Question
What are the most prevalent areas of debate surrounding public acceptance of biotechnology?
Acceptance of Biotechnology is still under heavy debate around the world. I'm curious to what researchers feel are the biggest areas of debate, such as Genetically Modified Food (GMF) or Biological Enhancement, and the public's fear of these technologies.
All Answers (31)
-
Agriculture!! People seem to accept, in fact expect, the most advanced technologies, including biotechnologies, when it comes to their health care. Vaccines, antibiotics etc. But their food? They draw the line there, but only if they are asked what they think. When they go shopping, or eating out, they may not give it another thought. -
I agree with Barbara about the area of argiculture. It's seems to be the most acceptable topic, to the general public. Discussions about biological enhancement seems to much to comprehend, but more discussed in news site, forums and networks where people have a interest in science and futuristic ideas. This might be a problem though. The public have to be prepared for the unavoidable development. Science moves fast. And if people are not prepared for the unavoidable major changes, there will be a conflict. That's why it seems important to promote and push advanced discussions in open forums in a conventional language. But this is not only for the people but just as much for the scientific society in preparation for how to distribute knowledge and advance in research.
Or what do you think? -
Agriculture, stem cells and vaccine development. However, it is normal to fear of people to new technologies, historically people tend to be suspicious but can not reject the idea that we should solve problems created by our own development as a consequence all people are involved
-
Novel biotechnology will bring people better life, to a certain extent, it also exists some risk. However, the latter could not prevent the development of biotechnology.
-
In my mind it is depend to any person or people in any country and thier need in thier life so we can see efect of varios problems and matters in thise way ok? -
Actually educating the people in this area from terminologies to issue is most important. We need to strenthe our molecular understanding and the fate of the transgene in a much more organised way.
-
Agriculture definitely!
Does the need of GMF over weighs risk associated with it?
-Safety profile for GMF (consumption & effects on environment) cannot be guaranteed until researchers have well developed understanding of molecular mechanism {long term study in huge population/ varied conditions might also be necessary as in case of biotech medicines}
-The question of environmental damage is quite important and often ignored.
-Patents & necessity to buy new seeds each plantation increases the cost of production for farmers. So economic perspective also is a major barrier. (INFAMOUS MONSANTO)
-Cost of R&D also increases the risk of sabotaging real data or information necessary to take critical decisions & besides even 1 in a million case for some sort of human health risk associated with GMF can be considered highly unethical especially when alternatives are available in abundance.
-On other hand use of vaccines & other biotech medicinal products is almost all the time well justified (risk/benefit ratio) but one cannot say the same in case of GMF. (not considering Economic perspective) -
I agree with Johannes Duelund; it is more discussed in news sites, newspapers and TVs where ordinary people and journalists discuss mostly pseudoscience and are not aware of any scientifically proved evidences. Whatever reason it has, this is the interests of the owners of the mass media
-
Ikshit Attarde - like if I was reading GreenPeace manual.
If you're scientist, tell us how can you prove and assure negative results for health testing? BTW where is your testing of radiation mutants? Did you ever heard that cultivated plants were ever tested for food safety?
What enviromental damage do you have in mind? Superweeds? The same superweeds which arise after excessive use of conventional herbicides?
Almost-monopol of Monsanto, BASF and other large corporations is BECAUSE of the testing required by you, so do not complain for both. You have to pick one.
The same applies for the inability to reproduce. That is to assure that GM plants will not spread among wildness. Moreover, if you knew something about agriculture, you would know that even conventional plants are sold as hybrides so their seeds cannot be used next year if they should have the same properties.
Not considering economic perspective is wrong because that's also important although not solely advantage of GM.
EDIT - just fixed new to knew :) -
I am wholly positioned on the side of advancing the current state of biotechnology for advancement of human societly, to quote from DuPont; "Better Living Through Chemistry".
