The teosinte is on the left in each panel. The three ears are teosinte, a corn/teosinte hybrid, and corn.
Basically, any plant or animal that does not look like its wild ancestor is genetically modified. That includes most, if not all, of the foods grown commercially.
What the advanced technology has provided is the means to genetically engineer organisms by targeting and modifying a single gene. Previous genetic engineering methods (hybridization, selective breeding, etc.) never allowed that degree of control; in order to get the one wanted genetic trait involved randomly changing many genes and screening hundreds or thousands of organisms to try to find those with the desired trait while minimizing those with undesirable traits.
As for the vaccines, I have been in medical research for over 20 years, and a large part of my career has been focused on fighting infectious disease. So when I say that vaccines are the most significant medical breakthrough ever, it is because I am very familiar with the various medical breakthroughs that have taken place. Countless millions of people are alive today because they received vaccines as children. In many third world countries, that may be the only medical intervention they ever receive. The problem in the US, and the reason that anti-vax hooey finds so many willing recipients, is that vaccines have been so successful that most young people--millennials, gen Xers, even some boomers--have never experienced or known anyone who has experienced the loss of a loved one from a vaccine-preventable disease. And so they think those diseases are gone, but have no understanding of why they are gone. I will continue to fight against this ignorance for as long as I am able.
