Some may say I am lax in my morals
Though I’m not one to advertise quarrels
I’m a bad, selfish man,
And because of my tan
We’re both mining and killing the corals
Headline: Coral could hold key to sunscreen pill
Ok, I can’t wrap my head around two stories recently in the news. First…. Human effluent (sewage, or shit, to you and me), pumped into the ocean, is killing corals. That’s about a week old. Literally, we are shitting on the ocean and killing it.
And now this week. The beeb tells us that “Scientists hope to harness coral’s natural defence…” against what? really, it doesn’t matter why, but in this case it is to make sunscreens. Fucking sunscreens. “By studying a few samples of the endangered Acropora coral…” Oh, it’s ok, “they will copy the genetic code the coral uses to make the compounds and put it into bacteria in the lab that can rapidly replicate to produce large quantities of it.”
“Dr Long said: ‘We couldn’t and wouldn’t want to use the coral itself as it is an endangered species.'”
So they’ll strip the information from the coral genes, then test it on scraps of skin left over from tummy tucks… seriously, check the link, I am not making this up. A product designed to enhance future vanity, tested on the byproducts of current vanity.
We are sooooooo fucked.