7: Natural versus Artificial Genetic Modification and Perils of GMOs

The rationale and impetus for artificial genetic modification was the central dogma of molecular biology that assumed DNA carries all the instructions for making an organism, which are transmitted via RNA to protein to biological function in linear causal chains. Since the mid-1970s, however, molecular geneticists have uncovered a remarkable circular causation network between organism and environment that not only determines which genes are expressed but marks and changes genes and genomes. In order to survive, the organism needs to engage in natural genetic modification in real time, an exquisitely precise molecular dance of life with RNA and DNA responding to and participating in “downstream” biological functions. Artificial genetic modification, in contrast, is crude and imprecise, and interferes with the natural processes, driving natural systems towards a state of maximum entropy as the perturbations are propagated and amplified down the generations with devastating consequences…