In Greek mythology, Icarus and his father Daedalus attempted to escape from Crete on artificial wings built of wax and feathers. Against his father's warning, Icarus flew so close to the sun that the wax melted and he fell to his death in the Aegean Sea. There is no question that the advances of biotechnology are creating a new landscape; but the question is whether that landscape more closely resembles a promised land, or as in Auden's poem, a sea in which the legs of Icarus are disappearing.