Another gene is used to resist the herbicide glufosinate, marketed by Ciba under the trade name Basta. A third gene, resistant to the antibiotic ampicillin, is a genetic 'marker', inserted to facilitate the development of the product. The development of pest-resistant crops such as this new maize holds out the hope of reducing the damage done by pests which currently destroy around a third of the world's potential crop production. This may be true - but that is a criticism of the way the corporate profit system works, not a criticism of genetic engineering. At least potentially, these new technologies promise to reduce the use of the more toxic herbicides and make cheaper staple foods available.
Safety is the main issue raised by critics of the genetic engineering of life forms.
It is the focus of the statement 'The need for greater regulation and control of genetic engineering', issued in November 1994 by a group of prominent, largely environmentally minded and left-leaning scientists. Their starting point is that genetically modified organisms pose a unique danger because 'recombinant techniques have enormously powerful new potentials'. The danger, as they see it, is that unforseen interactions with natural strains, or indeed within the genome of the organism itself, could lead to ecological destruction. They reject the claim that genetic modification can be compared to traditional selective breeding methods which, they point out, are much slower, and rarely involve gene transfer between species. In other words, they have been bought off.