Unintended consequences comes to mind. Like curing cancer with rabies.
Could anything possibly go wrong?
Picture this bug on the loose. Your clothes would fall off you. All your beverage bottles would collapse into goo. The dashboard on your car would melt into a puddle. Every electronic gadget in your house would dissolve.
GRAY GOO! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!
They’ll have to bury this until the next ‘Rat president.
Otherwise, Big Media won’t be able to publish anti-Republican articles about the island of plastic trash in the Pacific that gets ever-so-much more gargantuan whenever a Republican is elected President.
What could possibly go wrong?
The enzyme eats plastic bottles, but did they mention that the “by-product” of this consumption is a deadly gas that destroys the ozone layer, kills all plant life, and causes liberals to multiply like Tribbles?
OK, it almost certainly doesn’t do the first two, but let’s make double-damn-sure they don’t cause the third to happen. {;^)
WE’RE DOOMED!
KYPD
Larry Nice wrote about something similar to this happening to a very advanced society in ihs Ringworld series.
Commercially viable by 2097...maybe.
Go look up “Klebsiella planticola”. Popular belief is that it was a bacteria designed to break down dead biomass and produce alcohol efficiently, but in a fluke was nearly released into the wild before discovering (supposedly) that it was unexpectedly aggressive in doing so - to a degree that would/could have cause global apocalypse (as it would proceed to just “eat” every plant). Indications are this fear was overblown (by hysterical environmentalists apparently) ... but does at least serve as a warning that mis-engineered bacteria could have vast unintended consequences.
Remember that the world DOES suffer from world-spanning diseases & other invasive species having vast impacts. Being skittish about manmade ones is valid.
they had inadvertently purposely made the molecule even better at breaking down the PET (polyethylene terephthalate People with Extreme sTupidity, i.e., liberals). Maybe next year.
Now if they can come up with one that eats liberals, I’ll march in their “March For Science” parade carrying sparklers next year.
Oh, no! Something else to keep me awake at night!
The little critters in the Ocean are already eating plastic and Oil
