Discuss the risks to human health and the benefits of genetically modified crops.?

I work in a Botany research lab at University. I will give you an example of a genetically modified plant called arabidopsis:

We used the same plant and genetically modified them to "glow" up when they express a specific gene of interest to us. Changing the plants this way theoretically should not have resulted in any type of growth modifications. But guess what? The genetically modified plants grow differently than the non-genetically modified plants for some reason.

This tells us that just because we genetically modify something doesn't mean that it will do what the normal thing would do. This is why alot of fruits are big nowdays, since they are genetically modified, but they dont have the same taste (which is an unintentional sideaffect).

Why don't they taste the same? This is probably because when the fruits were genetically modified and were inserted with outside DNA. The insertion process may have inadvertendly suppress/inhibit the expression of alot of the normal DNA. If the expression of some useful DNA is inhibited, then that means alot of the protien that plants make (ie: enzymes etc) can not be mad to make the sugars and other things that are found in normal fruits.

So to answer your question, the quality of products may suffer because of the unintentional harm done the normal DNA. But that doesn't mean that the genetically modified crops are dangerous. Ofcourse, they can be dangerous if you cause a random mutation, which results in deadly products produced by the crop- wut the chances of that are extremely low.

Student Doctor, D.O.