Talkin' Shit About A Pretty Sunset

This is an obvious enough statement, but it means much more when you experience it firsthand.

On October 14th, I posted an email my dad had sent me from his business trip in Beijing, China. Early on October 17th, boingboing.net put a link to my post. By 3:00 PM, my blog had gotten a 5,500% increase in visits and there were already several other blogs linking to my post.

They were not portraying what my dad had written correctly. The gist of my dad's email was that he visited China's hydroponic and genetic research facilities and that the Chinese are creating human pharmaceuticals in cow's milk and they're growing millions of lettuce plants for consumers in massive, 200-yard tanks. The post did not mention that these activities have been around for a long time. While I wrote that it seems futuristic, it really isn't. In fact, my dad told me that as far back as 1983, he had proposed splicing bovine genes with human traits so biotechnology can produce more human pharmaceuticals cheaper. The Chinese are no different than the west, it's just that American/European scientists are only doing it in mice, etc.

The blogs linking to me and comments I got on the post were implying that McDonald's is selling consumers cloned & GMo beef, which is NOT true. Based on people's ignorance of modern biotechnology, China was being portrayed as some kind of Hollywood mad-scientist laboratory. I took down the link by 3:30 and requested that boingboing.net remove their link as well. I've now re-posted a more detailed version, which is not connected to the biggest blog in the world.

Why are people so freaked out by genetic engineering? It's always associated with Nazi eugenics, but that's so far from reality. What damage could gene-splicing do to people, outside of Hollywood-style fantasies?