Is this a good thing?
So here’s a problem for you.
I know you’re against genetic modified foods.
But it’s going to be possible in the very near future to genetically modify a potato (and they’re working on it) to make a plant that is resistant to blight.
They take genes from a bunch of potatoes and mix ‘em up in one plant to produce a plant that doesn’t die when exposed to blight (I note that may be oversimplifying the process just a tad) 
So is this a good thing or a bad thing? And where do we draw the line?
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tom crowley on Tue, 12th Aug 2008 8:47 am
I truly don’t know where you draw the line .I’m watching my peach crop wither away with brown rot .The fungicide I used to spray them with for that last month is no longer available to me .What is the difference between using classical methods and Mendelian genetics or recombinant DNA methods to get resistant varieties
One can only hope that people will use common sense ,but then again maybe I’m better off letting my peaches rot and enjoy the few years when my belle of georgia peach doesn’t succumb to that blasted fungus
Doug on Wed, 13th Aug 2008 6:12 am
@tom crowley -
I think it’s a bit like being a little bit pregnant… not quite possible. Ethics committees struggle with this issue all the time. And as ethics vary from culture to culture over time, this is indeed a thorny problem. We’ve already opened Pandora’s box… or not.
prairiepetunia on Wed, 13th Aug 2008 3:34 pm
A good thing. GMOs have been around for years now without any cases of people or food animals getting sick or changing. The EU was very resistant to GMO crops at first but now it is no longer much of an issue even to them.
Jan
Doug on Wed, 13th Aug 2008 3:49 pm
@prairiepetunia -
Jan - there would be some that would disagree with you about the E.U. and let’s define “sick”. Does that mean everybody throws up or does that mean reduced resistance to infections caused by poor nutrition within the product?
prairiepetunia on Thu, 14th Aug 2008 8:35 am
Doug - My husband is a farmer and agricultural writer and has followed this very closely over the years and can find no study that shows any effect from eating GMO enhanced food. We’ve had GMO soy for 15 years now. To me, it seems that adding (or subtracting) one trait in the genome of a plant will not have an effect on the remaining nutrition. I suppose this discussion will continue forever especially if more crops are changed or until it can be proven scientifically one way or another.
Jan
Doug on Thu, 14th Aug 2008 12:18 pm
@prairiepetunia -
Jan - while I don’t want to knock your husband’s research skills or your reporting on them - a simple scan of google on “gm foods nutrition” or other word-combinations will pull up interesting articles about the effects of gm foods and nutrition. I didn’t get very far down some other searches that pointed out either potential problems or real effects. I’m not going to get myself involved in attacking or defending gm foods but it seems to me that there’s a ton of info out there pro and con from each well-entrenched side of the fence.