While we are extinguishing natural species, we're also creating new ones through genetic engineering.
Genetically modified crops can be hardier, tastier, and more nutritious. Engineered microbes might ease our health problems. And gene therapy offers an elusive promise of fixing fundamental defects in our DNA.
Then there are the possible downsides. It wouldn't be a world threat if there wasn't some sort of apocalyptic quirk. Although there is no evidence indicating genetically modified foods are unsafe, there are signs that the genes from modified plants can leak out and find their way into other species. Engineered crops might also foster insecticide resistance.
Longtime skeptics like Jeremy Rifkin worry that the resulting superweeds and superpests could further destabilize the stressed global ecosystem ( #9). Altered microbes might prove to be unexpectedly difficult to control.
Scariest of all is the possibility of the deliberate misuse of biotechnology. A terrorist group or rogue nation might decide that anthrax isn't nasty enough and then try to put together, say, an airborne version of the Ebola virus. Now there's a showstopper.
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