Re: Yeah, I'm poking fun.
First of all, this might seem like semantics but I think it's a subtle thing that affects how people end up seeing things. You wrote:
"The problem to me is that in many cases, what they are modifying is so that the plant won't die when you pour more chemicals on them."
That implies that plants are one thing and then there are "chemical" (which people see as a bad thing) as something different. But note that the plant IS chemicals. For that matter, literally everything is chemicals. A carcinogen is something that in a high enough dose causes cancer in rats and thus (we assume) humans. Most if not all plants contain carcinogens and that's because they have to evolve defenses against pests in order to survive. If something is synthetic and created by humans then it has to be tested but something naturally occurring in plants does not. Plants aren't trying to be healthy for humans, rather they're just trying to survive. If a plant evolves a chemical defense against a pest and that chemical causes cancer in humans 25 years down the road, the plant doesn't care. People have this notion of plants as pristine, pure things, but they're not.
So that's nature on it's own. And then we humans can involve ourselves in that in order to make the plants grow better or whatever in an effort to get more food for ourselves. And whatever we do, whatever technology or chemicals we develop, etc, can be good or not good or whatever. Roundup was recently put into Category 2A of the IARC list but that doesn't mean it's giving people that eat food cancer. I honestly don't know the details but I suspect the danger is to the people spraying it all day if they don't have some kind of protection. I do know that other things on that same list (2A) that "probably cause cancer" are working night shifts and being a barber or a hairdresser.
Don't get me wrong, we should investigate everything and be careful about everything but I think there can be anti-GMO hysteria too and Roundup is often a target for that.
