irreligious at best.

This is not an original thought, but it is new to me so i feel like toying with it. There are hundreds of people who are trying to prevent genetically engineered foods from being introduced not only into today's market but also third world countries. I used to think Greenpeace had some good points, and I still think that they do, but in some instances you can't take everything that people say at face value.

Genetically engineered foods have been a part of our societies for centuries, starting with selective breeding. In this case, there is nothing unnatural about it. You simply kept part of a family of cows alive for the purpose of breeding and ate the rest. It was common sense. Now we have the technology to see, at least partially, what makes that head of cattle the tastiest, but the genome seems to be currently outside of our realm of understanding. However, plants are a little different. Plants have simpler cellular structures and processes. There are fewer cells and fewer types of cells so there is less information to process.

This basically means that we are better able to understand and manipulate plant cells and the plant genome. We can see in a lab why one strain of corn produces massive ears of corn even though it is kept in near drought conditions. (this is a literary device known as a hyperbole, it's for dramatic emphasis) And why is that important? Because not everyone lives in the United Freakin' States of America. We here in America have everything we need and more. And the same is true for most nations that have the luxury of philosophical debate about such things as genetically engineered plants. But let me ask you, if a development in science can save the lives of one or two Americans, is it not worth it? Indubitably the answer is yes, but why is it different when we are talking about several thousand, hundreds of thousands, or in more likelihood millions of lives? Isn't that worth it?

What kind of lives? You might ask. What kind of lives will they lead if they are eating genetically engineered foods? Won't that screw up your genes? Probably not. Genetics doesn't work like it did for Peter Parker or any other genetic freak in comic books. Such reasoning spawned from fear of elements we don't understand. This is ludicrous with today's understanding of genetics. Consider this, genetic engineering has only relatively recently benefited from the lab. It has been going on since the mid nineteenth century starting with
a monk named Gregor Mendel. Not many people objected then because he was simply manipulating how the plants pollinated. What is different now is we have lab coats and we can splice right on the genetic level and cut out the generations and generations of cross breeding.

We would do it if would save the lives of our friends and family. Why not do it when it can save nations?