The central dogma, "GMO" and defective epistemology.

The expression "Genetically Modified Organisms" was coined to indicate a group of agricultural products (mostly crops and vegetables), modified through direct DNA recombination in order to obtain useful phenotypic traits or to inhibit undesirable characteristics. But the border between rDNA ("GMO") and other biotech methods is blurred. Moreover, the ill-assorted group is frequently charged with having peculiar, negative characteristics: many activists, part of the public and a few social science scholars think that "GMOs" are all dubious, even inherently dangerous. However, theoretical justifications of this alleged problematic nature which is supposed to be necessarily linked to the "splicing" of DNA, only when applied to agricultural products, are missing: the only text which tries to go in depth on the subject, an article by biologist Barry Commoner, takes aim at the wrong target, misunderstanding the Central Dogma. "GMO" is a term that has no clear reference, let alone in a detrimental sense. The only attempt to give it epistemological dignity fails.