Fwd: GE crops uninsurable + GE humans next?

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" News Update from The Campaign "

GE crops uninsurable + GE humans next?

Tue, 2 Dec 2003 06:13:22 -0600

 

News Update From The Campaign to Label Genetically Engineered Foods

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Dear News Update Subscribers,

 

Posted below are two articles that provide a lot of excellent food for

thought.

 

The first one is from Wired News titled " Food Biotech Is Risky

Business. " This article explains that insurance companies are refusing

to insure genetically engineered foods. This is a good in-depth article

that sheds a lot of light on the topic of liability from genetically

engineered crops.

 

One of the most revealing statements in the article comes from Robert

Hartwig, chief economist for the Insurance Information Institute, an

industry trade association located in New York. Hartwig states,

" Genetically modified foods are among the riskiest of all possible

insurance exposures that we have today. And there's a good reason. No

one company knows where this path of genetically modified foods is

ultimately going to take us in terms of either human health or

environmental contamination. "

 

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) doesn't even require biotech

companies to notify the agency if a company is bringing out a new

genetically engineered food unless the product contains a known allergen

or has a significant nutrient change. And the Environmental Protection

Agency (EPA) is turning a blind eye to the potential damage genetically

engineered crops are posing to the environment. Further, organic crops

are being contaminated by cross pollination from genetically engineered

crops and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is acting like this

contamination of organic crops is not even taking place.

 

When these three government agencies are doing such an incredibly

inadequate job in regulating biotech crops, it should not be a huge

surprise that the insurance companies are staying away from providing

coverage for genetically engineered foods.

 

The second article is from The New York Times titled " When Fish

Fluoresce, Can Teenagers Be Far Behind? " This is a science essay that

poses some great ethical questions.

 

Science and science fiction seem to be coming together with genetic

engineering. No one knows what the outcome will be. But there are plenty

of reasons why citizens should be more than a little alarmed about what

is taking place. This article by author James Gorman will get you

thinking about some issues of real concern that will most likely be

developing in the not-too-distant future.

 

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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Food Biotech Is Risky Business

 

By Kristen Philipkoski

Wired News

 

02:00 AM Dec. 01, 2003 PT

 

 

(This article already posted to Alt. Med. Forum in a seperate post. Frank)

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When Fish Fluoresce, Can Teenagers Be Far Behind?

By JAMES GORMAN

 

The New York Times

December 2, 2003

ESSAY

 

Sometime in the future, when the distinction between cosmetologist and

molecular biologist has faded and gene shops dot the seedier urban

streets like tattoo parlors, the philosophers, moralists and historians

of science will try to pin down the moment when the new age began.

 

Science historians will probably say it started with the discovery of

DNA, or the mapping of the human genome. Others will claim it started

when Dolly was cloned and it became clear that the tools of

biotechnology had moved out of the high church of pure research and into

the unpredictable hands of people who bred sheep for profit.

 

I think the moment is now. And the creature that embodies the escape of

biotechnology into the world at large - a movement that will never be

reversed - is an aquarium fish that glows in the dark.

 

Genetically modified GloFish, developed by injecting genes from sea

coral into zebrafish eggs, will go on sale Jan. 5 in this country,

according to Yorktown Technologies LP in Texas. The GloFish are red in

regular light and glow fluorescent red under ultraviolet light. Similar

fish, but with different genes for luminescence have been sold for

several months in Taiwan.

 

This is the tipping point, when the world irrevocably turns toward the

science-fiction fantasies of writers like Philip K. Dick and William

Gibson, who envision biomedical technology permeating every corner of

the marketplace, from global corporations on down to small-time illegal

operations like stolen-car chop shops.

 

Imagining futures, much less predicting them, is a risky business, but

there's a nugget of truth in these fantasies, and that is that once

technology reaches the marketplace, it is transformed for mundane and

apparently frivolous purposes and spreads everywhere, legally or not.

