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The Pros And Cons Of Genetically Modified Organisms

1875 Words8 Pages

The Encyclopedia Britannica defines Genetically Modified Organisms as an “organism whose genome has been engineered in the laboratory in order to favour the expression of desired physiological traits or the production of desired biological products.” (Fridovich-Keil & Diaz, 2018, para. 1). Genetically Modified Organisms or GMO’s, can refer to the genetic modification in animals or agricultural purposes. The long held practice of modifying the genotypic traits can be traced back to prehistoric times, in which farmers would select the most fruitful crops. For instance, teosinte was domesticated over 10,000 years by humans from a small grass to form modern maize (Genetic Science Learning Center, 2013). Ancient farmers would select the maize with …show more content…

The evidence that highlights this the most is the Pew research study in which scientists from the American Association for the Advancement of Science or AAAS for short, were surveyed on their opinions, issue by issue in different scientific topics. It covers different relevant topics, including topics on food safety of genetically modified foods. In the survey, 88% of the scientists surveyed considered genetically modified foods safe, conversely, only 37% adults in the general population agree. The number increases among biomedical scientists to 91% when asked if they consider GM foods safe to eat (Pew, 2015). These results mirror the analysis from Blancke’s (2015) piece. The percent disparity between the public and scientists may be indicative of unfamiliarity in scientific literature among the common population. Additionally, when comparing the results of all of AAAS scientists and the biomedical scientists, the disparity decreases, but it still exists. This most likely correlates with the familiarity of literature among both groups. In general, biomedical scientists would be more well versed in the data as Bioengineering is a field that is related to their own, consequently the results seem to be …show more content…

(2012). The aim of the study was to observe the health effects of genetically modified maize fed that was treated with the herbicide RoundUp over a course of two years. The study had a sample of two hundred Sprague Dawley rats that where split up into groups of ten which were fed different levels of concentrations of RoundUp. The results were rats infested with tumors and kidney failure. The paper includes macabre images of the treated rats of very large tumors, which we're widely spread throughout the media. This very misleading as the paper failed to include images of the control group rats for comparison. Séralini’s methodology was source of criticisms among the scientific community. A central criticism was that the type of rat Séralini et al. used is predisposed to develop tumors at a high rate as they continue to age. This made it difficult to separate the experimental “noise” from the results, especially with the small sample size. Séralini et al. claims that the pesticides produced these tumors were called into question because it was possible that the the tumors were produced because of the natural predisposition of Sprague Dawley rats to develop cancer tumors and not due to the pesticide. With the nature of Sprague Dawley rats in mind, it was important to design a

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