If you eat a transgenic tomato, your fingers will get stuck and you will become a vegetable yourself, the press portrays. A genetic scientist tells about how dangerous genetically modified foods really are.
EXPERT Ruslana Radchuk, Researcher, Department of Molecular Genetics, Institute of Cultivated Plant Genetics (Gatersleben, Germany)
Can the genes of a GM plant be incorporated into human DNA?
- There are only a few cases of horizontal transfer (that is, not from parent to offspring, but from species to species) of genes from plant to plant, and the transfer and incorporation of DNA from plants to animals has never been observed.
This is good, but the experiment would be much more convincing …
- Scientists tracked the fate of plant DNA in the digestive tract of experimental animals and found its fragments in various organs. A natural question arose: as soon as foreign DNA enters the organs, can it not also enter the reproductive cells or the fetus, and therefore be passed on to the offspring?
But further research showed that foreign DNA does not cross the placenta and does not integrate into the fetal genome, even if it is injected directly into the blood of pregnant females. Strictly speaking, only after these experiments it became clear that you can safely eat any food. After all, the genes of an ordinary potato can be incorporated into the human genome with the same probability as the genes of a GM vegetable.
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Opponents of GMOs like to say that the DNA of such an organism is artificially altered, which means that its properties differ from the properties of the “ordinary” one
- From the point of view of genetics, modern agricultural wheat or corn are monsters, unattainable peaks for biotechnological engineering. They are mixed with several different genomes, they are seasoned with allergens and active mutagens.
And outwardly, these creatures differ from the wild ancestor primarily in their gigantic size. And these plants are the work of an ancient man who did not know what DNA is. Compared to them, GMOs are like batteries next to a nuclear power plant. And in doing so, we seriously discuss the risk of alkali leakage.
What is more dangerous for humans - GMOs or pesticides and herbicides?
- Most pesticides are hazardous to human health, and when cultivating GMOs, not so many are needed. It is widely believed in the press that since GMOs are specially designed to be herbicide resistant, it means that they are processed much more often and more. It is not true. Fields with transgenic plants are watered with herbicides no more than usual. At the same time, traditionally cultivated soybeans or cereals are often treated with defoliant herbicides (they destroy the leaves) right before harvesting.
Why are there so few GM plants on the market today? Where does the delay occur?
- The biggest problem for promoting GM plants is very expensive and unreasonably regulated tolerances. The second point is that there are still few potentially competitive plants. Finally, the third major obstacle is consumer rejection. As a result, there is now a very small range of transgenic plants on the market. And by the way, these are not "plastic" tomatoes or glossy apples from the supermarket.