The Foundation on Economic Trends read his interview Obviously, humans have been modifying nature genetically for 10,000 years with selection, breeding, mutagenesis. In classical breeding, genes are turned on and off when you cross strains. What's different here is that we have now technologies that allow these life science companies to bypass classical breeding. That's what makes it both powerful and exciting. In classical breeding, you can cross close relatives.
Taxonomy is an anthropocentric discipline anyway.
But you can't cross a donkey and an apple tree in classical breeding. What the public needs to understand is that these new technologies, especially recombinant DNA technology, allows scientists to bypass biological boundaries altogether.