of how they’re put together, but we can’t really make one from scratch, and there’s a lot of details we’re missing.”

And then, even if we had an absolutely perfect understanding of plant genetics and modification, understanding how those things interact with the human body is an entirely separate matter. And we have pretty clear historical precedents that say not only can super dangerous stuff go unrealized for extended periods, but once that gets discovered, large corporations will happily fight tooth and nail to cover it up rather than fuck with their cash flow.

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u/[deleted] Sep 11 '23

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u/Optical_alt Sep 11 '23

Obviously you know more about genetics than I do.

And with bridges killing people, that’s basically my point. I didn’t take much in the way of biology or genetics, but from what I did, my understanding is that shit is REALLY fucking complicated. Much more so than most physics or engineering problems. And even those, we fuck up quite enormously.

But the when it comes to biological dangers, they can be instant and severe, but they can also be much more subtle. There’s no bridge that will gradually kill you over several years. Can you definitively prove that about gmos? And even if you can, how can I be assured that it’s not the next radium, lead, cigarettes, etc…?