Ps important edit: When I said they were not as dangerous, I was referring to the
GENES themselves, not their products. Eating the GMO GENES aren't going to do much to you - they get broken down too quick by the body. There are some studies out there, though, that show that micro RNA's bind, and can cause miniscule changes (almost negligible) to cells. Sorry I didn't make that more clear. Obviously if you have a plant making a toxin it's going to affect you,
the genes themselves do very little.
Allusion in order to avoid your condemning of my posts I will only post sources from now on, a long with my opinions.
BACKGROUND: Genetically modified organisms have a number of processes involved in their fruition (hehe), many processes can lead to their final result (the GMO). The final result is the original organism's DNA in addition to another organism's DNA, or a silencing of a gene in the original.
DNA that is identified as "good" for a plant or organism can be cut out of the organism's genome by DNA Nucleases.
DNA Nucleases (Nucle = Nucleic acid, Ase = cut) are engineered to attach to a specific segment of DNA in a organism's Genome. They cut at a specific site. If enough information is know about an organism genome, two cuts can be made fairly well so that the internal fragment holds 1 gene. The following picture shows how EcoR1 works (a nuclease that is found in ecoli). If ANY GENOME has the sequence GAATTC (red) EcoR1 attaches, and nucleases (cuts) the DNA into to segments:
As before, if this is done twice, you can cut out a small piece of genetic material, that encodes for one protein/enzyme, etc. Now with one small segment of the genome cut, you can purify it and extract it and make a bunch of it (by a process of PCR). Once you have this small gene that, for example, allows a plant to make more Vitamin B, you must somehow get it into the plant.
This process uses ligases. These are the opposite of Nucleases, in that they ligate (glue together) two strands of DNA. Cutting the plant genome in which you would like to add a gene that produces more vitamin B in a plant, you would again cut the gene in two places, and use a ligase to bring the plants genome + the Vitamin B gene together:
Some key notes. Both the plant genome and the original vitamin B gene are natural. They both came from nature, and still perform their natural functions, however, the combination and the sequence of the new genome has never been found on earth before, and probably would never exist in the future (just from probability). In this scenario, I will argue in my opinion, that there is no additional danger from the GMO than from the original plant + the vitamin B gene (and since, in this case, we eat plants with vitamin B, there is ..little.. concern that the gene for vitamin B is harmful to us).
I think it is highly unlikely, nearly improbable, that the sequence change from the plant's original genome to the sequence of the GMO changes the healthiness of the plant's consumption as a food product. Especially since we have already been eating both genes, just never in the same plant at once. There are, of course, complex effects; how does the plant deal with additional vitamin B? Where does the extra energy to produce vitamin B come from, and how does that affect the plant? Is there some way this can be bad to our health.
IN THIS CASE my opinion, would be that probably not, however, lots of detail would be needed in how the plant uses its energy, the biosynthesis of vitamin B, how it deals with excess vitamin B, etc.
In another case, where we go through the same process, but this time create the plant resistant to disease, herbicide, or pesticide, I would say there is a good probability that something bad may happen. I think we have gotten lucky so far with the BT corn and Round-up ready soy beans - I'm surprised nothing catastrophic has happened yet.
But I'm not worried about our health, I'm more worried about environmental affects, biodiversity loss, and ecological effects (such as pollen infesting other native species). These are real concerns to me, and I rank these in higher danger than human-health-consumption concerns.
A study was done (with shaky practice / evidence) that in Oxaca mexico, there was found to be BT corn growing. Mexico had never bought any BT corn. It is either that someone had smuggled it across the border, or the long reign of our BT corn in the midwest has had such a strong prevalence that the pollen has found its way to central america.
Another study (with shaky evidence) found that monarch butterfly caterpillars can die from corn pollen on the Milkweed plant. Obviously this is a bad result.
I am curious to see what the ecological concerns would be for Vitamin A rice (golden rice). A rice bioengineered to produce more vitamin A (an almost insignificant amount to the daily diet).
Lastly, of course is biodiversity loss, which increases danger of drought, flood, saline soil. This is my greatest concern. This is where we start to destroy the complex system, and start reducing it to mechanical counterparts. Creating giant fields of clones of corn - very fucking bad idea. Raises crop yield, but one new "super bug", blight, disease, or even bioterrorism = fucked ourselves.
_ I am currently reading your references _
:x 
