vondy's blog

“A fist in the eye of god� was overall written very well. The only poorly written part was the intro because it start off very slow as it was talking about the women doing her dishes and watching the bird, and how it had evolved to do all of the things it can now do. Once she gets at her topic of the importance of teaching evolution, which allows the future adults to make educated decisions on important issues like gene altering and the importance of what reproduction does to move our society forward. I enjoyed looking through all of her examples of reason’s why not to alter genes. I also enjoy how she goes to show that religion and evolution aren’t at extremes. That things are changing slowly over time and it doesn’t matter how things began. I haven’t really thought about the whole necicarry need for genetic diversity. I would just like to know why it’s not possible to make a gene appear and then cross breed it with other plants with the gene. I’ve had some background in biology to know that it could either be a recessive (get covered up) dominate (cover up) or else combine for a mixture. Although it might not be that simple. I also understand that the companies that make these seeds to not reproduce otherwise after 1 year they wouldn’t be able to sell anyone seeds and would be out of jobs. Also another potential hazard is the plant escaping the crop areas when they are capable of reproduction. I suppose it is far better to have an area problem with a plant killing animals that eat or come into contact with the plant instead of a nation wide plant problem killing animals and endangering them. I think we should have restrictions on what we can do to genetically enhance. I think it should be weather something is harmful to anything then it can’t be genetically enhanced. But vitamins and minerals, water resistance, drought resistance and other similar characteristics would be fine. As far as I know, which isn’t very much none of those things would kill humans or animals, although maybe their ability to grow could cause other plants a lack of ability to grow or it might put them at a disadvantage in some areas and would cause the genes to be erased from the area in a matter of a few years to a decade. If the plants weren’t potentially dangerous to anything they should be then allowed to reproduce in the wild without nearly the fear of killing. The best thing possible is just to test things in a mini ecosystem that is controlled incase it does happen to be potentially dangerous. I think the biggest thing to fear is our own technology and this could potentially be a situation.

http://environment.about.com/od/globalwarmingandweather/a/heat_islands.htm an city enviromental problem i thought interesting

http://library.thinkquest.org/17109/environment.htm A quick link to some of the pro's and con's of gene altering