Genetically Altered Food Unnatural? Not Really

Who can resist the lush lure of the natural? The splendor of the grass, a roll in the hay, the almost sinful softness of rose petals?

There’s something seductive about the heady aroma of the farmers market on Sunday, the rough-and-tumble rowdiness of the dogs playing in the park. Nothing will sell a house faster than fine wood floors, fireplaces and ocean views.

It’s only natural that we cringe at the artificial: It goes against the grain. So it’s no real wonder that many people are feeling uncomfortable about the recent proliferation of genetically engineered crops. In the last few months, protests have sprung up up all over Europe, and the French have taken to calling these products “Frankenfood.”

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It makes us understandably uncomfortable to eat corn “enhanced” with the genes from bacteria--even if those genes protect the corn from insects.

And yet, we have to remind ourselves: There’s nothing “natural” about a rose, or a domestic dog--not to mention the melons and corn and tomatoes that call to us from the farmers’ stalls--even the completely “organic” ones. Human manipulation of genetic traits by cross-breeding is nearly as old as civilization.

White peaches aren’t “natural” any more than the “natural” cereal in my kitchen cupboard grows on trees. There’s nothing natural about bread, or wine or beagles.

In fact, there’s nothing “natural” about ourselves. In effect, humans and our ancestors evolved only because previous microbial inhabitants of Earth polluted the planet with a “poison” called oxygen, on which we happily thrive.

If it all seems confusing, it is. And not only in the world of the living. For example, most people would say that plastic is decidedly “unnatural.” But ultimately, most plastics are made from petroleum products, and petroleum is a product of long-dead plant matter that brewed for millions of years in the bowels of the Earth.

So plastic, in a sense, did grow on trees.

Even physics has a long history of confusion over “natural” laws. For example, Aristotle thought it was “natural” that light things such as clouds should rise in the sky, while “heavy” things such as rocks should sink. He thought it was “natural” that heavenly bodies should move in circles.

Later, physicists realized that the force of gravity pulled rocks to the ground and planets into orbits. Left to their own “natural” devices, they would simply float about in space.

Later still, Einstein discovered that falling objects and orbiting planets were, after all, simply following their “natural” paths in curved four-dimensional space-time. And so it goes.

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Today, physicists find much that’s unnatural about the so-called elementary particles that make up everything in the universe. Everything on Earth is made of familiar electrons and protons and neutrons. But all these particles have heavier “cousins.”

No one knows why. It seems completely unnatural. Indeed, when the first of these “extra” particles--the muon--was discovered, physicist I.I. Rabi asked famously: “Who ordered that?”

Physicists are still trying to answer that question.

Indeed, Einstein said that the question he would most like to answer was: Did God have a choice when he made the universe? Did we have to have a muon? Could gravity have been stronger?

In other words, are the laws of nature themselves “natural” features of the world? Or could they be different in some alternate universe?

What’s “natural,” of course, depends on context. It’s natural for an ice cube to melt on your kitchen counter, but not at the North Pole. Diseases that were “natural” to the Europeans who first took over the Americas spread death among native people who had no “natural” resistance.

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Even math has both “natural” and “unnatural” numbers. If we stuck to the natural ones (defined as the positive integers), we wouldn’t even have subtraction--not to mention algebra and all the rest.

What’s all this got to do with genetically modified food?

It’s probably sensible to be suspicious of the motives and methods of global agribusiness, to worry about tinkering with evolution and the dangers of loosing unknown genetic hybrids into the wild.

But natural or unnatural isn’t really the point. Genetic modification happens all the time. You could even say that falling in love is nature’s way of genetically modifying the species. Does it matter whether it’s controlled by a mad rush of hormones or by a batch of tailor-made DNA brewed up in a tube?

We evolve, therefore we are. All other plants and animals too. There’s nothing special about this particular point in the history of any species--corn, humans or dogs. We’re all on our way from someplace, going somewhere.

The real question about genetic modification is: Is it safe? Is it good? Does it benefit consumers?

Maybe God didn’t have a choice in how he directed the evolution of the universe.

But people do.