Can GMOs be used for good? Sure. I agree with Jack, it can be done ethically and responsibly, but I have no faith in the people who have monopolized most of this research to date. Hypothetically, I say yes, practically however, not unless something changes dramatically with those who are leading the initiatives.

I’m worried more about alternate uses. What about using GMOs as a weapon? There are plant genes which produce a compound functionally similar to estrogen. Hops for example does this in a small amount. Put that in rice and give it to a hungry foreign population, creating infertility issues among large portions of their population. The gene would propagate among indigenous seed stocks. If you had a 1% population reduction over 30 years in a country like North Korea, that’s a quarter million people who will never exist. More effective than any war we could wage on the ground, and these are potential people, not ever born. They will never exist to fight back. They will never contribute to their nation economically or with labor, advancing their technology, they will never breed. The costs would be negligible, less than deploying one battleship to the area. There is no news footage showing bombs dropped on civilians, no bodies piling up, a completely passive war. Would some nations be interested in using this on their own populations? Could caste systems be formed by keeping pure food economically out of the reach of the masses? Could people even uncover the truth? If the fertility problems were instead attributed to a virus in the media, would the public look any further than the cause which is offered up to them by the experts?

This is just one hypothetical. I don’t know the technology ever could or would be used in this way, but there are millions of hypothetical scenarios like this. Put small amounts of opiate compounds in a staple food to create dependence over time. Advantage weeds instead of suppressing them. Change the height or stem width just a bit to render existing harvesting equipment less efficient…

On the other side of the equation, it can be used for good. Deeper roots on annual grains allowing them to be grown in arid landscapes and feed people who might otherwise starve in a drought. Add plant synthesized surrogate protein only found in meat to vegetable crops, permitting a true vegan diet without supplements or the health problems which frequently arise from such diets. Larger grain yields on perennial grasses so we can have long term wheat crops that don’t require tilling the soil and constant replanting, preserving the landscape instead of destroying it. Disease resistance, restoring extinct plant species… these are all being done by groups around the world today. Good intention can still create negative consequences, but the potential is too great to ignore. If any of these come to fruition, it could save and drastically improve the lives of hundreds of millions of people.

Then you have the pointless uses. Look at the Glow in the dark plant on kickstarter. Kinda cool, kinda scary, mostly stupid. How long before your kids are begging for brussels sprouts when they have a candy flavored variety? Not the end of the world, but not really advancing society or meeting any specific need. Humanity has a way of bastardizing technology. How much internet traffic does the library of congress get? Compare that to cat memes and celebrity tweets. The internet is the gratest human invention, instant access to the sum of human knowledge and 99% of it is used for completely pointless shit. If you think everyone in the world is an idiot, you’re right, we all are. Brilliance doesn’t describe people, but the fleeting moments of success and innovation for which a person is recognized. The rest of the time, even the smartest people are still mostly dumb-asses. I expect that trend to continue and be prominently expressed in GMO research. We’ll see daisies with the center of the flower looking like the trademarked walmart smiley face, rainbow colored popcorn with each kernel color having a different flavor, grape vines being adapted to a small tree habit to negate the need to trellis them…

The technology is already out there. It’s actually not very difficult to understand and experiment with on your own. It’s not the exclusive realm of highly trained scientists working for mega-corporations. You (yes YOU) can spend about $2000 on basic lab equipment, buy cultures of agrobacterium with specific genes and modify plants yourself. That means people have some power over the progression of the technology, and it also means a malicious individual with a basic skillset could do a lot of damage. It’s good and bad.

You will not be able to stop the technology. No protests or legislation are effective, you cannot effectively boycott the products as they’re being pushed first in nations where people are hungry and don’t have a lot of other options. You can “vote with your dollar”, but frankly your dollar doesn’t stretch that far. You may do so for your own peace of mind and conscience, but to expect that to suppress the technology would be naive. The technology is already here. People will use it for good, for bad and for pointless reasons, and it’s applications will only expand. That’s what every new technology does.

The rational position is to have faith that the good people outnumber the bad people, that the pros will outweigh the cons. Expect some problems we haven’t encountered before, and expect that they will not be solved easily or quickly. Many solutions will be proposed, most of them will fail. It’s going to take society some time to come to terms with what these problems even are, and the advancement of the technology will outpace any attempts to restrict it through the means we have at our disposal today.

…Then you realize the best course is to focus on what you can do. Move to perennial fruits and vegetables, things which can be propagated by cutting. These are isolated from pollination contamination with nearby GMO crops. For that matter keep small meat animals, GMO tech is getting into meat as well. Pick one plant and be the steward of that species, preserving it’s genetic stock and providing it to people who want it. Maybe you do it on a farm or with a permaculture food forest, maybe it’s in a grow-tent in your house, or a couple strawberry plants in a pot on your windowsill in an apartment. You don’t need to forsake all GMO technology, some good applications will come of the technology, but I urge caution, wait for the crops to be proven, have an ample supply of non-GMO food at your disposal, and while the vote with your dollar strategy will ultimately prove fruitless, you can still use it to slow the adoption of the technology and make it economically less enticing in the short term. Don’t buy into propaganda or hysteria. The issues raised are too varied in their implications for anyone to objectively say “yes” or “no” to GMOs. You can make that decision and pick a side, but it will have to be done on a system of personal beliefs and gut instinct, not on a review of the facts as they already prove contradictory in different use scenarios. There is no universal truth to support or oppose their adoption, and it’s already too late for one view to prevail. The technology is in the wild now, it won’t go away, and the detractors are steadfast in their views and will not be swayed. Picking either side is now pointless from an advocacy standpoint, instead worry about what you can do personally to uphold your own ethics and prosper under this new scenario.