As for the idea that anything might happen so we cannot possible do anything, it is superstitious luddism of the first water. It amounts to submitting ourselves to whoever says "boo" the loudest. I can allege absolutely any consequence to absolutely any activity. I can inflate the size of the downside to any degree, up to an including eternal damnation. If low or no probability worries are supposed to constrain you due to the size of the alleged downside, see Pascal and get to church.
Rationality begins when you instead look at the known probability of anything going wrong. And there isn't any. We've tinkered for ages without the slightest negative consequence. We can tinker some more if we don't particularly like the results of the last round, and do so regularly. The result has been a dramatic, continuous trend of agricultural productivity increases, with the same scale of inputs, for longer than records can be found.
When all scientific knowledge, ages of past precendent, the welfare and survival of mankind on the present scale are all on one side of the ledger, and on the other side is a bare allegation of completely unspecified superstitious worries, we are supposed to consider it rational to weigh the latter more heavily than the former? That is just plain crazy. You might as well say, "since everything is subtly connected to everything else, if I don't throw salt over my left shoulder right now the sun might go supernova. Better not risk it".
When the consequences are completely innocuous personal inconveniences, it is merely raving nonsense to indulge such superstitious fears. But when it involves starving millions of other people to death, not to mention wrecking the ability to feed the present population of the world for the long term future, it is not at all innocuous. It is genocide by witch scare, and as such is a moral outrage.
I hope you are right.
There's no history, however,
for what happens when
people start switching
genes from species to species.
Because we're the first
people to do it.
That's why I said we have to
only imagine
the consequences.
There are no precedents for
transgenic transfers.
Or, for that matter,
for nanotechnology.
These technologies
are not updated,
simple extrapolations
of past nuts and bolts.
They are profoundly
different with their own unique
characteristics.
Maybe the future
will have the same ups and downs
we saw in the past.
But just as may be
it is reasonable to
worry that the new
ups and downs will be
different from the past as
the technologies
themselves differ from
past technologies. In fact,
the differences
led Bill Joy to write,
"Why the Future Doesn't Need
Us" -- Not because he's
a luddite. Rather
because the particular
characteristics
that let computers
radically change cyberlife
are coming "on line"
in the non-cyber,
real, material world in
the guise of things like
transgenic work and
nanotechnology. Don't
panic. But don't blink.