Meanwhile, there's a pair of small opinion pieces I wrote on the Glowing Plant project, explaining my feelings on the topic, and why I decided to support it.
The first one just got posted on the Glowing Plant blog:
http://glowingplant.com/post/52315929208/arent-gmos-evil
Aren't GMO's evil?
Luckily, that's one question we don't typically tend to get - although some people have definitely told us as much.
Like it or not, biology is the science of the 21st century, the way the steam engine dominated the first half of the 20th century. And just as there was a backlash against steam technology – it was going to put everybody out of work, and cows were going to drop dead in fright at the sight of a 20 mph steam train – there is a lot of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt about genetic engineering and genetically modified organisms. To the point that creations like the vitamin fortified "Golden Rice" are now banned from countries where they could be saving thousands of lives. I'm sure that the first humans to discover fire were feared and reviled by their neighbors. And I'm sure those fire makers were concerned that their invention might "fall in the wrong hands".
As with all technology, genetic engineering is not inherently good or bad – it all depends how you apply it. Science fiction stories are full of the hypothetical abuses of genetic engineering. Then again, they are also full of Midichlorians, and nobody takes those serious. More down-to-earth: yes, genetic engineering has been used to create quasi-monopolies on seeds and herbicides. But it is also being used to produce insulin and hundreds of other lifesaving drugs, develop cures for inherited diseases through gene therapy, and to make sure the next billion members of humanity will have enough to eat.
Monoculture and loss of crop diversity may be a really bad idea, ecologically speaking. And depriving farmers of the right to save and replant seed could arguably be called evil. But those are the products of a screwed up agroindustrial system, not the inevitable consequence of GMOs. As for the health concerns with GMOs – well, we're not creating a food crop here, but as a scientist I would rate eating a tomato with fish genes about as dangerous as eating a fish-and-tomato dinner – and far less risky than eating a new tropical fruit I've never seen before.
When it comes to synthetic biology and DIYbio, I feel we're standing alongside those early fire makers, discussing whether only the village elders should be allowed to handle fire, or whether we should teach everyone how to deal with it safely. Luckily, we know how that decision turned out…
Patrik D'haeseleer is a scientific advisor of the Glowing Plant project, and community projects coordinator at BioCurious, neither of which is in any way related or funded by his day job at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Joint BioEnergy Institute. The views presented here are his own, and do not represent those of the Glowing Plant project, BioCurious, LLNL, or JBEI.
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