Gluten Intolerant: You're Xmas Is Ruined

I'm sure we all know about "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire..." (actually titled "The Christmas Song").  You may or may not know about the American Chestnut Blight that has wiped out most of the American chestnut trees.  The blight is a fungus that was imported from Asian chestnut trees.

Well, it turns out that scientists have decided to resurrect this tree...by merging it with the fungal fighting properties of wheat.

Yup, that's right.

They've merged the DNA of wheat and the American Chestnut tree.

They have no idea if the gene will end up putting wheat gluten in the chestnuts.

They have no idea if the ecosystem will support this synthetic tree.

They have no idea of the animals, bugs, and other "normal" fungus will be impacted by their franken-tree.

Instead, what they're doing is putting this hybrid creation in the midst of fungal-laden forests and crossing their fingers that it all turns out right.  But in addition to now removing American chestnuts from the gluten intolerant diet, they've not learned the lesson from Roundup Corn:  that, just as I've been ranting about since college, nature is FAR superior to human engineering and that which you are trying to eradicate, will only come back stronger than ever.

You don't even have to look at the gene-manipulated plants of Monsanto to get the idea.

We're all aware of antibiotics not being effective anymore because of gained resistance by the bacteria that they kill.

It's the natural law.

So, (regardless of their lack of concern for wheat sensitivities), what happens when the fungus that they are trying to kill figures out how to beat the wheat resistance?  We're not talking about just the obliteration of the American Chestnut tree.  We're talking about the fungus now being able to cross species and kill wheat, too.

You see, having been a scientist, I can guarantee you that they didn't even THINK about the disastrous consequences to genetically engineering this tree.  Scientists don't.  They don't consider how many tons of genetically modified organisms they create during their research or what deadly alterations those organisms make to the DNA they're given.

No.

They act as if the organisms are frozen in time and that there is no extraneous by-products created by the organisms they operate on.  They treat their experiments like a collage on a piece of paper:  a little bit here, a little bit there..ok it's done.

But that's NOT what's going on.

Genetic engineering works like this:

You take a solution (like a milkshake) of the new DNA and you cover cells in a petri dish with this solution.

Then you wait and see if something you want happens.

There's no frozen moment in time where the scientist is EVER in control of the experiment.

There's no analysis done on whether or not the cells that don't act as planned won't end up making some catastrophic prion disease that kills us all (like Mad Cow disease).

There's no thought at all.

If you're not scared, you should be.

Screw the bomb.  It's gene therapy that will kill us all...if it hasn't already.