This may not be the platform for a scientific or political discussion about the risks vs potential short term benefits of GM and GMO, but on the other hand we all have responsibilities in that sense. With all due respect for everyone’s founded or unfounded opinions, I think it is fair to say that collectively we have the responsibility to inform ourselves and to leave this world in a decent shape for the next generations of all natural life forms, not just short sightedly for humans and humans’ interest only. It helps when we inform ourselves about risks above the personal or short term benefit, but the info available is not easily accessible and clouded by financial interests. There are plenty of reports that demonstrate that genes can go walkabout in an unforeseen way, in spite of all the pledged non-risks, altering life forms that were not intended or foreseen to be able to become genetically altered whuich may entail significant risk for the ecosystem. Even as early as 1989 a scandal with supplements involving components produced by GM bacteria (that I at the time thought was without any reasonable risk!) caused deaths and a never before documented form and long time unexplainable form of myalgia. The Japanese company that used these bacteria had no license for GM in production processes and is reported to have destroyed the evidence as soon as there were any concerns raised. So there never was hard proof and big money supported coverups abounded, but later experiments reconstructing the GM bacteria saw the components produced that were suspected of the ‘disease’ outbreak. So this did not even involve Nature (of which people once were part) being directly exposed to GM organisms, just to the products those organisms produced.
I am old enough to not have to see many more consequences of our human meddling with Nature, but many of us will. And certainly many more after us will.
Please, if must be I will happily beg: there is so much we can do with common sense while working in line with Nature, instead of against it. By definition humans are never smarter than Nature, simply because we can not grasp the big total. But will we ever learn?
Nature always wins, it might just be a very different Nature, that has been and continually is thrown off-balance by our greed and if we want to deny greed, at least by our meddling. That future Nature might not be as wonderful as the one we grew up with.
And yes, I took the RNA-based anti-Covid vaccine, but would have preferred the regular one which unfortunately and I would like to add shamefully was not readily available in NZ. We will still have to see if that was a good decision in the decades to come.
I wholeheartedly wish every one of us good decisions. Thank you.
www.bbc.com
