Alternatively, humans eat everything. From seeds to whales. Some things turn out to be bad for everyone, like hemlock. Some things are generally good, but very dangerous for a few, like peanuts.<p>As i see it, there are pretty much 2 cases for GMOs right now, and a third that worries me.<p>1, editing down a sequence to remove unwanted genes. Now, corn without gene X may be toxic. But, that seems unlikely. Billions of people have eaten corn one way or another, and there&#x27;s bound to be a mutant corn without gene X that people have eaten, just due to random mutation. For this case, GMO&#x27;s seem very safe.<p>2, combining genes from 2 things. Now, perhaps feature A weakens us in some way that feature B then exploits and becomes dangerous. Even then, as you say, our biology is fabulously complicated, and has worked solutions for a whole ton of problems. A potato with a cow gene doesn&#x27;t see obviously more risky than eating potatoes and cows. For this case, GMOs seem a bit more risky, but not substantially more risky than the editing case.<p>3, Genes created from the imagination. Our biology, specifically digestive system, has had to deal with the prior cases as long as there have been things eating each other. Creating entirely new sequences that our biology has never seen, well, that&#x27;s scary. we don&#x27;t have 4 billion years of evolution to rely on.<p>So, to sum up, case 1 and 2 seem reasonably safe. At least the kind of thing we can try out, if there are bad effects, we can outlaw those specific bad sequences. case 3 is really scary, and those types of GMOs ought to go through something like clinical drug trials for widespread adoption.<p><i>edit</i><p>by safe, i mean safer than driving. likely far far safer than driving.<p>because biology is fabulously complicated, heuristics are the best we can do right now. The above, or more sophisticated variations seem reasonable. we don&#x27;t <i>know</i> for sure, furthermore we <i>can&#x27;t</i> know for sure. Perhaps a limited release&#x2F;clinical trial style is better for case 2. But, there&#x27;s a ton of those kinds of foods already, they&#x27;ve appeared safe so far. Today, that seems like a lot of effort for not much value.