RosieRedfield

Bad for the health of people who eat them? Definitely not. GMO foods are much more thoroughly tested than 'conventionally bred' foods, and any that make it to market have passed all the tests.

Bad for the farmers who grow them? Again, definitely not. In India, the formerly catastrophic incidence of pesticide poisoning in cotton farmers has plummeted since they began using BT-cotton. The main reason the farmers pay the extra cost for BT-cotton seeds is the saving in pesticide costs. Bad for the environment: This is an area where we do need more data.

If you define 'sex' as 'maleness and femaleness', or something like 'intercourse', no. If you define it as 'processes that move genes from one cell to another', yes. But to me the most interesting definition is 'a process whose evolutionary job is moving genes', and my (controversial) answer is NO.

Yes, conventional plant breeding uses old-fashioned tools to generating random mutations throughout the plant's genome, and then sells us the varieties whose mutation-mixture makes them attractive to consumers. Sometimes they label them as 'heritage varieties'!

That's easy - the Department of Zoology pays my salary! But the study of Zoology is now very broad, including a wide range of molecular biologists and cell biologists and theoreticians, who never involve animals in their research.

These decisions are very personal, so we can never say what was 'right'. But if I had been in her place (carrying a BRCA gene version that creates a very high risk of breast cancer) I would have made the same decision. The genetic tests are very reliable, and the cancer-risk data is very strong. Worse, we don't know of any 'lifestyle' changes that would have make a big difference in risk of breast cancer.