Nature Using Technology to Destroy Nature
Uploaded by lmmu on Jul 25, 2008
In 1898, Felix Hoffman, a young chemist working for Bayer, succeeded in creating a pain killer to treat headaches that is still marketed to this day. He discovered aspirin. With the success of this wonder drug, Hoffman continued his work and, eleven days later, manufactured a cough syrup that Bayer felt ecstatic to mass market. People purchased the cough medicine in powerful numbers and felt the euphoric sense of goodness. It’s too bad that Mr. Hoffman’s second discovery was heroin. Bayer sold the drug for nineteen years before realizing that it contained more problems than it solved. It was too late for many; the junkie had been born. If the company had just waited longer, tested the product more (instead of counting on his earlier success) the lives of so many souls could have been altered.
It seems absurd now in the twenty-first century that something as disastrous and vile as the heroin fiasco could ever occur, but even today, it happens. People have this unhealthy habit of being overzealous with new technology. Take, for example, the exciting new world of genetic technology. Through years of research, scientists have uncovered a vast variety of options available, but at what cost? For instance, a whole forest of insect repellant trees has been created. If insects are not prone to be near those trees, they will leave to find food or simply stay and starve. The same goes for the snakes or other animals that feast on insects and continues all the way up to the human. Either the species will flee or they will suffer local extinction. Either way, there will be a random lot of trees thanks to the eagerness of using genetic technology. This foreign phenomenon is not limited to foliage though. Because they are incapable of withholding new technology, humans, much like insect repellant trees, will one day prove too exotic for the natural universe.
People are always looking for an advantage. Be it intellectual, physical, or aesthetic, they crave the best of themselves; even if that means fundamental genetic alterations. Athletes strive to be stronger, so steroids are used; the obese yearn to be thinner, so they undergo surgery; girls long to be prettier, so they get nose jobs. Vanity and arrogance grow too deeply in the hearts...