[extropy-chat] FWD (SK) Making Way for Designer Insects

[Terry W. Colvin]

Genetic Engineering Presents Potential Benefits and Increased Risks

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36943-2004Jan21.html?nav=hptop_tb

Making Way for Designer Insects

Washington Post
By Justin Gillis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 22, 2004; Page A10

The insect world could shortly undergo a genetic makeover in the
laboratory. Scientists are at work developing silkworms that produce
pharmaceuticals instead of silk, honeybees resilient enough to resist
pesticides and even mosquitoes capable of delivering vaccines, instead of
disease, with every bite.

Researchers are tinkering with insect genes to develop more than a dozen
new varieties, offering potentially broad social benefits while posing
complicated new health and environmental risks. Though most of the
designer insects are at least five to 10 years away from reality, concern
is growing that government agencies have yet to think about how to oversee
the research.

A new report scheduled for release this morning warns that the issues
posed by gene-altered insects are so complex that unless federal agencies
begin now to design methods of oversight, the necessary rules may not be
in place when scientists are ready to start releasing insects into the
environment.

The report by the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology, a think tank
in Washington, outlined laboratory work of astonishing ambition, with
goals that go far beyond the relatively limited uses to which genetic
engineering has been put to date.

Research is already underway, for instance, to create mosquitoes with
genes that render them incapable of transmitting malaria, with the idea
that the souped-up mosquitoes would be released into the environment to
spread their new genes into every type of mosquito capable of carrying the
disease.

Malaria sickens more than 300 million people a year and kills more than a
million, many of them babies in Africa, so any technology that brought it
under control would be a milestone in social history. Yet, in one example
of the complicated questions society will have to confront, it's
theoretically possible that rendering mosquitoes immune to malaria will
make them ecologically fitter, and therefore more likely to transmit other
diseases, some of which are fatal.

Mosquito researchers have said they are well aware of the potential risks
and have pledged caution in moving forward with their experiments.

The Pew report noted that someone is going to have to decide what kind of
research is needed to estimate the likely effects, and then decide whether
the benefits of releasing the designer mosquitoes are worth the risks. And
that decision will have to be made in a complex international environment:
Many African and Asian countries are ill-equipped to assess elaborate
genetic technologies, and their citizens are sometimes suspicious even of
simple technologies designed in the West. Just recently, resistance to
polio vaccination in some Muslim communities in Africa led to an upsurge
of that disease.

American regulatory agencies are likely to play a key role in overseeing
the insect research, since much of the laboratory work will be conducted
in the United States, the Pew report said. Yet only the Agriculture
Department has moved to assert jurisdiction, and only over a relatively
limited group of gene-altered insects, namely those that could become
plant pests. The few gene-altered insects likely to be ready for
commercialization in the next five years would probably be covered under
those rules, including an altered variety of pink bollworm meant to help
control that pest in cotton. But the majority of insects on the drawing
board would not be covered, the Pew report said.

The Agriculture Department, the Environmental Protection Agency and the
Food and Drug Administration all have congressional authority that might
give them some oversight power, but the agencies have yet to stake out
whether, or how, they will use their authority to oversee the full range
of gene-altered insects.

"We look forward to reviewing the Pew report," said Alisa Harrison,
spokeswoman for the Agriculture Department, adding that her agency was
already studying whether to broaden its regulations to include engineered
insects that might affect the health of animals.

Pew administrators said all three agencies know the new insects are coming
and have expressed interest in holding a large national conference that
would begin to tackle the issues.

"What we're hoping to do with this report is give the discussion a little
kick-start," said Michael Rodemeyer, executive director of the Pew
Initiative, a think tank set up by the Pew Charitable Trusts to study
genetic technologies. "The history of biotechnology is that the regulatory
system is always playing catch-up. The question here is whether the
regulatory system can begin now to think about who's in charge. What kind
of questions are we going to need to ask? What kind of tools are we going
to need to put in place to make sure the environment is protected?"

Some of the research programs under way have much more modest goals than
eliminating an entire human disease. In fact, some of the new insects are
likely to be commercial products of relatively limited scope, designed,
for instance, to control plant pests in a given crop grown in a region of
the United States.

The genetic modifications in those insects would not be much different, in
principle, than techniques already widely deployed. Control programs have
sometimes released millions of male insects sterilized by radiation, for
instance, as a way of limiting population growth in pests. One idea
scientists are pursuing is to release millions of male insects with
altered genes that always cause their offspring to die.

Other programs are designed to improve, or even to save, beneficial
insects. For instance, silkworms are being engineered to produce not silk,
but pharmaceutical or industrial proteins of various kinds. And
researchers are trying to design honeybees resistant to pesticides,
diseases and parasites, which have severely cut down the population of
beneficial bees in the United States.

But malaria researchers are not alone in their ambition. Some bugs on the
drawing board would be designed to control other human diseases such as
dengue fever, Chagas' disease and sleeping sickness. There's even a
research program that would use mosquito bites to deliver vaccines to
entire human populations, eliminating the need for doctors and nurses to
round up patients and use needles.

So far, consumer groups have cast a wary eye on the notion of genetically
altered insects, but they have not ruled out supporting some
modifications. Some farm groups have been supportive, seeing a chance to
control major crop pests. Most environmental groups have been
categorically opposed to the research, saying the effects of such
large-scale genetic tinkering would be impossible to predict in advance. 


-- 
"Only a zit on the wart on the heinie of progress." Copyright 1992, Frank Rice


Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1 at mindspring.com >
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