What I found most interesting from this week's readings was the part about Pollan interacting with Monsanto's scientists. Yes, the whole "Trust Us" thing is bizarre and somewhat alarming. But what struck me was when Pollan discussed the plant side effects from the experiments the scientists were doing. The plants would take on different shapes, colors, etc. that even the bright and brilliant Monsanto scientists could not predict. And yet here they are performing trial and error and when they believe they found the perfect plant, that's the one that gets put into circulation. It's the "we don't really know what is going to happen" thing that concerns me the most with GMOs.
I was having a discussion the other day with my boss who is very much a vegetarian and animal activist about GMOs. To my surprise, she had absolutely no problem with GMOs because the scientific data that says GMOs are unsafe does not exist. My argument was that we do not know for sure what is going to happen in the future with these plants. Especially with the one type of corn that we use. Still, she was unconcerned with corn being essentially in everything we eat. She mentioned that we have been eating corn for thousands of years (I brought up Pollan's point of variety with the Inca) and that corn itself is not bad for us. At this point, I had no more counterpoints to make.
I guess my question is how would you have handled that argument? Do you agree with my boss? I was caught off guard by the discussion, but wonder how everyone else would have formulated their case if put in my situation.
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