Are engineered foods evil?

KE VI N V AN A EL ST R OBERT GOLDBERG SAGS INTO HIS DESK CHAIR AND GESTURES AT THE AIR. “FRANKENSTEIN monsters, things crawling out of the lab,” he says. “This the most depressing thing I’ve ever dealt with.” Goldberg, a plant molecular biologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, is not battling psychosis. He is expressing despair at the relentless need to confront what he sees as bogus fears over the health risks of genetically modifi ed (GM) crops. Particularly frustrating to him, he says, is that this debate should have ended decades ago, when researchers produced a stream of exonerating evidence: “Today we’re facing the same objections we faced 40 years ago.” Proponents of genetically modi ed crops say the technology is the only way to feed a warming, increasingly populous world. Critics say we tamper with nature at our peril. Who is right?