Now those wonderful traits that made it such a good candidate for modification in the first place—its notorious aggressiveness and near omnipresence—are no longer such good things, are they? Because if there’s one thing you really don’t want your poison to be, it’s “notoriously aggressive.” And if there’s one place you absolutely do not want your “notoriously aggressive poison” to be, it’s “everywhere.” Keep in mind that this was not a theoretical scenario; far-flung, fictional and unlikely to ever actually occur. This bacterium was going to be released; it had all of the necessary approval. It was only a matter of proper marketing and shipping at this point. It was only by virtue of a random review by an independent scientist (Dr. Elaine Ingham, a professor at Oregon State University and possibly the savior of all mankind) that it was caught in time.