Research Question: Do the benefits of GMOs outweigh the known and unknown risks they pose to human and environmental health?
Claim/Thesis: The ubiquity of raising GMOs for use in the food system is an alarming and looming threat to environmental, which needs to be reevaluated for the future safety of our most basic food staples and current human health as well.
Arguments For: 1) We don't yet know how changing the DNA of a food crop will impact human health and animals for which they are used as feed.
2) It is still not proven if the GMO can cross breed with its wild counterparts and the effect of this out breeding.
3) The natural insecticides and herbicides these GMOs produce could have an unforeseen effect on their surrounding environment and cause unwanted resistance buildup to readily available chemicals.
4) The use of GMOs causes a sever loss of biodiversity of certain land races particularly in Mexico, the birthplace of the modern corn. Without this biodiversity if ever a strain were to fall ill to a virus or bacterium an entire food crop would cease to exist for the forseeable future.
Counter Arguments: 1) We have always consumed DNA and adding some here and there is no different than traditional breeding currently does to plants.
2) In the growing of GMOs we have developed ways of cutting down the risk of out breeding with other non target species, such as hedges and other separating plants.
3) By stacking and altering genes used to produce certain chemicals to fight pests and weeds we can substantially decrease the chance of either one becoming predominately resistant to the chemicals and therefore genes.
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