Wednesday, August 25, 2010

What exactly is the controversy?

Now that we all know a little bit about GM (what it is, benefits and risks etc), we can move on to the controversy which surrounds it.

There seems to be two key issues people have with GM, which appear to be largely separate:
  1. They don’t understand exactly what it is, what the science is, what it all means, so they become confused and/or scared of it
  2. They have moral or ethical issues, which most often stem from religious beliefs, although some people who are not religious have similar issues


Most of the scientific issues seem to stem around the fact that people don’t understand the science itself; in some cases they don’t even want to understand it, and they just assume it’s bad because it’s different and new. Those who do know/understand a little bit of the science, but are still against it, believe that the scientists are not doing enough to ensure that GM products are safe for consumption as well as safe for the environment. There are fears that GM food is harmful to human health, and will cause things such as allergies and cancer. This, as seen in the last post, can cause minor hysteria, with people going so far as to believe that eating food which contains GM in some way will lead to mutation.

Much of the ethical and moral issues stem from religion – people saying that it is against God’s will to change the genetic material of organisms which He created. (I will discuss my problems with this theory in another post.) Many people think it is just downright unnatural, often believing so because it is something that’s done in a laboratory. Other ethical and moral issues include: going against nature, ignoring animal rights, fears of monopolisation by large corporations and rich countries, goes against free will (largely to do with labelling issues), environmental risks... the list goes on and on. Each time someone thinks of something else that could go wrong with GM it adds fuel to the controversy.

In the next post, I will talk about how the controversy started in the first place.  

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

*sigh*

On a quick side note, as I was trolling the internet for useful articles, I came across this one. Reading the list of concerns that Russian people have about GM... well, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. This is what got me into science communication in the first place - the need to help people understand science better, so they can make better informed choices about their lives.


Here is the list of concerns:

  • GM food can change the genetic code of both adults and children. Children are thought to be especially vulnerable, the consumption of GM food will make monsters or retards out of children.
  • GM food causes cancer, e.g. cancer of esophagus.
  • GM foodstuffs are terrible allergens.
  • GM foods are the source of food poisoning.
  • GM foods make humans unsusceptible to treatment with antibiotics.
  • And last but not least: CM foods are either awful to taste or tasteless.
Here is a link to the full article:

Pros and Cons - Purely Science

Ok, here is the last post I will be doing which gives background on GM. After this I will be focusing on the controversy surrounding it, rather than it itself, and I hope I have given enough background to allow you to make sense of future posts.

In this post I will briefly list the pros and cons of GM from a scientific point of view. Other points of view, such as religious debate, will be covered within my discussions on the controversy.

To start off with, here are the scientific pros of GM technology (some of these will be similar to points listed in the last post):
  • The most obvious pro of GM is the potential to improve an organism in some way – for example crops can gain increased pest/disease resistance (therefore requiring less chemicals in the forms f herbicides and pesticides, which in turn lessens the amount of chemicals leaked into the environment), larger fruit, better or added nutritious value, require less water, shorten time before fruit production... the list is massive, just use your imagination!
  • Precise control over what, how, where and when a gene is inserted
  • Control over undesirable traits – also control methods are used to prevent the movement of traits to non-target species
  • Relatively quick process
  • Genes can be taken from any organism and added to the organism in question (in traditional breeding, the organisms have to be very closely related)
  • Crops may need less land space to produce the same amount of food, or have the ability to grow in land currently unsuitable to most crops
  • No current evidence of any health issue from consuming GM food
  • Rigorous testing required of all GM organisms, products and food to prove safety before release into the market

Here are some of the cons of GM. Remember, I am only listing the scientific things here, most of the objections raised by those against GM are not scientific, but more ethical/moral.
  • Although there is control over the insertion, as we do not know everything there is to know about genetics there is no absolute guarantee for what will happen (hence the rigorous testing)
  • Potential to create ‘super weeds’ or ‘super bugs’
  • Little research (according to the anti-GM crowd) has been conducted into any area of GM, such as long term heath issues, environmental issues etc

As you can see, the issues surrounding GM from a purely scientific standpoint are few and far between. Believe it or not, but all of these scientific issues can be, and are being, resolved with further research and testing. The list of problems with GM from a non-scientific standpoint is quite impressive, and I will cover these problems when I talk about the controversy itself.

Useful Websites:

Friday, August 20, 2010

Differences

Here is a short list of the differences between genetically modified foods and food produced by traditional breeding.

GM:
  • Insert or remove single gene
  • Gene may be from any organism
  • Precise control over where gene is inserted and how it is expressed – can limit expression of gene to specific parts of the plant, such as non-food parts
  • Direct control over unsafe traits, as a single gene is being added or removed
  • Strict regulations for production and sale
  • Relatively quick, accurate process


TB:
  • Many genes are changed when breeding occurs
  • Genes can only be from closely related species
  • Little to no control over where and how the gene is expressed
  • Unsafe traits must be bred out
  • Often do not require strict regulation for production and sale
  • Very slow, relatively inaccurate process


Useful Websites:

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Traditional Breeding

The term ‘traditional breeding’ usually refers to the process of ‘selective breeding’, which has been used by humans for centuries. As I said in a previous post, selective breeding is basically where you breed two organisms of the same, or very similar, species together in order to create offspring which hopefully will have desirable traits. These can be anything from bigger fruit, brighter flowers, disease or pest resistance, larger leaves... the list goes on and on.

