Mutated pests quickly adapting to biotech crops in unpredicted and disturbing ways

IMO the short term profit motive blinded them to the obvious long term consequences.

Any idiot could see this coming.

Creating a continuing problem is great job security!

io9.com...

Genetically modified crops are often designed to repel hungry insects. By having toxins built into the plant itself, farmers can reduce their use of environmentally unfriendly insecticide sprays. But as any first-year evolutionary biology student can tell you, insects are like the Borg in Star Trek: they quickly adapt. And this is precisely what is happening – but in ways that have startled the researchers themselves.

The discovery is a wakeup call to geneticists because it has highlighted the importance of having to closely monitor and counter pest resistance to biotech crops. The development also raises the question of the potential futility of having to change the genetic structure of crops in perpetuity; given that insects are constantly evolving, to what degree will geneticists have to go to ensure crop immunity to pests? And what does that say to the ongoing safety of such crops as far as human consumption is concerned?

It would have been better to fore-go GMO and learn to eat the insects!

This "trouble on the horizon" indicates that geneticists are in the midst of an arms race with insects. Each measure they enact will likely be countered by the ever-adapting insects. It's difficult to know at this point just how modified the crops will have to be to withstand these pests, or how these new crops could impact on human health and the very constitution of the insects themselves.

Destruction of the soil, the microbes that support plant life within it, The ability to plant non gmo strains into the soil to re-establish organic principles, all going to hell in a hand cart because of GMO's.
I was wondering how long it will be before just the presence of these insects in the soil will create toxicity that will halt growth of anything but the GMO strains, that have been adapted to grow in them.
The GM companies are going all out to obfuscate, curtail, and end any potentially negative research into their products, this says to me, they are being completely intentional in what they are doing, they already know the end result of interfering with nature, and interfering with the research trying to prove how disruptive this will be to our entire food security.
It is all pre planned, without controlling the very food on our plates, and its availability, they cannot 100% control the people.

This is probably why we have a seed vault in Norway. Someone had the foresight to plan ahead.

Nature finds a way.... always.

The same rate of adaptation probably would/will occur in most species however, the short life-cycle of insects gives them s HUGE advantage in countering the genetic engineers.

Way to go insects!

reply to post by Grifter81

A star for quoting Goldblum.

reply to post by rtyfx


I thought it was cheesy when I read it after posting.