Neil deGrasse Tyson Goes to Town on GMO Critics
Mother Jones points to a recently surfaced video, of unclear origin, in which the astrophysicist and “Cosmos” host goes on what can only be described as a rant against the anti-GMO crowd. “I’m amazed how much rejection genetically modified foods are receiving from the public,” Tyson tells a French interviewer. “It smacks of the fear factor that exists at every new emergent science, where people don’t fully understand it or don’t fully know or embrace its consequences, and so therefore reject it.”
“What most people don’t know, but they should, is that practically every food you buy in a store — for consumption by humans — is genetically modified food,” Tyson continues. “There are no wild, seedless watermelons. There’s no wild cows.”
“You list all the fruit, and all the vegetables, and ask yourself, is there a wild counterpart to this? If there is, it’s not as large, it’s not as sweet, it’s not as juicy and it has way more seeds in it. We have systematically genetically modified all the foods, the vegetables and animals that we have eaten ever since we cultivated them. It’s called artificial selection. So now we can do it in a lab, and all of a sudden you’re gonna complain?”
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