Q: One of our pastors said genetically modified organisms (GMO) belong to Satan’s work. He said that it does more harm than good. My husband works in a company that produces GMOs. He said that what he knows about GMOs is contradictory to what the pastor is claiming. My husband doesn’t work on Sabbath, and we give tithe from his pay. If it’s true that GMOs belong to Satan, does it mean that my husband should quit his work? — Suson, from the Philippines
A: Suson, GMOs is a fairly complicated and controversial topic. Before making such a drastic decision regarding your husband’s employment, I would carefully research the topic and pray about it.
An excellent peer-reviewed article was published in the “Journal of Adventist Education” in the October/November 2014 issue. In this article, “GMO and the Great Controversy,” Dr. David Steen makes the following important conclusion:
“After wrestling with this topic for many years, I have concluded that GMOs are not the panacea that some promoters suggest. They do solve some of the problems some of the time. Neither are they the extreme dangers that the anti-GMO activists would lead you to believe. A number of other scientists have independently arrived at similar conclusions.”
Dr. Steen is a plant physiologist whose primary interests are plant growth and development, plant biotechnology, and ultrastructural imaging. For more than four decades he did biological research and taught at Southern Adventist University and at Andrews University, where he was chair of the biology department.