But as furious debates about genetically modified food have demonstrated, we simply do not understand the implications of tampering with life's building blocks. Take the relatively innocent example of the Oxford ragwort, a non-native plant which, for the first 50 years of its life in Britain, lived quietly in that city's botanical gardens. It then grew tall enough to spread its seeds over the wall, and skittered along the cracks in the pavements for another 40 years until it reached the railway lines, where it found the conditions ideal and spread like wildfire to become one of the most common plants in Britain. The innovations that are already being explored by biotech companies are potentially much more troubling. As a result, patients who receive pig organ transplants will almost certainly have to pledge not to have children, to use barrier contraception and agree to have their sexual partners monitored for fear of some pig virus spreading to humans with devastating effects.
Similar examples are everywhere.
These fish are designed to live in commercial tanks, but accidental escapes from fish farms as a result of flooding are common. Once loose, such creatures could easily out-compete native fish and cause havoc with the ecosystem. We are in danger of playing ecological roulette - and that is only while trying to make people happier and better off. Genetic engineering opens the way to all sorts of horrific new weapons. An accidental or deliberate release of some virus, bacteria or fungus developed for the military could kill millions.