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Irish lilt in her voice a delight to listen to, if it weren’t for his foreboding sense that she intended to rip him apart with her razor-sharp mind. He chose his words of reply carefully, all too aware that she had a nationwide following and that on matters of science, he couldn’t match her. “Really, Dr. Sullivan, we simply hired the best caterer we could find. I know I’m going to have some—”
    “That’s hardly the point, Mr. Morgan. I’m sure we’d all like to ‘have some.’ I simply want to know if it’s genetically modified or not. Can you tell me that?”
    “I couldn’t say, Dr. Sullivan, but I don’t see the point of you making an issue of the food we’re serving at a reception—”
    “But this is exactly the point, Mr. Morgan. Not you or anyone else can tell whether the food we’re eating in America is genetically modified, because it’s not labeled.”
    By now all the reporters in the room had their cameras and microphones pointed at the two of them.
    Silently cursing her and feeling the sweat break out on his brow under the glare of the lights, as calmly as possible he slowly gave the answer he’d always resorted to in such confrontations. “There is no scientific evidence that eating genetically modified foods has ever harmed anyone.”
    His adversary rolled her eyes and shook her head as if she were about to say
Pleeease!
Instead she flashed a disarmingly beautiful smile and said to the camera, “No evidence of harm is not evidence of no harm.”
    He wanted to throttle her.
    Sullivan gave him no time to reply. “And what will the guides on your tour be telling us about the infectious strands of naked DNA which you use to make vectors?” She turned to the people with the microphones and cameras. “Vectors are the carriers of genetic engineering,” she explained, “used to transport the genes from one species and incorporate them into the genetic structure of another.”
    “
Infectious
is an awfully strong word, Doctor. There have been no proven dangers of naked DNA to date—”
    “No, but there have been some alarming studies that raise very troubling questions,” interrupted Sullivan, reaching into her briefcase and pulling out a stack of printouts about an inch thick. Laying them on the table and fanning them out like a deck of cards, Sullivan turned again to the reporters who’d been lapping up the spat, their lips pulled back from their teeth the way sharks grin just before they attack. “Here is a collation of recent research which proposes questions you should be putting to the technicians and scientists whom you will meet in this facility. And keep in mind that genetic engineers make a key assumption as they put a gene from one species into the DNA of another—that once it’s inserted a particular gene will act in the way it always has in its natural host. Some recent work shows that this is not so. How a gene behaves depends on its context amongst other genes, and we are mixing genes that have never been together since the beginnings of life.” She then pulled a few individual articles from the pack, handing them to those nearest to her. “These cover the five most contentious issues to date. One outlines the impact of feeding genetically modified potatoes to lab rats—a subsequent weight loss and increased immune response. The scientist who published the report ended up being fired by the laboratory he worked for. Incredibly, despite even his critics calling for subsequent studies, no follow-up work has been done to date.” She held up a second article. “This offers evidence that when an organism is genetically modified by the DNA of another species, the viruses, bacteria, and parasites in that organism are modified as well. The findings raise the possibility that these hitchhiker bugs, now carrying the DNA of synthetic vectors designed to jump the species barrier, may acquire new virulence, even the capacity to invade new species. The consequence could be