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Genetically engineered bugs on the horizon

If you think genetically engineered foods are scary, wait until you hear about biobugs.

Scientists are hard at work researching ways to genetically engineer insects for a variety of purposes. Under consideration: mosquitoes that act as "flying syringes," delivering vaccines every time they bite a person. Pink bollworth moth males engineered to pass a fatal flaw on to any eggs they fertilize. Honeybees engineered with immunity to diseases and pesticides.

Biobugs haven't garnered much media or activist attention yet. The corporations behind biotech foods have largely stayed out of the biobug field thus far, leaving it to university and government scientific researchers. But the Wall Street Journal, in a January, 2001 article, says it's just a matter of time before the issue becomes hotly contested.

The biggest worry about biobugs is that once released into the wild, they would be impossible to recall if something went wrong. Another is that genetically engineered bugs could become "super bugs," extremely resilient and damaging to crops.

"We need to be very careful because there is more that we don't know about gene transfer than we do know," Marjorie Hoy, a University of Florida entomologist and member of a USDA committee on biotechnology, told the Journal. Not all genetic tinkerers are trained to think about the broad ramifications their creations may have on the environment, she adds. "We're the sort who doesn't think much beyond the lab."

Biobugs raise many tricky ethical and logistical problems. For example, one idea under consideration is a genetically modified mosquito that would carry polio, measles and other vaccines in the Third World. Would people have to give consent to be bitten by the bugs? What happens if a person gets bitten by numerous Frankenmosquitoes, and gets too big a dose?

Government agencies haven't figured who has responsibility for biobugs. The U.S. Department of Agriculture focus on insects is restricted to those that bother crops and livestock. The Environmental Protection Agency and Food and Drug Administration, which are involved in regulating biotech foods, "lack either the authority or any great interest" in regulating biobugs, according to the Journal.

The first release of a genetically engineered bug was scheduled to take place in the United States in the summer of 2001. Scientists planned to release 3,600 moths, engineered to contain a gene from a jellyfish, under a cage within a three-acre cotton field in Arizona. The moths are the first step in an effort to eradicate the pink bollworm pest.