Thought there might be some members on the list who would be interested in
this . . .
Jim T.


>===============================
>Following are the prepared remarks of ASPP member Nina Fedoroff presented
>at Sen. Kit Bond's (R-MO) press briefing November 30 in Seattle in
>coordination with the WTO meeting.
>
>Genetically Modified Plants: monsters or miracles?
>
>Nina Fedoroff
>Willaman Professor of Life Sciences
>Director, Life Sciences Consortium and Biotechnology Institute
>The Pennsylvania State University
>30 November 1999
>
>
>The term GMO or genetically modified organism has recently come to
>designate organisms, especially plants, which have been altered by adding
>one or a few genes through recombinant DNA techniques. This is now often
>contrasted with what is called "traditional" plant breeding techniques.
>The use of recombinant DNA techniques, collectively termed "genetic
>engineering" has come to be viewed as something altogether new and
>different from anything that "traditional" plant breeders do. Some even see
>it as "unnatural" and the potential source of mutant plants that could be
>harmful to the environment and human health.
>
>Oddly enough, traditional plant breeders are always on the lookout for
>mutants - perhaps it's worth reminding you that mutation simply means
>change.  The short wheat plants that gave us the Green Revolution were
>mutants - mutants that yielded much more wheat because the plants were
>short and  sturdy and didn't fall over and produced more seeds.  Farmers
>around the world planted those mutants, growing more wheat than they'd ever
>grown and feeding more people than the world had ever contained before.
>These mutants gave the lie to Malthus' prediction, about a hundred years
>ago, that the number of people in the world would soon outstrip the food
>supply.
>
>Norman Borlaug, the father of the Green Revolution, had to wait for nature
>to toss up the right mutation.  Today, using recombinant DNA technology and
>our expanding knowledge of plant genes, we can do it ourselves.  This is
>like the difference between having to depend on a lightening strike for the
>fire to cook your evening meal and learning how to make matches to be able
>to make a fire when and where you want it. My point is simply that rDNA
>technology is another step forward on a human continuum of acquiring and
>using knowledge to make life easier and food more plentiful.
>
>Now let's step back and examine the world stage on which these steps are
>being taken. The human population is roughly 6 billion - at least that's
>the official estimate as of October 12th 1999. At the beginning to the
>century, there were a billion and a half people on the earth.  The number
>passed 2 billion in 1927, 3 billion in 1960, 4 billion in 1974, and 5
>billion in 1987 - and today it's 6 billion, only seconds (on a historical
>time scale) after it passed the 5 billion mark.  Birthrates are coming down
>everywhere in the world - faster than expected.  That's the good news.  But
>the bad news is that we're still adding almost 80 million people to the
>population every year. This means that there will be another 2 to 4 billion
>people on the earth before the population stops growing.
>
>We are all increasingly aware of the fragility of our environment.
>Although we hardly give it a thought, agriculture itself is tremendously
>destructive ecologically.  So we face the dilemma that we must feed a still
>larger population, yet become better stewards of our environment everywhere
>in the world.  We can only succeed in doing so by knowing more and using
>that knowledge to make our agricultural practices less destructive and our
>food more nourishing. When we evaluate the risks and benefits of any
>particular innovation, such as the use of herbicide resistant crops, we
>need to evaluate them in the context of what we are already doing.
>
>What are the risks of genetically modified plants?  Well - if you're
>worried about the recombinant DNA techniques, it is already clear that
>there aren't special risks that result from using the new techniques
>themselves.  By this time, literally billions of genetically engineered
>organisms have been made and there is not a single report of a monster or a
>mutant that's out of control.  But does this mean everthing's ok and
>there's nothing to worry about?  Not at all.  What it means is that the
>kinds of things that we need to worry about are the kinds of things we are
>already having to manage.  They have to do with the kind of plant and its
>particular characteristics.  There aren't any useful generalizations here.
>
>Let's take one familiar case.  Many millions of acres, both in the US and
>elsewhere, have been planted with cotton that is resistant to a certain
>kind of major cotton pest, the cotton bollworm.  People don't eat cotton
>plants, so there aren't any human health risks.  But even for plants which
>people eat, adding the toxin doesn't create a health risk, it just adds a
>little protein - and I mean a little tiny bit - because the protein that
>makes them resistant is quite toxic to insects but it isn't toxic to
>people.  The good news for the environment is that in 1998, as an example,
>some 2 million fewer pounds of pesticide were applied to the fields than
>would have had this been an ordinary cotton crop.
>
>The genetic modification in these plants is that they contain and express
>an gene from the bacterium Bacillus thurengiensis, aka Bt, that codes for a
>protein that is toxic to the cotton bollworm.  What about the problem of
>"gene flow?"  Well, genes only flow between very closely related plants,
>because the only way they can get out is through the pollen.  But cotton
>pollen doesn't do a thing for other plants - only very closely related
>weeds and cotton doesn't have any close relatives in the US. So this isn't
>an issue for this kind of plant in this country.
>
>What about loss of gene diversity or biodiversity.  Concern over losing
>gene diversity arises because some people think that we now have lots of
>genetic diversity in our crop plants.  We don't.  We now grow the best
>strains on as many acres as we can.  GMOs don't change this substantially.
>Another concern is about the loss of biodiversity.  This means different
>things to different people, but the central concern seems to be that GMOs
>are so efficient at killing pests that we'll have fields that have no
>insects left, so the birds will starve.  The reverse is true.  The Bt
>plants kill only those insects that munch on them and only the small subset
>of insects that are sensitive to that particular and very specific toxin,
>while a broad-spectrum pesticide kills every insect in sight.
>
>But there are risks.  The Bt gene is being introduced into many crops in a
>very short period of time.  However we may try, we can't outrun nature
>forever and insects resistant to the Bt toxin already began to appear
>simply from the use of the bacterium itself, which we've been using in
>agriculture and in the control of gypsy moths for many years.  So the
>bottom line is that there are risks - they're mostly economic and none of
>these risks are unique to GMOs.
>
>Jim Watson, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, has said that this is
>the safest technology humans ever invented.  To this I would add that it
>has the potential of being the most environmentally conservative way of
>increasing the food supply as we struggle to slow the runaway train of
>human population growth with the slower fixes of education and economic
>development.
>
>Brian Hyps
>Public Affairs Director
>American Society of Plant Physiologists
>15501 Monona Drive
>Rockville, MD 20855
>301-251-0560 (phone)
>301-309-9196 (fax)
>[log in to unmask]
>
>
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