Danger Of Genetically Modified Foods

Introduction

“Today we are fast approaching the day when the body can no longer be regarded as fixed, man will be able within a moderately short period to redesign not merely individual bodies but the entire world”, Alvin Toffler predicted decades ago.

Many children all over the world go blind every year because of a lack of Vitamin A, vitamin deficiency is a primary cause of blindness. About 300,000 cases of blindness are recorded every year around the world, so Genetic Engineering revolutionized the rice industry by placing the gene for vitamin A into rice and it turns into “golden rice”. Rice is a staple food for many different culture’s diet and so by doing that, people can grow rice that has extra Vitamin A and it’s a way to counteract this deficiency. This is an example of Genetic Engineering.

Almost any technology that provides us with many benefits will usually come with risks and uncertainties as well. We should be vigilant in making wise decisions in using technology, we must be aware of its potential impacts in our environment well enough to decide whether the risks are acceptably low. What are the risks brought to us by tolerating Genetic Engineering in agriculture? The answers will probably fall into two categories: risks to our health and worst, environmental impacts.

Discussion:

The BP oil spill and the Japanese nuclear radiation leak, these are huge problems with long lasting effects. The existence of some of that radiation can go on hundreds of thousands of years. The conflicts mentioned above is the effects of genetic engineering on our environment. Genetic Engineering is the insertion of genetic material or DNA into the cells of a living organism, usually using a bacterium or a virus. The artificially inserted DNA selected for a specific trait of interest can be extracted to an entirely unrelated plant, animal or microorganism, the result is a plant or animal that has been altered in a way that could never occur in nature, nor could it be achieved through traditional cross pollination or hybridization. “Genetic engineering is new and complicated field which often yields unexpected results.”

Genes are the main contributor of this field. Genes are genes and it doesn’t matter where you stick them and they just function the way they normally do. For example, to take a gene out of a plant and stick it on an animal means the plant genes suddenly wakes up and goes “where am I, who are all these other genes around me?” because genetic engineering altered the context within which that gene is found.

In my own opinion, what really causes genetic engineering is the people pushing the benefits of genetic engineering who stand to gain enormous money from it, because today products of biotechnology are being incorporated into our food, spread on to our environment and engineered into our medicines without our knowledge

Genetic pollution, contamination from genetically modified crops that self-propagate in the species. The genes that we put out today can outlast the effects of global warming, nuclear waste or oil spills and even all of it, because it spreads and continues to self-propagate in the ecosystem. We need to be very careful of the genes we introduce into our ecosystem. This is an irreversible pollution, pollution with legs and wings.

Genetic engineers manipulate particles of DNA to change the genetic structure of organisms. To wrap this up, the introduction of foreign DNA into an organism could trigger other DNA in the plant or animal to mutate thus creating new allergies. The new combinations of genes and traits have the potential to create allergic reactions that have never existed before. Insects, birds and wind might carry genetically altered pollen to other fields and forests, pollinating plants and randomly creating new species that would carry on the genetic modifications. In short gene pollution can’t be stopped.

We could only stop the massive production of genetically modified foods if and only if genetic engineers will put the genes back in the laboratory for analysis purposes and understand it fully before they ever deploy these practices again because this conflict might disrupt not just only us, but the world.

Years ago scientists found a bacteria growing in a chemical waste dump near a factory surviving the presence of roundup herbicide which normally kills bacteria and they decided to put it in the food supply so they took the gene out of the bacteria that allowed it to survive the weed killer and put it into the soybean so now, the soybean plants can be spread with roundup herbicide and not die and now you have a roundup ready soybean. This is genetically modified foods, designed to withstand more herbicide. I was surprised when

I read the article about the genetically modified foods, inside the DNA of the bacteria living inside our intestines was the gene that they found in the chemical waste dump and these people who have eaten the soybean have inherited the bacteria from the gene of the herbicide, meaning long after you stop eating the genetically modified foods you may have these genetically modified proteins produced continuously inside your own intestines. This could have serious medical consequences, this is just one of the many studies that should have been done before they put these stuff on the market.

Genetic Engineering is really a radical revolution in food production, it is really a sell invasion technology. Some of us heard that genetic engineers are taking arctic flounder fish’s gene and putting it into a tomato so that the tomato can last longer and withstand the cold temperature.

In conclusion, I want people to not buy GMO foods or genetically modified foods. We should be concerned and be scared not only for our parents or to our friends but for ourselves. Why do you think people are sick now? ; because we cannot tolerate what’s going on any longer, we must stand up, we must talk to the people at the store and say I’m not going to buy food unless it says “not genetically engineered”. It’s in our hands, it’s right in front of us and it is just a matter of avoiding genetically modified foods and inspiring others to do the same.