Not so. The current crop of species here have 'balanced out', having deleted 
perhaps millions of other species in the process. Our current mechanisms have 
been pretty primitive at really 'doing anything', ie, producing more of the 
same gases that already exist, just at greater qty, or introducing synthetic 
chemicals in limited areas that the human hierarchy declared 'safe', yet look 
at the damage done.

Creating something that can move, interact with it's surroundings, escape 
capture perhaps, or even reproduce, whether it be microscopic or pet-sized, 
could cause real and grave harm to the rest of 'us'. It upsets the balance, and 
if, in order to make this new 'life' robust, we give it qualities to survive in 
the world, it may be even better suited to it than us or some part of the chain 
we depend on... Even the lowly virus or bacterium - perhaps one that is 
supposed to do some programmed good - is susceptible to the same mutation 
process as current diseases. The Darwinian champion might not only become 
deadly, but may not even respect species boundaries. Epidemics among a 
population spread by some contact at a minimum with others who have it of the 
same species (mutations to species hoping only further serve as example). 
Consider if not only we get it, but our food chain also gets it too. Not only 
does that wipe out the food supply, but those same animals will be taking to 
every last human on the way out.

That's just the single-cell experiments... ;-) and the processes described are 
not one in a million - mutation, species jumping, epidemics, lethality - are 
all common, but today are with organisms that have resulted in our current 
balanced hierarchy at least.




William "Chops" Westfield wrote:
> On Jan 26, 2008, at 4:09 AM, Apptech wrote:
> 
> 
> How about: not particularly more so than current mechanisms
> of species extinction by habitat destruction via man or
> imported (but otherwise natural) (or "conventionally genetically
> engineered" (bred)) "pests." ?
> 
> BillW
> 
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