In perusing Boing Boing today, I found a link to this blog entry which discusses this article (L.A. Times, free registration required) about specially bred fish that are triploid. For those who aren't familiar with the terminology, what that means is that the fish have three sets of chromosomes. Most sexual organisms have two sets of chromosomes - one from the mother, and one from the father. Having three sets of chromosomes almost always results in sterility or other defects (Down's Syndrome (Google search) in humans is a triploidy of chromosome 23 only). However, triploidy is nothing new, and certainly not threatening in any way. In fact, the bananas you buy at the store are triploid and sterile.

These fish grow bigger, since they don't have to expend any energy on sexual reproduction. I would be happy to eat these fish; there should be no problems. This is not even really genetic engineering in the sense that most people understand genetic engineering; no new genes are being added to the fish and thusly no new proteins are being made. And even if new proteins were being made, the fish are sterile and couldn't propagate the changes to the wild population anyway. This is just another example of people who aren't really educated about the field getting riled up about nothing.

Adding genes from one organism to another organism (for example, RoundUp Ready soybeans) is a different issue, but I am still of the opinion that the process is greater than 99.5% safe. (Disclaimer: I am a Ph.D. student in biochemistry and genetics, studying plant genetics. However, this is also why you should believe me.) No process will ever be guaranteed 100% safe, but without genetic engineering we will never be able to feed the world's population at the current rate of growth.