With the words, Genetically Modifies Organisms, comes heavy debate nationally. Mark Lynas started the lecture off great by saying that he used to believe GMOs were bad but admitted to not doing any research on the tropic. I believe most people against them today have not done the necessary research to see the benefits of GMOs. I have always tried to ignore what the political campaigns are doing to promote anti-GMOs because most of their arguments are scientifically proven, but I do need to do more research to absolutely understand GMOs to be able to educate others on what great ways they could help our growing population. Mark said to always ask for evidence and to go beyond the self-campaigning in anti-GMOs and that’s advice the general public should follow.
Mark Lynas brought up a great point about peaceful existence. Some many horrible things have happened where companies have destroyed or banning GM plants that had the potential to help the poor or children with deficiencies. For example, golden rice was stopped that was proven to help children with vitamin deficiencies. In Kenya, if anyone were to make a GM crop with high nutrition or high yield to help the poor, they would go to jail for 10 years that is a ridiculous regulation that has no scientific evidence to back up that GM is a health risk. I believe, just how Mark Lynas said, that farmers should have the right to choose what technologies they would like to use. The farmers that may be against GMOs do not have the right to stand in the way of people striving for doing things differently for the better. Everyone is entitled to their own views.
Another issue he brought up was that instead of helping the world by banning GMOs, people are actually doing more harm than good. With using GMOs for over a decade, there has been no harm from consuming them. I thought his statistic was comical that, you are more likely to be hit by a meteor than be harmed from a GMO. GMOs reduce chemical use like pesticides because they are made to be resistant by themselves. They would also help with raising yield because by 2050 we have to feed 9.5 billion in the same amount of land and GMOs are really the best way to do that. The people that are for organic are actually hurting us more than helping. Organic would require more land and is less productive. Organic is in the way of our progress by not allowing for innovation. If Biotechnology is stopped there might actually be famines that people predicted, not because of GMOs, but because farmers were stopped from progressing technology to help with the demand with increasing population.
My favorite part of the video that will always resonate with me is that the monster is not the GMOs themselves, it is our reaction against it that hurts us more.
