03-26-2022, 08:44 PM
It is bad in that once a GMO gets out to the wild and successfully reproduces, there is no taking it back.
A while ago US intelligence director published a warning about that. The warning said that hostile actors could easily use GMOs as a weapon to decimate people, food system, the ecosystem etc.
But the same applies to domestic state and private organizations as well - it doesnt matter whether a harmful GMO got out because of a hostile attack or a lab screwing up and causing it to escape. The effect is the same.
Imagine that a wheat strain that causes world's grain supply to go 40% less productive, gets out and starts reproducing with the normal grain strains in the fields. GMOs are made to not reproduce, but all it takes is the right mutation somewhere to restart it.
Or imagine GMO viruses - you saw some example of that with covid. It does not matter whether it was a biological attack by a country, or it got out by mistake or it was natural - the end result is the same.
GMOs and biological research should be very tightly regulated, internationally. Even tighter than nuclear weapons. Currently the US is the only country that refuses to sign the biological weapons proliferation treaty which almost everybody else signed.
A while ago US intelligence director published a warning about that. The warning said that hostile actors could easily use GMOs as a weapon to decimate people, food system, the ecosystem etc.
But the same applies to domestic state and private organizations as well - it doesnt matter whether a harmful GMO got out because of a hostile attack or a lab screwing up and causing it to escape. The effect is the same.
Imagine that a wheat strain that causes world's grain supply to go 40% less productive, gets out and starts reproducing with the normal grain strains in the fields. GMOs are made to not reproduce, but all it takes is the right mutation somewhere to restart it.
Or imagine GMO viruses - you saw some example of that with covid. It does not matter whether it was a biological attack by a country, or it got out by mistake or it was natural - the end result is the same.
GMOs and biological research should be very tightly regulated, internationally. Even tighter than nuclear weapons. Currently the US is the only country that refuses to sign the biological weapons proliferation treaty which almost everybody else signed.