I'm not a politician or lawyer. The patent infringement stuff you mentioned sounds bad, but I don't know enough to make an educated comment.

As far as RoundUp Ready soybeans, what I know about it is that it inhibits an enzyme required for RoundUp (the sprayed pesticide) to work, thus rendering certain crops "immune" to the spray. From a bioengineering perspective it is ingenious and allows developed nations to have plentiful and cheap crops year round. GMO is a product of our (humanity's) need for cheap, plentiful and calorie-dense foods. Sure, we can complain about the fact that we don't want to eat pesticides/insecticides/whatever, but we complain far more when the food we eat is expensive, scarce and calorie-sparse. Before GM (I'll include selective breeding in this category), our food supply was predicated on the vagaries of the weather, insects, viruses, fungi and bacteria. We now enjoy a plentiful bounty year round and still we complain. We cannot have it both ways.

I realize that there is a gut reaction to GM (and irradiated) foods, but people need to educate themselves and ask if they would rather have massive price swings for staple foods or (relatively) cheap food year round that is inherently not the product of evolutionary changes.

I really don't get all the GMO hubbub. I realize it sounds bad - like we are Frankenstein-ing our food, but I'm a biologist and physician and people need to realize that we have been GMO-ing our food since the advent of agriculture/husbandry. The whole POINT of agriculture/farming is to breed crops/animals such that they express certain genetic traits that are valuable to humans. Examples are abundant: bananas, corn, cows, chickens, Scottish fold kittens... Basically anything that humans can grow/raise, we attempt to genetically modify through selective breeding; the fact that we now have the technology to accomplish these changes in a lab is obvious as the next logical step. If you object to GMO then you should be a hunter-gatherer. This is not to say that there are no risks to selective breeding/GM. For one, genetically similar or identical organisms are susceptible to the same pathogens. If we stake our fortunes on a single type of wheat, corn, cow, banana, whatever - we risk losing it forever if there is some sort of infectious outbreak. As far as health risks to consumers, I don't think there is any legitimate science that suggests that GM food is any worse for you than non-GM food (the same goes for irradiated foods).