About regulation of GMOs

The intense debate around genetic research and genetically engineered organisms will continue for the years to come, probably alongside with the work done by researchers anyhow. One frequent argument of the people opposing this kind of research is that the design of the living creatures that exist today is the result of a long and complicated evolutionary process, whose nature we do not understand completely, except recognizing as its main driving force the continuous adaptation to the environment. This adaptation took millennia to occur and so did the evolution of species.
However, something that many fail to recognize is the speed at which our habitat is changing, and today our natural environment is actually man-made and it poses a huge variety of new features (if we are only to count the chemical compounds that show up every year, chemicals that were not existing freely in nature before). Should we not then see the same rate of adaptive beneficial mutations taking place? Of course, this is not possible, because for a mutation to become prevalent, millennia are required. Carefully conducted research could certainly induce mutations that are beneficial beyond doubt. Somewhat paradoxically I believe that a rule of thumb should be: do not regulate what we do not understand thoroughly, and regulate what we understand and when we know precisely the outcome of the regulation imposed. This rule could be applied in the economy as well.