However, I also believe that extensive debate and some level of regulation is warranted and necessary in many fields of science and technology. Many of the current themes seen in the Pharmaceutical industry have led to a high level of distrust in regards to the motives and morals held in high-level administration. It is certainly an area which needs an intentional overhaul. Another heavily politicised area of biotechnology is that of in vitro fertilisation, and it's implications for allowing embryo selection and profiling,
The debate surrounding stem cell research currently, in my opinion, is largely a product of media and organisations driven and constrained by conservative and counter-productive beliefs, when they could be worrying about developments with existential implications. For example this previous RG post: http://goo.gl/3tbnl points out some of the dangers of technology miniaturisation, which some sources claim is limited by, or rather, reaching the limits of, Moore's Law. An dramatic extension of this trend could terminate in a phenomena which has been much expounded in the Science fiction field, the 'Grey Goo' , something which has also been speculated to have many possible useful applications. -
I think animal testing and biotechnology modified animals is one of the hottest topics nowadays.
Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) aren't fully accepted. I work with transgenics and every time I tell someone what I do they think I'll create killer tomatoes... Thanks greenpeace and other organizations for stupid campaigns with missinformation and fear instead of information and debate. -
I think transgenic technology , be it transgenic crop or biotech modified animals is the hottest topics for past few years. Even people without basic knowledge about GMO argue vehmently against it. The misinformation propagated by the anti GMO NGOs and organizations have indeed deep rooted in public mind . Anti GMO network argue against GMO for the sake of argument without going to the scientific details and rationale behind it. The GMO technology has slowed down considerably because of the concern and opposition of such people
-
Beyond the scientific issues, this debate is a question of democracy. Opposing large corporations (which are far more mighty than Greenpeace), farmers and consumers try to maintain, or regain control over their food and the way it is produced.
I mean, whatever one thinks, people have the right to be skeptical, and finally to decide. Scientists shall be aware of that and take them for serious. -
Really can you freely decide? Or can you pick only from those, which were approved by government (and GP)?
-
Benjamin Otto says this is a question of democracy but for me it is clear cut. people are just aware of what they are told to be aware. who are educating ordinary people on GMOs? the media and Greenpeace. who are the owners of mass media? billionaires who own the economy of the world. why don't they tell people about the real dangerous things in their life especially in food and pharma industry. I think you should google Alex Jones and see some of his documentaries on this. this is a matter of economic and technological monopolies that the economic elites are seeking.
-
Monsanto used to be a conventional heavy-duty chemical company. As such, it fought every regulation anywhere near its business areas using an enormous political tribute paying lobbying machine and every tool they had. Then along came genetic engineering technology, and they wanted to get into the area of applying GMO to agriculture -- a wise business decision on their part. Early in the game, they realized that if they didn't obtain a dominant position in this area and control the direction of evolution of this technology, much if not most of their chemical business could be destroyed.
Monsanto was well aware of the fate of the previous era’s vacuum tube manufactures. These big guys totally dominated electronics: they owned the market, the money and the politicians. Then along came the transistor. All the major electronic players of the 50's realized that the transistor was going to put their vacuum tubes out of business, RCA and the others built multi-million dollar labs and hired the best and brightest, but despite their efforts, they were blown out of the water by an unknown geotechnical firm called Texas Instruments followed by Fairchild Instruments, then National Semiconductor, then Intel, etc. Not one of the major electronic firms of the vacuum tube era is a major player in todays electronics industry. Monsanto has seen how dominant players can be destroyed by innovative "garage" shops, which can move faster and more creatively. They needed a strategy to prevent such innovative fast moving competition from evolving.
In a brilliant business move, Monsanto shifted its position away from using its lobby power to kill all regulation to testifying to Congress (truly shocking testimony at the time) that "more" regulation and oversight is need in this emerging genetic engineering field. The eNGO’s (environmental non-governmental organizations – environmental activists) agreed and picked up the theme as an excellent fund raiser. By ensuring that Congress created our expensive, time-killing GMO regulatory system, Monsanto helped bring about a system which essentially prevented more creative and innovative small businesses from evolving, ultimately killing off their competition.
Let’s look at a specific example: Monsanto makes a great deal of money from Roundup-resistant plants, which prevent competitive weed problems and allow no till-farming and lower energy farming. However, many plants naturally produce chemicals in their roots, which compete with other plants (“root zones” are the botanical equivalents of “war zones”). These chemicals can effectively prevent competition by killing or excluding "weeds" (defined as any other competitive plant in its root zone) -- this is seen in nature all the time. Absent the GMO regulations purchased by Monsanto’s lobbying efforts, some garage shop started by an angel investor (AI) or VC with a few biotech grad students and post-docs might well have turned the Corn root zone into a "w... [more] -
Tomas Hluska
Yes i do agree that my post has been kind of inspired by greenpeace GMO stand & I do have limited understanding on GMF. But isnt complexity of bio-molecular mechanisms still not yet well established?
