Safety And Danger Of GM Food Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words - 4

Safety And Danger Of GM Food - Essay Example Using findings from studies that have been conducted and an analysis of the genetic makeup and the number of chromosomes of various organisms, this paper will establish facts about the concept of genetic mutations. It will examine and establish the facts behind the allegation that genetic engineering techniques are the reason behind the increased number of cancer cases globally. Cancer is caused by the existence and persistent growth of cells which are unregulated. It occurs where there is an unregulated growth of cells after cell division in a certain area of the body and the cancerous cells are capable of spreading to other parts of the body. The concept that genetically modified foods are carcinogenic is disputed because the predisposing factors to cancer are vast and their scope is not well understood by experts. Arguments for the case are for the opinion that the genetic composition of humans could be altered the same way that of plants is altered by the introduction of foreign genes thus causing the growth of cancerous cells. Even though there are scientists who see it as baseless, some have still gone ahead and conducted a number of experiments to determine the real effects of genetically modified foods have been conducted using rats. In this particular experiment, a group of rats is fed on a lifelong diet of some of the best selling genetically modified corn while the control experiment was fed with normal nongenetically modified meals. A report by Poulter, 2012, on the studies conducted showed that the rats that were fed with genetically modified corn developed tumors and some of their organs stopped functioning properly. 65 percent of them had developed tumors by the twenty-fourth month. On the other hand, the tumor rate of the rats that had been fed with normal food was at thirty percent (Poulter, web).