The Butt Ugly Weblog

Then there was the girl who concluded that she could modify the e.coli bacterium to make it more antibiotic-resistant. She had had access to a university biology lab, where the grad students had helped her run the necessary equipment.

I asked this student why she would even want to succeed at this goal, given that we all carry that particular bacterium in our gut. She said she just wanted to know. Okay, fair enough. I asked her if she was aware that the field of biology had refused to do that exact experiment for fear that the modified bacterium would escape into the wild and endanger us all. No, she wasn't aware of that.

When I asked her what she did with the resulting genetically modified e.coli, she replied, "Well, I knew that the e.coli colonies would be kind of dangerous, so I disposed of them by mailing them to another lab." That beats dumping the stuff down the train, but it's also yet another reason not to be a postal worker.