 

Many groups and government agencies stand poised to confront abuses in

medicine, to protect the food supply and the environment from big

agriculture. Meanwhile, who is watching the pet stores? Or the beauty

parlors?

 

The science involved in creating the fish is not new. Genes for

bioluminescence were introduced into tobacco plants and carrots in the

1980's. Mice have been made to glow. No doubt humans could be made to

glow if parents with foresight knew that one day they would be

desperately trying to find their middle school child at a dark and

crowded school dance.

 

The fish were first developed to be indicators of polluted water.

Scientists set up the genes for the proteins that produced light to be

turned on by the presence of toxins.

 

The original fish were hobbled genetically to prevent their spread in

the wild. And there is not much worry about the new pets creating a new

crisis of global glowing. Zebrafish have long been sold without

establishing themselves in the wild.

 

But biotechnology itself cannot be successfully hobbled, despite the

best intentions of governments or the self-appointed guardians of our

health and food supply. The Center for Food Safety, a private consumer

group that has been keeping an eye on genetically modified fish for use

as food, has urged the Food and Drug Administration to regulate genetic

adventurism like the GloFish project. But it is far from clear that

bioengineered pets count as food or drugs.

 

There is no doubt about the human appetite for modifying the bodies of

their plants, their pets and themselves. Witness dogs, cats, parakeets

and canaries, pigeons, tulips, roses and plastic surgery.

 

" I think this is just an expansion of what's always been done with

ornamental plants and flowers, " said Dr. Lee Silver, a professor at

Princeton in molecular biology and at the Woodrow Wilson School of

Public and International Affairs. " It may introduce a lot of people very

quickly to the power and wonders of biotechnology. "

 

It may also suggest further advances, or outrages, depending on your

point of view. What we do with our own bodies is pretty open territory.

Plastic surgery is often, as they say, elective. So, imagine if you

will, that you could pay to have genes for glowing in the dark inserted

into your own body. How many glowing teenagers would there be? And who

would stop them, once they reached age 18? After all, one's own body is

one's own business.

 

" I think there's a distinction between what you do to yourself and what

you do to the larger environment, " Dr. Silver said. Society looks

askance at any attempt to change human evolution or tweak human nature

in a way that will be passed on to posterity. But if you could engineer

only yourself, there would be few limits.

 

The technical problems are serious because this is different from using

genetic engineering to create new strains of mice and other creatures.

To create these strains of mice, scientists start at the beginning, with

an egg cell. The difficulty comes in sending genes into the body once it

is fully grown to try to get the body's cells to express them. Dr.

Silver said this had been tried for medical uses but with little

success. " Somatic cell gene therapy is extremely inefficient, " he said.

It's hard to get the cells to take up genes and express them.

Researchers have, however, succeeded in getting mice to take up and

express luminescent genes in lung cells.

 

That's a beginning. And there's going to be big money in cosmetic

genetic enhancements once scientists do find a good way to send genes

into a human being and get skin, and other cells to express them. Skin

may glow, of course. Or people could choose a skin color they like.

Baldness could disappear. Fur may make a comeback - one's own fur.

Certainly any genes that make one more sexually attractive will find a

market no matter what regulations applied.

 

Athletes, who seem willing to indulge in self-experiment with relatively

little concern for their long-term health, would push biotech in another

direction. The Olympic Committee would have to look for genetic

enhancements for, say oxygen metabolism, buried in the genome. And pets.

The pets will be beyond belief. Just find a picture of the hairless

sphynx cat to see what we've perpetrated without stirring the genome

with our fingers. Then let your imagination run riot.

 

I'm not suggesting that this is a good thing. But like it or not, the

fish has left the barn. This is not going to stop no matter what anyone

thinks.

 

There will, of course, be holdouts - people who cling to the old ways.

They'll insist on living with the bodies they were born with, carrying

around cairn terriers in little baskets like Dorothy in " The Wizard of

Oz. " But even if they stay in Kansas, they won't be in Kansas anymore.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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