Canada and USA: Scientists have broken the walls that separate the species. Laboratories are responsible for having created several thousand new plant and animal life forms.
Such new forms being researched or already in existence are: wheat, implanted with flounder fish anti-freeze gene, to be able to withstand below freezing temperatures; mice implanted with human growth-hormone gene, making them twice the normal size; and transgenic mice, to name only a few.
Stephen Strauss of the Globe and Mail reported that patents are being issued for new life forms by the US Patent office, and that in Canada, the Federal Court of Appeal ruled that altered life forms are only “a composition of matter” and therefore do not qualify for patenting.
Many fear the ecological repercussions of these altered life forms “will threaten the integrity and future of creation,” says Michael Fox, scientific director of the US Humane Society.
Environment Canada biotechnology chief Martin Boddington stated that the Canadian government wished to use existing legislation to control patenting of new life forms but he admitted, “I don’t know where to draw the line.” As Stephen Strauss (Globe and Mail) concluded, “Among the molecular biologists, there is a clear consensus on that point at least. It can be summed up in a single word: Humans.”
