Question: I have seen a video,where a scientist was changing plant's DNA so that a plant that doesn't normally make medicine turned into a plant medicine factory. Do you agree with this change of a plant's structure and purpose?

Emma Markham answered on 18 Jun 2019:

Personally yes. We have been changing plants and animals genetics over thousands of years through selective breeding (breed a big cow, with another big cow, and you get mostly big baby cows). So the only thing which is new if that is it faster and easier. Also, it is important to understand that bacterial have also been doing this for thousands of years. Agrobacterium is a bacteria which feeds of plants, and will pick up some of their genes and transfer them to other plants it feeds on. This can cause tumors in the plants, but it can also transfer beneficial traits too. In fact, the current mechanism for editing the DNA is CRISPR which comes from bacteria!
Most modified plants are grown in special conditions, so that there is no risk of their seeds escaping into the wild. The technology is very safe and can have huge benefits.
There is also an ethical argument to do this. If you have the ability to make a plant produce medicine and you don’t, then people could suffer and die. Is it ethical to deny people medicine just because you don’t want to modify a plant, despite thousands of years of selective breeding being acceptable.
Modifying plants has been proved to be safe and acceptable. Currently, 80% of all the corn in the world is modified, and 93% of all soy has been modified. If there was a significant issue with modified plants then we would know about it, as these plants have been extensively studied. We are going to rely more and more on modified plants as we try and face the challenge of climate change, we will need to modify plants to cope with drought and heat stress, otherwise we will experience famine.
I understand how people are cautious of new technology, which is a good thing, but modified plants have been shown to be very safe and hugely beneficial.