GE foods are those including
ingredients made using techniques in which scientists insert genes into an
organism's DNA. [1]
Genes are templates that cells use in creating
proteins, which determine many of an organism's characteristics. Changing an
organism's genes therefore can cause its cells to make novel proteins, causing
it to exhibit a new trait.
For example, a gene conferring cold resistance
in fish can make a tomato plant create proteins which similarly give it greater
resistance to cold.
GE versus traditional
breeding
Traditional breeding is another way of getting
genes into an organism to cause it to exhibit a new
trait. Although the
biotechnology industry would have you believe that GE is just like traditional
breeding, it is radically different.
In traditional breeding, members of the same,
or very similar, species are crossed to create offspring with some novel trait.
This greatly limits the genes that can be combined. Furthermore, when different
but similar species are crossed, their offspring are infertile--preventing
inter-species gene combinations from propagating in the wild. For example, a
donkey and a mare can make a mule, but the mule will be infertile, the end of
the line for the combined genes.
GE smashes these natural
barriers! Using GE, any gene from any plant, animal, bacterium, fungus or virus
can be inserted into the DNA in reproductive cells of any other organism. If the
resulting organism survives, it generally can pass on its altered DNA, and
whatever new traits it causes, through normal reproduction. For example, GE
enables scientists to create pigs which have human genes, genes which will be
passed on to future generations of GE pigs.
Inherent danger
Since an organism's genes serve as templates
in creating proteins, which determine many of the organism's characteristics,
new genes are inserted into an organism's DNA so that it produces novel proteins
and novel characteristics. The inherent danger in creating crops and foods in
this way is that these novel proteins may easily have unforeseeable
consequences.
The likelihood of unforeseeable consequences
is exacerbated by the fact that gene insertion is actually wildly imprecise.
Scientists cannot determine where, or how many, genes end up in a host
organism's
DNA. The random insertion of genes can create proteins that have never existed
before in nature. It can also inactivate existing genes (preventing them from
expressing a normal protein) or activate inactive genes (creating proteins that
normally are not expressed).
Environmental scientists discovered decades
after their introduction that synthetic pesticides which do not exist in nature
(such as DDT) caused massive harm to people and the environment. [2] GE
foods (which contain proteins that do not exist in nature) may prove to have
similar unpredictable impacts.
The fundamental uncertainty about creating new
genetic combinations that propagate to future generations is raising profound
objections. Nobel laureate and Harvard professor emeritus in biology Dr. George
Wald put it this way: "Our morality up to now has been to go ahead without
restriction to learn all that we can about nature. Restructuring nature was not
part of the bargain." [3]
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[1] In some cases, the food
ingredient itself does not contain a foreign gene, but was produced using a
transgenic organism.
[2] DDT was found to accumulate
in fish and thin the shells of fish-eating birds, such as eagles and
ospreys.
[3] Wald, George. "The Case
Against Genetic Engineering," in The Recombinant DNA Debate, Jackson and Stich,
eds. pp127-128.
