This isn’t cross breeding two flowers, it is plugging genes from a mushroom into a flower. I can understand using GMOs to grow more food to prevent starvation and malnutrition, but this is messing with another living organism for pure aesthetic purposes. It feels different.
Buddy we turned wolves into frenchies, we well and truly crossed the line and burned the bridge on fucking with other species for aesthetics before any of us were born.
That's not something I'm necessarily concerned about. My personal concern is the normalization of gene editing for aesthetic purposes spreading to other organisms, and dogs are a perfect example. Humans have been artificially selecting flowers for specific aesthetic purposes for centuries: Fine. Humans have been artificially selecting dogs for specific aesthetic purposes for centuries: Not fine. Humans begin gene editing flowers for aesthetic purposes: Fine... What happens next? I don't think that this implies humans are definitely going to start using gene editing dogs for specific aesthetic purposes, but who knows? We should be having these dialogues so that we don't get caught up in this before the practice becomes normalized. With great power comes great responsibility, as Uncle Ben says.
I'm assuming these things are seedless, so they won't start popping up and spreading naturally?