Glowing Fish

Dinky wrote:

"Brian C. Attwood" wrote in message
snip
That said, I think there are some compelling uses for GM especially in
agriculture, but that it should not be used flippantly like in the case
of glowing fish.


Exactly. Genetic modifications are fine IMO to do such things as prevent
humans from being suceptable to smallpox, or make corn resistant to disease,
but creating a new species of creature simply to fill a market niche and
make more money is just plain wrong. It's abuse of an unbelievably powerful
new technology that we don't yet understand the consequences of.
snip

Okay, obviously you two haven't even bothered to look into the history of
this fish. It was not created by marketting "gurus" (same can't be said
for the parrot fish for example). It was created by scientists, in the
pursuit of research. It probably wouldn't have even made it to market had
not some fish exporters seen the scientific research and went "ooo,
nifty". Now you might fault the researcher for working with the marketing
people once they caught wind of his research, but at least the original
intention for creating this fish was for scientific reasons.

Here's some links on the whole deal:

http://education.guardian.co.uk/high...978391,00.html
http://www.sciscoop.com/story/2003/6/26/72442/4245
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q...&dopt=Abstract
http://publish.gio.gov.tw/FCJ/past/03052382.html

Other transgentic scientific work with zebrafish:

http://www.niehs.nih.gov/centers/2000news/ctrnws2.htm
http://www.mcdb.ucla.edu/Research/ShuoLin/resource.html
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/9712/18/t_t/...ish/index.html
http://www.glencoe.com/sec/science/b...es.php?iRef=30

So keep in mind when you keep ranting against genetically modified fish
that the issue here isn't the fish itself, GM fish have great scientific
uses, but the marketing of the fish to the public. Don't throw the baby
out with the bath water. There are many valid scientific applications of
this technology. Marketing it to the public is the issue.

Also, as for concerns of this fish in the local waterways.... it glows.
Remember why albino/yellow morphs are so uncommon in the wild? Their color
makes them easy for predators to spot. I'd imagine the same would hold
true for glowing fish, probably more so. Doesn't excuse any aquarium fish
making it into the natural waterways, but it is a more pragmatic view.