Clarisa Herrera

   This is a good start on the first writing assignment.  
   You have done a good job, for the most part, on the 
   "they say" part.  

   I have made a number of suggestions for rewording
   or rewriting things directly on a printout of the 
   paper.  Ask me what I meant if the markings are not
   clear.  A lot of the small markings are for grammar 
   and usage issues that often cause problems for people whose
   first language is not English.  For instance,

    * It's good to avoid words like "massive"
      or "massively" meaning "greatly" or "to a large degree"
      -- these are common in everyday speech, but they should 
      not be overused in more formal writing. 

    * "little to no benefits" (page 1, second-to-last line)
      is not really correct because "little benefit" would 
      be singular, but "no benefits" would be plural.  You 
      could either say "little or no benefit" or "few if any
      benefits"

    * Fourth line from top on page 3:  Make GMOs plural,
      and then "has" should change to "have."  Later in
      the sentence, "none is true" should be either "none
      of this is true" or "this is not true."  At end, 
      since "big biotechnology companies" is plural, and
      you are using the plural verb "are," change
      "beneficiary" to the plural "beneficiaries."

    * (Bottom of page 3) The word "aliment" is very uncommon 
      in English -- it is not technically incorrect, but it sounds
      strange because it is used so rarely now.  I know you 
      wanted to mix things up by not using "food" every
      time, but here there's really not much of an alternative. 

   Please feel free to come to office hours to run a first
   draft of the second stage by me and we can talk about
   these and other writing points.  

   Comment:  If you look at Greenbaum and Gerstein again,
   you will see that they are proposing that this sort
   of third-party or governmental regulation of GMOs could
   provide the sort of validation and oversight that you
   are describing.  But this does not exist yet, at least
   not in the form they are proposing.

   PS:  One of the main points of the Laskawy article
   is that increased resistance to pesticides and herbicides 
   is negating the benefits of GMO crops.  The interesting
   point her is that that resistance develops naturally 
   through evolution.  In effect, the genomes of the
   pests and the weeds are changing in response to 
   our genetic modification of the crops.  Some people
   compare the situation to an arms race where neither
   side can ever gain a decisive advantage.