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Genetically Modified Mouthwashing Bacteria
Moxen writes: "The BBC is running an article about a genetically modified bacterium that is intended to replace the existing lactic-acid-producing variety currently residing in your mouth. Once the new bacteria have replaced the old, you can apparently expect the elimination of 'most tooth decay.' Rather clever, if you don't mind playing host to a colony of GMOs."
This sounds pretty neat. I'd like to never have to worry about tooth decay again. I'll bet this would do a pretty skookum job of keeping my breath fresher, too. But... Do the scientists who've developed this actually have a clue?
Is this, for example, going to be so successfully alive in my mouth that it'll decide to live elsewhere too? Maybe it will kill my digestive bacteria? Possibly cause less functional first stage digestion in my mouth?
I suppose this, like any new GE type revelation, is one that is only testable imperically. I don't know about anyone else, but that kinda willies my out. Maybe we're creating bacteria-zilla, eh?
I find it surprising that many people I speak with about GE generally place it at the same level of complexity of *any* scientific discipline. Much as I'd like to think that I am a smart fellow because I know some computer stuff, the GE world is waaay waaay more complex than the one I live in. I am convinced that we do NOT have the ability to ensure any level of safety in the deployment of any GE in any form, whatsoever. We just don't have any way of being deterministic about outcomes of GE on any organism.
Maybe I am out to lunch. Please (PLEASE) prove me wrong - but GE seems to be very much a "what happens if we push *this* button" kind of discipline.
If it did spread through kissing, how would they make their money back?
Police Officer: I'm sorry, son, you're going to have to come with me. Seems like you've got an illegal copy of DNA sequence 9422136A residing in the bacteria in your mouth.
Why is Grand Theft Auto a much more serious crime than Reckless Driving?
Because of the Almighty Buck's all-mighty interests. :|
If we could be free of cavities forever with just one whiff of a spray, then half the dentists out there would be out of business, and so would toothpaste/brush industries.
I would sure like a bit of that spray though.
I have a genetic condition that weakens my teeth somehow. My grandmother had mostly false teeth when she turned 20 and my mother has the same problem. I brush my teeth like 5 times a day and I keep getting cavities. Most of my teeth have already been drilled at least once and I'm only 22 years old
More importantly, it seems implausible that this treatment is a once-in-a-lifetime affair. I might believe it would last a week, but no more than that. What if someone brushes his teeth? Even if one need no longer worry about cavities, brushing is still required to remove plaque and prevent gum disease.
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By intentionally creating something which is viable in the short term, we give a huge (and arbitrary) survival bonus to the changes we have introduced. When something evolves in the wild, it is given many more survival tests along the way as it gradually changes.
These survival tests are also test exposures for other organisms. If you are exposed to a totally new bacteria to which no human has been exposed before, you have no defences tailored to fight that bacteria, even though that bacteria may have been given (intentionally or accidentally) specific weapons to attack you. Humans are likely to have developed a resistance to any non-modified bacteria which they have been in contact with over the generations while it was mutating.
Why is Grand Theft Auto a much more serious crime than Reckless Driving?
Either way, if the new bacteria outcompete the old bacteria (which is the requirment for ensuring that they will take over your mouth), then the new bacteria will probably be better able to survive a Listerene attack than the old one.
Why is Grand Theft Auto a much more serious crime than Reckless Driving?
More importantly, hows it going to affect a breathaliser test?
Games Workshop Petition
But what type of alchol does it produce? AFAIK most alchol is poisonous to us. Even at the minute levels it would be producing I would think its effects over time wouldn't be a good thing.
Why don't they sample these people and isolate the naturally evolved kind, instead of trying to GM-engineer one? <conspiracy theory>Could it be that you can't as easily get funding if you can't anticipate reliable patent-enforced market and production control?</conspiracy theory>
<soapbox>We ought to fix the system somehow, so greed[1] and little-boy-in-the-lab enthusiasm[2] could be better harnessed for the common good.</soapbox>
<fud>Sooner or later we'll get the GM-biological equivalent of introducing rabbits into Australia, except the continent will be our bodies.</fud>
([1,2] Note that I didn't say to eliminate those things. Just to move towards more benign ways of getting rich and having fun. [2] I recognize that there are enthusiastic little-girls-in-the-lab too).
<more soap>Wouldn't it be great if the LCS/AI folks could engineer some cheap, programmable, incapable-of-self-reproduction, insect-size robots that would swarm on command into crop fields and mechanically chew up weeds and pest insects, instead of having GM-engineered crops that resist herbicides[3] and produce insecticides[3] of their own? We could stop fouling our world nest with poison[3], and let oceans, lakes, rivers, streams, etc., gradually recover instead of gradually die. Mother Nature could start thinking of us as a balm instead of a bad skin condition.</more soap>
[3] This is not a call for eliminating Monsanto-type companies and their profits. Just a wish that they would transform themselves and get behind something better than contaminating and poisoning the world.