[extropy-chat] LUDDITES: No GloFish for the U.S.

[Anders Sandberg]

(from my blog about it)

The Center for Food Safety's complaint
http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/li/GloFishComplaint.pdf
against the FDA has some truly hilarious parts. Among others:

    "Additionally, the imminent release of genetically engineered
ornamental fish into the environment and the consumption of them by
other carnivorous fish as part of the foodchain means that such
carnivorous fish will be caught or purchased and consumed by CTA Board
Members. Such results compel their involunrary consumption of
genetically engineered ornamental fish that have not been approved as
safe for use as human or animal food."

Just think about it. Out there there are fishes eating stuff that has not
been approved as safe. Yucky stuff, dangerous stuff. Unregulated stuff.
Just feel the anarchy accumulate in the fat tissue beside the mercury!

Of course, as pointed out in section 9, the deep reason is aesthetics. CTA
doesn't like nature with modified creatures in it. So they are injured by
them. Being an atheist 1/8th troll, I could probably claim being
aesthetically and ethnically injured by church steeples had I lived in the
US.

More seriously, this actually is the core of the issue. The practical
risks are negligble (besides the potential for spread in the Mexican Gulf
ecosystem, but that is true for the original zebrafish too), the
antibiotics resistance genes are nothing compared to the plasmids already
used by bacteria actively and of course eating something that has eaten a
fish that had a fluoroscent protein is not much more dangerous than eating
a fish that had eaten a jellyfish with the same protein. It is all about
what kind of nature one wants. A nature defined by not having been
affected or changed by humanity, or a nature where humanity is a
participant in evolution. A glowing fish has increased diversity,
something many view as desirable. The big question is of course if the FDA
or some other agency (the EPA?) that gets to define that nature,
especially since it is both local and global. Just as decency standards
and aestetics varies, so does bioaesthetics and philosophical views on
nature.

I don't know the likeliehood of a FDA banning the fish (the complaint
seems somewhat arbitrary to me, but I know little US law tactics and some
agency might want to extend its boundaries and funding a bit), but given
that it is up for sale and easily bred this might be the start of a real
biotech underground. In many ways it might be worse if fishes are spread
in secret between individuals who are more likely to be disrespectful of
the law and perhaps traditionalist ecology than if they were just mildly
regulated and debated by aquarists.

Hopefully we can get away from a debate where the issue is that a species
is genetically modified to a debate where the issue is whether this
particular modification is bad, risky or doesn't fit our aesthetics.

-- 
Anders Sandberg
http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa
http://www.aleph.se/andart/

The sum of human knowledge sounds nice. But I want more.