by Daniel S. Greenberg

About the author: Daniel S. Greenberg is a science writer. His books include The Politics of Pure Science (University of Chicago Press, 1999). He frequently writes articles for the British medical journal The Lancet.

It’s difficult not to sympathize with our European cousins in their resistance to “Frankenstein foods.” That’s the term they apply to foods in which genes have been added, deleted or modified to make them cheaper to produce or to prolong their freshness.

The real issue is political, rather than medical or scientific. Basically, it comes down to the people’s right to know what they’re eating, even if their notions on that matter are demonstrably nonsensical to scientists and government regulators. In most cases, genetically modified foods are unrecognizable because...