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Well, that one of three commissioners voted on his "values". Giving him the benifit of the doubt about there being no possible harm in the release of these fish, we can imagine the other two commissioners were moved by non-scientific arguments. I wish they could explain their moral delima, after all moral arguments should be reasonable rather than mindless emotional reactions.

I wish their position were better explained, but I'm afraid there is no reasonable basis for their objection. The rest of the article has some stuff about inapropriate exercise of human "power" over animals. If they realy felt that way, they might as well outlaw pet fish of any kind. I'm not aware of any pain or suffering that's special to these little genitically altered fish. If it's OK to breed goldfish simply to subject them to repulsive pet shop conditions and the ownership of 5 year olds, why not this new fish? We already tollerat the creation of pet dogs with gross and unhealthy deformaties through inbreeding, would there be any difference between that and altering the genes directly? How do these people jibe their "values" with California's abortion laws, which alow people to terminate tissue that would become a person if left alone? With one in three women in the US killing at least one of their babies, I don't understand handwringing about pet fish.