In 2013, Mark Lynas, a writer and activist gave a speech at the Oxford Farming Conference and was exceedingly open about how his view on GMO crops had drastically changed. He spoke about how his anti-GMO stand boiled down to a lack of education on the subject, stating directly that he, “had done no academic research on the topic, and had a pretty limited personal understanding.” So basically in the 1990’s when he was advocating against GMO’s he was flying by the seat of his pants, but mid 2000’s he started doing some reading, and found out many of the things he had believed were in fact false and backed up by facts and research. Within his speech Lynas makes some great points about how important GMO’s are, that they are basically needed to keep crop yield high enough to support the growing population.

I think that is was very big of Lynas to not only admit that he has had a change of heart, but also to do it so publicly. He apologizes for his actions, but is not necessarily ashamed of them, it shows that peoples minds do change and it’s a socially okay thing. After addressing why his change of heart occurred he continues to beef up the argument for the use of GMO’s in our society. How there are a major number of benefits and few cons to GMO’s that people aren’t often aware of, or completely educated about, emphasizing that there is no real reason GMO’s should be banned.