Sat, 12 Feb 2005

Genetic Engineers Barking Up the Wrong Trees?

Well, this should make everybody feel better about turning engineers loose on life forms... when I was a kid in the fifties and sixties, I was convinced that the world would end in a nuclear fireball. Forty years later I'm convinced that it won't - it'll be biology that'll be our undoing, not physics.

In a commentary titled 'Genetic engineering for better suburbia', Vincent Barnes says, 'Cures for diseases and feeding the world with genetically modified foods is well and good but the real money is in solving the problems of homeowners, the vast silent majority of Americans who toil away every spring and summer fighting pests and every fall injuring their backs and falling off ladders.' Should Monsanto bring us designer maples that don't shed leaves? Would you buy designer grass that grows two inches and stops? Even if you won't eat GM food?"

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