Nina Fedoroff Quotes

Modern genetic engineering makes producing GMO food products relatively easy. GMOs can improve crop yield and greatly enhance the nutritional value of those same crops.

I mean, we're really making a quantum change in our relationship to the plant world with genetic modification.

Gene editing to make crops more abundant and resilient could be a lifesaver on a massive scale. The technology is already beginning to show results, attracting public and private investment, and for good reason. Scientists are developing crops with traits that enhance their growth, reduce the need for fertilizers and pesticides, boost their nutritional value, and make the plants hardier during droughts and hot spells. Already, many crops that have been improved by gene editing are being developed and tested in the field, including mushrooms with longer shelf lives, potatoes low in acrylamide (a potential carcinogen), and soybeans that produce healthier oil.

Surely, if we are going to be better at producing food of the right value, then we have to accept that genetic technology... is going to be part of that.

In the food case in particular, one of the technologies that could help there - genetic technologies that could create better crops with higher yields and less need for water and fertilizer - is tremendously feared. Very little of that fear is scientifically grounded.

The fact is that humans have been shaping the genetics of what they eat for thousands of years. Genetic engineering simply speeds up the process that used to take generations. Preventing people from getting things like golden rice or disease-resistant cassava destroys human life, and does not spare the environment in any way.

We are going from reading our genetic code to the ability to write it. That gives us the hypothetical ability to do things never contemplated before.

We're moving from reading the genetic code to writing it.

Right now people are interested in genetic engineering to help the human race. That's a noble cause, and that's where we should be heading. But once we get past that - once we understand what genetic diseases we can deal with - when we start thinking about the future, there's an opportunity to create some new life-forms.

You can now modify the genes of large animals, and the largest animal we are concerned with is the human.

If you get very fine, accurate, and inexpensive control over your genome, you can fundamentally change the kind of organism you are. You are extending human capacity.

This is a whole new era where we're moving beyond little edits on single genes to being able to write whatever we want throughout the genome. The goal is to be able to change it as radically as our understanding permits.

Almost everybody is enthusiastic about the promise of biotechnology to cure disease and to relieve suffering.

What the public needs to understand is that these new technologies, especially in recombinant DNA technology, allow scientists to bypass biological boundaries altogether.

There's massive government initiatives going around the world, and you see that there's a real enthusiasm for genetics.

There doesn't seem to be any other way of creating the next green revolution without GMOs.

Here at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, we have genetically rearranged various viruses and bacteria as part of our medical research. In fact, we have been able to create entirely new types of DNA molecules by splicing together the genetic information from different organisms - recombinant DNA.

We discuss the potential drawbacks of genetic testing or genetic modification of crops. We do not discuss the suffering and environmental damage that will be caused by holding back innovation…. The debate is unbalanced here because it is complacent about the imperfect present.

Genetic engineering of are own species is not a question of if, but only a question of when….The human race may bifurcate into two subspecies of humans: Enhanced and Unenhanced.

… biologists are now going to be directing evolution.

The advance of genetic engineering makes it quite conceivable that we will begin to design our own evolutionary progress.

Like other new and potentially powerful technologies, gene editing raises legitimate questions and understandable concerns about possible risks and misuse. How, then, should the technology be regulated? Rules developed decades ago for other forms of genetic engineering do not necessarily fit. Noting that gene-edited organisms are not transgenic, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has reasonably concluded that genetically edited plants are like plants with naturally occurring mutations and thus are not subject to special regulations and raise no special safety concerns.

New technologies are often met with skepticism. But if the world is to continue the remarkable progress of the past few decades, it is vital that scientists, subject to safety and ethics guidelines, be encouraged to continue taking advantage of such promising tools as CRISPR.

In chemicals, Synthetic Genomics is one of my real loves.

Middle-income countries are the biggest users of GMOs. Places like Brazil.