Summary Of 'Are Engineered Foods Evil?'

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David H. Freedman uses statistics and emotion to help the readers connect more with what he is saying in his article. In the Article, he talks about the pros and cons of Genetically modified foods, how they are tested and if they can cause any real risks to the people. “Are Engineered Foods Evil?” appeared on September 2013 in the issue of Scientific American entitled “The Food Issue: The Science of Feast, Fuel, and Farm.” He also has written in Inc. Magazine, the Harvard Business Review, Wired and even in the New York Times. Freedman utilities a solid base of benefits and worries, a clean record and a way forward to educate the common people or other researchers on the effects of Genetically Modified Foods. Freedman points out that there …show more content…

Freedman plays on emotion in the Benefits and Worries section and really starts out the whole article with that because it is an uncertain subject and he’s going to do anything he can to grasp the audience. He writes that the benefits of GM foods are greatly higher than the risks and that for the most part, GM foods help lower prices on foods and farmers are now able to use fewer pesticides. Zilberman says “the world will have to grow 70 percent more food by 2050 just to keep up with population growth.” p. 632 Freedman is playing to the audience and making them realize that food is an important aspect and we need it to survive and GM foods could help the process go faster. GM foods can withstand more harsh conditions than regular food could or can. Even so with all the evidence of good and how it can help us most of the world has banned GM foods. They refuse to use them even though there are people starving in their country and even though they would save so much more money. Page 632 says that there are only 4 countries that use GM foods and that is the United States, Canada, Brazil, and Argentina. Many people have …show more content…

On page 633 it says that the human race has long been selectively breeding crops and that today 's wheat could not exist outside of farms due to their seeds not being able to scatter. Also, wheat, rice, peanuts, and pears have been created using mutagenic techniques and there are to this day no known health risks from these foods. Selective breeding usually involves lots of genes being swapped while GM scientists are able to insert single genes allowing there to be less room for error or anything unknown they weren’t expecting. Scientist Goldberg stated “We know where the gene goes and can measure the activity of every single gene around it. We can show exactly which changes occur and which don’t.” p. 633 They add virus DNA to plants which to some would be a turn-off but it’s actually very common and people, as well as all other organisms, have viruses injected into their bodies and it usually does no harm. Yet the question on page 634 saying “could eating plants with altered genes allow new DNA to work its way into our own?” has been a concern but scientists clear up that they have never found a genetic material that could manage its way through the human stomach and reach the cells. Also, the everyday person encounters so many other viruses and bacterias that they have become immune to many so the genes in GM foods most

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