Many animals including birds, frogs and hedgehogs live on them. They'll simply seek to engineer and monopolize other defense systems. This kind of behavior seems to imply that plant life and all other life on our planet is merely there to be experimented with. There seems to be an underlying belief that nature can be controlled. The attempt to create superraces of plants at the cost of biodiversity and locally adapted crop varieties puts the globe's food supply at severe risk.
Genetic engineering is designed for intensive farming, and means big business.
At a time when our environment is already suffering extreme stress we should avoid risking the fragile balance or compounding our problems with genetic engineering. Traditionally, the role of the genetic scientist is analogous to that of the naturalist who studies individual plant and animal species. The science of ecology takes a broader view and studies the relationship between different plants and animals, recognizing the complex inter-relationships that link everything on Earth to everything else. Such a science would study the complex relationships between genes in the body as well as their interaction with the inner and outer environment. Dr. Ricarda Steinbrecher is a genetic scientist and a member of the British Society for Allergy, Environmental and Nutritional Medicine.