Genetically-modified food is not going to give you cancer
Last week PSPG and the Penn Biotech
Group hosted Dr. Val Giddings, President and CEO of the consulting firm
PrometheusAB and Senior Science Policy Fellow at the Information Technology and
Innovation Foundation. Dr. Giddings specializes in issues concerning genetically-modified
organisms (GMOs) or as he prefers to call them, “biotech-improved” organisms,
which have been genetically engineered to have certain beneficial traits. This usually means that a gene from one organism is inserted into the genome of a different organism to alter its properties or behavior in some beneficial way. GMO
crops are frequently altered to improve tolerance to herbicides (think RoundUp)
and resistance to insects and pathogens. They can also be modified to change
their agronomic qualities (how/when they grow) which helps farmers to be more
productive. Crops can also be modified to improve their quality: for example
Golden Rice has been engineered to produce beta-carotene, the precursor to vitamin
A, which …