About built -in genes

One of the most mysterious stories about the harm of GMOs is the confidence of some people that food genes can be built, give rise to amazing mutations that will not appear immediately, but will begin to work in the third or even fifth generation. This idea is so common that it is already becoming a plot line of science fiction novels, which, albeit very dubious quality, find their grateful fans.

Supporters of GMOs, including me, love to send in such cases to a textbook on human physiology, to the chapters about digestion. The expediency of such a “sent”, however, is very doubtful. A person who did not sleep in biology lessons in high school, and so everything is clear. The one who overslept everything, most likely, will still not understand anything. To understand, you will have to repeat not only physiology, but all the other knowledge missed by the ears. So, everything will remain in its place.

But what if you try to look into history? If the gloomy future in which we will have evil mudtant children because of eating genetically modified potatoes today, if the embedding of food genes with subsequent transmission through several generations may be a threat, then there should be cases when this happened. If this happened, then such cases are probably fixed somewhere by historians, prose writers or just a suffering soul. Man is a curious creature, omnivorous. We eat bugs and worms, and it’s scary to think, fish, well, at least one gene, but, for sure, built, and someone during this time should have appeared consequences.

And, you know, I found what I was looking for. The prospect of the genetic degeneration of mankind is real. The story is full of documented cases when the genes of food integrated and changed all the biochemistry of a person.

Perhaps one of the most famous, well -documented cases was described by Karl Friedrich Jerome Baron von Munchausen in the middle of the 18th century. Somehow, on the hunt, he ended bullets, then he charged the gun with a cherry bone and shot at a deer. What was his surprise when, a few years later he met this deer again, a holly tree grew on his head. The baron thought that it gave the roots a cherry bone. The truthfulness of this story is not in doubt, the baron was known for its crystal honesty. But he was mistaken in the reasons. Today, from the height of our scientific knowledge, we understand what really happened. The genes of the cherry bone were built into the deer genes, and the cherry tree on his head is nothing more than a mutation. It would seem that this one egregious case, mentioned even in a famous movie, should warn us, people, against manipulations with genes. But for some reason we remained deaf to warnings from the past.

Another egregious example is presented in the famous fairy tale of Wilhelm Gauf "Dwarf-Zno". We all remember what happened to the hero of this work, how, after being “in service”, the sorceress grew up a hump and nose. The storyteller finds the cause in witchcraft, but today we know - witchcraft does not exist. Everything that was previously considered a “miracle” or “magic” is the essence of the manifestation of the forces of nature. The true cause of the metamorphosis that has occurred is that the genes of stumps were built into a poor child. After all, it was the mother of Jacob that was the cabbage, which means that he could eat them. In addition, witchcraft is theoretically manifested immediately, but here the process took years. Exactly - a mutation, exactly - from built -in genes. Fortunately, the process turned out to turn that it inspires optimism.

In Indian mythology, we stumble upon creatures with the head of the elephant. But this is also the result of a direct mutation of a person who occurred as a result of nutrition of elephant meat. Ancient letters cannot lie. What is India. The centaurs calmly walked around ancient Greece just shortly before Homer. The only thing is not yet clear to me: a centaur is a mutated person who has eaten a horse, or a horse that has eaten a person. In any case, the recent story with Konina under the guise of beef may have sad consequences.

And the Minotaur? And the jellyfish of Gorgon? And the sphinxes? No, no matter what they say about the safety of genetically modified products, the great knowledge of our distant ancestors tells us about something else. Wise ancestors wanted to warn us, not to allow us to play with the most secret - a secret genetic code.

Maybe such arguments will not seem convincing to everyone, but they 100% correspond to the argumentation of supporters of “embedding genes”. Nearnly cited a single real evidence of their theory, limited to only loud statements. This is very easy to understand.

There are fairy tales. Greek myths. Munchausen. Stories about the fundamental difference between selection and genetic modification. Reflections on inadmissibility to poke hands into natural processes. These tales are written by fairy tales.

And there is science. Creation of genetically modified organisms. Safe. Necessary. Establishment by those properties that selection will take an inaccessively large amount of time. Science may not be as interesting as fairy tales. And scientists do it.

Genes, however, can really be built up, this is well known. You can recall viruses or exchange of resistance to antibiotics among bacteria. The horizontal transfer of genes is also found in eukaryotes (living organisms whose cells contain nuclei, they are all plants and animals, including humans. - Ed. ). This, however, is not related to the harm or benefits of GMOs. And this is much more exciting than any fairy tale stories.