[theFIRMbss]

>Agriculture is -based- on selective breeding of grains and of livestock lines for characteristics we find more useful.

Yes, but our stone age
ancestors who made the jump
to agriculture

never took the genes
from, say, some insect and put
them into some plant.

Genetic techniques
are creating things we can
only imagine

the consequences
of. And imagination
has been known to fail.

But if it fails in
this context, the results could
be catastrophic.

[JasonC]

Virtually all of the stuff being opposed as "GM" food is based on techniques equivalent to selective breeding. In a few cases, genes from similar plants are transfered to slightly different plants. There is precious little more than that going on. We have been "playing god" with life forms for ages - yeast, yogurt, cheese to corn and wheat to cows, sheep, horses, dogs, to chickens, pigeons, etc.

As for the idea that anything might happen so we cannot possible do anything, it is superstitious luddism of the first water. It amounts to submitting ourselves to whoever says "boo" the loudest. I can allege absolutely any consequence to absolutely any activity. I can inflate the size of the downside to any degree, up to an including eternal damnation. If low or no probability worries are supposed to constrain you due to the size of the alleged downside, see Pascal and get to church.

Rationality begins when you instead look at the known probability of anything going wrong. And there isn't any. We've tinkered for ages without the slightest negative consequence. We can tinker some more if we don't particularly like the results of the last round, and do so regularly. The result has been a dramatic, continuous trend of agricultural productivity increases, with the same scale of inputs, for longer than records can be found.

When all scientific knowledge, ages of past precendent, the welfare and survival of mankind on the present scale are all on one side of the ledger, and on the other side is a bare allegation of completely unspecified superstitious worries, we are supposed to consider it rational to weigh the latter more heavily than the former? That is just plain crazy. You might as well say, "since everything is subtly connected to everything else, if I don't throw salt over my left shoulder right now the sun might go supernova. Better not risk it".

When the consequences are completely innocuous personal inconveniences, it is merely raving nonsense to indulge such superstitious fears. But when it involves starving millions of other people to death, not to mention wrecking the ability to feed the present population of the world for the long term future, it is not at all innocuous. It is genocide by witch scare, and as such is a moral outrage.