You may now return to freaking out.
Not freaking, just being careful. For example, with Monsanto's genetically modified "Bt" corn, the corn's DNA is equipped with a gene from soil bacteria called Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) that produces the Bt-toxin. It's a pesticide that breaks open the stomach of certain insects and kills them. Monsanto and (EPA) assured us it was only insects that would be hurt, and the Bt-toxin would be completely destroyed in the human digestive system, and not have any impact on all of us.
Oops.
Doctors found the corn's Bt-toxin in the blood of pregnant women and their babies, as well as in non-pregnant women.i The study has been accepted for publication in the peer reviewed journal Reproductive Toxicology.
We are being experimented on. I choose not to play as best I can. This is different that selective breeding of plants.
Exactly.
If we were all able to go back in a time machine to 200+ years ago, what would we find? First of all, we’d find produce much smaller and often full of bugs. Prime cuts of beef would be a luxury for most people. Comparatively speaking and in today’s values, items like four and sugar and even salt would be very expensive in today’s dollars.
We’d not be able to get fresh fruits and vegetables during the winter months, we’d see and would be accustomed to shortages in some foods due to local crop failures because of crop pests and diseases. We’d be total dependent on local crops as absent refrigeration and crops that are modified, either from selective breeding or through its much more efficient close cousin and really no different - genetic engineered, to withstand shipping over long distances; we’d be limited to what was grown locally. If you were dependent on what you or your close neighbors grew yourselves and your crops failed, you might well starve to death or come very close to it. And people would die or suffer lifelong disabilities from diseases unknown to us now like scurvy. That’s not to say that everyone didn’t survive and eat fairly well, but it took a lot more personal energy and resources and planning and dollars to do so compared to today.
If we went back in time, we’d also be accustomed to having large families but also with the fact that many of our children would never live to adulthood because they succumbed to now preventable diseases like measles or the flu or simple bacterial infections due to a cut or an abscessed tooth. While a few of us would live to a very ripe old age; that would be the exception as a great many of us would die before the age of 50. Many women would die during child birth.
FWIW, I went shopping at a Wegman’s yesterday – love that store BTW. But as I was shopping for some produce, in particular for some fresh cauliflower, the first thing I noticed was there were two types: conventional and “organic”. The organic heads of cauliflower were half the size and twice the cost of the non-organic. So which do you think I bought?