A Fish Story; Wrangelling Over Salmon Genetic Upgrades

President Obama's F.D.A. approved the sales of genetically fast-growth engineered salmon in the United States over the disapproval of Alaska's Senator Lisa Murkowski who would like to boycott the 'Frankenfish'. The Alaska Bio-Luddite movement has been shocked into a tizzy. Plainly the sale of fast growing King Salmon from a pool in Panama wouldn't help natural grown Alaska salmon that are in declining numbers do to capture on the high seas by foreign fleets.

The approval of genetically engineered fish in the U.S.A. along with the profusion of free trade agreements opens a Pandora's box of nations able to grow and export high-grade genetically engineered fish to the U.S.A. I can hardly wait for catfish the size of whales to grow in Thailand and be trained and directed to swim to American ports for harvest under the guidance of navigation and control brain implants.

In the good old days Senator Stevens of Alaska as a business progressive would have just said go ahead and approve the things universally and Wrangell Alaska would have been the location for the first genetic engineered major fish producer of King salmon to Seattle; location and market position being first being everything, Americans will probably wait until they can buy salmon made ion Shanghai before a super-salmon facility is built at Institute Creek. Hundreds of high-paying jobs will be lost to foreign rivals so Alaskans can listen to the radio and be depressed about job prospects.

I have opposed genetic engineering of bio-forms in the past on principle because it allows random human genomic modifications that cannot be reversed. In the short term though the desirability for women that want their kids to have larger, trophy boobs or short parents that want their kids to be 8 footers able to get that N.B.A. contract may be hard to suppress from becoming political reality.

It is hard to imagine viable prospects for containment of human genomic modification. The first time a researcher produces a gene splicing tweak to eliminate inheritable breast cancer opposition will swoon. If a illegal offshore bio-tank produces a genetic skin color upgrade wealthy Afro-Americans will be returning with Chinese looking progeny.

Genetic engineering is a kind of magic that can let fresh water vegetables grow in saltwater to enhance food supply, or increase brain size, change the structure of neurons in whales to better accomplish mathematical calculations and sundry other presently unimaginable 'weird miracles' of science.

Dr. Frankenstein wanted to create life from dead body parts. Genetic engineering entrepreneurs want to create new forms of existing life by super-sizing good things generally. There are of course some very dark side of the force possibilities in morphing life willy nilly however. So instead of calling growth challenged fish that hate speech term 'Frankenfish' they night better be called 'affirmative growth' fish with the potential to pioneer brave new habitat settlements where no habitats have existed before. Probably an umbrella corporation will own all of the patents on Frankenfish within the concentration of wealth principle. Maybe it should be made illegal to own patents on genetically engieered life-that might be the best discourager of corruption in the concentration of power area.

There are stories of the brave affirmative growth salmon of Panama able to leap tall buildings in a single bound and return hope to the starving, tired and poor immigrating fish yearning to swim free that have yet to be told, and chapters that have yet to be written of the poor little salmon that saw the great waterfall ahead and thought to him or herself, 'I will overcome'.

I wonder how the genie of genetic engineering will be kept in the bottle with so many tech tools available and proliferating as a fairly simply tech. Computers will probably be able to design their own life forms one day so people can grow-their-own new species at home. In a way, space colonization looks better and better as a way to put a firewall between normal human life and the evolution by design Frankocrats.