Deceitfully Dismissed applications of GM Crops

While the unjustified health risks are repeated, the significant applications of GM crops are overlooked. GM crops have already contributed to feeding starving nations. Bacillus thuringiensis (BT) cotton is a genetically modified variant of a cotton producing plant that produces its own insecticide (Kathage & Qaim, 2012). This crop has decreased the need for insecticides and increased crop yields (Qaim, 2010). These factors have resulted in increased income from farming and therefore increased quality of life for the farmers that adopt these crops. GM crops have also contributed to solving malnutrition, particularly in developing countries. Vitamin A deficiency is known to have various clinical implications, including vision impairment (Sommer, 2008). GM rice, titled golden rice for its color, has been engineered to produce β-carotene, a precursor to vitamin A. Furthermore, the ability of the β-carotene from golden rice to produce vitamin A in children was equivalent to pure β-carotene, demonstrating its effectiveness (Haskell, 2012). Additionally, the crop could provide nutrition to remote populations that would otherwise not have access to vitamin A supplementation (Moghissi, Pei, & Liu, 2016). These examples provide a just basis for the monumental applications of GM crops.

In addition to overlooking the applications of GM crops, they are often falsely contraindicated. Given that there are herbicide tolerant GM crops, some sources claim that GM crops will promote herbicide use, and therefore lead to environmental harm, among other health effects like “sterility, hormone disruption, birth defects, and cancer” (Smith, 2010). Although the claim that herbicide resistant GM crops will encourage herbicide use is a logical progression of thought, it is not based in primary research. For example, a recent exhaustive meta-analysis has revealed GM crops have reduced the need for pesticides, indicated by a 37% decrease in pesticide use (Klümper & Qaim, 2014). In addition to the pesticide use claims, anti-GM sites often claim that GM crops definitively harm the environment (Glass, 2018). Although further research is required to evaluate the invasiveness and pervasiveness of GM crops and its effect on biodiversity (Tsatsakis et al., 2017), GM crops have had measurable positive impacts on the environment. For example, the increased crop yield and decreased pesticide use have resulted in decreased fuel use and tillage changes (Brookes & Barfoot, 2016). These reductions have resulted in a yearly decline in greenhouse gas production equivalent to that of 10 million cars (Brookes & Barfoot, 2016). Therefore, the positive impacts of GM crops are severely undermined by baseless claims rooted in pseudoscience.