If anyone has been wondering what the government is doing
with all the money they are saving by closing the Tucson, AZ
Bee Lab, here's something that could be simple co-incidence...
CNN has an interesting article about a "genetically engineered
insect" that will be released this summer near Phoenix, AZ.
http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/science/03/08/biotech.insect.ap/index.html
The moth in question is supposed to be easy to track because their
larvae will glow in the dark, courtesy of a jellyfish gene or two
(no, I am NOT making this up!)
The next step will be to release a different variant that will not glow in
the dark, but will mate with cotton-pest moths, but will be sterile.
They hope that releasing enough of these sterile moths will make a
dent in the reproductive cycle of the moth.
Not to worry, though... "Your Tax Dollars At Work" (TM) have provided
screen cages for the moths, to insure that the modified moths do not
escape into the wild during the tests. Even if a windstorm knocks over
the cages, and they DO escape, we are patted on the head and told that
they cannot reproduce, and will soon die.
Let's see... what sort of fun could we have with THIS?
a) Bees could be bred with the glow-in-the-dark gene, to allow
hobbyist beekeepers to work their hives at night after a long
day at the office. This would also allow swarms to be tracked
down at night, a time when beekeepers may have time on their
hands and nothing much else to do.
b) The mutant glowing moths (anyone remember "Mothra", the
least scary of the Japanese movie monsters?) could wreck
havoc in the sweater drawers of Phoenix, AZ, forcing public
officials to release radioactive bird/bat hybrids to catch and eat
the moths, but then those same public officials would be forced
to release genetically modified cat/eagle hybrids to catch the birds,
and then Wolf/Buzzard hybrids, and so, and so on in the best
1950s Grade-B Japanese Monster Movie tradition.
c) The Tucson Bee Lab could be resurrected from its ashes
to study how a similar approach could be used to combat
the wax moth, which currently destroys comb in abandoned,
dead, and diseased hives... oh, wait a sec - never mind...
we WANT wax moths to get rid of all that diseased comb
before it spreads diseases or becomes a home for nasty
"africanized bees", now don't we?
d) Maybe someone could learn from history for a change.
In a recent New York Times, there just happens to be
a very appropriate article that explains "history" in this
regard, and it just happens to also be about "moths",
in this case the Gypsy Moth.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/06/science/06MOTH.html
(When it asks for a username and password,
if you don't feel like filling out forms, just use
the username "syberpunk", and password
"syberpunk".)
e) Of course, nature hates waste, and just won't tolerate an empty
niche in the food chain, so expect some even more persistent
opportunistic moth to take over for the moths at issue if the
experiment "works".
With all the outrage over genetic modification in Europe, there
are some new ads that are trying to improve the Bio-tech
companies' public image here in the US, most notably, one
about "Golden Rice", that is claimed to be the cure for blindness
among undernourished 3rd-world children. Never mind that a kid
would have to consume pounds and pounds of the rice to get
even minor positive results, and never mind that the same kid
would also have to get some protein in his/her diet, something
clearly lacking in most under-nourished 3rd-world diets.
...but any child who could eat pounds and pounds of any rice, and
had some protein too would thereby not be so malnourished, would he?
It matters not, the Bio-tech companies have found a "story" to
tell, and they will spend a reported $50 Million US to promote
and advertise a "breakthrough" that only cost $100 Million US to
develop in the first place. "Feeding hungry children and saving
them from blindness" is very powerful ammo for the PR hacks,
and it just does not matter that it is a lie.
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