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[APD] Re: glowfish banned
Has science ever produced by genetic technology an organism that has
gotten loose and created problems?
For that matter, has controlled breeding (domestication) ever
produced an animal or plant that has gotten loose and created
problems? I can't think of any examples. One might cite the
domesticated cat getting loose on islands and decimating certain
flightless species of birds. However, I think that the damage is due
not to what little changes have been made in the cat by the
artificial selection process that creates domestication, but to the
cat's retaining most of the characteristics of its wild ancestors.
The same arguments apply to feral goats and pigs.
The plants and animals that are threatening native species and
creating problems in ecosystems to which they have been newly
introduced are all pretty much unmodified. The characteristics that
would make an animal or plant a threat to any ecosystem are much more
likely to be produced by the process of natural selection which acts
on the entire genome than by the introduction of a gene or two from
some other organism.
If unmodified zebrafish are not a threat to the state of California,
I can't see how the ones that produce a red fluorescent pigment
produced by a gene from corals would be.
--
Paul Krombholz in chilly central Mississippi
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