The big question is ... who will trust the Boeing - FAA duo after this? The 777X is coming, there surely will be rather pointed questions from airlines, the EASA and more.
I think many do not understand typical practices of regulatory agencies. As a related example, what do you think the FDA requires in terms of genetically engineered foodstuffs? Many seem to think there's extensive oversight and safety testing. There isn't. They treat genetically engineered products and natural products identically. If a company has all their regulatory issues in order to market e.g. corn, they can cook up a new genetically engineered corn in the lab and bring it to market with literally 0 additional oversight necessary. All the FDA offers here is a completely voluntary consultation, and that in turn basically is little more than the company signing off on some checkboxes.
This leads to a bemusing and disconcerting run around.
Monsanto: "The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is responsible for the safety and appropriate labeling of food and feed products grown from GM crops." [1]
FDA: "It is the manufacturer's responsibility to ensure that the food products it offers for sale are safe and otherwise comply with applicable requirements." [2]
Sound similar? It'll be the exact same story if/when a company inadvertently releases a harmful genetically engineered product. The assurance of safety provided by regulatory agencies is often illusory. As an aside, this is all clearly described on the FDA's page as well. [3] But the phrasing is designed to mislead consumers. They state repeatedly that it is unlawful to ship unsafe food to consumers without ever directly clarifying that they themselves never actually test the foods. Inventions go straight from Monsanto's lab to your plate. Obviously they have a major incentive to ensure their products are safe, but they have a long history of failing in that obligation yet remain a multi billion dollar company.
Food safety isn't a function of relatively small changes in the genome of plants you eat, this is pseudo-scientific nonsense. The "natural" corn or animals you eat also experience genetic drift, and the FDA isn't tasked with sequencing them and certifying each "change".
If the purpose of aircraft was to feed them to giants who'd digest them for their raw materials Boeing wouldn't need to certify the 737 MAX either. But aircraft are flown, so minute changes to their construction can make a lot of difference. This comparison of yours makes no sense.
Boeing obviously felt there was a basically 0% chance of their decision being in anyway unsafe. And they are, arguably, the most qualified people on this Earth to decide this. Of course they probably got blinded by profit a bit, but it's not like this was a Ford Memo moment. A single plane going down is a catastrophe. Two planes going down is something much worse. They obviously felt everything was perfectly safe; they were wrong. Lots of people died. Even though the most likely outcome is they'll get a slap on the wrist, I think there's no way they would have gambled on this.
The reason I mention this is because I don't believe you believe it's impossible to create an unsafe product as you are implying in your statement. Genetic engineering technology enables us to hybridize anything. As a not entirely random example you could combine an orange with genomic data from an arbitrary virus or perhaps certain aspects of various plants in the nightshade family, if you so wished. You can theoretically do great things with genetic engineering, and you can certainly also do awful things. And there is no doubt that you can also accidentally do awful things. And I don't think short term safety is the real concern. You're not going to drop dead after drinking a cola because of some genetically engineered corn syrup in it. My concern would be longterm unforeseen consequences.
For instance weight gain, fertility, and even cognitive and psychological factors are all connected to what we consume in various ways that remain poorly understood. And we're currently running a compulsory experiment in that nearly all foodstuffs in the US now contain substantial components of genetically engineered products. The rest of the world works as a control, to varying degrees, due to radically less consumption of engineered products. What will be the longterm consequences of this? Perhaps we're already seeing them. Or perhaps the issues plaguing the US are caused by something altogether different. The point I was making is that it's ultimately up to the individual to come to their own decisions here. If you're happy to consume any genetically engineered product in full faith then I fully respect your view, even if I might disagree with the soundness of it [1]. I'd ask for nothing but comparable treatment.
> I fully respect your view, even if I might disagree with the soundness of it. I'd ask for nothing but comparable treatment.
I'm not claiming you have to eat GMO food, or food that's been exposed to cell phone tower waves or whatever.
But you weren't expressing a personal preference. You were suggesting that a government organization like the FDA should be regulating something based on a hypothesis that the current scientific consensus shows is baseless.
At that point you aren't asking for your view to be respected, you're suggesting that government policy should be changed to enforce it on the rest of us.
I did link to an overview of much of the current state of the science. You linked to a pop science article written with the impartiality and professionalism of a Breitbart article, though it does in turn reference something meaningful. Here [1] is the actual report from the NAS that that page references. They comment directly on our little discussion. Page 513: "FINDING: Not having government regulation of GE crops would be problematic for safety, trade, and other reasons and would erode public trust."
It also goes into detail on the problems with "weak" regulatory regimes. I put "weak" in quotes as any genetic engineering specific regulatory regime would be stronger than the US' reliance on self regulation. For instance in one study referenced (page 194) scientists ran a typical regulatory test (90 day whole food study) with rice that was genetically engineered specifically to be toxic. And indeed it was toxic. But over the standard 90 day test, no ill effects were found. This is a quite a serious problem.
And the one final thing I'd hit on is that much of the research on genetic engineering is driven by the companies that stand to profit from proving everything is safe and beneficial. Similar to how at one time nearly all science on e.g. leaded fuel was driven by interests that had a motivation to prove that everything was safe and beneficial, and so that's exactly what they did.
The NAS paper when discussing rat studies mentions, "Some found no statistically significant differences [from consumption of genetically engineered feed], but quite a few found statistically significant differences that the authors generally did not consider biologically relevant, typically without providing data on what was the normal range." later emphasizing again after discussing various dismissed abnormalities detected in rodent studies that "There was no presentation of standards used for judging what would be a biologically relevant difference or for what the normal range was in the measurements." In other words statistically significant differences were simply completely dismissed as "biologically irrelevant", without ever defining what would actually be considered biologically relevant. That's not good science, to say the least - but it's the typical pattern in much of the research for GE products, which tends to rely heavily on direct or indirect industry funding.
And, I think you'll find your view that negligible regulation is acceptable to be something very few outside of those directly connected to the genetic engineering industry would find satisfactory. The only reason more people do not voice concern is because they're generally completely unaware of the lack of safety inspections for these products. This state of 'regulatory subterfuge' is itself reason for a significant degree of cynical skepticism. You want to regulate? Ok. You don't want to regulate? Ok. You don't want to regulate, but strongly imply that you are? That's not ok.
