Current Event #3

Summary:

In Andrea Donsky's article "What's so bad about GMO's? Top ten reasons to avoid them", she expresses to her readers that they are most likely consuming food which are GMO based without knowing, due to the lack of labeling by companies. She then lists off and explains the effects of these harmful GMO’s on the human body.

Analysis:

The purpose of this article is to inform people about genetically modified organisms and their effects. By informing more people about this issue, Donsky is able to thoroughly inform her readers, who may not even be aware of this situation, and allow them to take some sort of action. One important claim she makes about the lack of labeling food is that " [the attempt of] federal regulations on labeling foods that contain GMO's, none have passed" which allows for food companies to not have to legal inform their consumers of what they’re actually eating, and wont risk the fear of losing clients. But the biggest risk of these companies not telling their customers by not labeling the food, is that the GMO’s may badly impacts the health of individuals and cause a risk of people getting very sick and they wouldn’t even be aware of it happening. She exclaims the fact that GMO’s have only been in our system since the mid 90’s and people don’t know the true harm of these GMO’s on our bodies since they haven’t been out long enough to do thorough testing. This leaves the consumers to have no knowledge and no real proof of what these GMO can cause and what the effect on their bodies can actually be. Some known negative impacts they have include "pesticides...cancer...environmental...super weeds...patent issues..." but it doesn’t disregard the fact that there could always be more that have not been discovered yet. By choosing all the negative impacts and effects that GMO’s have, Donsky can argue for her readers to not consume the GMO’s and allows them to be aware of what is going into their bodies and gives them reason to fight for GMO labeling so no one cane be ignorant of what they can cause.

 Work Cited

Donsky, Andrea. "Top 10 Reasons to Avoid GMOs." Top 10 Reasons to Avoid GMOs. Naturally Savvy, 9 Sept. 2014. Web. 28 Feb. 2016. <http://naturallysavvy.com/eat/whats-so-bad-about-gmos-top-ten-reasons-to-avoid-them>. 

Thoreau on Simplicity

The importance of simplicity is one of Henry David Thoreau's main recurrent themes in Walden. He claims that the needs and wants of an individual should be few, and encourages stripping away the luxuries and comforts of life down to the bare essentials. To Thoreau, simplicity allows one to live life to fullest. His ideas in the 19^th century can relate to the 21st century because in today’s society, people focus more on materialistic items in life which prevents people from really appreciating it.

Thoreau expresses that many of the materialistic items we find “important” only act as obstacles that don’t allow mankind to reach their highest potential. By “simplifying” our possessions and living off the four most essential items as he claims are, “Food, shelter, clothing, and fuel,” illustrates Thoreau’s ideas of living life to the bare minimum and allows an individual to appreciate life without commodities which aren’t really needs but wants. There are people in today’s society that have more than they need and only care about what they wish to have without acknowledging all that they do posses.

Many people disagree with his idea of living simply because they work hard for what they earn and should be able to do what they please with it. Given that fact, yes it is true that people work hard for what they have, but they don’t need to spend their money on unnecessary items just to flaunt to others. This is why there is always constant competition to see who is better than whom and people just end up hurting each other just to prove who is the best with their materialistic items.

If we lived simply as Thoreau suggest, it would eliminate the competition of materialistic items and allow people to appreciate life for what it is.

Current Event Journal #2

In the article, "GMOs: Facts About Genetically Modified Food" by Marc Lallanilla, he argues that GMOs are overall safe and better for the people; that people are merely influenced by others to believe that they cause harm, when it reality its very rare. He does this by listing the pros of cons of GMO's and states, "However, many scientific organizations believe the fear-mongering that runs through discussions of GMO foods is more emotional than factual." At first, Brody seems to be on the neutral side of the situation, not really giving an indication of where he stands. But as the article progresses and more information is laid out, his view can be seen as supporting GMO since he always seems to counteract an issue with proven facts from the NLM (National library of Medicine), as well as points out how GMO can help the farmer and consumer. By doing this, he is able to support his claim and further develops it by bringing in politics. He states how the government passed a law that required foods to only be marked as GMO if the nutritional values were changed due to the GMO, if not, then no label was required. He does counter act this by stating that different state legislatures are trying to pass laws that require all foods to be labeled by claiming that people have a right to know. But his rebutal is clear, foods would have a hard time coming into the states because major companies will have a hard time dealing with the food labeling issue. But overall, he states the battle for or against GMO foods will be a constant and will go on for a while. 

Works Cited:

 Lallanilla, By Marc. "GMOs: Facts About Genetically Modified Food." LiveScience. TechMedia Network, 11 Jan. 2016. Web. 07 Feb. 2016. <http://www.livescience.com/40895-gmo-facts.html>.