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Ecology of Transgenic Crops
Abstract
Michelle Marvier
American Scientist
Volume 89, No. 2
March-April 2001
Full Report http://americanscientist.org/articles/01articles/Marvier.html

Abstract: Concerns about risks posed by transgenic agricultural crops generally focus on direct risks to human health. There is, however, a set of potential ecological risks that bears equal scrutiny. Transgenic crops designed to resist or kill herbivores, for example, may spread their genes to non-crop species, producing virulent weed species. Likewise, these crops may negatively affect populations of beneficial insects, as was the case in the recent controversial finding that transgenic corn may increase mortality in monarch butterfly caterpillars. Assessing such risks is inherently difficult, but the impact of ignoring them could be devastating.

Michelle Marvier is an assistant professor of biology at Santa Clara University. She earned a Ph.D. in biology from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1996. Her diverse research interests include the ecological impacts of genetically engineered crops, the demography of endangered salmonids and the ecological interactions of parasitic plants. Address: Department of Biology, Santa Clara University, 500 El Camino Real, Santa Clara, CA 95053. Internet: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
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Don't know much about ecology
Don't know much biology
Creating life from a science book's
About the greatest risk we ever took

"These findings demonstrate the fragmentary nature of current knowledge of genome structure and function and regulation of gene expression in general, and the limited understanding of several physiological, ecological, agronomical and toxicological aspects relevant to present-day and planned genetic modifications of crops." Visser et al. Plant Research International (No. 12) 70 pp.

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"We don't know shit about biology." Craig Venter, the scientist whose company completed the sequencing of the human genome in 2000 ("Decoding the genome" Ralph Brave, Jan. 9, 2001)