The Weed That Ate the World?

It’s been said that modern technology is a jungle fraught with its own unique and unpredictable risks. Indeed, the same advances that led newspapers from the manual typewriter to the computer also created the possibility of losing entire news stories for hours, if not permanently, with a misplaced keystroke.

So, perhaps we should have been prepared for this latest amendment to the law of unintended consequences. Just call it “The Weed That Whacked Washington.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has approved hundreds of experiments involving field tests of genetically engineered plants. And farmers this year are expected to grow record numbers of genetically modified crops from seeds produced by biotechnology companies.

The troubling development is that the Riso National Laboratory in Denmark has discovered an instance in which a super crop plant can pass its new genes on to weeds that are in the same family. The result? A super weed resistant to herbicides.

All of it points to the need for a close examination not only of the genetically boosted crop but of its impact on the environment into which it is introduced. Talk about bringing new meaning to the term “biohazard.”