This is in response to Rudy Bergen’s letter to the editor July 7, titled technological gain.
I have to go on record that I believe that some (not all) scientists who work with DNA encoding and decoding put too much faith in what is an inherently empirical process, and the world is the laboratory.
I, for one, want the choice to participate in these studies.
Back in 1972, Susumu Ohno coined the phrase “junk DNA,” which is in more proper terms “no-coding DNA” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noncoding_DNA). How much of an organism’s DNA can be considered “junk” and what the overall consequences are of modifying these sequences of supposedly inconsequential DNA is debated by many scientists (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130529121023.htm and http://www.livescience.com/31939-junk-dna-mystery-solved.html).
Scientists and government establish a baseline of DNA modification which is considered “functionally equivalent,” and if a modified product, through whatever means (i.e. gene splicing vegetable DNA with animal DNA) can be deemed “functionally equivalent” then no mention is deemed necessary.
However, if the samples are equivalent, then why is the modified one better? If they are not equivalent, then I want to know, and decide with my dollars if I want the purported benefits of the modified product.
Functional equivalence, by very definition, ignores any DNA considered “junk.”
I, for one, am not asking for the outright ban on GMO products (as some countries in the world already have done), but I do want to know if the product I am purchasing has GMO properties, or may have cone into contact with GMO products (as cross-pollination of plants will by its very design communicate product properties from one plant to another) and what those GMO properties are.
If these GMOs are so wonderful, then tell me why, with details! Promote them and let me see, but do not hide them under the guise of “functionally equivalent” or it will be most obvious that the only ones who benefit are the companies and corporations that created the item in question.
Daniel Bragg
Vernon
