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.
2Cryptozoology.com,
"Raptor
Sighting in Oklahoma," June 2005, archive.
3Your 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.
