THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT
The Environmental Costs of Genetic Engineering
At a time when an estimated 50,000 species are already expected to become extinct every year, any further interference with the natural balance of ecosystems could cause havoc. Genetically engineered organisms, with their completely new and unatural combinations of genes, have a unique power to disrupt our environment. Since they are living, they are capable of reproducing, mutating and moving within the environment. As these new life forms move into existing habitats they could destroy nature as we know it, causing long term and irreversible changes to our natural world.
Natural species could be driven out, with a knock-on effect on animals and plants that depend on them. With an in-built resistance to disease and pests, new "super crops" could have a competitive advantage over natural flora and fauna. A crop made to be salt tolerant, for example, could invade estuaries stifling the natural estuarine vegetation and impacting on wildlife which is dependent on it. The same applies to `super animals". A fish engineered to tolerate cold could escape from fish farms to wreak havoc in the habitats of native fish where they may live longer and use up vital food.
- New crops may breed with wild relatives or cross breed with related species. The "foreign" genes could spread throughout the environment causing unpredicted changes which will be unstoppable once they have begun.
Entirely new diseases may develop in crops or wild plants. Foreign genes are designed to be carried into other organisms by viruses which can break through species barriers, and overcome an organism's natural defences. This makes them more infectious than naturally existing parasites, so any new viruses could be even more potent than those already known.
- Ordinary weeds could become "Super-weeds": Plants engineered to be herbicide resistant could become so invasive they are a weed problem themselves, or they could spread their resistance to wild weeds making them more invasive. Fragile plants may be driven to extinction, reducing nature's precious biodiversity.
- Insects could be impossible to control. Making plants resistant to chemical poisons could lead to a crisis of "super pests" if they also take on the resistance to herbicides.
- The countryside may suffer even greater use of herbicides and pesticides: Because farmers will be able to use these toxic chemicals with impunity their use may increase threatening more pollution of water supplies and degradation of soils.
- Plants developed to produce their own pesticide could harm non-target species such as birds, moths and butterflies.
No one - including the genetic scientists - knows for sure the affect releasing new life forms will have on the environment. They do know that all of the above are possible and irreversible, but they still want to carry out their experiment. THEY get giant profits. All WE get is a new and uncertain environment - an end to the world as we know it.