Michael Pollan Quotes

Modern genetic engineering makes producing GMO food products relatively easy. GMOs can improve crop yield and greatly enhance the nutritional value of those same crops.

Surely, if we are going to be better at producing food of the right value, then we have to accept that genetic technology... is going to be part of that.

Back in 1983, the United States government approved the release of the first genetically modified organism. In this case, it was a bacteria that prevents frost on food crops.

People have freaked out when I tell them that my dragons are scientifically based... what else can you call a genetically engineered life form?

In agriculture, people have taken wild plants that can't be eaten by people - and turned them into wonderful food sources. And that's because genomes can change, and people working with plants have picked mutations. Mutations are nothing more than genetic changes.

Every orchid or rose or lizard or snake is the work of a dedicated and skilled breeder. There are thousands of people, amateurs and professionals, who devote their lives to this business. Now imagine what will happen when the tools of genetic engineering become accessible to these people.

I have been intimately involved in the techniques of genetic modification as a scientist since GMOs were first conceived. In that time, hundreds of studies and tests have been done on GMO safety - and we've seen no scientific evidence that GMOs are inherently more dangerous than crops produced by traditional plant breeding.

It's possible that we could change a human gene and double our life span. I don't know if that's true, but we can't rule that out.

New molecular methods that add or modify genes can protect plants from diseases and pests and improve crops in ways that are both more environmentally benign and beyond the capability of older methods.

Some bioengineering is good, especially if it results in plants that are more drought-resistant or perennial food crops.

All the food we eat - every grain of rice and kernel of corn - has been genetically modified. None of it was here before mankind learned to cultivate crops. The question isn't whether our food has been modified, but how.

Human beings have been manipulating the biological world for thousands of years without understanding how DNA codes function.

In the food case in particular, one of the technologies that could help there - genetic technologies that could create better crops with higher yields and less need for water and fertilizer - is tremendously feared. Very little of that fear is scientifically grounded.

It might seem unfair to reward a person for having so much pleasure over the years, asking the maize plant to solve specific problems and then watching its responses.

One of the really remarkably beneficial aspects of genetic engineering is that much of the previous methodology for controlling pests and so forth is through chemicals that affect a very broad spectrum of insects, for example, or fungicides that control fungi.

There's almost no food that isn't genetically modified. Genetic modification is the basis of all evolution. Things change because our planet is subjected to a lot of radiation, which causes DNA damage, which gets repaired, but results in mutations, which create a ready mixture of plants that people can choose from to improve agriculture.

We are going from reading our genetic code to the ability to write it. That gives us the hypothetical ability to do things never contemplated before.

When you do cross-breeding of plants, you're doing this blind experiment where you're just mixing DNA of different types of cells and just seeing what comes out of it.

If you can write DNA, you're no longer limited to 'what is' but to what you could make.

Now that we can read and write the genetic code, put it in digital form and translate it back into synthesized life, it will be possible to speed up biological evolution to the pace of social evolution.

I suspect any worries about genetic engineering may be unnecessary. Genetic mutations have always happened naturally, anyway.

What's different here is that we have now technologies that allow these life science companies to bypass classical breeding. That's what makes it both powerful and exciting.

We're moving from reading the genetic code to writing it.

What the public needs to understand is that these new technologies, especially in recombinant DNA technology, allow scientists to bypass biological boundaries altogether.

There doesn't seem to be any other way of creating the next green revolution without GMOs.