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Genetic Engineering's Brave New World
| Article
# : |
18719 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
8 / 1991 |
2,756 Words |
| Author
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Gail Dutton
Gail Dutton is an independent writer specializing in science
and technology. She lives in Southern California. |
Killer Tomatoes, the Eggplant that Ate Philadelphia, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles may indeed be figments of Hollywood's imagination, but the genetic engineering that spurred such flights of fancy is very much a reality. Sheep already have been engineered to produce pharmaceuticals in their milk, plants are being engineered to develop a tolerance to herbicides and the cold, and the gene that carries potato rot and cucumber slime is being eliminated from bacteria.
Genetic engineering makes it possible for scientists to add or eliminate specific traits from individual plants, animals, or microbes. Many of the changes brought about by genetic engineering can also be effected using traditional methods. But these limit the spectrum over which changes can be achieved to related individuals or species only. With genetic engineering, however, "It also is possible to move genes among radically different species," according to Norman Ellstrand, a botanist and genetic ecologist at the University of California in Riverside.
Also, traditional breeding methods in plants have introduced unfavorable traits such as dwarfing and absence of dormancy, which hinder their survival in the wild. Genetically engineered, or transgenic plants, on the contrary, may have improved abilities to survive drought, frost, salinity, or certain pests. As one example of the possibilities with genetic engineering, researchers at Biosource Genetics Corporation in Vacaville, California, have succeeded in altering the genetic structure of tobacco plants to make them produce specific proteins, such as the anticancer drugs interleukin-II or interferon.
As must become obvious, advances in the field of genetic engineering could mean progress on an unprecedented scale for all of civilization. But, exciting as these developments are, they are not without risks. "Genetic engineering became controversial in the early 1970s," according to Rebecca Goldburg, a biologist for the Environmental Defense Fund, because of the fear that mutants would inadvertently be given traits that could make them harmful. Largely due to misinformation and hype, genetically engineered species were being compared to many exotic microbes, plants, or animals that had caused havoc in their new environments.
A prime example of such fears was chestnut blight. According to John Cairns, Jr., director of the Center for Environmental Studies at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, the disease is caused by a natural organism that "had no enemies when it entered the United States at the turn of the
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