[APD] Re: glowfish banned

[Paul Krombholz <krombhol at teclink_net>]

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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