CGS-authored

Biotechnology has been erupting onto the news pages lately, but somehow the headlines seem to highlight the trivial while missing the profound ways in which we've taken it upon ourselves to reshape life.

A quick survey of last week's headlines includes:

-- Kraft Foods' recall of taco shells that contain traces of a bioengineered corn. The feed was approved for consumption by cattle, not for humans, and the misdirected corn prompted a public outcry.

-- Then there was the story about the artist who persuaded a French laboratory to splice fluorescent genes from a jellyfish into a rabbit embryo. The altered embryo was planted in a female rabbit, which gave birth to a bunny that glows in the dark, just like a jellyfish.

-- Finally, there came the advisory report, two years in the making, that urged scientists not to do gene-splicing experiments on human sperm or egg cells. The thrust of the recommendation was to forgo any attempt to ``improve'' human inheritance, at least for now.

The common thread in all three stories is the almost magical fact that...