The green gene revolution.

• Autores: The Editors
• Localización: Scientific American, ISSN 0036-8733, Vol. 291, Nº. 2, 2004, págs. 8-8
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This article discusses genetically modified crops. As millions of people in Zambia and Zimbabwe faced famine in 2002, their governments rejected corn donated by the United Nations, calling it "poison" because it contained some genetically modified kernels. There protesters blockaded the street, shouting predictions that GM crops would devastate human health, the environment and the welfare of small farmers. Yet only a month earlier the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO)--traditionally a champion of the small farmer--had concluded that the ongoing "war of rhetoric" about agricultural biotechnology may pose a greater threat than the technology itself does. In its refreshingly apolitical report, State of Food and Agriculture 2003-2004, the FAO assessed a growing body of scientific and economic data on GM crops. One of the worst things about GM crops, the FAO argued, is that too few farmers are planting them. The science, it determined, says overwhelmingly that the GM food plants currently on the market pose no risk to human health, although multiple-gene transformations now in development need further study.