GMO Research Opinion Paper

GMO Research Opinion Paper[edit]

For almost 30 years GMOs have existed and the debate for their use still exists today. Why is that? Many people maybe even you, find that GMOs are unsafe for consumption, unsafe for the environment, or just plain unethical. I’d like to show you that GMOs are not to be feared, nor persecuted, but instead can act as the human race’s greatest asset and weapon against our problems. I even believe they can solve some of the earth’s most pressing problems surrounding our food, our earth, and our atmosphere. However, on the off chance that some people think this will just blow over and they won't have to care about GMOs I'm afraid they can’t. This is an issue that will affect everyone no matter how much they don't want to be. GMOs can be found in almost all foods in stores all over the country. One of the marketing tools companies use to make people buy their food is the claim “GMO-free”. They shun GMOs and feed off of the mistrust and fear that stem from them, causing people to want to buy their product more than a product that would have GMOs. The main reason people distrust GMOs is that they believe that they will harm them in some way, luckily that isn't the case.
GMOs are no more harmful than their non-GMO counterpart. In other words, GMOs are fine for you. But don't just take my word for it, take it from 132 Nobel Laureates, 12,776 respected scientists and experts on the subject, or the World Health Organization. All of whom support the use and potential of GMOs. Over the past 20 years of research, there have been over 10,000 research papers done by scientists all over the world. Even the National Academies of Science, engineering and Medicine have vouched for GMOs. But what about plants that have been engineered to be toxic? For example, BT crops. A gene borrowed from the bacterium "Bacillus thuringiensis", lets engineered plants produce a protein that destroys the digestive system of specific insect pests. The plant makes its own pesticide. Insects that eat it die. That point scares away most people. Pesticide sprays could be washed off. While the poison in BT crops is inside the plant. That would hurt us, right? But actually, it's not a big deal. Poison is relative, what's harmless to one species, might kill another. Coffee, for example, is a poison that kills insects but is harmless to us. Or take chocolate, it's dangerous for dogs but us humans can get enough of it. BT crops produce a protein that is tailored to the specific design of the digestive tract of certain insects; it's completely harmless to us.
Another popular belief by people is that GMOs can and will hurt the environment, luckily that is not the case either. They can, in fact, do the opposite. The American Chestnut Tree was an endangered plant and was almost wiped out by a disease. However, scientists made a GM version of the tree and are bringing it back. But that's not even the best part, this tree is actually a natural carbon emission consuming plant, meaning that if enough of these trees are planted they can reduce global warming ten-fold. People also worry about the dirt on earth, won’t GMOs hurt the very terrain we walk on? When farmers use fertilizer they hurt the terrain a lot. Nitrogen is a common fertilizer, but its build-up pollutes the groundwater and speeds up climate change. Plants that collect their own nitrogen could fix two problems at once. This could solve the problem of the overuse of fertilizers in the developed world, as well as the shortage of it in developing countries. The world is constantly needing more food. We could grow that food by clearing more and more forests to create fields and pastures and by using more pesticides. Or we find a way to do it on the land we've got right now, with more effective methods like GM crops. Intensifying farming instead of expanding. Saving land and reducing carbon emissions.
GMOs can also help a lot of people in need. Most people don’t have access to food, because healthy food is too expensive and the cheap food is actually harmful and doesn’t have the nutrients they need. That's where GMOs can come in. There is a tomato that has antioxidants that are healthier than regular tomatoes. Imagine if that tomato was used instead of the original. The USDA found that Americans alone eat about 28.3 pounds of tomatoes per person in 2015. That GMO tomato can be applied to all people giving them nutrients they didn't have before. But it's not just tomatoes either this science can be applied to any plant. Take Golden Rice, for instance, it has Beta-carotene built into it which is needed by humans in order to make Vitamin A. The advantage of golden rice is that it can be used in areas where Vitamin A deficiency is common and so can help prevent blindness. There's even a GMO banana has the same concept, putting helpful nutrients in regular food items.
The main reason people have hated GMOs is that of Monsanto. Which is reasonable when thinking of just Monsanto. Monsanto patented one of their GMO seeds, but when one of their seeds passes over into another farmers land, they can sue them to bankruptcy and take over their land. Not only that but their despicable history starts in the 70’s when they created a chemical called Agent Orange which scarred the people in Vietnam and created genetic disorders. But this idea that all GMOs are bad because they stem from Monsanto is upsetting. GMOs can actually help farmers.
When smaller farmers that provide for their community or town like in third world countries or even the homeless population a lot of good can come to these farmers and the people around them because of GMOs. Sometimes farming can be dangerous whether it's because of pesticide, weather or disease farmers need a way around this. That's why in Bangladesh they had to find a new way to plant. Eggplant is an important crop in Bangladesh but often, whole harvests are destroyed by pests. Farmers had to rely heavily on pesticides. Not only was this very expensive, farmers also frequently got sick. The introduction of a new GM eggplant in 2013 stopped this. The same BT protein I mentioned about before, an effective killer of insects but harmless to humans, was engineered into them. This reduced insecticide use on eggplants by more than 80%. The health of farmers improved, and their income rose dramatically.
Sometimes GMOs are the only answer we have left. Like I mentioned earlier about the Chestnut tree, it was about to be wiped from the face of the earth, but GMOs saved it. Or a more pressing example, the Hawaiian papaya. In the 1990s, the papaya industry in Hawaii was under attack from the ringspot virus which threatened to wipe out Hawaiian papaya. The solution was a papaya genetically modified to be vaccinated against the virus. Without it, the state's papaya industry would have collapsed.

My final thoughts on the subject are this. In short, GMOs have the potential to not only drastically change agriculture but to also dampen the effects of our own irresponsible behavior. GMOs could be our most powerful weapon to save our biosphere.

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