Fwd: Radio show on Wednesday + Time magazine on Pharm Crops

[Guest guest]

Tue, 20 May 2003 13:03:44 -0700

 

News Update from The Campaign

Radio show on Wednesday + Time magazine on Pharm Crops

 

News Update From The Campaign to Label Genetically Engineered Foods

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Dear News Update Subscribers,

 

Two items you may find to be of interest:

 

" TO THE POINT " RADIO SHOW ON WEDNESDAY

 

This Wednesday, the popular Public Radio International show " To The

Point " will discuss the recent World Trade Organization (WTO) case the

U.S. has filed against the European Union (EU) over their moratorium on

genetically engineered foods.

 

I will be one of four guest speakers on this show. Also on the show will

be the EU Commissioner for Health and Consumer Protection, David Byrne,

a spokesperson from the office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR)

and Dr. C.S. Prakash, one of the leading promoters of genetically

engineered foods.

 

I anticipate this will be a lively conversation since the EU says this

WTO case is unnecessary. And Dr. Prakash and I do not agree on the

health and environmental safety of genetically engineered foods.

 

If you would like to hear this show, you can listen on many NPR and

independent public radio stations or online over the Internet. Here is a

link to a list of the radio stations that play the To The Point radio

show:

http://www.moretothepoint.com/stations.html

 

You can listen over the Internet from 11AM-Noon and again from 7-8 PM on

KUOW at:

http://www.kuow.org/

 

Or you can listen over the Internet from 1-2 PM on KCRW at:

http://www.kcrw.org/grid/

 

I understand EU Commissioner David Byrne and the USTR spokesperson will

be on first and then Dr. Prakash and I will be on later in the show.

 

TIME MAGAZINE ON PHARM CROPS

 

The current issue of Time magazine has an article about the concerns

over pharmaceutical drugs being genetically engineered into food crops.

 

Time magazine receives a great deal of advertising revenues from the

pharmaceutical industry so the article is not overly critical of this new

science. However, it does point out several of the concerns from this

experimental and potentially dangerous technology.

 

The article titled " Cures On the Cob " is posted below.

 

Craig Winters

Executive Director

The Campaign to Label Genetically Engineered Foods

 

The Campaign

PO Box 55699

Seattle, WA 98155

Tel: 425-771-4049

Fax: 603-825-5841

E-mail: label

Web Site: http://www.thecampaign.org

 

Mission Statement: " To create a national grassroots consumer campaign

for the purpose of lobbying Congress and the President to pass

legislation that will require the labeling of genetically engineered

foods in the United States. "

 

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Cures On the Cob

Plants spiked with extra genes are being harvested for drugs. Could the

wrong ones land in our food?

 

Time Magazine

May. 26, 2003 Issue

 

By MARGOT ROOSEVELT

 

The scraggly cornstalks sprouting from pots in Andy Hiatt's laboratory

don't look particularly unusual. But woven into their DNA is a tiny

strip of mankind: a human gene that codes for an antibody to a sexually

transmitted disease - genital herpes - that afflicts some 60 million

Americans. When the corn plants mature and produce kernels, Hiatt's

company, Epicyte Pharmaceutical of San Diego, hopes to turn them into a

topical gel for herpes.

 

And that's just for starters. Epicyte is one of a host of biotech

companies that have seized on the information in the map of the human

genome - a map that was officially declared complete last month - to

create all manner of plant-based pharmaceuticals. Researchers have

launched more than 300 trials of genetically engineered crops to produce

everything from fruit-based hepatitis vaccines to AIDS drugs grown in

tobacco leaves. They call this biopharming.

 

Critics - and there are many - have another name for it. They call it

Pharmageddon. Environmentalists are worried that the unnaturally

combined genes, when loosed upon the ecosphere, will spread like genetic

kudzu. Consumer advocates, who have never warmed to today's genetically

modified foods, fear that plant-grown drugs and industrial chemicals

will end up on their dinner tables. Hoping to head off a public revolt,

the Federal Government is putting the finishing touches on new

regulations aimed at reassuring the grocery industry that human-based

crops will not contaminate the food supply.

