Long time readers will know how much I dig Norman Borlaug and genetically modified crops. His work on the Green Revolution using genetic engineering to increase crop yields has saved hundreds of millions of lives. By the 1980s, there were plenty of critics, and GMOs became, and still are, a cultural boogeyman. Critics derided it as “unnatural” and deemed it “Frankenfood.” As Borlaug once said “They’ve never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they’d be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things.” He did take critics seriously though, as some claims held merit. The use of antibiotic resistant genes is used heavily in engineering, and if antibiotic resistance spreads into the biome, it could pose a major public health crisis. The fear of unexpected consequences in the field of genetics has been a common trope in science fiction from The Island of Dr. Moreau and The Boys From Brazil, to Jurassic Park and Gattaca. In updating the Godzilla series for the modern age, tapping into these fears was a logical choice, and fit the original anti-nuclear themes to a tee. While I personally feel the fears are overrated, Godzilla vs. Biollante is hands down my favorite of the series.

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