PESTICIDES and genetically modified organisms are two things that environmentalists love to hate.
There are certainly good reasons to hate conventional pesticides. Looming large among those are the harm they do to the humans exposed to them and the death of beneficial insects, fish and birds. Now, however, researchers are developing a new kind of insecticide, one that will only wipe out a target species (see “Bugs beware: we’re gunning for your genes”).
The key is a method of gene silencing called RNA interference. There is every reason to think this approach will be safe. In many cases, the best way to “apply” RNAi will be to genetically modify plants, and there’s the rub: many green organisations, along with the organic food movement, oppose all GM crops.
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They should reconsider. Plants modified to produce bacterial toxins appear to have cut conventional pesticide use. Plants containing RNAi-based pesticides should be even better and it may be hard for target pests to evolve resistance to them.
They will be safer for the environment, farmers and consumers than conventional pesticides, too. Indeed, they will even be safer than the pesticides sometimes used by organic farmers, such as rotenone, a plant extract that has been linked to Parkinson’s disease.
For most farmers, after all, the choice is not between pesticides or no pesticides. It’s between more or less harmful ones.