And no I'm not in a position to suggest methods for assuring negatives results, why not ask the same to GMO manufacturers? isn't it ethical question? And being critical is a necessity.
I'm not arguing on development of biotechnological food products since it does have beneficial potential but is it enough to not consider the negative possibilites? Which I personally think should be well established before its supplied to masses either for consumption or cultivation.
http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/gmfood/overview.php
And the economic issues I'm concered with atleast related to monsanto's pesticide & GMO seeds (Cotton) which has already caused significant losses to economic status & lives of farmers.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1082559/The-GM-genocide-Thousands-Indian-farmers-committing-suicide-using-genetically-modified-crops.html
But being optimistic, the least thing expected is that "emergin, innovative" GMO industry consider these ethical perspectives & emerge as an respsonsible player
Dallas Weaver - thanks for the perspective, it does relate to few concerns with R&D & its business. -
In spite of strides made by biotechnology be it transgenic crop or biotech modified animals, there is always uncertainty and fear among people that something may go wrong. Or, this may help some race to modify human genes of large populations to make them submissive through food. However, the main problem is that the so-called Green Revolution in many countries was possible due to public funding of research whereby crops were bred instead of developed by introducing an alien gene. Further, being public funded, seeds were available at low cost and farmers could use the harvested crop as seeds for next year again and again till a new and more high yielding varity was developed. The development of transgenic seeds by now is in the hands of MNCs which get these seeds panted under intellectual rights and programme these seeds to suicide that is, the harvested kernels cannot be used as seeds next season. This situation compromises the farmers's traditional right on seeds since the first agricultural revolution. -
It has generally been assumed by the biotechnology-associated scientific community that public opposition to GMO technology largely stems from ignorance of the science, directed by anti-technology interests. As a research scientist involved in biotechnological and molecular biological research for more than 30 years, I think that it is quite possible to be legitimately skeptical of disseminating recombinant organisms into the general food supply without a considerably more extensive body of safety research. In my experience, current scientific knowledge and understanding, especially in terms of interactions among complex systems, are full of gaps and miscalculations that frequently lead to embarassing, if not disastrous, consequences. Just one example of a legitimate reservation is the possibility of allergic reactions in the gut from fusion of insect and plant proteins. There are many examples of autoimmune reactions triggered by subtle alterations of familiar proteins, the archtype of which is penicillin allergy. There does appear to be an increase in the incidence of inflammatory bowel disease, Crohn's Disease and ulcerative colitis since GMO foods were introduced about 15 years ago. Although this possibility has been raised repeatedly in mainstream scientific forums, I am not convinced that sufficient directed research has been done on the subject. Of course, if the public were to become more scientifically literate and begin to ask more informed and uncomfortable questions, I am sure most scientists who now denigrate them for their ignorance will continue to denounce them as naive and misinformed, not possessing the level of sophistication required to debate the issue. Are such critics actually aspiring to be priests of a religion of science, rather than sincere pursuers of scientific knowledge in the service of the public good? -
I once again participate in this debate. I am fully convinced about advancing the transgenic technology, though it may sounds little bit harse. Advancing transgenic technology does not mean producing killer tomatoes as rightly pointed by Dr. Leonardo, We may able to produce some vitamin or insulin or some life saving drugs in tomato, for which it should not be levelled as killer tomatoes. Majority of campaign against transgenics point towards use of antibiotics gene or genes from bacterial or other micro organisms which may enter the food chain and destroy the immune system. Those apprehensions are legitmate but whether such such studies are conclusive. I do not see any such conclusive studies related to effect of transgenic food on human health. Yes, we have to take maximum care and intensive reserach should be carried out to find out if there is any such effect. For me its not just democracy to voice our protest. For me its advertisement of the green peace and some NGO. I am fully aware of the legitmate right of the farmers on their seed and this is happenening since time immemorial and am fully support of this. In no situation, the MNC should control the seed and farming system. But what I want to impress upon is to allow the technology to grow . There were ways and means to insert only the desired gene without the antibiotics or any other unwanted gene. And if so we should use the technology for the benifit of the society and mankind to produce life saving drugs in our food , enrich our food with vitamins and so and so on. Just stoping the reserach for sake of stoping will not take us anywhere. Science is for the betterment of mankind and it should continue to do so.
