Do-it-yourself genetics - Scary?

[Prophet Tenebrae]

Most of those against genetically engineered crops are actually motivated primarily by less altruistic notions than the well being of their fellow man.

Which is to say - they see GM as a manifestation of corporate globalisation (in the case of Greenpeace and similar) and they'd rather see people starve than let GM - controlled as it is by a relatively small number of multinational concerns that are pretty much run by Hitler in suits as far as these people are concerned - proliferate.

Speaking of Godwin's law - Eugenics is still inexorably (and wrongly) linked to Hitler and a good number of people still start foaming at the mouth when you suggest that MAYBE a baby that isn't going to drop dead of cystic fibrosis or be in some way mentally retarded BECAUSE DAMNIT! GOD WANTS YOU TO SUFFER!

I personally love that. Not quite on a level with forcing people with terminal/degenerative illnesses to live a life that they deem not worth living because the invisible man in the sky demand that THEY SUFFER! Actually, I'm not sure I've ever seen any justification of that from the Bible beyond the whole "playing God" rationale... and there's a fairly strong correlation between that type of person and the type of person who goes to the prison to wave a big placard saying "Fry the SOB!" But this is something of a tangent.

Bottom line - much of the knee jerk "this is bad" is generated because Hollywood hates science and the trope "science = bad" is one that has been busy since the industrial revolution.

Chances of someone in their garage creating the Armageddon plague are probably about the same as them finding the secret to eternal youth.

I maintain that there is a neo-luddite movement which is rather more sinister than just people who don't want to get a mobile phone and that there is precious little to do with interest in the dangers of technology and very much to do with an exploitation of instinctive fear of the new for the forwarding of an anti-globalisation agenda.

Not that the other side is much better... but hey, big corporations give us shiny shinys - what does the opposite side of the coin offer, other than stagnation, anarchy and going back to living in caves?