/sci/ - Science & Math

Millions of unstudied random mutations -> Must Be Safe And No One Cares

Intentional mutations that are studied extensively -> Must Be Unsafe And Everybody Loses Their Minds

That's idiotic. There's no reason why even huge modifications like moving a fish gene to a rice plant would be any more likely to have bad consequences than having a single random mutation. Or a million random mutations as is often the case in nature.

If you buy two apples they most likely don't have identical genomes. They might even have entire genes that are missing from the other one. No one knows and no one cares. A million mutations is not a safety concern but somehow a single mutation is IF AND ONLY IF some researcher used a specific technology (GM) to produce the difference instead of some other technology (like radiation & selection) that can wield the exact same end result.

We could produce every single GM food using conventional methods also (it would just take a lot more time/money). Would that make them safer for anti-GM folks? The plant would be exact clones but the other one would be GM free and the other one wouldn't be.

There's absolutely nothing in GM technology that makes food any less safe. And yet that is implied at every single debate.