Apr 18 2011: I think that the whole point is being overlooked here. Scientists aren't making glow in he dark animals for the sake of making glow in the dark animals! That would be rediculous and certainly a cause of issue. Rather, the reason scientists work with engineering these traits is because they are very easy to test for. It would be much more difficult to engineer DNA to to express a random gene that creates a random enzyme that has to be tested for with specialized equipment. Glow in the dark is just much simpler because we can see it in plain sight. But what does this mean? Well, when bioengineers can master these techniques with easily testable genes, then we can move up to genes that can make a positive impact on the human (and other) species.
So yes, there is a point to all this strange experimentation going on lately. Perhaps it may seem strange to give a fish the ability to glow in the dark, but such experiments are the precursors to being able to insert a gene into the human genome that would increase our thinking capacity, or changing a gene to prevent cancers, or deleting a gene that leads to Alzheimers. Making fish and other animals glow is just the building block towards all that is possible through manipulation DNA sequences.
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A reply on Conversation: Misunderstanding Ethics and the purpose of this talk
So yes, there is a point to all this strange experimentation going on lately. Perhaps it may seem strange to give a fish the ability to glow in the dark, but such experiments are the precursors to being able to insert a gene into the human genome that would increase our thinking capacity, or changing a gene to prevent cancers, or deleting a gene that leads to Alzheimers. Making fish and other animals glow is just the building block towards all that is possible through manipulation DNA sequences.