Mae-Wan Ho  Mae-Wan Ho (; 12 November 1941 – 24 March 2016) was a geneticist  known for her critical views on genetic engineering and evolution. She has authored or co-authored a number of publications, including 10 books, such as "The Rainbow and the Worm, the Physics of Organisms" (1993, 1998), "Genetic Engineering: Dream or Nightmare?" (1998, 1999), "Living with the Fluid Genome" (2003) and "Living Rainbow H2O" (2012). Ho has been criticized for embracing pseudoscience. Ho received a Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1967 from Hong Kong University, was postdoctoral fellow in biochemical genetics, University of California, San Diego, from 1968 to 1972, senior research fellow in Queen Elizabeth College, lecturer in genetics (from 1976) and reader in biology (from 1985) in the Open University, and since retiring in June 2000 visiting professor of biophysics in Catania University, Sicily. Ho died of cancer in March 2016. Ho was a co-founder and director of the Institute of Science in Society (ISIS), an interest group which published fringe articles about climate change, GMOs, homeopathy, traditional Chinese medicine, and water memory. In reviewing the organisation, David Colquhoun accused the ISIS of promoting pseudoscience and specifically criticised Ho's understanding of homeopathy. The institute is on the Quackwatch list of questionable organizations. Ho, together with Joe Cummins of the University of Western Ontario, has argued that a sterility gene engineered into a crop could be transferred to other crops or wild relatives and that "This could severely compromise the agronomic performance of conventional crops and cause wild relatives to go extinct". They argued that this process could also produce genetic instabilities, which might be "leading to catastrophic breakdown", and stated that there are no data to assure that this has not happened or cannot happen. This concern contrasts with the reason why these sterile plants were developed, which was to prevent the transfer of genes to the environment by preventing any plants that are bred with or that receive these genes from reproducing. Indeed, any gene that caused sterility when transferred to a new species would be eliminated by natural selection and could not spread. Ho expressed concerns about the spread of altered genes through horizontal gene transfer and that the experimental alteration of genetic structures may be out of control. One of her concerns is that the antibiotic resistant gene that was isolated from bacteria and used in some GM crops might cross back from plants by horizontal gene transfer to different species of bacteria, because "If this happened it would leave us unable to treat major illnesses like meningitis and "E coli"."