Who Says I Can't See?

My mum said, to get people to read you work you have to offer them an opinion, a bit of help, a piece of infomation or a story, well heres and opinion. Most people think that teenagers don’t pay much attention to what goes on around them, actually I just assumed that, if you’re a mother or a father with a teenage son or daughter who does pay attention., well good for you. But otherwise, for the rest of the world, heres a different point of view, maybe one you haven’t heard before, maybe one you have.. but in any case it’s my point of view.

I do theatre as a subject in school and today our teacher started off the class with a story. He said that he had a cousin in San Francisco who was a reporter, and who had done a report on why KFC was officially KFC, and not Kentucky Fried Chicken. And he said that the reason that it was KFC was because the original name is no longer true. Once upon a time when it all first started out they had used free ranged chickens, but this involved a long process of killing, plucking and de-boning to get it ready to be cooked. So to save time they took the chickens to scientists, and had them genetically modified so that they had no feathers. Apparently this is a disease in strange parrots in South America. Once they had done that they had saved millions in time costs, so they did it again. They removed the claws and beaks, then changed the bone to cartilage to help with de-boning, until these creatures weren’t really chickens. They had to change the name because the meat they were selling was no longer from a creature that could be described as a chicken. Well I believed it, and for those who don’t know this story, it is entirely untrue and is known as an E-myth. The theatre class was about E-myths and story’s we could turn into plays. But the topic I have drawn from this is Genetic Modification.

Genetic Modification has already taken a hold on humans, without knowing it we have done it for millions of years. We’ve bred our sheep to have shorter legs and produce more meat or wool. Wolves have been bred into small domestic lap dogs (I have always admired nature and would prefer a wolf to a Jack Russel) We have change almost every domestic animals in such ways that they can no longer survive in the wild. And we keep on doing that, I mean HOW THA HELL DO SEEDLESS GRAPES REPRODUCE? There is huge debate on this topic, How far should we go? What is right to change? Should we only do it on animals? Should we not do it at all and quit while we are ahead? I am a nature lover, I’m not so psycho that I’m vegetarian ( no offence) but I love nature, and I have admired it for the perfection it has. Every single creature is built for its exact purpose, and can function in such a way that it is perfect for it’s environment. I don’t know if God did this, I’m not religious, nor am I sure evolution could create such perfection. But I believe we should stop while we can. There are limits and we may believe that we are helping by removing all vulnerability to certain diseases, but I think that in the end, Genetic Modification will turn on us. And when something bad happens, we will solve it again with modification and the circle continues.

Another problem is natural Modification, and once again it is caused by us. Everyone knows about bacteria that have developed in hospitals until they are entirely resistant to antibiotics. This is caused by changes in the bacteria, at a genetic level. Could this be counted as genetic modification? It’s caused by bacteria’s constant contact with antibiotics until only bacteria with a genetic immunity to antibiotics are left. They breed an entire race with this immunity and we have a new kind of bacteria! This is Genetic Modification turned against us, this can be related to Bird Flu. A slight genetic modification and this could pass onto humans and practically wipe out our race given the chance. Hopefully the same thing will happen for us that happens for bacteria, and we’ll live on.

Personally I can’t see how humans became such a powerful species, we have no teeth or claws to defend ourselves with, no coat or thick pelt to keep us warm. All we have is a brain, and anything we can do with it. I say our rise to power is in a way, a fluke. We tricked and manoeuvred our way to power, driving herds of buffalo off cliff faces. Other animals hunted and breed. We herded cows and farmed the land, changing it to our own needs. Now we seek to change things that should never be changed, know thing that should never be known and in general we are destroying the world more than ever. This may not be your opinion, it may be insulting to you, and I’m sorry if it is.. But this is the way I see the world.