Headline Feb 14th / Dr Frankenstein's Laboratory!

"Dr Frankenstein's Laboratory!!?"

Special Dedication For Species Called Humans

And an appeal for Sanity!

Your natural order of things is in the advanced stage of transformation!!! We once again thank 'WOW'! For it's splendid research. Now read on:

Geneticists are ever so quietly , 'inventing completely new species'. One scientist has suggested that it is possible to genetically engineer an entirely new 'Kingdom'. But let us first explain what a kingdom is:
A Kingdom being one of the five large groupings of all living things : animals , bacteria, plants and so on. A new kingdom would combine characteristics of two or more of these- say plant and animal- to create a new ....well , a new something-or-the other Creature??? Thing???

Already geneticists are tampering and fiddling about with what we would probably see as the natural order of things. And since a few years some Universities and Scientists are trying to create a solely vegetarian pig . A veggie pig , one that eats grass. Geneticists hope to insert a bacterial gene into the animal that will produce a digestive enzyme to breakdown the cellulose in grass, thus allowing the animal to live of say, grass cuttings.

Other projects, on both animals and food, are more advanced and more complex. Mice have also been altered to produce fragments of human antibodies; eventually these could be extracted and used to treat diseases like cancer or rheumatoid arthritis. The future this portends has it's "nightmarish qualities".

Imagine a cow that was just a giant udder, a living machine from which thousands of gallons of milk pour each day. And you may get to eat genetically engineered meat, made from bacteria or fungi. You could grow meat at home. Homes could be insulated with specially engineered ivy or wines that would protect the building from cold and , at the same time, would be genetically programmed to produce fruit or vegetables.

"For geneticists of today , every living thing has become the gene pool for every other living thing". This is truly and terribly frightening . We must stop and rethink our ethics. If not, the experimenting could most easily take a wrong turn and spring uncontrollable havoc. Such engineering experiments are hideous and cruel and scary. Presently, there is nothing reassuring about them , at all!! You could easily engineer a horse to have a male face. Or a zebra with a female face. And vice versa as well even with a reverse.With scary thoughts of unnatural selection, Good Night!!

SAM Daily Times- Voice of the Voiceless