-
@Mohammad "farmers could use the harvested crop as seeds for next year again and again till a new and more high yielding variety was developed": This is wrong unless we talk about pre-historic farmers. Breeders do that in the recent decades. Farmers do collect the seed and use that and hope for the same good yield.
There are two problems with the seeds: one is that some crops (e.g. corn) are hybrids and this technique (replanting next year the collected seeds) just does not work well. The other is that creating new varieties of higher yield or better tolerances, etc. takes much efforts and resources, either by conventional breeding or via biotechnology, and investors have the wish to get the profit they worked for, which is fair enough. Farmers can not compensate for the investments in one single year's price of seed, as the breeding required much more resources usually. Hence the companies coerce the farmers to buy the seed on high prices each year, which is simply not the way it should be in most cases. This problem has not been solved yet, and it will not be easy to solve either.
Nevertheless, as we need and use and pay the banks in the current extraordinarily complex economic system, the same way we need to have the breeders in the current increading level of population on the already overpopulated globe.
The difference between GMO and the conventional selection of random events is that in the GMO technology we know what feature we aim to improve or establish and we exactly know what alterations are introduced into the genomes, while in the conventional methods things are usually less certain. As Melvin just mentioned "ignorance of the science", while people are so immensely ignorant, they can be easily misled and deceived. On the other hand, while people have much more children they can possibly feed, we are all in trouble. -
I fully agree that free inquiry in the sciences, as in all academic endeavors, should be protected, provided that it does not endanger public safety. I do not believe, however, that we should use the public marketplace as a laboratory to test the wider effects of biotechnology on the biosphere. Although many universities and research institutes maintain limited, relatively isolated ecosystems for that purpose, the current business climate encourages corporations to push promising initiatives to maximum profitability, while taking advantage of novel technologies in a relatively undeveloped regulatory environment. While it is true that we may know precisely where in the genome we are inserting engineered DNA segments, traditional breeding practices filter the process through the entire organism and its environment, taking advantage of prior evolutionary adaptations and ecological complementarities.
-
Melvin, I have two notes on that, beyonds that I mainly fully agree with what you posted here and in the previos post. One is that the risk may be greater thanwhat we talk about here, as we consider mainly GMOs in agriculture, but all those other modified organisms in the industry may slip out of inspection and control, like mutant bacteria for mining and much more. The other thing is that it is a very rough generalization that GMOs are some plants with foreign or unknown or dangerous DNA inserted. GMO is just the product of genetic modification, and it can be one of several kind of actions. You may consider safe if chromosomes recombine by conventional breeding, but you consider it dangerous if the genes or chromosomes of the parents are combined in a rational fashion. One may consider the vitamin gene in the rice, but he/she eats the fruits with the same gene. GMO is the genetically modified barley with one single point mutation in a promoter that eventually results in a few % higher tolerance to drought. But the public awareness treats the whole as something purposely bad or at least dangerous just because the same scientists could produce dangerous products too. Traditional breeding does not help to prevent dangers either. But cows or the "conventional" plants will not be forbidden just because some people have allergy to milk. Or peanut. Or flour.
-
Yes, I have the bliss of "ignorance of the science". But, Indian Council of Medical Research New Delhi, the Indian watchdog of GMO crops which is all praise to this technology but in the same document it also mentions thogh in passing, "The case of GM potatoes experiencing Galanthus nivalis lectin gene for insecticidal properties is an example of the potential of GM foods to cause toxicity. In a group of rats fed with GM potato damage to immune systems and stunted growth was observed and the experiment had generated considerable controversy."
Further, some GM crops are reported to go on producing pesticides to ward off pests, can one guarantee that these esticides would not harm the farmers working in nearby fields, if exposed repeated for long period.
