There's a page-long section in the book, I almost want to post it verbatim but there's too much history behind it that would have to be explained first. So I'll just summarize.
In this future (23-something Bangkok) most natural species are extinct (kinda like Blade Runner) but gene designers have come up with disease-resistant copies that move and look like their source species. With small modifications.
Like cats that can change colors like chameleons. One character keeps one as a pet (they're mostly feral, apparently to keep the (real?) rat population under control). The man says it is "a hungry little beast" which is a good thing because "if it's hungry enough it will succeed us, unless we design a better predator."
"We've run the analysis of that," Kanya said. "The food web only unravels more completely. Another super-predator won't solve the damage already done."
Gibbons snorts. "The food web unravelled when man first went a-seafaring. When we first lit fires on the broad savannas of Africa. We have only accelerated the phenomenon. The food web you talk about is nostalgia, nothing more."
He then goes on to say with the Earth's ecology ravaged by man, the only hope is to continue to develop new organisms to serve mankind's needs, and to stay one step ahead of the plagues and ecological disasters that have followed the collapse of the natural world.
In other words, mankind has no choice but to continue to try to play god, and innovate his way out of the mess he's made.
The message is dire.
But holds some truth. The damage is already well underway and well beyond reversal.
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