Genetically Modified Organisms

I hear what you are saying azezil, ostensibly I agree. I feel uneasy with the idea of GMO's being given access to the ecological system. These organisms can never truly be controlled and genes humans append or alter in species x may have vastly different consequences on symbotic species of gmo x, or may create super-predators of one nature or another that could seriously undermine the ecological system as a whole. Some species may become overtly, unnaturally and artifically proliferic due to more food or less predators because of a gmo or because of the impact of a gmo to the food chain. I'm not trying to be a doomsdayer, but this is the entire concept of Frankenstein.

Also I believe it amoral to create organisms for the purpose of harvesting human organs, moreover if such technology did become available what kind of impact would it have on human society, would humans in effect become a master race. A race of genetically superior (by design) organisms and therefore wholly right and endowed with the ability to manufacture organisms and reengineer the environment to service us, at a genetic level?

As much as i care for the environment, plants and animals there in, I think it rather inevitable that one day they will be all gone.

I'm not flaming you azezil, but what makes you think that one day the earth will be, a big wasteland or like Trantor a planetary city from foundation? Strange.

Genetics will allow us live longer, maybe longer than we should! but i think its our right as a superior species to do whatever necessary to ensure our survival. By that I mean if genetic manipulation will allow us an easier way of life, one where children no longer have to suffer the because of genetic defects, a world free from desease, it's worth doing.

Of course that is the big debate, do the benefits outweigh the risks, and can humans really answer the question before making mistakes and learning from them? Can humans afford to make mistakes and learn from those mistakes?

As for the introduction of alien species into an environment that isn't ready for them, that would be unfortunate, we can only hope that sufficient care is taken to ensure this does not happen.

Hmm, I would take example of the large marsupials that used to live in South America, there used to be gigantic cousins of the kangaroos in South America, but these species were killed off literally by feline and canine species which crossed from Eurasia over the then bridged Bering Strait into Alaska and gradually filtered down to South America, eventually to supplant the marsupials that were the dominant mamals at the time. Here is my what if, what if we humans are the marsupials in this case and a Frankenstein of our own creation supplants us? Much the same concept applies to aliens, humans may encounter non terran lifeforms if humans ever devise a feasable way to traverse great distances of interstellar space, we, humans, may meet a race so pathogenically violent and advanced that total anhilliation, a total war against our species allays our race and destroys all terran life. It may sound a bit far fetched, but a society that thinks in a radically different way, that has a radically different brain might view such genocide as the 'natural order'.

I think genetic manipulation is extremely desireable in some instances, ie medical research, longevity negating congenital defects, but where I think it is not really warranted or properly tested is in the field of argiculture. Once a crop of gmo's comes into cantact with the environment at large, it becomes part of it. My major gripe with this is that in ordinary circumstances evolution and genetic change takes millions of years, but here come the humans, we are going to do it in years, not eons, and what will happen if and when it goes wrong? How bad will it be, pithe or the beginning of the anhillation if the human race? No way to know until it happens it would seem, that position seems scary, never mind untenable.