Posted
9th July 2001
Duped By Genetic Engineers "
..............."GM techniques which in the precise and
targeted way bring in a couple of genes that you know what they
do and you know where they are is vastly safer, vast, vastly
more controlled than this so-called conventional breeding...."
Sir Robert May, UK Government Chief Scientist 1995 - 2000, and
current President of the Royal Society, UK (BBC interview 9th
March 2000)
The
biotechnology sector 'ISB News Report' for July 2001 includes
a revealing piece by two biotechnology consultants from New
Zealand which by default exposes the degree to which the technical
risks associated with genetic engineering have been regularly
misrepresented by the scientific community. Constantly we hear
the refrain about how 'precise' genetic engineering is. But
this claim is not supported by the facts and many governmental
advisers on GM biosafety have been 'taken in' by it.
The
purpose of the New Zealand consultants' report is to highlight
possible future technical improvements in order to reduce the
lack of precision and control prevalent in current genetic engineering
techniques. However, in so doing they reveal in some detail
the technical basis for the inherent risks associated with those
genetically engineered organisms which have already been approved.
Below are some of the comments made by the article's authors
Kieran Elborough and Zac Hanley in relation to the technology
used to create the GMOs that are already being released into
the global environment and food chain: "Plant biotechnology
often requires the use of various imprecise methods of transformation
to introduce additional genetic material. These processes cause
severe changes to cell metabolism by disrupting existing architectures
or by activating defense mechanisms designed to cope with entirely
different assaults.
Methods
that release cells from the restraints of higher orders of hormonal
control (i.e., cell culture, a prerequisite for some transformation
systems) can cause wholesale and detrimental changes in metabolism
via somaclonal variation, as most probably occurred in the examples
most frequently cited by the anti-GM movement." "Plants can
also prevent the expression of virally introduced genetic material
via methylation of DNA, although this can perturb the normal
regulation of other genes.
Such
changes in the chemistry of DNA in turn activate transposons,
which propagate throughout the genome with disruptive effects
on all systems. This phenomenon can be exploited as a tool for
functional genomics but is generally undesirable if a novel
plant is to be considered substantially equivalent to an existing
food crop." "Undesirable outcomes also arise from the method
of DNA introduction (which mimics pathogen attack) or from the
random insertion of the transgene into sensitive areas of the
genome, often many times per genome. In particular, the effects
of imprecise insertion may not manifest themselves in early
generations since different DNA error-checking mechanisms are
activated during growth, reproduction, embryogenesis, and development."
"[Gene] 'silencing' observed in later generations [is] caused
by methylation of the transgene, which can occur in more than
50% of the transgenic plants in any one experiment.... the mechanism
of methylation silencing activation is unelucidated..." "[Post
Transcriptional Gene Silencing] is responsible for the useful
genetic modification technique called antisensing .... Antisensing
results in reduced expression of the native gene but is an imprecise
method of altering gene output.... for example, to increase
the storage time of soft fruits such as tomatoes.... contrary
to the textbook orthodoxy, the presence and position of introns
can affect the outcome of transgenesis considerably.""It
is clear from the above discussion that the introduction of
novel DNA into a genome involves the concomitant introduction
of gene-derived material into other systems, processes, and
mechanisms (for example, the introduction of novel protein into
the proteome).
All such introductions may alter the behavior of the system
and, via the multi-level integration of these systems and processes,
the whole cell...." ".... the use of transgene elements such
as the 35S promoter from Cauliflower Mosaic Virus to force the
subjugation of cellular processes to our whim will be seen an
unnecessary and inelegant use of power, akin to the proverbial
use of a sledgehammer to crack a nut."
However,
perhaps the most relevant comment by these authors is their
contrastingly different description of the overwhelmingly sophisticated
and precise operation of system functioning in natural non-genetically
engineered organisms: "The finest examples of powerful yet precise
control of biological processes are found in living organisms,
whose systems, after millions of years of evolution, are well-honed,
robust, adaptable, and capable of rapid response, yet are also
fail-safe, highly redundant, self-monitoring and -repairing,
and subject to both automatic and executive control or veto
at multiple levels." As the authors' piece makes clear it is
exactly this evolutionarily necessary precision which is typically
absent from the processes of genetic engineering currently being
used to modify the world's biological environment. This dangerous
combination of scientific ignorance and technological crudity
lies at the very heart of an irresponsible and commercially
driven genetic engineering stampede which is fuelled by the
irresistible lure of monopoly-generating intellectual property
rights. It is a stampede which specifically evades even the
most primitive consideration of the basic evolutionary context
of biological systems.
It seems most likely that this apparent process of deception
has been entered into purely to protect investment in an area
of infant science whose use in applied technology has at the
very least been introduced in a scandalously premature fashion.
In reality, however, it is clear that even the basic conceptual
thinking underpinning the development of genetic engineering
is wholy misguided. As part of this process it appears that
an attempt has been made to simultaneously dupe both the public
and their political representatives - always assuming, that
is, that the latter have not been consciously compliant. It
can only be a matter of time, however, before those elements
of the scientific community which have encouraged such distortions
of scientific knowledge are brought to account...
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