Open Season Is Seen in Gene Editing of Animals

I had fairly nice conversation the other day with a neighbor who actually knew what CRISPR/cas9 were. I was stunned but delighted. It was a rare occurrence, though.

>I'd like to do more public outreach but the knowledge gap seems insurmountable

You're not giving people enough credit. You can explain DNA from a functional standpoint to children. The problem is bandwidth - there are many things a given person will possibly might want to know that have big consequences. However, it's not clear that everyone should know how GMO's work compared with, say, nuclear energy, encryption, general food production techniques, banking, medicine, global politics, and whatever they need to do for their current occupation. Clearly a substantial number should, but everyone?

Like, imagine someone from the intelligence community saying they'd like there to be a public discussion about terrorism, but they're skeptical it could ever happen because 80% of Americans don't know where Boko Haram is located. The answer isn't to throw your hands up and say that the knowledge gap is insurmountable, it's to provide the opportunity for dialogue so that enough people can engage the issue.

I think genetic engineering is an important tool to use, and that the left leaning establishment (with which I typically identify) is far too knee-jerk opposed to any use of it.

I think there are real environmental concerns with over use of herbicides and with pesticides bred into plants that then kill non-pest species.

But I don't see any harm in adding vitamins or other positive traits to similar plants. AND I don't see harm in removing horns from cattle. (Quoting PETA in the article seemed pointless; of course you can't expect a group of militant vegans to say anything else.)

What I'd love to see is an independent organization that makes a rational determination as to the likely ramifications of a genetic change, and that certifies that sufficient testing has occurred to verify food and environmental concerns have been addressed.

But currently the best we have is the Organic certifications, which completely ban any GMOs. The distinction between GMO and non-GMO is even somewhat arbitrary, it turns out [1], where some non-GMO food could have far worse mutations than a surgical gene change, making such a ban worse than pointless.

[1] There are techniques where you subject seeds to radiation and then look for the mutations you want using genetic techniques, and that wouldn't fall under a GMO ban, for instance -- and those genes may have been changed in multiple ways, with some of the effects unpredictable. See http://grist.org/series/panic-free-gmos/

The problem isn't with genetically modified organisms; it's with human nature. The promotion of GMOs by certain parties as an unequivocal good, and the tendency to label anyone as anti-science who questions the laissez-faire regulation of their widespread commercial use, sets off a skeptic's sense of human greed and hubris at work.

I'm less concerned with screw ups than malicious applications. The technology is just getting better and cheaper, controlling access to it ultimately won't be possible.

Natural pathogens have caused an awful lot of suffering, it won't be long before people start designing even more awful variations, if they aren't already.