Genetically modified food is good to the world


 


            Genetically modified food is the trend of today. The existence of genetically modified food may mean a breakthrough in science, technology, economy and health. Genetically modified food, or GMF’s are food containing genetically modified organisms. For example, a genetically modified pig may be used to produce the pork chop that one may eat everyday.


            Genetic modification is no longer a new concept. Nature has long been genetically modifying every species in order to fit the changing environment. People have adopted the action of gene modification. Genetic modification can potentially bring many positive effects for many people. it can potentially end the continuing problem plaguing many people in different parts of the world today: hunger.


Hunger is one of the most widespread social issue and one of the most difficult to alleviate. In the statement by the hunger site, it described the hunger and other related issues that threaten human life everyday. The following is an excerpt from the site.


“It is estimated that one billion people in the world suffer from hunger and malnutrition. That’s roughly 100 times as many as those who actually die from these causes each year.


About 24,000 people die every day from hunger or hunger-related causes. This is down from 35,000 ten years ago, and 41,000 twenty years ago. Three-fourths of the deaths are children under the age of five.


Famine and wars cause about 10% of hunger deaths, although these tend to be the ones you hear about most often. The majority of hunger deaths are caused by chronic malnutrition. Families facing extreme poverty are simply unable to get enough food to eat.


The Hunger Site began on June 1, 1999. In 1999, a year marked by good economic news, 31 million Americans were food insecure, meaning they were either hungry or unsure of where their next meal would come from. Of these Americans, 12 million were children. “ (, 2007).


           


            Social policies regarding hunger are increasing in number throughout the years. This is in response to the continuous hunger problems around the world. More than a million people die of hunger every day. Due to the increasing death polls, many nations have raised their alarm. Much legislation is passed every week to alleviate the hunger in the world.


            GMF’s pose a potential answer to this continuing problem of hunger. GMO’s have the capacity to reproduce and grow rapidly even without continued tending. If these organisms can reproduce and grow at a rate two times as fast as any other organic organism, then it may be something that can help many people. Another positive outcome that can be attributed to GMF’s is resistance to pests, heat, cold and drought (, 2006). GMO’s can lessen the usage of pesticides that contribute much to environmental pollution and poisoning. Some “pesticidial” properties occur naturally in plants. This is the reason why many organic farmers tend to use pesticides. But still, these pesticides can potentially harm the human being consuming the food. Genetically modified foods however, do not need pesticides and germicides in order to resist pests and insects. Plants that are genetically modified are inserted with genes from insects (, 2006), that’s why they posses insect-resistant properties.


            Pigs potentially cause harm to the environment and to man as well. Pigs that are naturally bed posses manure with high counts of phosphorus, which can be harmful to the environment. Phosphorus in pig manure can deplete oxygen, encourage the overgrowth of bacteria and fungi and potentially emit dangerous greenhouse gasses. Though many laws and restrictions are put on pig farming, this can not give the desired effect of thoroughly eliminating this hazard. Genetic modification however, provides an easy solution for this. Pigs are genetically modified, so the manure they give out virtually contains less or no phosphorus at all. This is a breakthrough for farmers who have no option on the disposal of pig manure.


             GMO’s can also lessen the possibility the increase of allergen carrying food. Many foods have innate allergens. This can be greatly harmful to many people, especially children and babies. But GMO’s have no or lessened possibility of carrying allergens, therefore cutting the possibility of death to almost half.


 


Health, Illnesses and GMO’s


The ways in which health, disease and illness were defined depended upon a number of different factors. For example, the ways in which professionals define health and illness are different from the ways in which other members of society conceive of them. Within our Western culture there has always been great diversity in the conceptualizing of health and illness. Though the models of health and illness may vary, these concepts play a defining role, indicating what should, and what should not be, the objects of public health concern.


According to  (1981), the concepts are ambiguous, operating both as explanatory and as evolutionary notions. Health and disease are normative as well as descriptive terms. For example, they describe states of affairs, factual conditions, while at the same time presenting them as good or bad ( & , 2001). At a cultural level what constitutes health has become a central plank of contemporary consumer culture as images of youthfulness, vitality, energy and so on have become key articulating principles of a range of contemporary popular discourses.


According to ,  and  (1980), health is the optimum level of independence in each activity of living which enables the individual to function at his or her maximum capacity.  (1995) defined health as a state of wholeness or integrity of the individual, his or her parts and modes of functioning. ,  and  (1986), states that health is a relatively stable state of maximum wellness which equates with independence.  (1980) pointed out that health is defined by cultures and individuals to denote behaviors that are of high value and low value.  (1966) defined health as the ability to function independently regarding fourteen fundamental activities of daily living. According to  (1982), health is a varying state of wellness and illness which is influenced by physiological, psychological, socio-cultural and developmental factors. These are just a few of the meanings of health as described by some authors.


As societies increasingly come to expect their citizens to manage their own health and take responsibility for their own illnesses, the individual is required to ‘police their body’. In the sociology of health, a sociology of the body has emerged as a rapidly expanding area following the impact of post-modernist theory. In the present collection, two readings focus on ‘the body’. In the first it examines the significance of the body to consumerism, and emphasizes the important role that consumerist notions of the body have in ‘health maintenance’ and ‘disease prevention’ strategies and discourses.


In the field of medical sociology, empirical research has continually provided evidence of the way social and material circumstances influence the pattern of health and illness, apart from the undoubted influence of medical concepts and knowledge. The popular notion that ‘knowledge is power’ is often taken to mean the reverse: that under postmodern conditions power is little more than knowledge and ‘truth claims’. However, the idea that we live in a period of ‘post-scarcity values’ where such discursive processes hold sway, flies in the face of the continuing effects of economic deprivation in contemporary societies-as reflected in the continuing debates about income differentials and social status and their impact on health, even where absolute poverty is less evident. Unless such sources of power are recognized postmodern ideas threaten to become little more than a gloss on the continuing trend of widening social inequalities ( & , 1998).


Within consumer culture the emphasis on ‘appearance’ and ‘bodily presentation’ has become paramount. The individual is encouraged to ‘adopt instrumental strategies to combat deterioration and decay’ with ‘body work’ being supported and structured through the production of ‘stylized images of the body’ in the advertising and entertainment media. In the context of consumer culture the prime purpose of individuals’ maintaining their ‘inner body’ through control of their diet, exercise and unhealthy behaviors ‘becomes the enhancement of the appearance of the outer body’. Clearly, consumer culture is incapable of generating satisfactory strategies and solutions to the inevitable deterioration and decay which accompany ageing and death insofar as its logic is to avoid these realities and instead sell us the illusion of a forever happy, disease and pain-free life which we can achieve by buying into regimes of body maintenance ( & , 2001).


In considering the social and environmental forces affecting health, access to health care, disease and illness, the significance of various dimensions and aspects of social stratification has been well documented, including ‘ethnicity’, ‘gender’ and ‘social exclusion’. In the present collection a short extract from  (1995) describes the ‘picture of health’ experienced by women in both the developed and poorer countries of the world.


 GMO’s and GMF’s provide the solution to many of these problems on health and illnesses. But GMF’s are viewed by many people as harmful due to the fact that it is synthetic. The common misconception in the world today is that if it is not natural and organic (synthetic), it carries potential harm to mankind.


But still, GMO’s should be viewed as positive, because, clearly, all its positive effects outweigh the negative. It may even be the answer to man’s ultimate goal: immortality.


 Reference:



Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com


0 comments:

Post a Comment

 
Top