ShneekeyTheLost wrote:Hell, grafting is little more than primitive GMO and hoping for a specific result in shotgun fashion instead of selecting the precise mutation you want. Never did understand all the fearmongering around GMO. Humans have been doing it for thousands of years with selective crossbreeding, cross-pollination, and other techniques. Corn, as we know it today, is a geneticlly modified organism. It started out as Maize, and over time, was cross-bred to be larger and higher yield and whatnot. Peanuts literally did not exist until they got cross-bred from a couple of different species. Modern technology just makes it marginally less random.
Yeah, much of the hysteria around GMOs is just that: hysteria. I've actually been involved in some of that sort of work, and can say with certainty that a good deal of what is written about the dangers of genetic engineering is totally ridiculous. However, the wariness is not
all unjustified. There are some aspects of modern gene splicing that aren't as much of a problem with older, more “traditional” version such as grafting or breeding hybrids.
1) With the older techniques, you mostly had to work with closely related species. You could mate a lion with a tiger or grow an apple on an orange tree, but you couldn't cross a lion with an apple and expect to get anything other than an annoyed lion and a lot of applesauce.
When it comes to modern genetic manipulation, though, you can mix kingdoms and phyla rather than just species much more easily. That lets you accomplish far greater things, but also means that the resulting organisms can have much more unexpected things going on inside of them. Sometimes proteins from one species don't mix in a very nice way with proteins from a radically different one. And sometimes the discovery of those unexpected products can be rather unpleasant.
So while the older techniques were much more blind and along the lines of, “Hey, let's see if we can mix these together and see what happens!”, newer techniques are more likely to have more spectacularly disastrous results.
2) The greater freedom to pick and choose specific genetic sequences means that there is more room for abuse of genetic modification. There is now much greater potential for all sorts of nasty bioweapons. On the plus side, there's also more potential for all sorts of counters to all sorts of nasty bioweapons, whether those bioweapons be natural or artificial.
3) The practices of companies involved in GMO research or production. Companies can be less than fully transparent about things that consumers really ought to know about. Companies can also be overbearing and arrogant and bullying. To me, this sort of thing actually seems to be the most valid concern of the anti-GMO crowd, as far as actual events that have occurred. Many companies involved in marketing GMOs have acted atrociously over the years. This isn't really a problem with GMOs themselves, per se, but rather is a problem with society's handling of the new technology. Sensible legislation (if such a thing is possible), responsible regulation, and well-informed consumers ought to be able to work out the worst of that. Or else we'll muck the whole thing up totally and spend the next century flailing about wildly. Given the history of humankind's handling of innovations, I'd say it's about a 50/50 chance either way.
TazManiac wrote:(chemical luminescence in a Land Mammal wouldn't likely have been a evolutionary 'plus' to be handed down to subsequent generations...)
It wouldn't have to be a plus, just so long as it wasn't a burden to reproduction. Heck, it might even be a trait that's actively harmful to the long-term survival of the individual so long as it makes the critter look sexy enough for long enough.