I sit firmly 'on the fence' where such engineering is concerned - and you only have to visualise someone actually perched astride a fence to appreciate just how eye-wateringly uncomfortable adopting that position can be ...
I wear two hats, and frequently swap them over. One has the word 'clever' written on it, the other is marked with the word 'wise'.
Today I'm wearing the 'clever' hat, because I'm currently working on a method of mass-producing nucleus colonies without ever making a single split, and which has the potential of rendering the package-bee industry obsolete. From time to time I also get to do work on my Captive Mating Chamber project, which I also do whilst wearing my 'clever' hat.
But then there are other days, when I get to wear my 'wise' hat instead and question whether I should even be working on these projects: should we (over-brained monkeys) even be attempting to take control over natural mating processes which have worked so well for millennia ? Are other creatures present on this planet only to serve the needs of human beings ?
It's when I begin to direct such questions towards my own modest ambitions that I'm reminded of something which the Nobel prize-winner Macfarlane Burnet said:
"... the scientific technological materialist approach - which is responsible for our exponential impossibilities - is traceable to the intensely anthropomorphic concept of God in the Judaeo-Christian religions from which our civilization has drawn its central concepts.
In both Graeco-Roman and Oriental religions, animals, trees and rivers could have divine or spiritual significance, as well as humans. The Jewish monotheism quite unequivocally adopted an anthropomorphic God - with all the characteristics of a dominant male tribal chief. Christianity, still further, shifted religion to an exclusive concern with human beings by regarding Christ as a fusion of man and God.
Christianity and the two Judaeo-Christian heresies, as White calls them, of Islam and Marxism are all wholly concerned with man, with interactions between men and with human attitudes toward a personified God, or its equivalent, and a human go-between - Christ, Mahomet or Marx. All three religions are dominated by a faith in perpetual human progress - and a lack of interest in the rest of the living world."
I make a distinction between cleverness and wisdom: cleverness is about solving short-term problems - it's about inventing, the finding of ingenious solutions to any obstacles which present themselves within our lives. But then there's wisdom: having the ability to forsee the possible long-term consequences of our actions.
We humans are pretty good at cleverness, but wisdom really isn't our strong suite - in particular, we've increased our numbers at the expense of all other creatures on this planet, which we view as being completely subservient to us, in part because of the words written in an ancient Jewish manuscript. If we can't even control the size of our own human population here on Earth, what right do we have to be exerting control over the population of other creatures ?
Ah well - time to climb back onto that fence again, as I'll be wearing my 'clever' hat for the rest of today ...
LJ