Biotechnology at the crossroads

Biotechnology is once again in the midst of a major controversy. Last 
month the British Medical Association (BMA) came down heavily against 
genetically modified (GM) crops and food products — both results of 
biotechnology. In Australia, food labelling has become a big issue. Amit 
Sen Gupta writing for New Democracy, the newspaper of Communist 
Party of India (Marxist), takes up some of the issues.

In a widely publicised statement, the BMA said that "The precautionary 
principle should be applied in developing genetically modified crops or 
foodstuffs, as we cannot at present know whether there are any serious 
risks to the environment or to human health involved in producing GM crops 
or consuming GM food products.

"Adverse effects are likely to be irreversible; once GMOs are released into 
the environment they cannot be subject to control. It is therefore 
essential that release does not take place until the level of scientific 
certainty is sufficient to make the risk acceptable."

The statement termed as "unacceptable" the present practice that some GM 
and non-GM products are mixed at source, and are not adequately labelled. 
It said that if the biotechnology industry persists with its stance of 
mixing GM and non-GM products,  imports of such products should be banned.

Significantly, the statement also pointed to the dangers of transnational 
corporations (TNCs) being able to use, to their advantage, lax regulatory 
procedures in third world countries like India. It said that regulatory 
procedures in the third world should be as rigorous as those in developed 
nations in order to prevent companies escaping legal constraints.

The statement recommended that there should be a coordinated effort by 
industries and governments worldwide to ensure that the regulations and 
provisions affecting GM products do not favour the developed countries at 
the expense of other more vulnerable developing nations.

What is biotechnology

Biotechnology is defined as any technique that uses living organisms (or 
parts of organisms) to make or modify products, to improve plants and 
animals or to develop micro-organisms for specific uses.

Biotechnology is, in fact, an old and well established science, producing 
products that are important and familiar to all of us. Breeding of new 
varieties of plants and animals, the making of bread and wine, the 
manufacture of vaccines — all these familiar processes use biotechnology. 

But in the mid-1970s and 1980s, several powerful new techniques were 
developed that constitute a qualitative leap in the area of biotechnology. 
These techniques allow us to manipulate living organisms much faster and in 
a more focused manner. They provided the foundation of what is called 
"molecular biotechnology".

Among the best known is genetic engineering or genetic modification.

Developed in the l970s, genetic engineering allows us to remove genes from 
one organism (e.g. humans) and put them into another organism to produce 
altered genetic material (DNA). The new organism, so produced, contains 
characteristics of both the donor and the recipient organism.

Other new techniques that have contributed to a new direction in 
biotechnology research include cell fusion and bioprocess technologies. In 
the former case two different kinds of cells can be fused — the result is 
a hybrid cell that has characteristics of both parent cells.

Bioprocess technologies allow genetically engineered cells and hybrid 
cells, as well as other types of cells, to be grown in large enough 
quantities to produce drugs for use in humans.

Ethics in biotechnology 

Advances in genetic modification technology occur on many fronts including 
the manipulation of viruses, bacteria, plants, animals, fish, and birds.

These developments have important impacts in agriculture, in the 
manufacture of chemicals and pharmaceuticals, in medicine and in the use of 
animals for medical research and therapy.

One set of concerns are related to the development of new concentrations of 
power in large chemical and pharmaceutical companies such as DuPont and 
Monsanto, that invest in, for example, genetically modified virus-resistant 
and herbicide-resistant crops.

The risk is that the increase of their power in the agriculture industry 
will result in higher prices that farmers have to pay for seeds and 
chemicals and ultimately in higher prices for consumers.

There is growing worldwide opposition to the granting of patents on 
biological materials such as genes, plants, animals and humans.

Farmers and indigenous peoples are outraged that plants that they have 
developed are being "hijacked" by companies.

While the corporations stand to make huge revenues from this process, the 
local communities are unrewarded and in fact face the threat in future of 
having to buy the products of these companies at high prices.

The transnational corporations are racing one another to manufacture 
pharmaceutical and agricultural products, the main ingredients of which are 
the genetic materials of the medicinal plants and food crops of these local 
communities.

