Disagree

by Hickman

Created on: July 20, 2010   Last Updated: July 21, 2010

The thought that genetically modified organisms (GMOs) plants, animals and their byproducts are designed for the ultimate benefit of anyone but private biomedical and pharmaceutical industries is simply diabolical.  How on earth have we gotten to the position of championing the manipulation and monopolization of Nature (Which, I’ll remind everyone, belongs to no one entity) for patent and profit?  In truth, the long-term disadvantages of GMOs to the world’s poor specifically, and global biodiversity in general, are so great as to cancel out the short-term benefits of GMOs to any one group of people. 

Now don’t get me mixed up with the anti-science crowd because I love Science and I am a champion of scientific progress and the advances in basic science that improve the quality of all our lives.  But, anyone with a smidgen of common sense would take the motives and actions of the bioengineering industry with a grain of salt and demand unfettered oversight into their operations and halt their efforts to ‘own’ the rights to biological life.  Do not be swayed by the slick, propaganda films cunningly produced by GMO Industry lobbyists, into thinking that these companies give a tinker’s damn about the daily human tragedy felt by the world’s hungry poor.  They don’t care about hungry people.  A GMO company, the GMO industry as a whole, cares about one thing…making money. 

A company has no conscience, owns no soul and commits no altruistic act that does not contribute to its primary objective of turning a profit for its share holders.  This is not an anti-Capitalism rant; this is simply a statement of fact.  So if we accept this simple fact, we must ask ourselves, what does the GMO Industry stand to gain by distributing genetically modified seeds to farmers in the world’s poorest nations?   Well like a drug dealer, giving away the first hit for free, the GMO Industry is simply assuring that any farmer planting GMO ‘patented’ seed will be coming back to them for their next season, and the next and the next….   Because you see, in order to protect their patented investment and ‘intellectual property’ vested in that crop seed, the GMO companies engineer their products to be sterile, incapable of propagating in the wild.  Therefore, once the grateful farmer harvests his bountiful, pest-resistant crop, he will find that his fields again go fallow; warranting another visit to the GMO seedbank, and you can bet that the dealer’s price has gone up.

Another objection to widespread GMO use in poor countries is that we simply do not know how that locale’s unique biosphere will react and change in response to the introduction of the modified organism.   We must remember that a GMO is a living organism that has been modified from its wild type or natural state. So how this organism, be it plant, animal or insect, will interact with the native flora and fauna that encounter it, we do not yet know and more importantly, the GMO company does not know how the native species will react in subsequent generations. 

For argument’s sake, let’s say that the introduction of a GMO plant that repels a crop pest yields a short term benefit for a poor farming community that is suffering and the GMO has just saved the next two years for these people. But what does the GMO plant affect in this environment in the next 5, 10 or 20 years?  Understand that nature does not happen in a laboratory or a vacuum.  All living organisms in any biome interact with each other and the introduction of any GMO has complex and unforeseen consequences. 

If these consequences are negative (like the GMO plant’s pesticide properties wiping out a beneficial pollinator insect as an unintended side effect) then the poor community suffers years, maybe decades of failing crops and compromised biodiversity.  A poor community is least likely to afford the legal and political fight to demand justice and reparations from the GMO Industry in the event of negative biological consequences from modified organisms used in and around their homes and land. 

So no, genetically modified organisms are not engineered to selflessly benefit the world’s poorest people. I admit some short term gains by poor people may be had when GMOs are introduced but at what cost to those people in the long run?  The hungry and poor do not deserve to become the GMO Industry’s guinea pig and it is beyond hubris to ‘patent’ life-forms, genetically modified or not.  No company holds intellectual property rights for Life.

Learn more about this author, Hickman.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.