 

But the proposed rules are not satisfying the critics or slowing the

biopharmers. Open-air trials of pharmaceutical crops have taken place in

14 states, from Hawaii to Maryland. A Texas firm is selling a corn-bred

enzyme that stimulates insulin production in diabetics. Clinical trials

have begun for experimental crop-grown drugs to treat cystic fibrosis,

non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and hepatitis B. " Molecular farming represents

the pharmaceutical industry's best opportunity to strike a serious blow

against such global diseases as AIDS, Alzheimer's and cancer, " says

Francois Arcand, president of the Conference on Plant-Made

Pharmaceuticals, held in Quebec City earlier this year.

 

What's driving this effort to morph fields into drug factories? In a

word: cost. In the past decade, the DNA revolution has spawned a

generation of drugs made from human antibodies, the proteins that white

blood cells use to defend the body against disease. Today such

" biologics " are cultivated in huge fermentation vats, often by

painstakingly planting cloned human cells in such unlikely breeding

sites as the ovary cells of Chinese hamsters. Building one of these

sophisticated biofactories can take as long as seven years and cost up

to $600 million.

 

Achieving the same results through biopharming - splicing antibodies

into the genetic fabric of plants, growing them in fields and extracting

and purifying them - could cut costs by half. " If you don't have to

spend half a billion, then more products can advance to the

marketplace, " says Arizona State University researcher Charles Arntzen.

The opportunities, he points out, are not limited to human drugs.

Arntzen foresees rich markets for plant-grown vaccines to protect fish

and poultry against diseases now being treated - and in many cases

overtreated - with conventional antibiotics.

 

So far, more than two-thirds of plant-based medicines are being tested

in corn - a plant whose genetics is well understood. But the perils of

using food crops became clear last December when the U.S. Department of

Agriculture (USDA) ordered the incineration of 500,000 bushels of

soybeans in Aurora, Neb. The soybeans, from a plant used in everything

from baby food and margarine to ice cream, were inadvertently mixed in a

silo with corn that was genetically engineered by a Texas firm,

ProdiGene Inc., to produce a vaccine against pig diarrhea. " Drugs have

side effects, " says Jean Halloran of the Consumers Union. " They should

not turn up in our cornflakes. "

 

The pig-diarrhea incident rattled the industry. Some major players,

among them Dow and Monsanto, are steering clear of the Farm Belt,

preferring to grow their pharmacorn in isolated areas of Arizona,

California and Washington State. Even so, the USDA - under pressure from

Midwestern politicians who dream of biopharm Silicon Valleys in Iowa -

has stopped short of restricting biopharming in major corn-growing

states. Its new rules would step up inspections of biopharms and expand

the buffer zone between genetically modified corn and food crops to a

mile. But opponents say that's not wide enough to prevent

cross-pollination, and a coalition of 11 environmental groups is filing

suit against the Agriculture Department. They want to ban the use of

food crops for pharmaceutical uses and restrict the plants to

greenhouses. If such measures were enforced, argues Jonathan McIntyre,

chief scientist for Monsanto Protein Technologies, " it would set back

the industry 12 to 20 years. "

 

At Epicyte's spotless laboratory, Hiatt is taking no chances. Tiny

tobacco leaves injected with herpes-antibody genes fill the incubators -

a backup, he says, in case corn is outlawed. And the company is

branching out, developing plant-grown antibodies to fight respiratory

syncytial virus, treat Alzheimer's, battle weaponized Ebola and even

attack sperm - a kind of biopharm birth control.

 

By the end of the decade, biopharmaceuticals are projected to grow into

a $20 billion industry. But how many of the new drugs will be

manufactured in living plant-factories remains uncertain. " There has

been an emotional response to the technology, " says Hiatt. " But if we

can bring down the cost of treating these diseases, the drawbacks

compared with the benefits will be minuscule. "

 

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If you would like to comment on this News Update, you can do so at the

forum section of our web site at: http://www.thecampaign.org/forums

 

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