[CTRL] NRC warns on GMOs again

[Jim Rarey]

-Caveat Lector-     http://www.biomedcentral.com/news/20040121/02   January 21, 2004   NRC warns on GMOs again Report urges multiple containment systems for engineered animals and plants | By Tabitha M Powledge For the fourth time in recent years, a committee of the US National Research Council has warned regulators and developers of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) that science knows too little about how the novel organisms will behave in the real world. The latest report, issued Tuesday (January 20), argues that the safest way to make sure that a transgenic animal or plant cannot escape to spread its engineered genes in nature is to fence it off with more than one containment system. If one method falters, then others can take over as fail-safes. The new report focuses on methods of biological containment, but concludes that confinement methods for GMOs should also include chemical and physical barriers such as greenhouses and inland aquaculture pens. Because of their cost and complexity, biological containment methods such as sterilization and chromosome duplication will usually be the third choice, according to committee member Daniel B. Magraw, Jr., executive director of the Center for International Environmental Law in Washington, DC. “The current lack of quality data and science is the single most significant factor limiting our ability to assess effective bioconfinement methods,” the report said. Not all GMOs will need to be confined, and there is not much concern about potential dangers of transgenic traits now in existence, according to committee member and conservation biologist Anne R. Kapuscinski, founding director of the Institute for Social, Economic, and Ecological Sustainability at the University of Minnesota in St. Paul. But it is impossible to determine what percentage of GMOs will require bioconfinement. “We didn't get more quantitative than that because there is so much uncertainty,” said at a press conference announcing the report. Biotechnology Project Director Gregory Jaffe at the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington called on the federal government to adopt the report's recommendations immediately. “Until the science surrounding reliable confinement methods catches up with product development, only [genetically engineered] organisms determined to be safe without the need for strict confinement should be commercialized,” Jaffe told The Scientist. “Risky applications of genetic engineering—such as producing vaccines or other drugs in food crops—should not be allowed.” Val Giddings, vice president of agriculture of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, a trade group, said the report confirms “that technology providers have a variety of methods available to ensure confinement of organisms modified through biotechnology when risk warrants it.” Among the report's conclusions: • Whether a new organism should be confined (and, if so, how) should be judged on a case-by-case basis early in the organism's development • Most proposed confinement methods have not yet been experimentally tested • Pharmaceuticals and other chemicals that should be kept out of the food supply should be produced in nonfood organisms • Evaluation of GMOs should be transparent, with results available to the public • GMOs ignore national boundaries, so international cooperation is needed to regulate them • The possibility of human error should be taken into account The report noted in its survey of bioconfinement methods that they fall under three headings: reducing the spread of GMOs, reducing unintended gene flow into other organisms, and limiting _expression_ of transgenes. For plants, researchers have developed both actual and theoretical methods that target reproduction, but most are untested. Induction of triploidy can prevent cell division and reproduction in finfish and mollusks, but the method can fail and has yet to be tried in other species like crustaceans. Generation of all-female lines is a promising birth control technique for some commercial species, but not if males from related species lurk nearby, according to the report. Several approaches, most untested, could reduce survivorship of GMOs by “making them dependent on humans, either by genetically engineering the organism so that it requires an anthropogenic substance for its survival or by genetically engineering the organism so that it cannot live without an anthropogenic compound that blocks _expression_ of the harmful gene,” according to the report. In insects, radiation-induced sterility works, but can reduce fitness. Genes that make insects sterile may fix the fitness problem, but insects are so numerous that even a small failure rate could mean lots of healthy, hearty, potentially dangerous offspring. In bacteria and fungi, one approach is suicide gene—genes that make an organism vulnerable to a particular chemical or other change in an environment. But none have been field-tested, and no suicide strategies have been thought up for viruses, the report said. Links for this article Committee on the Biological Confinement of Genetically Engineered Organisms, National Research Council, Biological Confinement of Genetically Engineered Organisms, Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2004. http://books.nap.edu/catalog/10880.html  Daniel B. Magraw, Jr. http://www.ciel.org/Staff/magraw.html  Anne R. Kapuscinski http://research.amnh.org/biodiversity/symposia/archives/conserv ation-genetics/presenters/kapuscinski.html  Gregory Jaffe http://pewagbiotech.org/events/0627/jaffe.php    ©2003, The Scientist Inc. in association with BioMed Central.