On balance, the benefits of GMO's outweigh the harms.

One of my sources improperly linked in the last round. [5] - (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...) Like Liz, I would have liked to have made these rebuttals longer but I foolishly overestimated the time remaining I had to submit args. All rebuttals will be elaborated in the following rounds.=Rebuttals=R1. Food Production and Poverty in impoverished countriesI am rebutting both C1 and C3 here. GMOs increasing rates of food production is directly tied to the argument that it can reduce poverty as a result, so I have coupled the two rebuttals together. I hope neither my opponent nor readers of the debate mind this change in formatting.In contention one, Liz asserts that GMOs permitting increased food production would be on-balance beneficial. She is unfortunately mislead in this assertion. In areas and nations where starvation and need for futher nutrition are present, the majority of the problems are more attributable to lack of infrastructure rather than need for better rates of food production. [1] In some impoverished countries, rates of food production have even risen to higher than ever before, but the large quantities of starving people remain the same due to poor systems of food distribution and economic conditions. By this logic, spending large sums of money to implement even newer methods of crop production when the prime issue is a governmental and societal incapacity to distribute food would be redundant. The amount of monetary funding required for poor farmers to purchase GMO seeds are not worh the minimalist effects they will bring considering the real cause of problems within developing societies. On balance, replacing and replenishing entire developing nations with GMO seeds instead of indigenous ones would only advance the issue that initiated the conflict; lack of economic capacity and infrastructure.In terms of supposed environmental benefits, GMOs are on-balance more destructive to the environment than contributive. Liz makes the assertion that GMOs will benefit the environment because they will lessen the need for further forest conversion to farmland, but improvements in Agricultural Technology and Infrastructure could just as equally accomplish this feat. Reducing pressure to clear more areas for farming is not a benefit exclusive to GMOs. Using the same logic expressed above, bettering the infrastructure of developing countries can do this same thing without the negative baggage that GMOs bring. Considering all of the environmental risks concerning biodiversity established in R1, Food Production and it's relation to poverty is therefore not an inherent benefit.R2. Health 'Benefits'"The usage of pesticides and herbicides (chemicals designed for killing and/or impairing the growth of living organisms) directly harms humans. Such chemicals use can be reduced through the implementation of GMO’s."In this argument, my opponent presents a lighthearted but unfortunately misguided understanding of GMO's. The whole reason that corporations genetically modify organisms in the United States and around the world is to design them to be resistant to Pesticides and Herbicides. Pesticides and GMOs are an inherently linked combination. One of the most commonly circulated herbicides in North America, Glysophate [2] is patented and produced by the same company that produces the majority of North American GMOs, Monsanto. In her arguments, Liz even concedes a correlation between GMOs and the herbicides she denounces with this line.."Glyphosate on HT crops is also significantly less toxic to humans than current herbicides. To further elaborate, the use of pesticides on crops has been reduced by almost 10% since 1996 largely due to the planting of genetically modified crops (8)"Glysophate is itself a herbicide, and is used in synchronization with genetically modified crops that are altered to be resistant to it. To say that GMO crops reduce the usage of herbicides/pesticides is a contradiction in itself as the majority of GMO crops in the USA are created for the prime purpose of being able to more effectively exploit the herbicides themselves.In other words, GMOs do not reduce the use of dangerous pesticides and herbicides because they are modified to be resistant to them. Judging how they are modified in this fashion, biotechnology companies can further use pesticides and herbicides with less risk of damaging useful crops.Glysophate [2], which my opponent argues poses less health risks than other herbicides, is actually found to be an extremely ambiguous and possibly dangerous substance, as per my contentions in R1. It is true that Glysophate has a lower toxicity than competing herbicide brands, but this does not inherently make it less dangerous.To quote my second source, The surfactanct polyethoxylated tallowamine has an acute lethal dose three times that of glyphosate alone and destroys red blood cells. Yet toxicity studies used to regulate the product only examine the “active” ingredient only and not the formulation. Acute symptoms of glyphosate exposure include, destruction of red blood cells, lung dysfunction, low blood pressure, kidney damage, erosion of gastrointestinal tract, dizziness, fever, and nausea.[2a] [2b] [2c]=Sources=[1] - (http://tinyurl.com...) [2] - (http://tinyurl.com...) [2a] - Sawada, Y., et al. 1988. Probable toxicity of surface-active agent in commercial herbicide containing glyphosate. Lancet 1(8580):299.[2b] - Tominack, R.L. et al. 1991. Taiwan National Poison Center: Survey of glyphosate-surfactant herbicide ingestions. Clin. Toxicol. 29(1):91-109[2c] - Talbot, A.R. et al. 1991. Acute poisoning with a glyphosate-surfactant herbicide (“Roundup”): A review of 93 cases. Human Exp. Toxicol. 10:1-8.[3] - All sources from R1