TL: THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT - - The Environmental
Costs of Genetic Engineering
SO: Greenpeace International (GP)
DT: January 28, 1997

At a time when an estimated 50,000 species are already expected
to become extinct every year, any further interference with the
natural balance of ecosystems could cause havoc.   Genetically
engineered organisms, with their completely new and unatural
combinations of genes, have a unique power to disrupt our
environment.  Since they are living, they are capable of
reproducing, mutating and moving within the environment.  As
these new life forms move into existing habitats they could
destroy nature as we know it, causing long term and irreversible
changes to our natural world.

* Natural species could be driven out, with a knock-on effect on
animals and plants that depend on them.  With an in-built
resistance to disease and pests, new "super crops" could have a
competitive advantage over natural flora and fauna.   A crop
made to be salt tolerant, for example, could invade estuaries
stifling the natural estuarine vegetation and impacting on
wildlife which is dependent on it. The same applies to `super
animals".  A fish engineered to tolerate cold could escape from
fish farms to wreak havoc in the habitats of native fish where
they may live longer and use up vital food. 
*  New crops may breed with wild relatives or cross breed with related species. 
The "foreign" genes could spread  throughout the environment
causing unpredicted changes which will be unstoppable once they
have begun. 
*  Entirely new diseases may develop in crops or
wild plants.  Foreign genes are designed to be carried into
other organisms by viruses which can break through species
barriers, and overcome an organism's natural defences.  This
makes them more infectious than naturally existing parasites, so
any new viruses could be even more potent than those already
known. 
* Ordinary weeds could become "Super-weeds":  Plants
engineered to be herbicide resistant could become so invasive
they are a weed problem themselves, or they could spread their
resistance to wild weeds making them more invasive.  Fragile
plants may be driven to extinction, reducing nature's precious
biodiversity. 
* Insects could be impossible to control.  Making
plants resistant to chemical poisons could lead to a crisis of
"super pests" if they also take on the resistance to herbicides.
* The countryside may suffer even greater use of herbicides and
pesticides: Because farmers will be able to use these toxic
chemicals with impunity their use may increase  threatening more
pollution of water supplies and degradation of soils.  *  Plants
developed to produce their own pesticide could harm non-target
species such as birds, moths and butterflies. 

No one - including the genetic scientists - knows for sure the
affect releasing new life forms will have on the environment. 
They do know that all of the above are possible and
irreversible, but they still want to carry out their experiment. 
THEY get giant profits.  All WE get is a new and uncertain
environment - an end to the world as we know it.