When two organisms mate and produce offspring, the offspring inherit  a random selection of genes from each parent. This means that there is absolutely no guarantee that the desired trait will appear in the offspring. When you breed two organisms together, there is no way for you to control which genes are passed on to and expressed in the offspring. This means that the gene responsible for making larger fruit might not be passed on at all.

It also means that other genes, possibly less desirable ones, can be passed on as well or instead. Even if the correct trait is passed on, there is no way to stop less desirable traits being passed on too. Sure, you could end up with bigger fruit, but they might be bitterer or have a dull colour. There is also no way to stop harmful traits from being passed on, such as high toxin levels. Once these are bred into the organism, you then have to take even more time breeding it back out while still keeping the desirable traits.

Another downfall of selective breeding is the time it takes to get it right. Due to the fact that you are breeding organisms together, you have to wait for them to be in mating season. It can also take a very long time to get the right combination of traits in the offspring – there’s no guarantee that the first generation of offspring will have the desired traits, it could take many generations to get it right.

Many of those who oppose GM question the need for such drastic measures when we already have a working technique to achieve the same end. It is a reasonable argument, however GM has many benefits over traditional breeding, which I will discuss in the next post.

Useful websites:

Friday, August 13, 2010

The Science Behind GM

In the last post I gave some simple descriptions of some of the terms you are likely to hear/see when learning about GM – as promised, here is a more detailed description of what exactly happens in Genetic Engineering.

Scientists have found enzymes (proteins which act as catalysts within the cell to speed up or slow down processes) which can cut DNA and paste it back together again. This has allowed scientists to cut out whole genes from one set of DNA and paste them into another set of DNA, usually within another organism.

Scientists have also discovered little things called vectors, which are strands of DNA that can insert themselves into other DNA. An example of this is a virus.

Using this knowledge, we can now customize the DNA of organisms to a degree.

Why would we want to do this?

In crops, for example, if one crop is resistant to a specific disease which another crop is highly susceptible to, we can take the individual gene from the resistant crop and insert it into the susceptible crop. All of a sudden, the susceptible crop can become resistant!

This is very handy, as it can reduce to need for insecticides, pesticides, fungicides etc. Or even make fruit ripen later after picking (extending the shelf life), make it larger or juicier, allow crops to become more resistant to things such as heat and frost... the possibilities are endless.

Many people question the need for such drastic measures. Haven’t we already been doing this sort of thing all along with traditional breeding?

Look out for my next post, which will explain in more detail exactly what traditional breeding is, and why scientists are turning from this to GE in order to improve crops.

Useful Websites:

Enzyme:

GE:

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Handy Definitions

First things first – here are some definitions of the terms which surround genetic modification:

DNA, whose full name is deoxyribonucleic acid, is the building block of life. It is stored as a code (known as the genetic code or genome) within almost every cell of an organism, and is made up of four ‘bases’. These bases are denoted by the letters A, G, C and T. The combination that the bases are arranged into determines what information is available to build and maintain an organism (similar to how letters are arranged to form words).

A Gene is a small section of DNA (or the genetic code) which ‘codes’ for a specific thing, such as a protein or chemical. These influence the characteristics of an organism, such as eye colour, fruit size, etc.

A Genetically Modified Organism (GMO), Transgenic Organism (TO) or a Genetically Engineered Organism (GEO) is an organism that has had its genome altered in some way. These three terms mean the same thing.

Genetic Modification (GM) is the term used to describe the act of changing the genome of an organism – you have modified the genetic code of the organism. This can be done by changing the existing genes of an organism in some way, or by introducing new genes from other organisms.

Genetic Engineering (GE) refers to the techniques and technologies used to create GMO’s. (I will create another post to explain the science behind GE/GM.)

Traditional Breeding, also known as selective breeding, has been used by humans for thousands of years to create organisms with desirable characteristics (such as bigger fruit) by cross-breeding existing organisms together. (I will create another post to describe this process in more detail.)

Here are some good websites which provide definitions of these terms (where I got my information from):

DNA definition:

GM Definition:

GE Definition:

Traditional Breeding Definition:

Sunday, August 1, 2010

The Beginning

Hi,

I'm Emily from Aus. I'm creating this blog as part of my assessment for a course I'm doing at university. After completing a Bachelor of Science (Botany) I'm now studying a Masters of Science Communication at the University of Queensland, which involves a lot of journalism/media/writing studies. I hope to end up working in informal science education (teaching science outside the classroom) and/or writing for science magazines, hopefully children's science magazines.

Through this blog I will discuss the controversies surrounding Genetically Modified (GM) food and crops, including how it became a controversy, what is driving it, the science behind the technology, the features of scientific practice which are contributing to the controversy, and how the media is influencing the current debate. I will also talk about anything interesting I find or think of, so please feel free to add your own thoughts to the debate. If you have any questions about this topic, or would like to know anything in particular, please post a comment and I'll most likely answer via a new blog post. This is so everyone can see the answer - chances are you won't be the only person out there with that question!