Biotechnology is in many ways simply an extension of traditional breeding methods. We have to say right up front that there's one obvious way in which it's not simply an extension of traditional breeding methods. The problem is, obviously, that traditional breeding can't take genes from humans and put them into pigs, and current techniques do allow us to isolate the gene for human growth hormone and insert it into hogs. That's not possible through traditional breeding. It's not possible in traditional breeding to take a gene from a fish and insert it into a tomato. So there is a new power here that is quite different. But that said, traditional breeding methods have always tried to conduct experiments where a whole range of new kinds of plants or proteins or animals are produced and then you select the one that fits your purposes best. And in that sense biotechnology is simply a continuation of selective breeding.
Transcript for Clip 2 -- Ethical concerns
I [would] like to distinguish two types of ethical objections to agricultural biotechnology: intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic objections are objections that the technology is wrong in and of itself. [Genetic engineering is] playing God or it's unnatural. It's tinkering with species boundaries. Intrinsic objections to agricultural biotech say whatever the benefits might be, no matter how great they might be in the end we shouldn't be doing this. Extrinsic objections are of a different sort. They focus on the consequences and they're sort of cost/benefit objections which are of the sort that there may be some good benefits. We may be able to feed hungry people. Farmers may be safer because they don't have to spray chemicals on these new crops. And those are clearly benefits. But the risks, the potential harms, are so great that we shouldn't proceed with the technologies.
