If they turn into alien weeds, our favourite flora could be overrun, rare plants could be lost, and insect life devastated by crops which continuously produce their own insecticide. Allergy sufferers won't stand a chance of avoiding ingredients which they are allergic to. They won't even know they're there. So many questions hang over gene technology that it must be foolhardy even to contemplate releasing these unknown organisms into our world. Yet genetically engineered organisms have already been tested in the environment more than 4000 times.
Engineering means manufacturing something new.
With genetic engineering scientists are using parts of living organisms as their basic building materials to change life forms and construct new ones. The genes carry all the chemical instructions needed to make the organism behave in a certain way, and since they are passed on from one generation to the next, offspring inherit these traits from their parents. The danger is they're mixing genes from entirely unrelated species - animal genes are going into vegetables, bacteria genes into food crops, and human genes going into animals. The genetic industry is no respecter of nature's boundaries - boundaries designed to protect the inherent uniqueness of individual species. As more and more genes are isolated from their natural sources scientists are able to control more and more aspects of life.