"A hundred times this. I distrust GMO, but not because I distrust the technology - I think it's vital, incredible, and we've barely scratched the surface of its potentials. The race and the planet could both benefit tremendously from increased adoption of GMO tech across the board (from food to medicine to materials engineering, etc.). However, companies like Monsanto are demonstrably not trustworthy. And, indeed, the entire capitalist mindset is was makes this kind of technology so profoundly and obviously dangerous. But this has nothing to do with the science, and everything to do with cutting corners, forcing work-arounds through idiotic patenting of naturally-occurring genes, generating cheap monocultures, breeding for superficial (i.e., sellable) phenotypes like size and colour as opposed to breeding for nutritional optimality and ecological fit, etc. etc. And of course, you can take the prescient (and terrifying) perspective that Bacigalupi offers and realize that monopolizing the food market is better than sex - and the best way to do that is to patent resistance to engineered food pathogens. GMO has the potential to be a global panacea. GMO + capitalism has the potential to end us."