Sep. 3, 2001 For all the promise of crops genetically modified
to resist pests, the miracles of the laboratory are only good
until the bugs outsmart them. Mark Whalon, a Michigan State
University entomology professor, says that farmers and those
marketing genetically modified seeds shouldn’t become complacent
because so far there has been no documented evidence that
insects have developed resistance to crops engineered to repel
them. Instead, in a presentation at the 222nd National
Conference of the American Chemical Society (ACS) on Wednesday,
Aug. 29, he said precautions should be taken to explore ways to
combat resistance to genetically modified organism (GMO) crops
before the bugs develop it. “We’d like to think that science
could manage resistance, but in truth, historically we’ve been
pretty ineffective,” Whalon said. “I think what’s going on in
the big GMO crops – corn and cotton – is that growers haven’t
yet gotten a high enough percentage of GMO plants in the field
such that sufficient selection pres