Copyright scoop
Genetically Engineering Wild Animals Is as Moronic as It What is your reaction when you hear that some scientists and science writers are proposing genetically engineering wild animals, with the intention to mitigate the Sixth Extinction at the hands of man? The idea is to “engineer in the sorts of change that could occur naturally, given enough time, if only the wildlife would stop dying already.” Such an answer to the human crisis is so wrongheaded that it rightly evokes instinctive The problem isn’t with other animals; it’s with the human animal. In a stunning display of circular thinking, a leading science writer ends her paean to genetically engineering wild animals by writing: “Humans are the ones driving biodiversity loss of all species. We have new tools that could help to address this travesty, so isn’t that at least worth No, it isn’t, because genetic engineering of wild animals will make the travesty much, much worse. For example, as coral reefs are bleaching into underwater deserts all over the world, and fish populations are plummeting from industrial over-fishing, benefits like “scientists have taken genes from jellyfish and coral and added them to zebrafish, to create fluorescent versions of the popular aquarium pets” are being touted as the wonders awaiting us. Rather than focus on the erroneous use of the human mind, language camouflages human responsibility for the Sixth Extinction with phrases like, “this current mass extinction.” Rather than address root causes in human nature, superficial thinkers state the obvious: “In the midst of this current mass extinction, where 150-200 species go extinct every day, traditional conservation tools aren’t enough.” mentality is that new technologies will remedy what old technologies have wrought. Pushing the mentality that has brought the Earth to the ecological precipice is folly on a cosmic scale. The threat of nuclear war still hangs over our heads like the sword of Damocles. The global community is unable to rein in the rapacious fossil fuel industry, though we have new technologies that are cheaper than extraction. Nationalism is again running amuck, with the most corrupt and self-serving ruling the world. And we’re supposed to believe that genetic engineering will save the remaining wild creatures from extinction? does anyone believe that using our brains in the same separative, tool-making way that’s fragmented the seamless systems and species of the Earth to the point of extinction and collapse will somehow, with exponentially more powerful tools, remedy the harm man has wrought? technologies, such as atomic and thermonuclear bombs, should never have been developed. Cloning has had some dubious benefits to agriculture, but cloning people has been banned. The point is that as our species accelerates its decimation of the Earth we simply don’t have the wisdom to use genetic engineering intelligently. The rationale for genetically engineering wild animals is that “humans have been altering the DNA of other species for millennia.” After all, we’re told, “it began about 30,000 years ago, when the grey wolf morphed into the dog, the red jungle fowl transformed into the chicken and the aurochs gave way to domestic cattle.” Notice the passive tense in this sentence. It conflates the difference between initially unintentional domestication, which much later “evolved” into selective breeding, with the exponential increase in fragmentation that human manipulation at the genetic level will mean given our current level of stupidity as a It’s simply no good to say, “we may not have modified their genetics by design, but when we select for specific characteristics, the related DNA sequences hitch along for the ride.” And that “although the hi-tech methods of today’s scientists may be different, the end result is the same.” The casualness and obtuseness of such an attitude, given how destructive and disharmonious humans have become, is astonishing. To conflate selective breeding, much less unintended, trial-and-error domestication by early humans, with genetic engineering, represents a monumental failure to make essential distinctions. To take the current human mind as a given, and “accept a policy that enables researchers to proceed with genetically modifying wildlife cautiously,” epitomizes human arrogance. human nature either as immutable or non-existent is brainless. We aren’t born as captives of our lineage anymore than we’re born as blank slates. Culture and education play huge roles in our development, and are within our capacity to change. The foolish call to “bring it on” where the emerging, profit-driven industry of genetic engineering is concerned does not represent faith in human innovation, but the hubris of the human mind. individuals and a species we have no choice but to awaken true intelligence before using these tools, or we’ll sure as hell make an exponentially greater mess of nature using By turning within while remaining engaged with the world, we can bring about a transmutation in ourselves. And must do so before turning scientists loose to mess with the DNA of the few wild animals left in the few intact habitats on Earth. After all, as the saying goes, “wisdom denotes pursuing the best ends by the best means.” We neither understand the ends to which the human mind has brought us, nor the much more powerful means that the human mind is devising. The whole brain can and must attend to the movement of thought within, which quiets the mind, ends fragmentation, and allows insight and © Scoop Media