Few years back dozens of sheed died suddenly while freely grazing nearby GM cotton field . But their "an autopsy report".is not made public. -
Very interesting responses. It is interesting to see that the most heavily debated topic, that of GM foods and resources, is what comes to mind when we talk about biotechnology. Perhaps this is because it is an extremely heavily debated topic, along with strong proponents of both extremes. It seems that food is the biotechnological application that most concerns people, perhaps because of its potential ubiquity and relevance to everyone.
What about biotechnological enhancements to humans? There are a host of potential applications such as bionic limbs, eyes and organs, nanotechnology, exoskeletons for endurance and strength and even silicon chip implants into specific cortical regions to allow for the wireless control of weapons, lights and remote control objects. I would be very interested to hear the research communities' perspective on these applications, and to open my eyes to the range of potential biotechnological applications to humans for the purpose of enhancement. -
@Mohammad Firoz Khan - how is it, that nobody cares about the chemical pesticides, which are freely spread over the field? The pesticides produced by plants are inside them and hardly could hurt someone.
-
@Tomáš Hluska: Yes, chemical pesticides are really very harmful and through different media are reaching in our body and also through biomagnification. But, to say that pesticides produced by GM plants remain inside is against fact. To the best of my knowledge no firm producing GM crops has claimed it. To verify it, you have to pass through nearby a GM cotton field, your experience will be telling.
-
@Mohammad Firoz Khan - ty MY knowledge, the GM cotton is Roundup-ready, isn't it? Roundup-ready plants harbour gene for resistance to Roundup herbicide, which is afterwards applied to the field. Thus that is actually example of dangerousness of chemical herbicides.
And you can reach resistance to other chemicals and herbicides, so this is not issue of GMO, but of the farmers and agriculture. -
Instead of selecting list for debate for acceptance,policies should be derived to educate the stakeholders downstream the process. The main groups are the extension education scientists in delivering agri-biotechnologies to farmers. According to me they have the understading that biotecnology is nothing but the GM crops, having deleterious effect.But they need to be educated first to kow the real application of biotechnologies. policies should be made in this regard.
-
@Tomáš Hluska: Let me acknowledge on the onset that I am neither a biotechnologist nor a scientist in its strictest sense. My opinion on GM crops is based on my readings of certain opinions expressed in magazines and scientific journals. In my concerned opinion, the agricultural corporate giants investing money in the transgenic crops are out there to make money not to eradicate hunger from the planet. The most unfortunate part of this GM in scientific opinion is that these crops are not developed keeping in mind the needs of the poorest farmers in the poor countries. Further, those who are arguing for GM crops are simply lobbying for the agricultural corporate giants, nothing less, nothing more. Below is an appraisal of impacts of GM crops on human health and ecosystem by renowned scientists of whom one’s findings after preliminary findings never saw the light of the day (Corporatists’ influence!).
Unknown health consequences are a common objection to GMO organisms. The most condemning research done on such organisms is the work of renowned scientist Arpad Pusztai, who found evidence of intestinal damage caused by genetically modified potatoes (Randerson). His funding was suspended for his publication of preliminary results, and therefore the study was never completed (Randerson).
Cross-pollination with the wild type of GM species may lead to genetic contamination of the wild type, which could alter local ecosystems. Genes are difficult to control, and wild types of certain plants have been found to contain transgenic genes. Unapproved genetically engineered grass has been found in Oregon (Pollack). 83 percent of rapeseed varieties in the United States and Canada were found to contain transgenic genes (Pollack).
Bt expressed in transgenic organisms is also toxic to a variety of helpful insects, including natural pollinators and pest predators. Monarch butterflies, a chief pollinator in North America, are highly susceptible to Bt poisoning, and will occasionally feed on corn plants (Pimentel).
The introduction of Bt crops has also led to the rise of secondary non-target pests as major scourges. Mealy bugs in India and Pakistan emerged as major pests directly following the introduction of Bt crops in the region. These insects destroyed 50,000 out of 8 million acres of cotton area across Pakistan, and the damage is still increasing. Organic crops have escaped the plague, due to their farmers' use of natural pesticides instead of Bt crops (Ho). Likewise, in China, Mirid bugs, which once did not present a threat to agriculture, have progressively grown in number since the introduction of Bt crops, especially in regions growing Bt cotton (Lu). The decrease in synthetic pesticide use in these regions has contributed to the rise in pests that have never responded to Bt. However, it is possible that integrated management of secondary pests, including techniques that integrate natural predators or parasites, can alleviate the new pestilences (Lu).
