Saturday, December 8, 2007

GMOs continued

Although there a lot of benefits to changing the genes of an organism, there are a lot of concerns that keep people from accepting this idea.

-Safety
Safety is a huge issue. Do we really know if there could be long term affects to our bodies, the plants or animals, and the world….no. We can assume that there aren’t any, but we don’t know for sure. Using plants that contain vaccines could affect our allergies or the way that antibiotics react in our bodies. Cross pollination of plants could cause a lot of damage if those plants meant for non-vaccinated production contained the vaccination.

-Economy
How can we stop a few companies from dominating sales and becoming a oligopoly in this industry? That would be very difficult since only a few companies deal with this type of technology and science. Would third world countries become mostly dependent on the larger countries that are willing to help feed them and take care of them? Possibly, so that’s not helping these other countries develop at all.

-Ethics
Many people think that it’s wrong to change the genetic make-up of plants and animals. They say that genetics have been set in place for a reason and that is something put shouldn’t be messed with. Seriously though, if we have the ability to help people and benefit the world without doing anything morally wrong, why not do it. It’s one way to help save the world.

-Reasoning
Many people are also afraid that the technologies will become prejudice. Only countries with the right resources can make GMOs and some people are afraid that their motives will be to gain wealth. The technologies may only be used by certain countries and new technologies would only be developed in the interest of those countries needs or wants.
After looking at all of these major negative points, I would actually say that the good outways the bad in this case. So many benefits can come out of changing the genes. I guess I’m a little biased though because my major is plant genetics and breeding. Oh well, you all now know where I stand.

1 comment:

Herryponting said...
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