Genetic Engineering

Hmmm ... so last night a friend and I went to see a new horror / black comedy / satire called ... Black Sheep. I think I posted links to it once before.

While it was in the category described above, it was also very provocative on a macro level - a social commentary on the possible outcomes of genetic engineering.

To cut a long story short, a farmer developed a sheep that was like a super-sheep, and (I don't know if anyone will ever see it but I still won't give that part of the plot) basically a 'defective' one of the experimental sheep got released accidentally by a Greenie (environmental activist) who was trying to sabotage the lab. He got bitten, other sheep and other people got bitten, and well, there are a lot of killer sheep on the loose.

It's VERY much darker than I make it sound here, but well, I suppose it got me thinking.

For example, does modifying a gene in something so it has a natural immunity (for argument's sake, a frog gene in crops so they are protected from lots of insects) seem better or worse than dousing the crops in lots of chemicals to protect them from those insects?

Is taking the b-lactoglubulin out of a cow's DNA so she produces lactose-free milk (for all those people with dairy allergies) better or worse than putting the milk through a post-production chemical process to do so?

I don't know everything by any means about GE ... but it is interesting ...

Any thoughts?