Neil deGrasse Tyson claims that genetically modified food is nothing to worry about, because human beings have been doing it for thousands of years. That’s a lie. The genetic modification that Tyson is discussing is plant breeding and hybridization. And yes, plant breeding dates back thousands of years—about 7,500, not the 10,000 that Tyson claims—to when farmers in Mexico created maize by planting the earlier crop teosinte and selecting for desirable genetic traits over the course of centuries. More recently—for instance, in the case of Norman Borlaug’s world-changing dwarf wheat—scientists have achieved laudable successes with hybridization. This is what Tyson is rightly claiming success for. But that’s not what the millions of people around the world concerned about genetically modified organisms are worried about. And it’s NOT what the questioner asked Tyson. He asked about transgenesis, a process put into use in the 1980s by big agribusiness firms like Monsanto. Transgenesis, specifically, is the introduction of foreign genetic material into a living organism. Monsanto has most often achieved it by ballistic DNA injection or gene gun, which blasts genetic material into undifferentiated plant cells in a petri dish— this destroys most of the cells, but usually leaves some that have successfully merged. Transgenesis can also be achieved using liposomes, plasmid vectors, viral vectors, pronuclear injection and protoplast fusion. Monsanto’s current preferred method of transgenesis is using the bacteria Agrobacterium tumefaciens to infect plants with desired DNA traits. Transgenesis can even be used to insert genes that code for pharmaceuticals into living organisms. A man of Tyson’s intelligence and stature should surely know the difference between transgenic crops and hybridized ones. tinyurl/orl2ygf
Posted on: Sat, 02 Aug 2014 03:05:48 +0000
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