The counterargument to fears about disease is ridiculous:

> But nature is totally random.

Does David Haussler really believe that? That whatever species exist in an ecosystem today is just some random set? That evolution is noise in the background? How would he characterize natural selection? Would he say we shouldn't care about invasive species at all, since what we humans introduce can't be any worse than "totally random"?

It's a bad argument, and the NYT should not have let him get away with it. They even go so far as to use part of it in a pull quote!