Bt cr... [more] -
@Mohammad Firoz Khan
Your first paragraph doesn't deserve anything better than this
http://kfolta.blogspot.cz/2012/07/thoughts-from-shill-for-monsanto.html
You should think carefully about whether you're fighting against genetically modified crops (then you shouldn't care who makes them) or against these evil companies (then you shouldn't care what they produce, whether it is Agent Orange or GMO).
What about the Golden Rice? It was not produced by these big evil companies and even in such case they released needed patents to be usable by small farmers in third world countries.
The current status is not fault of GMO, but of people and companies as descriebed by Dallas Weaver. Fixation on this status (many and many years of useless testing) will only protect these big companies and restrict smaller companies and Universities from entry to the market simply because they don't have enough money.
I didn't read the rest of your post yet.
Popular Answers
Monsanto was well aware of the fate of the previous era’s vacuum tube manufactures. These big guys totally dominated electronics: they owned the market, the money and the politicians. Then along came the transistor. All the major electronic players of the 50's realized that the transistor was going to put their vacuum tubes out of business, RCA and the others built multi-million dollar labs and hired the best and brightest, but despite their efforts, they were blown out of the water by an unknown geotechnical firm called Texas Instruments followed by Fairchild Instruments, then National Semiconductor, then Intel, etc. Not one of the major electronic firms of the vacuum tube era is a major player in todays electronics industry. Monsanto has seen how dominant players can be destroyed by innovative "garage" shops, which can move faster and more creatively. They needed a strategy to prevent such innovative fast moving competition from evolving.
In a brilliant business move, Monsanto shifted its position away from using its lobby power to kill all regulation to testifying to Congress (truly shocking testimony at the time) that "more" regulation and oversight is need in this emerging genetic engineering field. The eNGO’s (environmental non-governmental organizations – environmental activists) agreed and picked up the theme as an excellent fund raiser. By ensuring that Congress created our expensive, time-killing GMO regulatory system, Monsanto helped bring about a system which essentially prevented more creative and innovative small businesses from evolving, ultimately killing off their competition.
Let’s look at a specific example: Monsanto makes a great deal of money from Roundup-resistant plants, which prevent competitive weed problems and allow no till-farming and lower energy farming. However, many plants naturally produce chemicals in their roots, which compete with other plants (“root zones” are the botanical equivalents of “war zones”). These chemicals can effectively prevent competition by killing or excluding "weeds" (defined as any other competitive plant in its root zone) -- this is seen in nature all the time. Absent the GMO regulations purchased by Monsanto’s lobbying efforts, some garage shop started by an angel investor (AI) or VC with a few biotech grad students and post-docs might well have turned the Corn root zone into a "w... [more]
Monsanto was well aware of the fate of the previous era’s vacuum tube manufactures. These big guys totally dominated electronics: they owned the market, the money and the politicians. Then along came the transistor. All the major electronic players of the 50's realized that the transistor was going to put their vacuum tubes out of business, RCA and the others built multi-million dollar labs and hired the best and brightest, but despite their efforts, they were blown out of the water by an unknown geotechnical firm called Texas Instruments followed by Fairchild Instruments, then National Semiconductor, then Intel, etc. Not one of the major electronic firms of the vacuum tube era is a major player in todays electronics industry. Monsanto has seen how dominant players can be destroyed by innovative "garage" shops, which can move faster and more creatively. They needed a strategy to prevent such innovative fast moving competition from evolving.
In a brilliant business move, Monsanto shifted its position away from using its lobby power to kill all regulation to testifying to Congress (truly shocking testimony at the time) that "more" regulation and oversight is need in this emerging genetic engineering field. The eNGO’s (environmental non-governmental organizations – environmental activists) agreed and picked up the theme as an excellent fund raiser. By ensuring that Congress created our expensive, time-killing GMO regulatory system, Monsanto helped bring about a system which essentially prevented more creative and innovative small businesses from evolving, ultimately killing off their competition.
