s blown from the plants and soil into the atmosphere. Once in the upper atmospheric regions, these particles act as nuclei around which water collects and freezes to form ice. Some scientists consider this process absolutely essential for rain to fall. Genetic engineers are working on a strain of P. syringae that would not form frost on plants. Some scientists are concerned that these strains could conceivably cause serious climatic perturbations that inhibit rainfall and cause drought.Farmers fields are not the only places that are threatened. Scientists are looking for a way to destroy lignin, an organic substance that makes trees rigid, by use of a genetically engineered enzyme. They believe that it would be of use to clean up the effluent form paper mills or for decomposing biological material for energy. This poses a threat to forests because it could destroy massive amounts of them by eating away their lignin. We could end up with no trees. Engineers could try to create organisms with a suicide gene so they only live for a very short time, but they would be alive long enough to do damage.These engineers and businesses, like Pioneer, Sandoz, Imperial Chemical Industries, Dow, Ciba-Geigy, Monsanto, Upjohn, Elanco, and Pitman-Moore to name the leading corporations in agribiotechnology, dont understand the impact that these engineered organisms can have on the existing fragile ecosystems. It is clear that the biotechnology industry is potentially one of the most serious threats to the biodiversity and ecological integrity of planet Earth. The threat will become a reality if this technology is applied with the same values and attitude toward life and the biosphere that sanctioned and promoted the wholesale application of pesticides and the development of capital-intensive monoculture farming and forestry. But this is not to say that this new technology could not be used appropriately. For example, it could be used to engineer plants to...
