Remember Jurassic Park? Remember Jeff Goldblum playing Dr. Ian Malcolm? Remember when he ever so eruditely commented on the DNA cloning of dinosaurs with this jewel ...
"Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."
I often think of that quote as a perfect metaphor for a bunch of stuff we oh-so-clever humans do these days, but specifically today I thought of it when reading about the Union of Concerned Scientists new report, Failure to Yield: Evaluating the Performance of Genetically Engineered Crops.
The UCS just keeps on rockin' in the food world. Brief summary:
Contrary to proponents' claims, genetic engineering (GE) technology has produced, at best, only small increases in yields of major food crops compared with other agricultural methods, according to a new UCS report. The report examined dozens of peer-reviewed studies and found that U.S. yields of soybeans and corn have increased over the past 15 years mainly thanks to traditional breeding and other agricultural practices. The report also concluded that, due to the technical complexity of the task, engineering crop genes for high yield is unlikely to help the world feed itself in the foreseeable future. The report recommends a shift in research emphasis toward traditional breeding and modern ecological farming methods, which have been woefully underfunded.
And money quote:
"Despite the common assertion that we need GE crops to solve world hunger, we found that these crops just don't live up to the claims made about them. The GE industry should stop making false claims about yield, and the U.S. government should reconsider its policy of promoting this expensive and disappointing technology to the developing world." ~ Doug Gurian-Sherman, Senior Scientist, Food & Environment
And link to Reuters story.
Ya know .... maybe Mother Nature really does know best after all.
