Genetically Modified Foods and How It Affects the Human Body

Throughout history food has always been a major need in order for human survival. However, in the recent decades human population on earth has made food supplies short in some nations, while others have a one hundred percent import market, with no deport at all, in their food markets. This has led to an increase in food experimentation within research labs to make food genetically able to grow faster, to being able to produce a larger quantity of foods from one seed. These times of crops and food have become known as genetically modified food. Genetically modified foods are essentially foods that have been manipulated in research labs by chemicals and toxins to provide results needed to satisfy customers and corporations; however, these chemical and toxins can also lead to health problems and alter some aspects of daily life for consumers.

Genetically Modified Foods was introduced to the world through the findings of how to isolate pure DNA by scientist Andrei Nikolaevitch Belozersky in 1935. This led to the revolution within the scientific community to produce man-made DNA for a multitude of things, but scientists started with altering DNA of bacteria, plants, and crops. The genetically modified foods that would derive from this process would essentially be plants and crops that would not be able to grow naturally in nature. Genetically modified foods require a gene to be transferred to another organism through a vector, which in the case of genetically modified foods would be a crop or plant seed. In order for this to occur, the transferring gene must be isolated by a restriction enzyme. One of the most common restriction enzymes that are used is the restriction endonucleuse which cuts DNA for isolation at a specific point. On...

... middle of paper ...

...odified crops and plants in it. The safety of consumers should come first when dealing with a situation that has the potential to have disastrous effects, and that can go unnoticed at times. The side effects of genetically modified crops has the potential to harm the human body through chemicals counteracting ones everyday lifestyle from taking medicine, to being able to do normal bodily functions; and can also lead to antigens taking residence in one’s body that can cause illnesses that have fatal results. Genetically modified foods can be seen as a threat to the safety of the United States population based off of the fact that the goals that were set to be reached by introducing these foods to the market has not fully reached, and how side effects continue to pop-up as corporations come up with new chemicals and/or bacteria/virus DNA genes they can put in a seed.