FSM wrote:

Firstly to jaaaaake - Genetically modified things have never been proven unsafe or had a single side effect in the 20 years. It has never produced anything toxic and hasn't effected pregnant women or the babies. When genetically screened the babies wee found to be completely normal.

Safety is not the issue with GM. Those against GM use this excuse as it will gain more support by those who do not understand it. The issue with GM crops is that they like pesticides, herbicides & insecticides could make pests, insects weeds resistant to toxins. Creating superbugs. This is already caused by toxins and medicines so the positives of GM vastly outway the negatives. This hypothetical safety issue has nothing backing it up.

Cloning is illegal because of the ethical problems it brings: Cloning would only logically needed for transplants - that would mean killing the clone for the human, building armies or workforces - slaves, or building copies of oneself to keep yourself alive which is completely egotistic and wrong. If legalised only the rich would be able to afford it making the social gap between rich and poor bigger.

If by genetic humans you mean babies made outside the womb (testube babies) i feel this is okay. If a couple cannot have a baby they should be able to however if the reason they cannot have a baby is genetic this gene should be modified to allow the offspring to be fertile. This would need to be done to stop human fertility gradually getting worse in the long run. And yes you are still human if fertilised in a test tube. They are genetically the same as humans, they grow up the same, they live the same. The only thing against it is religious nuts saying the baby will grow with no soul as it isnt natural which is complete bollocks, religion shouldnt have the right in this case to stop the potential of life.

Ironically, policy makers around the world gain confidence in the safety of GM crops because they were wrongly assume that the US FDA has approved them based on extensive tests, and approvals everywhere rely on the developers to do safety studier on their own crops. Research does not need to be published and most is kept secret under the guise of "confidential business information." Very little data is available for public scrutiny. In 2003, for example, researchers reviewed published, peer-reviewed animal feeding studies that qualified as safety assessments. There were ten. The correlation between the findings and the funding was telling. Five studies "performed more or less in collaboration with private companies" reported no adverse effects. In three independent studies, "adverse effects were reported." The authors said, "It is remarkable that these effects have all been observed after feeding for only 10-14 days."...

The prevailing worldview behind the development of GM foods was that genes were like Lego blocks, independent pieces that snap into place. This is false. The process of creating a GM crop can produce massive changes in the natural functioning of the plant's DNA. Native genes can be mutated, deleted, permanently turned off or on, and hundreds may change levels of expression. The inserted gene can become truncated, fragmented, mixed with other genes, inverted or multiplied, and the GM protein it produces may have unintended characteristics with harmful side effects.

To make this clear, we'll use the popular analogy comparing DNA to a book. The four bases that make up the genetic sequence are the letters in the book; the genes are special pages that describe characters called proteins. The common way people explain and promote genetic engineering is to say, "It is just like taking a page out of one book and putting it in another."

In reality, a book would look quite different after it had undergone genetic engineering. The inserted page (gene) may turn out to be multiple identical pages, partial pages, or small bits of text...

One of the most unscientific and dangerous statements made by biotech proponents is that millions of people in the US have been eating GM food for a decade and no one has gotten sick. On the contrary, GM foods might already be contributing to serious, widespread health problems, but since no one is monitoring for this, it could take decades to identify.

Judy Carman, a former senior epidemiologist for the government of South Australia, describes the difficulties from a public health perspective. "The problem is to recognize that there is a new health problem in the community" I f GM crops created a new disease, it would not have an established surveillance system. In fact, most existing diseases do not have any effective surveillance systems in place, making it hard to identify a change.

Carman points out that, "The HIV/AIDS epidemic went unnoticed for decades, even though it created memorable secondary infections ... and had a focus in young gay men who tended to cluster geographically and see the same doctors. It was largely picked-up by chance ... even though there were by then thousands of HIV/AIDS cases worldwide."