why r gmo's dangerous?

Answer 1

GMOs aren't dangerous. In fact they are certified safe, which is more than can be said for organic or conventionally grown food.

In fact people die every year from eating organically grown food, yet there has not been a single reported case of harm from eating GM food. I think the facts speak for themselves.

Candy2mercy is spouting propaganda with little basis in fact. The soybean containing the Brazil nut gene was indeed found to be allergenic but was destroyed and never released to the market. No such soybeans exist in the food chain. All GM foods are tested for allergenic effects before release to the consumer.
A person who is allergic to fish is probably allergic to only one of the hundreds of thousands of proteins that the fish is made up of. It is extremely unlikely that if that person would have a reaction to a tomato containing a fish gene particularly as the fish protein that was put into tomatoes is not allergenic.
If we take a guilty until proven innocent attitude with our food we will have to ban nearly all food until we can test it and prove that it is safe. We all assume the food we eat today is reasonably safe so any new foods should be tested to current standards, i.e. as safe as or safer than conventional food.

The truth is that no-one can provide a legitimate varifiable reason for their opposition to GM food. There is absolutely no scientific evidence to support the current sense of paranoia surrounding this technology.

Answer 2

Most GMO plants are probably safe, but most of the dangers come from the companies modifying them assuming they're safer than they are. So may silver bullets get shot into our own feet.
Here are a few specific dangers:
Modified turf grass (Agrostis stolonifera) resistant to Roundup ("Roundup-ready")--pollen from this grass has gone way farther than anyone thought possible, and grasses can hybridize very easily (Agrostis can hybridize with 13+ other grasses). Many grasses are invasive non-natives, and when they pick up herbicide resistance land managers have to switch to harsher chemicals for control.
Introduction of novel allergenic proteins--transgenic soybeans can contain brazil nut proteins; many people are allergic to tree nuts. With no labeling requirements and no way to tell just by looking, GMO's can expose people to allergens unexpectedly. I'm allergic to fish; would I know if the tomato I'm eating has fish protein in it as a "natural" antifreeze?
Nontarget effects--plants that are engineered to make their own pesticides can affect nontarget organisms. This is less of an issue to me, since growers would be spraying anyway.
There's also the often-overlooked economic effect; when companies engineer crops, they can be very proprietary with their material. In addition to charging a premium for their seeds, and not allowing farmers to grow a second generation from them without pay, they have often sued farmers for "benefitting" from crops contaminated by drifting transgenic pollen! GMOs set up small farmers into a sharecropping level of servitude to large corporations.
I AM a scientist, and not an ignorant fear-prone person. People are doing things they really don't know the full effects of, and even in a year or two of research on a crop there have been a lot of "oops" moments. Things should be shifted from a "safe until proven otherwise" to "dangerous until proven safe" because there's no way to put the genie back in the bottle.

Answer 3

gmo's are POTENTIALLY dangerous (not proven to be dangerous) because we don't know the long term side-effects. We are splicing genes from one organism to put into another, but we are not yet sure that the one gene we want doesn't have a bad gene attached.

Answer 4

They aren't. Some worry GMO's will crossbreed with wild-type species and produce "super weeds". Other people contend GMO's will force farmers to purchase expensive seeds and possibly specialized equipment and/or chemicals to go with them. A few people even worry allergies may develop because a peanut gene for example could be spliced into another plant and a person with a severe peanut allergy unknowingly takes a bite and.............
To date, no problems have arisen.

Answer 5

Are you asking about genetically modified organisms? What is the answerer above me talking about? It sounds like he's talking about HMO's.

Answer 6

heh, misread that as HMOs