< Back to Meet the Experts Home

Gary Marchant

Regent’s Professor and the Lincoln Professor Emerging Technologies, Law and Ethics at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University

Independent Expert

Expert Bio

Gary Marchant is Regent’s Professor and the Lincoln Professor Emerging Technologies, Law and Ethics at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University. He is also Faculty Director of the ASU Center for Law, Science and Innovation, Professor of Life Sciences and a Senior Sustainability Scientist in the Global Institute of Sustainability at ASU. Professor Marchant has a Ph.D. in Genetics from the University of British Columbia, a Masters of Public Policy degree from the Kennedy School of Government, and a JD from Harvard Law School. Prior to joining the ASU faculty in 1999, he was a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of the law firm Kirkland & Ellis where his practice focused on regulatory issues. Professor Marchant teaches and researches in the subject areas of environmental law, risk assessment and risk management, genetics and the law, biotechnology law, food and drug law, legal aspects of nanotechnology, and law, science and technology.

Studies, Articles and Answers

Filter by

Showing 2 out of 2 results

Question

Q: The technology behind GMOs, like any technology, is not inherently good or bad but can be abused. What is being done to better recognize and avoid such abuses?

Answered By Gary Marchant - May 15, 2014

A: It is true that most technologies are not inherently good or evil but rather must be evaluated based on how they are used. In the case of genetically modified crops and foods, there have been enormous benefits from the applications used to date, as documented in a report released in May 2014 in the United Kingdom. There is the promise of even greater benefits in the future of this technology. But, like any technology, GM technology could be abused and applied in a malevolent or socially destructive manner. There are two principal checks against this misuse. The first check is by the comp [...]

Health & Safety How GMOs Are Made

Question

Q: Are there any well known andor published examples of unintended, deleterious consequences from conventional breeding in foodrelated plants? Are breeders obligated by regulators to systematically look for deleterious consequences from conventional breedin

Answered By Gary Marchant - Nov 06, 2014

A: While no GMO food has been found to have harmful effects on human health, a number of conventionally bred foods have resulted in deleterious consequences. For example, in the late 1960s, the U.S. Department of Agriculture teamed up with Penn State University and the Wise potato chip company to breed a new strain of potato, called the Lenape, that was intended to produce the perfect potato chip. Unfortunately, the potato had an extremely high level of a naturally occurring pesticide called solanine that made the potato toxic to humans and quickly led to its demise.An article in Smithsonian mag [...]

Health & Safety