I find this post insightful generally but I don't think the last sentence was necessary. It is possible to be an organic advocate irrespective of "listening to the scientists" on this or any other topic. Constructing and attacking this straw man doesn't really add anything to your post.
I think it's true though. The opposition to GMO foods is typically reflexive and unthinking. It's not grounded in logic or science. That's not to say throw all caution to the wind, but I've yet to hear anyone make a sound argument in this case. And there are at least good arguments to be made on both sides referencing the existing literature.
Sure. But a lot of pro-GMO thinking is also quite glib ("we've modified crops for thousands of years so what's the problem?").
I think mostly what's behind anti-GMO attitudes is the fear of unknown and unintended consequences. We've seen a lot of those ever since technology has been invented and they do seem to have proliferated in the last couple of centuries. So, it's not unjustified, especially when messing with extremely complex and barely understood systems. It's the same for weather engineering, for example. Parable of the sorcerer's apprentice and all that...
You don't really have any idea where opposition to GMO foods originates. You guess that it is reflexive and unthinking because that is convenient for you to guess.
There are strong arguments against, not necessarily GMO as a technology, but practically all existing commercial uses of it. Furthermore, each use of it is potentially an independent problem with its own dangers. Thus far the only beneficial use of it I have heard of is "yellow rice", which is not actually available, for purely capitalistic reasons.
They're all beneficial or they wouldn't have gone to this stage.
Maybe you don't think the benefits outweigh the risks, and that's a valid question.
However, the concept obviously has tremendous potential. All the variety of life is after all genetics. Improvements in nitrogen uptake could save tremendous amounts of fertilizer and help the environment, for example.
Everything is beneficial to somebody. Opium distibution is beneficial to poppy farmers, CIA agents, and, earlier, to the British Empire. Roundup-resistant soybeans are beneficial to Bayer.
golden rice is not available because activists in courts have done everything they can to keep it unavailable. This isn't capitalism, other than capitalism will not throw good money after bad fighting things out in court.
