Question

How do GMOs relate to chemistry and everyday life? What are the pro's and con's of using GMO's/Pesticides? What are the dangers associated with their usage? Are there natural pesticides available? Do they work as well?

Answer 1

Chemistry is all around us and is part of our daily life. Chemistry can be thought of as the collection of substances or chemicals that have a defined composition. There are “natural” chemicals produced by nature and there are “synthetic” or “artificial” chemicals made by humans.  

Our human bodies, plants, animals, bacteria and viruses absorb, produce and release thousands of chemicals each day such as water, sugar, cholesterol, vitamins and medicine, resulting in millions of chemical or metabolic reactions in an organism. For example, eating sugar extracted from a sugarcane plant will trigger many chemical reactions in our body: the sugar will get processed, broken down, transported, some will give us energy to run and some will get stored or excreted.

Whether a human or animal eats a GMO or non-GMO plant, it’s the same concept. As we eat the plant, we ingest thousands of chemicals such as metabolites, proteins, DNA and sugars, which will have responses in our body. Different responses include giving us energy, making us sleepy and providing vitamin C for defense. No two plants we ever eat are exactly the same, just like there are no two humans on the planet who are exactly the same. Every plant we eat provides a different mix of chemicals (food components) entering our bodies.

As part of regulatory and safety studies, GMO producers are required to run tests and submit data that demonstrate substantial equivalence, meaning the GMO plant is substantially equivalent to an already existing non-GMO plant. In other words, the chemical composition of the GMO plant is comparable to the non-GMO variety, except for the new trait that has improved the plant. For example, one can add a building block to a plant that was missing before. The opposite approach that can be achieved with GMOs would be to leave a building block out of the plant that wasn’t that great for the plant or human consumption in the first place. A nice example is the GMO Arctic Apple, where scientists have simply turned off the browning process in the apple, so they don’t turn brown after bruising.

Pros

• Growing GMO plants is supposed to allow farmers to:
• Spend less money producing more food.
• Use fewer pesticides and herbicides.
• Do less tilling to remove weeds, thereby protecting the soil.

Cons

• The downsides of farming with GMOs include:
• Creating “super weeds” that have evolved a resistance to glyphosate, a common herbicide in GMO food production.
• Plants that produce their own insecticide, a bacterial toxin Bacillus thuringiensis (BT), which has led to BT-resistant bugs.
• A human population that is unwittingly consuming BT, too, since the insecticide is part of GMO plants.
• Disappointing crop yields and doubt over the environmental benefits of reduced tilling.

The dangers associated with their usage :

1. GMOs are unhealthy.
2. GMOs contaminate―forever.
3. GMOs increase herbicide use.
4. Genetic engineering creates dangerous side effects.
5. Government oversight is dangerously lax.
6. The biotech industry uses “tobacco science” to claim product safety.
7. Independent research and reporting is attacked and suppressed.
8. GMOs harm the environment.
9. GMOs do not increase yields, and work against feeding a hungry world.
10. By avoiding GMOs, you contribute to the coming tipping point of consumer