The Devil's Tool Or Hope For The Future?

 

When it comes to the subject of GMOs — genetically modified organisms — nobody sits on the fence, calmly watching the cornstalks swaying in the breeze. The farmers, some of them anyway, look at their fertile fields and count their bushels and their bucks; the seed purveyors survey the results of their complex scientific handiwork and convince themselves that they're helping to feed — to save — humankind. Concerned consumers, environmentalists, and the kinds of farmers who irrigate their soil with their own sweat, meanwhile, see not corn or cash or glorious technology but something unnatural, something dangerous, something evil. That other lot just shakes their heads and says, hey, we've been fooling Mother Nature for centuries; that's how we domesticated plants and animals; that's how we built civilization. GMOs are just a more efficient way of growing things, good for everybody. GMOs, in other words, are a matter for debate....