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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.
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.
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.
Francois
Arcand, president of the Conference on Plant-Made
Pharmaceuticals, held in Quebec City earlier this year,
was quoted as saying, "Molecular farming represents
the pharmaceutical industry's best opportunity to strike
a serious blow against such global diseases as AIDS,
Alzheimer's and cancer."
The
story says that 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.
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, one process
involves painstakingly planting cloned human cells in
the ovary cells of Chinese hamsters.
Jean
Halloran of the Consumers Union was quoted as saying,
"Drugs have side effects. They should not turn up
in our cornflakes."
The
story notes that 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.
Jonathan
McIntyre, chief scientist for Monsanto Protein
Technologies was quoted as saying that if such measures
were enforced, "it would set back the industry 12
to 20 years."
Source: Time
magazine
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