The firms are also collecting other living things, ranging from soil micro-
organisms to animals and the genes of indigenous people, which they use for 
research and making new products.

Another concern has to do with a distinctive feature of biotechnology 
development: collaborations between academic and company researchers.

From the beginning, these relationships raised questions, centring on the 
prospect of harm to universities from too close an association with 
commerce.

Effect on health & environment

Let us now turn to risks to human and animal health and the environment. 
Many different kinds of development raise concern about such risks.

Doubts are being raised regarding the social and economic consequences in 
agriculture, of releasing genetically modified plants.

There are apprehensions of the risk that herbicide-resistant crops will 
become weeds or cross with weedy relatives and spread herbicide-resistance 
into weed species.

It is not an adequate answer to this concern to cite food needs of the 
world's population in the years ahead and the boost that such crops are 
projected to give to food production.

The world is heading for a major crisis in public health as outbreaks of 
new and re-emerging infectious diseases continue to occur with increasing 
frequency. The current strains of many pathogens are resistant to known 
treatments, some to nearly all known drugs and antibiotics.

There are concerns that at least part of this phenomenon is related to the 
transfer of genes across unrelated species of animals and plants (i.e. 
horizontal gene transfer).

The phenomenal increase in virulent infections and antibiotic resistance 
coincides with the commercialisation of genetic engineering biotechnology.

Genetic engineering is inherently hazardous because it depends precisely on 
designing gene transfer vectors (carriers) to cross wide species barriers.

The question which needs to be addressed is the extent to which genetic 
engineering biotechnology, by facilitating horizontal gene transfer and 
recombination, is contributing to the emergence and resurgence of 
infectious, drug-resistant diseases.

An enquiry into the possible contribution of genetic engineering 
biotechnology to the causation of infectious diseases is all the more 
pressing in the light of other recent findings indicating that micro-
organisms genetically engineered for "contained use" may not be effectively 
contained.

Setting boundaries

Among other considerations raised by the risks related to biotechnology is 
the question of how to deal with scientific disagreements, uncertainties 
and unknowns. These are issues for scientists and technical people, though 
not for them alone.

The risks in question from herbicide-resistant crops concern the release of 
genetically altered organisms.

There is disagreement among scientists about the risks of release, in part 
because research in this area of biology has not been funded as well as 
molecular biology; so we lack investigative findings. 

There is another feature to the debates among scientists, disagreements in 
the assessment of risks by molecular biologists on the one hand and 
ecologists on the other.

The molecular biologist is occupied with errors that can occur in the lab 
in the process of tinkering to arrive at a desired product.

The concern is with things that can go wrong so that the tinkering fails to 
result in a product with the desired characteristics.

In the lab, the molecular biologist seeks knowledge that makes it highly 
unlikely that some unexpected or uncontrollable sequence would result once 
the product is used.

The molecular biologist reasons that there is a high probability that such 
a risk, if it exists, would have to come to light in considerable lab 
experience with well characterised genes.

On the other hand, ecologists are concerned that control in the lab over 
the error of getting the wrong product need not ensure control over the 
error of getting unpredicted outcomes in the field.

Even extensive experience in the lab, they contend, is not likely to pick 
up information that will predict how an organism might fare outside the lab 
where a multitude of ecological factors are acting and interacting.

For ecologists, the concern is with the error of unanticipated consequences 
that might occur in an actual echo system.

For addressing this conflict over risk judgements, we need more research, 
bringing together people from different disciplines.

In the ultimate analysis, in biotechnology (as in many other sectors of 
scientific advancement), it is today necessary to work out several 
boundaries.

It is not enough to say because it is technologically possible to do 
something, there is no harm in actually trying to do it.

Similar debates are current, for example, in relation to the nuclear 
industry.

Modern science has made it possible to alter nature in a fundamental way, 
the consequences of much of which we are not even aware of. Unless 
boundaries are set to circumscribe the extent to which we are willing to 
proceed, the future may be fraught with unknown dangers.