Let’s look at a specific example: Monsanto makes a great deal of money from Roundup-resistant plants, which prevent competitive weed problems and allow no till-farming and lower energy farming. However, many plants naturally produce chemicals in their roots, which compete with other plants (“root zones” are the botanical equivalents of “war zones”). These chemicals can effectively prevent competition by killing or excluding "weeds" (defined as any other competitive plant in its root zone) -- this is seen in nature all the time. Absent the GMO regulations purchased by Monsanto’s lobbying efforts, some garage shop started by an angel investor (AI) or VC with a few biotech grad students and post-docs might well have turned the Corn root zone into a "weed free zone" by that approach, eliminating the need for Roundup and its fancy, profitable, Roundup-resistant plants. Monsanto’s future profits are assured by a decade-long regulatory system whose huge artificial complexity, specialization and up front expenses and legal costs effectively make it impossible for a startup company to survive and develop into a disruptive Monsanto competitor. Yet another road block to this potential approach to "war in the root zones" GMO game is that it could also crimp the eNGO's fundraising efforts. If neither humans nor butterflies were going to eat the roots (and the expression of the genes could be limited to the roots) it would be more difficult for them to generate people’s fears and the lucrative contributions resulting therefrom.
Think of the options existing in nature in the form of genes that just need to be moved around. For example, apparently parasitic wasps actually create a virus using components from it own cells, which infects and inactivates the immune systems of the insects its larve consume alive, and these virus can be species specific. With genetic engineering, we could, in theory, make plants, which produce viruses lethal to specific pests, when it is attacked. These specific insect viruses would be just digestible food to our system, much like the work going on producing human vaccines against things like flu in tobacco plants or the trillions of bacteria virus (phage) that already exist in our digestive systems. But is any approach likely if it would put insecticides, fungicides, etc. out of business? A species-specific pest approach would be very disruptive to the chemical companies. However, the big guys have little to fear for their bottom line if it takes 10 years and a $100 million dollars to get approval for each gene set attacking each specific insect pest put into each specific plant strain. Anything targeting a specific pest isn't economically viable.
In conclusion, the anti-GMO activists and their associated eNGO's have a very symbiotic relationship with the Monsanto's of the world. The do-gooders are given a golden fund raising opportunity as they spread FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) to an ignorant public, while Monsanto gets to grow its business by marketing a restricted set of GMO crops to the farmers, while preventing the evolution of competition which would threaten its profits
The market penetration of GMO foods has been the fastest penetration in history, but the set of genetic changes has been limited to those which do not disrupt the business models of either the eNGO's or the Monsanto's of the world.
Whether this mutually beneficial symbiosis between the eNGO’s and the Monsanto’s of the world was created by rational actors deliberately structuring a self benefiting system is irrelevant. Evolution in nature often creates obviously non-optimal designs whose existence prevents any fundamental change that would result in a much better design. An example of this is the vertebrate “camera” type eye in which blood vessels and nerves have developed between the lens and the light sensors – truly a “non-intelligent design”. This design excluded evolution of a far better eye design for vertebrates (the invertebrate eye of the squid evolved with the vessels and nerves behind the retina rather than in front of it).
Regardless of whether Monsanto and the eNGO’s consciously set out to do so, our GMO regulatory system is preventing huge amounts of beneficial innovation, and the effect is the same: we are left with a less-than-optimal regulatory system design which leaves little room for intelligent exploration of the overall problem and opportunities outside of the box created for whatever reasons by those who benefit from being inside it.
However, I also believe that extensive debate and some level of regulation is warranted and necessary in many fields of science and technology. Many of the current themes seen in the Pharmaceutical industry have led to a high level of distrust in regards to the motives and morals held in high-level administration. It is certainly an area which needs an intentional overhaul. Another heavily politicised area of biotechnology is that of in vitro fertilisation, and it's implications for allowing embryo selection and profiling,
The debate surrounding stem cell research currently, in my opinion, is largely a product of media and organisations driven and constrained by conservative and counter-productive beliefs, when they could be worrying about developments with existential implications. For example this previous RG post: http://goo.gl/3tbnl points out some of the dangers of technology miniaturisation, which some sources claim is limited by, or rather, reaching the limits of, Moore's Law. An dramatic extension of this trend could terminate in a phenomena which has been much expounded in the Science fiction field, the 'Grey Goo' , something which has also been speculated to have many possible useful applications.