THE NEW CREATOR.

              Mankind is undoubtedly the pinnacle of evolution's achievement so far, in terms of intelligence and the ability to purposefully change the natural world which is brought us into being. Of course, since these are the traits we are dominant in, we tend to regard them as the most fitting criteria to determine evolutionary ascendancy. We are certainly not evolution's pinnacle in terms of numbers-many different species ranging from beetles to bacteria must populate the world in far greater numbers than ourselves. In terms of biochemical abilities we are pathetic, helpless, creature compared with plants, whose photosynthesis 'cleverness' we depend on ,and a multitude of organisms from bacteria to various other vertebrates which can manufacture many more of the molecules they need to survive and grow than our vitamin-dependent selves. Our ability to rearrange or destroy the  natural world, to make vast prairies of wheat, new breeds of horses and dogs cattle and crops, to demolish rain forests and eradicate dangerous pathogens such as the virus that used to cause smallpox, has been purchased in return for a hopeless dependency on the very creatures we can manipulate or destroy.

For many years mankind has been able to act as the 'sharper of life' in various indirect ways, such as selective breeding or extermination, shepherding, chemical control and cultivation. Throughout the 1970s we became steadily able to shape new life directly, thanks to the emergence of the ne 'biotechnology' known as genetic engineering. Genetic engineering is a blanket term for a host of different biochemical techniques which promise to ultimately give us complete mastery over the nature of life on the planet, and on any other planets we choose to colonies as well. All of the living things on the earth today are at heart composed of genes that encode proteins. Genetic engineering allows us to tinker directly with the chemical that genes are made of DNA. It allows us to take genes out from living things and study them. It allows us to put new genes into living things that would never have acquired such genes by more natural means. It allows us to chop us genes and to change them, to swap genes around between living things, to manufactures entirely novel genes not yet discovered by evolution, and to generally explore the full potential of DNA as a carrier of genetic information at an unbelievably faster rate than the slow remorseless march of conventional evolution.

Mankind, by learning the skills of genetic engineering has become a radical new, dramatically fast and powerful mechanism of genetic change. Unlike the conventional mechanisms of genetic change, mankind can purposely direct evolution towards specific goal.

we could create new breeds of livestock which could give larger yields and perhaps be resistant to various diseases. Eventually we could probably create new breeds of people, if we wished. The ultimate possibilities of genetic engineering are virtually limitless, since DNA is what makes living things what they are .Obviously these limitless possibilities can be a source of great concern and a hope. Human history surely catalogues the exploits of a species abundantly supplies with craziness; and the future always eventually arrives, often much sooner than we expect it to.

Therefore, it is easy to laughingly dismiss the idea that the relatively trivial tinkering of today's genetic engineering could eventually lead on to the creation of such 'wonders' as photosynthetic disease-free humanoids, with regenerating brains and a life span to many thousands of years; but genetic engineering, with its potential to take over the 'reins' of evolution from Darwinian natural selection, can make the laughingly likely. If the slow march of evolution by natural selection has allowed single cells to give rise to humans, what might humans be changed into by much faster process of purposeful genetic engineering? Isn't it?