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Would You Like Drugs in Your Rice?
Digitus1337 writes "Wired has the scoop on a new type of rice that was just approved for production by a narrow vote. 'Ventria believes growing drugs that produce proteins like lactoferrin and lysozyme in rice could be a cheaper way to develop drugs than building and maintaining expensive manufacturing plants... Opponents say growing the crops in open fields endangers organic and conventional crops, as well as human health...'" Update: 03/30 23:15 GMT by T : That should probably read "growing rice that produces proteins like lactoferrin and lysozyme."
these aren't antibiotics. these are naturally occuring proteins that are present in breast milk that help fight infection. once a baby is weaned off breast milk, s/he no longer receives these proteins. so the idea is to give the non-breast feeding babies a supplement made from this rice so that the infant has a constant supply of the protein.
given that these are naturally occuring proteins that everyone was exposed to as a child, i think the liklihood of bacteria developing a new resistance to them is low (otherwise, it would have happened sometime within the past several thousand years)
There have been documented problems that can occur after harvest as well.
I personally don't have anything against generically engineered organisms, only that you have to be very careful managing them. While they shouldn't be able to compete as well as "natural" varieties, all it takes are a few big screw-ups to destroy the industry.
Indoor growing helps, as do a number of other controls that can be put in place. Moderate regulation is a good thing, in my opinion.
most genetically modified foods aren't made for the direct betterment of mankind. rather they are modified for the betterment of the plant. So, rather than make a tomato that is free of salmonella, they are making tomatos that are yucky to tomato worms (for the most part).
The species that are being made for the betterment of mankind typically are done to rectify dietary defficiencies in a given population. For example, vitamin A rice for developing countries which often have large populations of people who don't get enough vitamin A (lack of causes blindness). The rice in this particular story isn't meant to be used to better all people, but (as i read it) to be a supplement for babies who are not breast-feeding (as it was engineered to have proteins naturally occuring in breast milk).
The problem with genetically engineering crops isn't that we are "babying" our immune system (that's a separate issue mostly involving the overuse of antibiotics). Rather, the problem is the overreliance on single species (such as the vitamin A rice) and the lack of natural diversity. Eventually an opportunistic pest is going to come along and decimate your rice field; a condition that would be limited if multiple strains of rice were to be grown.
Do we really want to risk our young daughters eating abnormal quantities of lactoferrin and risking a higher rate of gigantomastia and breast cancer?
I think you mean gynecomastia. Women don't get it, so I'd be more concerned about our young sons looking like young daughters, more than anything else. But your point is taken. Messing with the natural way of things hasn't always worked in ways we have intended. Putting iodine in salt worked pretty well, but the creation of a rice-based pharmacy when a substantial number of people depend on rice as their sole staple does merit some cause for concern, IMHO.
Yeah, but you'd never produce prions in this manner, or at all for that matter. Prions do a very poor job of catalyzing reactions and are completely useless for anything other than giving people vCJD. And I can't think of any other proteins that work when denatured. The shape of a protein is what gives its unique catalytic capability, denature it and that shape is gone, along with its functionality.
As for prions, not a lot is understood about them. It seems like they work by denaturing proteins, thus shutting down cell functions and generating more prions. They only seem to be a problem for nerve tissue, perhaps because of its low rate of division, but no one really knows. Also, while they do seem to be a large problem for herbivores (mad cow, chronic wasting disease, and a few other variants) they don't seem to have much of an effect on the carnivores that eat those herbivores. This seems to be true of people as well. Despite the fact that many millions of people (in Britain and elsewhere) have been exposed to BSE contaminated beef, there have only been a few thousand reported cases of vCJD.
Some researchers believe that natural herds of animals rely on carnivores to remove the animals with chronic wasting. While human hunters usually select the largest, healthiest animals, carnivores typically target the smallest, or weakest animals. This is a theory that will be soon put to the test as the elk herds in Yellowstone become infected with the chronic wasting epidemic that is sweeping northward through the Rocky Mountains. Researchers have noted chronic wasting starting to appear in the elk herds in Teton National Park, which borders Yellowstone on the south.
Also, CJD (the original kind of CJD which hits people in the later years of their life) seems to be tied to prions, but doesn't seem to be a problem for young people. CJD hasn't been tied to exposure to BSE, it seems that some people just get it later in life.