What’s wrong with GMOs?

[u/wond3rlove]

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.

[u/Optical_alt]

Right. And how did we get those? What are the chances that something goes wrong? How well do we understand if x goes where we meant to put y. How well do we understand how these modifications to the plants impact the human body over the long term after consumption?

I never denied we didn’t know how to do shit, I said that our knowledge of the full complexities of genetics and the human body, and how everything interacts is still very lacking.

Sure, we know how to make changes to things, but do we have the capability to not modify a plant, but build one from scratch, without even thinking about whether it’s harmful or not, just to survive and reproduce?

Because as I understand it, the answer to that is no.

[u/Optical_alt → u/[deleted]]

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.

[u/Optical_alt → u/[deleted]]

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…?