M: Let’s move on now to an area that appears to be of great concern to you. I’m talking about the idea of taking a desirable characteristic from one plant and transferring it into another.
Well, this has actually been happening for thousands of years, hasn’t it And surely the new techniques are just speeding up the progress of plant and animal breeding that we’ve had for a long time.
W: Well, in one sense that’s true, and in another sense, it isn t.
There is no doubt that genetic engineering saves us money and time in breeding. But on the other hand, by employing this technique we run the risk of narrowing our genetic diversity. We’re in the process of creating super-breeds with certain strains, and leaving other strains by the wayside. We’ve started to narrow our genetic diversity in... other ways. I’m thinking of how we have monocultured plants and animals in agriculture.
M: What else will genetic engineering bring about
Genetic engineering will make this situation worse by speeding up the monoculturing. Now, this is different from traditional breeding.
What men have ever carried out such outrageous experiments, as are being done now For instance, take the growth hormones research. Scientists have taken human growth hormones and place them in mice. Human hormones in mice! So what happened You had super mice, as we call them. Then they had babies and passed these hormones on. Now every generation of mice has human hormones. It’s ridiculous -absurd.
There was another experiment: last year scientists took the gene that emits light in the firefly. They inserted it into a tobacco plant, and now.., that plant lights up, day and night.
So this technology allows us to go beyond nature’s limits. We can cross totally unrelated species and get who knows what... !
W: Well, this creates serious environmental questions. Not only that -it creates grave ethical questions, too.

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