By Staff Writer, Yeva Mikaelyan

            Last month, I briefly touched upon a subject other than pesticides; genetic engineering. But I hardly explained what it is so a lot of people were probably really confused. So, I extend my apologies.

            According to Safe-Food.org, “Genetic engineering is a laboratory technique used by scientists to change the DNA of living organisms.”

            Basically, genetic engineering is taking an organism and placing genes of another organism in it in an attempt to fix a “flaw” that the original organism has (hence, the fish DNA in your tomatoes). This, in turn, causes a plethora of unanswered questions as to how it will affect the world.

            Sounds scary? It is. The entire biotech world is taking a stupid, unnecessary, and potentially fatal risk.

 It’s like cell phones. We are the guinea pigs for this technology and we have no idea how it will affect our health or the health of the environment in the future.

For all we know, all the genetically engineered crops could develop some weird disease tomorrow, and we will all end up dead. There is no way to know because no one bothers to make sure that these products are properly tested.

The first problem with genetic engineering is that these scientists have no idea where they are aiming. According to The Food Revolution by John Robbins, although genetic engineers know what gene they are putting in, they have no idea if it will land in the middle of another gene and disrupt its function. It’s like shooting a gun with your eyes closed. “Oh, oops, I just killed that old lady.” Great job.

Secondly, we do not know how these new foods will affect us, because like I said, they are not properly tested. An article on EarthSave.com says that, “Some of the genes used in genetic engineering were never in the food supply before. There is no way to know ahead of time whether some people may become allergic to the proteins that result.”

And then there are the antibiotic resistant genes in these foods that could transfer into our internal bacteria. And if those bacteria develop antibiotic resistance, then diseases that we were able to treat with antibiotics before could become resistant to the treatment. Hence, the weird disease and everyone dying.

“But genetic engineering could end world hunger!” NO. Bad. Wrong. It can not and it will not. There is currently enough food on the planet so that each person could receive 3,600 calories a day. The problem is distribution. First-world countries over-consume third-world countries get nothing. Why? Because they are too busy raising cows for us so they can have enough money to feed their families. There is nothing the biotech world can do about that.

And, of course, the head of the beautiful biotech industry is none other than Monsanto. You know, the people poisoning our school with pesticides? I really hope that you do not believe that any claims these people make are to be trusted.

So how can you avoid exposure to genetic engineering? Eat organic food. It is a bit more expensive, but it is also much healthier and doesn’t taste like cardboard. Either that or grow your own food.

Remember, organic is what nature gave us. Trust me, there are enough problems in the world to deal with; we do not need to waste our time trying to fix “problems” that were never really problems to begin with.