I'm not talking about altering humanity or anything like that, but the basic principle of altering a plant at its genetic level is really not a principle that many educated people consider unethical on any level. The act of artificial genetic selection is, at its core, a highly accelerated method of artificial manual selection (like what we've done with breeding) which is again, quite similar to natural selection. We're really only speeding up the process of evolution, a concept that is hammered into the head of every student in a first year EEB course.
Obviously, this technique becomes a little more complicated when you're splicing genes from species that would never interact or breed, but the principle holds in general. My first point was obviously not targeted towards senior philosophers or people with medical degrees who have knowledge of the subject. I was clearly talking about the general populace that feels like anything GMO or "unnatural" is wrong and will lead to zombies, vampires, locusts, etc. I wasn't targeting high-level philosophical arguments but just the uneducated opinion of far too many that needs to change.
