#284 / GMOs #2

Genetically Modified Organisms (or GMOs) are ever more present in our environment. They are not aliens from outer space. In effect, they are aliens from "inner space." We have created them and brought them to life.

Human beings have thought up these new forms of life (and have even patented them). Human activities have disseminated these new organisms throughout the world of Nature, a world in which we actually reside as guests, and not as the landlord.

Many think that our ability to create new forms of life is a real "step ahead." This is even better than the "plastics revolution," in which human beings began manipulating chemistry to synthesize new types of materials not found in the natural world.

Living within the world of Nature is so ... limiting, isn't it? How much better to live within a world that we create ourselves, to meet our very legitimate desires. Forget about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and the health problems that have been generated by synthetics we have made omnipresent in the environment, even loading up mother's milk with a synthetic chemical payload that probably doesn't really have beneficial effects on the next generation. You can tell I am skeptical.

GMOs do "synthetics" one better. When all we did was to create new "materials," unknown to and incompatible with the world of Nature, those new materials at least were not "alive." But GMOs are.

I tend to trust the movies in terms of their evaluation of aliens from outer space. In the movies I've seen, the arrival of aliens from space hardly ever brings good news for humanity. I doubt these aliens from our "inner space," generated by our own activities, mean good news either.

Not in the long run, anyway. It is just like in the movies.