My appearance in 1996Wayne Stegall


Copyright © 2011 by Wayne Stegall
Updated February 7, 2012.  See Document History at end for details.

Playing God


I have often thought how technology could solve some of man's problems.  As for biotechnology, for example, if living organisms could be created that would create fuel products, what a benefit that would be.  I could think of others as well.  However, man's inevitable use of technology for evil brings its downside.

I was alarmed when I heard recently that a biotech company had recently engineered a better salmon.  They had spliced in the genes of a rare sea creature more tolerant of cold than the salmon itself.  The improved salmon would grow through the cold season to produce a larger fish in a shorter time.  The yield of salmon for the seafood market would be greatly increased.  The rare sea creature itself is not edible that I have heard.  Who wants to eat tainted fish?  Previously, I had read in a respected science magazine that a new improved corn hybrid had been developed by splicing in genes from of all things a fly!  The idea of eating food of this type creeps me.  Who would want to eat anything so monstrously changed?

Mad scientists?!  I remember watching a classic black and white horror movie where the scientist kept his hideous creatures, the results of his experiments, in rows of cages lining the walls of his lab.  That day is here!  Certainly the first company produced many deformed creatures before they created the salmon they desired.  What if fly genes added to the corn hybrid had produced, from unsuccessful early attempts, animated plants like the Venus Fly Trap, even dangerous ones?

The companies creating these things will disclaim any harm, saying the final products themselves are harmless.  Yet, if they are greatly improved as they say, their cultivation would have to be tightly controlled.  Any release into the population of normal flora and fauna would be disastrous.  As improved species, they would take over and dominate, extincting that which is natural.  This problem is actually playing out in Europe regarding engineered crops.  Plowing fields contaminated by genetically engineered crops and replanting them with natural ones results in contamination of the crop with the undesired hybrids still sprouting up from old seed.

It is only time before they get around to really dangerous stuff.  Jurassic Park anyone?  Do you think it absurd?  The discovery of a fully intact Wooly Mammoth in ice in the recent past sparked many a discussion of the restoration of that creature.1  More recently, it has been said that dinosaur DNA has been discovered to be more intact inside of fossil bones than previous thought.

To really spark your imagination, consider that I read of two Velociraptor sightings in 2005 on the internet.2,3  A man driving through Oklahoma said he was startled when one ran across the road in front of his pickup truck.  He saw it clearly and said it was a small reptile about two feet high just like one of the small dinosaurs seen in Jurassic Park.  A young visitor from Ireland said that an investigation of large eggs in a cave in the mountains of Utah, while riding mules in the desert with his family, provoked a confrontation with a creature that returned to protect its young.  As his family came to his rescue, he barely escaped while the creature killed his mule in a stroke with the large hook claws of a velociraptor.  As an odd note, I saw an Army recruitment ad on DirecTV about April 2006 saying "Army Strong" while depicting a large reptile eye resembling that of a small dinosaur peering in from the dark.  In my experience, this is how some tampering tactics are done when a large number of people are urged to secrecy regarding some matter.  Strange...

Perhaps, in our isolated lives, our knowledge limited to only what the system will allow us to know, these reports seem completely absurd.  In the dangerous world we actually live in, it would be naive to deny at least the possibility (and plausability) that such things could happen.

Sweet Dreams ;-)

Postscript

February 7, 2012

On driving home today, a very large bird flew above the road in front of my car awkwardly and in utter silence.  With the sun going down behind it, I passed it off as a buzzard until I turned its head to show the profile of a Pterodactyl.  In that instant, I also realized that it had no feathers.  What a mind-bending hoax!  What are the odds otherwise, especially in view that I am a political target?  It was a lot fun at any rate.  When I moved toward my internet computer to publish this article addition my house was buzzed by a helicopter.  Birds of a feather?  Mother bird protecting her nestling?  Who knows?  Strange...



1Although confident of my memory of this matter, recent web browsing found new discussion of this matter.  Many new internet articles report a certain plan by Japanese researchers to clone the Wooly Mammoth within the next few years.  One example:
The Telegraph, "Mammoth 'could be reborn in four years'," January 13, 2011, article, archive.
2
Cryptozoology.com, "Raptor Sighting in Oklahoma," June 2005, archive.
3
Your True Tales, "Velociraptor in Utah," May 2006, archive.

Document History
January 14, 2011  Created.
January 14, 2011  Reworded account of Oklahoma sighting to remove "panic stop".

January 15, 2011  Made minor grammar improvements.
January 19, 2011  Updated with footnote documenting new web articles regarding the cloning of the Wooly Mammoth.
February 7, 2012  Added testimony of a Pterodactyl prank.