1. What are the environmental dangers involving the “escape” of GMF’s into the w
ID: 65828 • Letter: 1
Question
1. What are the environmental dangers involving the “escape” of GMF’s into the wild?
2. What are the possible health dangers versus benefits regarding GMF’s.
3. Why do countries have such opposing views on the safety of GMF’s?
4. What is the greatest benefit of GMF’s and conversely the greatest danger? Develop your own opinion and be able to support it with your own reliable research.
5. In chapter 8, the production of a transgenic goat is described. How were researchers able to get the anti-thrombin gene into the goat? How were they able to have the gene expressed in mammary tissues only? What basic principle of biology makes it possible to place genes from one organism into another?
Explanation / Answer
1. There is always the danger that genetically modified organisms will "escape" into the wild. A fish, for example, that grows four times as fast as a normal fish but escapes into the wild, could destroy the existing natural balance of our planet.
2.
Human health is not achievable unless adequate amounts of nutritious and safe foods are available and accessible during all life stages. An estimated one-third of the world’s population, largely in the developing world, is currently food and nutrition insecure. The biologic imperatives for achieving nutrient and food security, as well as humanitarian concern, are the driving forces behind efforts to achieve equitable food distribution among today’s global population. Food systems, therefore, are challenged to meet current global needs and those of the future in the light of mounting population pressures and rising quality-of-life expectations, while recognizing increasingly limited arable farm resources. A principle assumption is that the resolution of food and nutrition problems and challenges of today and tomorrow have technological dimensions. Transgenic modification (GM), traditional and modern, applied to plant and animal food sources (GMFs) hold potential for improving human nutrition and health provided that the capabilities for using GM crops are available in the developing as well as the developed world. Coexisting with potential benefits of genetic modifications of plants and animals are known and unknown risks, as is common to all technologies, old or new. Implicit in the latter assumption is that absolute safety is not an achievable standard.
Public discussions surrounding the development and use of applications of modern biotechnology for agriculture are widespread, particularly discussions about the development of GMFs and GMOs and the safety and efficacy of the new products. Public concerns about gene technology lie in four major areas, namely ethical concerns, socio-economic issues, effects on the environment and food safety and human health. Although acknowledging the importance and the interconnectivity of all these areas, the principal focus of this statement is the scientific basis for assessing the risks and benefits to human health of GMFs and GM crops.
3. Concern about GMOs cannot simply be imputed to a lack of knowledge in biology. Various studies have enabled us to better understand how risk perception is determined. Research has shown that known or avoidable risks, such as smoking and driving, are more acceptable to the public than poorly known and unavoidable risks, such as radioactivity. The newness and associated uncertainties of GMOs, and the inability for the individual to avoid GMOs once adopted, put public skepticism squarely in the latter category. In addition, as far as biotech and transgenesis are concerned, usefulness, riskyness and moral acceptability must also be taken into account, as well as trust in the involved actors and institutions.
4. With an ever increasing global population, massive 3rd world hunger, and with an estimation that a child dies for every two seconds world wide from starvation; this does not even take into account the number of people who are mal and undernourished, there is a great promise in the use of this technology to benefit not only the farmers, but also societies worldwide.
Some opportunities to use GM foods for good is:
Positive Environmental Impacts of GMO's:
Soil salinity has become a major problem in all agriculture especially in the San Joaquin Valley. This has made crops less able to grow and in some cases unable to grow at all.
Related Questions
Navigate
Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.