Blog #3

Elissa Forsyth

P3 Researching GMOs

For project 3, I decided to go outside of the course theme of Ethics in Higher Education. I chose to do this because I am very passionate about health, food, and science, so doing my paper about GMOs, would allow me to write about my interests and get experience in writing about a science related topic that would relate to my major, biomedical science. I brainstormed to research GMOs, with the subtopics on their effects on the economy of the world, the starvation issue, and the health of consumers because those are the main ways that GMOs affect us as people in the market that consume them.

My research question is: How are genetically modified organisms affecting the health of the consumers and the environment? Being as healthy as possible has always been one of my personal policies, however, I didn’t necessarily have a reason besides the fact that other foods outside of Whole Foods just simply weren’t necessarily considered healthy. For that reason, I wanted to find out why those foods that aren't considered healthy and what they actually do to the people that consume them and the environment that grows them. In Whole Foods, you can easily pick up any box or container and on the front of it, you can find a little logo that says Non-GMO Project. Taking into account that Whole Foods is all about health and this logo seems to be on almost every product, showing that it does not have GMOs, I got the hint that GMOs must have a negative effect attached upon consumption. Doing some basic research, I found that genetically modified organisms do in fact have some major health and environmental effects, sparking my interest to research it further. Check out this link for the Non-GMO Project to better understand what they stand for: http://www.nongmoproject.org/

Because genetically modified organisms have such a large effect on so many areas of our lives, there are many stakeholders. One would be Monsanto, the company that creates the genetic modification of the plants and sells the seeds. Another would be farmers who grow the genetically modified crops and other farmers that feed their animals the genetically modified feed. The health industry would be benefitting from the new problems created by the GMOs so doctors could also be considered stakeholders because they would be the ones curing those who became ill from consuming the GMOs. Drug companies would be stakeholders in a similar way to doctors, but would be making money from creating and selling new cures. Any organization trying to prevent popularity of GMOs in the food market such as the Non-GMO Project would also be stakeholders. Lastly, the consumers would be a stakeholder because their health is at risk because of GMOs. I would want to address Monsanto, because their corporation continues to grow and they need to understand the problems for, quite literally, the whole world. Monsanto would be considered an unconvinced stakeholder, but if they did become convinced to side with me, the biggest change in the food industry would result in contrast to addressing other stakeholders.

Moving into P3, I’m most concerned that it will be a struggle to find enough credible evidence for the GMO issue because GMOs are a relatively new issue that have not been able to be studied throughout the course of someone’s health life or on the environment. GMOs were brought into use in America in the 1990’s so it may be hard to find evidence that would support the fact that they cause long term negative effects, especially since science discovery is a slow process. To address this concern I will try my best to find credible sources and information and use the information that I can find in my paper.