A Rose by Any Other Name... Could be as Deadly...

Greetings.
I just heard a spiel on N.P.R. regarding an apparently lauded-as-genius modification of E. coli to include pleasant wintergreen and bannana smells (the latter to serve as a cue that the colony growth cycle has been completed. Over the course of the superficial interview, the experimenters acknowledge that, to their knowledge, these smells have never been associated with these organisms. A bunch of carnival music later, and the story is over.
I make no secret that my enthusiasm for genetic manipulation is only in very specific pursuit areas. I have also openly acknowledged that N.P.R. treatments are often hopelessly superficial to the point of making commentary unacceptable. That having been said, I'd like to make the following points anyway:
1. The response the "scientists" who were asked about their impression of their own work was that they don't feel omnipotent but see themselves as "engineers".
2. The "scientists" don't seem to care about the awesome responsibility of keeping under-wraps a sweet-smelling E. coli strain. A huge implicit reason mammals come equiped with sniffers is to undo and avoid the presence of bacterial strains... what now?
3. Manipulation for the sake of manipulation or cleverness is (continues to be) a pretty hateful stroke in the face of a dividing line that is keeping patients away from stem-cell research. Is anybody even watching the $#%%%# movie? These flippant tasks make those concerned about scientific morality and ethics circle their wagons.
In short, after all the pointlessly glowing bunnies and the pointless articles attempting to justify the existence of glowing bunnies, and the reality that all these high-profile hijinks are using what essentially constitutes ancient methodologies (in the molecular scheme of things) by the point of these gimmicky actions (and thus are pointlessly pointless in terms of anything but the ramifications of what could come if the experimental organisms aren't kept under lock and key), nothing has changed. I hope somebody got a masters project out of the stale methodology recap., but I'm not impressed. Should I be?