What's New in Life Science Research

The technology for creating genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is appealingly clever, and it opens up a host of possibilities for engineering crops and livestock to order. But how things work in theory (and in the lab) does not necessarily tell us all we need or want to know about how things will work in the world.

Consider transgenic Bt corn, corn genetically modified to express the Bacillus thuringiensis toxin, which is poisonous to many insects. The appeal of Bt corn is that it makes its own pesticide, poisoning the voracious insects that might try to eat it without the need to spray synthetic chemical pesticides that might harm the farm workers or even the consumers eating the corn.

There were early reports that pollen from Bt corn might drift to neighboring milkweed and harm "non-target" insects such as Monarch butterflies. The weight of scientific opinion at this point seems to be that harm to Monarch larvae is not likely, or at least not at the levels that would do significant damage to Monarch populations.

One wonders, though, how much research was done on this kind of "collateral damage" possibility before transgenic corn was being sold and planted in fields. Obviously, if you're attacking an engineering problem with some hope of actually producing a working solution in your lifetime, you can't consider every possible unforeseen consequence. Still, there are some impacts it's good to think about before you bring your product from the drawing-board, lab, or test field to the market. It's not nice to make the commercial farmer your beta-tester -- at least not when the stakes might include endangering other species.

There's something else that comes with GMOs being solutions to engineering problems -- transgenic crops are intellectual property which farmers need a license to grow. Not necessarily a cheap license, either. For obvious reasons, licensing fees may convince some farmers to opt out of growing GM crops. However, it's not clear that voluntarily opting out will always be effective.

By and large, our crops grow outside, in the sun, and the rain, and the wind. Our plants have evolved to take advantage of those gentle breezes to stay in the gene pool -- given the chance, plants are going to get it on. But what happens when those gentle breezes waft the pollen from a GMO to other crops? Suddenly that pricey corn plant's gametes are getting busy with the silk on the humble non-patented corn plant next door. What does this do to the gene pool? Will this intermingling of genes be desirable or not from a farming point of view?

And does a gentle breeze turn nearby farmers into unwitting biopirates? Will the companies licensing the GM crops mount RIAA-style prosecutions against the folks granted illegal GMO downloads by the fickle wind?

Perhaps a more pressing question is whether organic farmers be able to continue to use Bt, one of the few heavy-duty natural pesticides in their arsenal (and one, it should be noted, that they apply sparingly as needed rather than routinely). What if Bt corn results in Bt resistant pests? Sure, farmers growing Bt corn are required as part of the end-user agreement to grow a "pest harbor" of non-Bt corn nearby. As this is basically corn being grown to be eaten by pests, though, there's an economic incentive to be lax in meeting this requirement. And while the Bt corn can only be grown by licensees, Bt resistant pests will be available to all farmers.

That's evolution for you. Just because your side is clever doesn't mean the other side in the arms race won't find a way to catch up.

My point here is not to declare GM crops an irredeemably bad idea. Rather, it is to suggest that the environment in which GM crops need to "work" is incredibly complex. Engineering crops that avoid the sorts of bad consequences we might worry about in real life may be a more complicated problem than simply getting a plant to grow well with a foreign gene and getting it reliably to express that gene as it grows.

I hope the folks making the GMOs are working through the necessary refinements before putting their products into wide release.