So, I am supposed to write an opinion piece on an issue relevant to biotechnology. I chose to write about genetically modified foods, because it's a topic that I hadn't made up my mind about, and I thought writing the piece would be a good excuse to sift through the data on either side.

I'd done a little preliminary research, mostly by reading through a bunch of news articles over at New Scientist. Today I decided it was time to haul out the big guns, and so I headed over to UC Berkeley's BioScience library. And right there, on the new books shelf, having arrived just this week, were not one, but two, books on genetically modified foods. One was a collection of previously published articles aimed at the scientifically-educated layman; the other was a collection of fairly detailed scholarly articles on aspects of assessing the safety of genetically modified foods. Since I'd pretty much decided to focus my article on whether current regulatory mechanisms are adequate for assuring the safety of genetically modified foods for the consumer, this was exactly what I needed!

I love being timely.

I also found a good handful of recent articles from journals like Nature, Toxicology and Journal of Biotechnology, so that I'm not relying entirely on the review literature.

I'd forgotten how much fun it is to browse the stacks at the BioScience library. They have everything from cookbooks to scholarly monographs. It was difficult not to be distracted by a big book titled something like Dinosaurs!, or An Overview of the Human Brain Project. (There's a Human Brain Project?)

The other cool thing about the BioSciences library is that they always have odd little exhibits outside. I stumbled across a little display downstairs on loan from some kind of museum of entomolgy. They had a box of enormous bumblebees, lined up in ranks. And several boxes of very large beetles. Most striking, though, were the hawkmoths. They were so big, and surprisingly solid-yet-aerodynamic looking. I was disappointed that the display didn't identify the precise types of hawkmoths. There were five or so different varieties. The most striking ones looked a bit like this image, except they were paler in color. Pale grey and rose colored.

So, I brought my stack of articles home, and I've read about half of them. Interesting reading. I'm pretty much convinced that genetically modified foods are safe for consumers. Environmental/ecological concerns are a trickier problem: there are both potential problems and potential real benefits to GM crops there. And you also have to weigh into the balance the fact that conventional farming is already hugely ecologically destructive.

And there are political and economic issues...but I think I'm going to stick to the science for now.