February headlines

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Feelings about biotech depend on how the tale is told

February 20
Daily University Science News

That seems obvious enough, says Dr. Steven B. Katz, associate professor of English at North Carolina State University.

So how come so many scientists and policymakers don't get it?

"The important role that language plays in the public's perception and reception of scientific data and risk assessment is often neglected by scientists and program administrators," said Katz, who has reviewed many case studies, both in the U.S. and abroad, of controversial subjects --such as biotechnology -- that have been slowed or completely halted by public opposition.

"In many of these cases, public resistance, at least in part, has been traced to communication problems -- flawed rhetorical choices and faulty assumptions by scientists about the role of language, emotion and values in communicating with the media and public," he said.

Katz presented "Language and Persuasion: The Communication of Biotechnology with the Public," on Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco. He also offered some positive recommendations for facilitating biotechnology communication with the public.

Katz's examination of the role language plays in the biotechnology debate touches on a number of crucial issues: the effect words may have on the public; the way experts accommodate information for non-expert audiences; communication models for risk-assessment communication and the importance of public participation in the process.

Syntax, diction and the arrangement of ideas in communication all seem to play significant roles in determining its effect, Katz has found. "Even when a paper is 'clearly written,' word choice, style and order of presentation can have an effect on the public's reception, understanding and acceptance of communication concerning biotechnology," he said.

Sacrificing accuracy for general comprehension -- though necessary -- can also complicate matters if the communication about the benefits and risks of science, such as biotechnology, is not built on the concerns, knowledge and values of the audience, Katz said. If scientists have an understanding of their audience, "the information is transformed in that it becomes a different message, one adapted to the specific needs of the audience," he said.

Certain communication models, such as the practice Katz calls "one-way communication" -- in which the educator or expert does all the talking and the public does all the listening -- can be detrimental to the communication process.

No consensus can be achieved when this occurs, because the public is given little or no voice in the discussion.

"This form of communication will often devalue the listener or audience because the listener or audience is given no opportunity to provide input, ask questions or make decisions," Katz said.

"The values and knowledge of the public need to be respected, recognized and utilized in communication," he said. "There are serious implications for biotechnology research and industry if they are not."

(Reference: "Language and Persuasion: The Communication of Biotechnology with the Public" By Steven B. Katz, NC State University Feb. 18, 2001, at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting.)

Some biotech upstarts fizzle against native plants

February 20
New York Times

Just being genetically engineered does not make a plant any more likely to become an invasive or persistent weed, according to a huge new decade-long study published this month in Nature.

In what some researchers called the longest-term study ever of environmental risks from biotech plants, a team of British scientists found that genetically modified potatoes, beets, corn and oilseed rape planted in natural habitats were as feeble at spreading and persisting in the wild as their traditional counterparts.

Scientists said research should allay fears that genetic engineering per se would make plants more prone to becoming vigorous, invasive pests.

"It puts the last nail in the coffin of the idea that all genetically engineered plants are terrible weeds," said Dr. Norman C. Ellstrand, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California at Riverside, who was not involved in the new study.

But researchers, including the authors, emphasized that the new findings did not mean that all biotech crops would be environmentally benign either. Though these four crops did not muster any real threat, researchers said other genetically modified plants — endowed with more advantageous foreign genes — might have what it takes to invade and persist in natural habitats.

"The problem is you might find people who want to extrapolate way too far," said Dr. Mick Crawley, an ecologist at Imperial College London and the lead researcher on the new study, "people who want to say there could be no problem with genetically modified plants in natural habitats."

Dr. Crawley said the project, which cost in the millions of dollars, was financed by public and biotech industry money.

In the grand study, the team of researchers sowed thousands of biotech and conventional seeds (or for potatoes, tubers) in 12 different natural habitats and under a variety of conditions in each habitat.

What they found was that whether genetically modified or not, the crops did not stand much of a chance in any of the habitats against England's native plants.

In fact, nearly all of the crops of both kinds disappeared within the first few years of the experiment. By the end of the full 10 years, only one outpost of traditional potato plants was still hanging on.

"The bottom line is, with these genes, in these crops, there's no difference," Dr. Crawley said of the success of the two types of plants.

Dr. Crawley noted that the particular genetically engineered crops used in the study carried foreign genes that were not likely to give the plants an advantage that would promote their spreading and survival in England's forests, heaths and bogs.

The oilseed rape, corn and beets were engineered with foreign genes providing herbicide resistance — a trait not likely to be useful in the wild where farmers are not out spraying herbicide.

The potato was genetically engineered to have insect resistance. While insects can be devastating pests to farm and garden plants, insects are typically not responsible for keeping plant population sizes in check in the wild, Dr. Crawley said. As a result, insect-resistance is not considered a powerful advantage that will increase a plant's ability to spread or persist in natural habitats.

Since the crops tested proved only as noninvasive as expected, researchers say, the study did not shed light on the more pressing question: whether biotech plants engineered with genes likely to make them succeed in the wild could indeed become fast-spreading weeds. Scientists interviewed said good candidates for testing include plants engineered with foreign genes for drought resistance or disease tolerance.

In addition, Dr. Ellstrand said that the environmental threat investigated — whether genetically engineered crops could themselves become weeds — had always been low on scientists' list of concerns about biotech plants. Among other more pressing concerns are whether genetically modified crops can create problematic weeds by passing their foreign genes on to wild relatives.

Gene technology unsafe says ex-proponent

February 19
New Zealand Herald

A scientist who once vigorously promoted gene technology now condemns it as unsafe.

Professor Terje Traavik, head of the department of virology at the University of Tromso in Norway, told the Royal Commission on Genetic Modification that the first generation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) came from "crude and potentially unsafe [scientific] methods."

And he said the third generation of GMOs being produced now were no safer and should not be allowed out of the laboratory.

Professor Traavik, appearing on behalf of Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth during a two-day sitting in Auckland to hear evidence from anti-GE groups, likened the release of genetic organisms into the environment with chemical pollution.

But he said GMOs were more dangerous because scientists did not know how they would behave.

He gave as an example the insertion of a gene from the Brazil nut into soyabean plants which, although not known to cause allergies in humans, caused an allergic reaction in people who ate the soyabeans.

"Although the third generation of GMOs being produced now may have health and nutritional benefits, health and environmental risks apply to all GMOs," he told the commission.

The commission was also told genetically modified crops would not reduce pesticide use.

Proponents of GE technology have consistently claimed crops such as Roundup-ready soy, which has been genetically modified to be resistant to the herbicide, mean less use of toxic sprays and herbicides.

But long-time pesticides campaigner Muriel Watts, director of Soil and Health magazine, said the University of Missouri had found that weeds in a field planted with Roundup-ready soy were also found to be Roundup resistant and as a result applications of Roundup had to be increased.

Roundup-ready soy has been genetically engineered in the United States to be resistant to the herbicide so it can be applied without damaging the food crop.

Ms Watts said little was known about the effects on humans from pesticide and herbicide spraying, let alone what their interaction with genetically engineered crops would do.

Under cross-examination from the pro-GE Life Sciences Network, an umbrella group for industries and scientists who support the technology, Greenpeace said it did not oppose the development of genetically modified organisms, but did not want them released for field trials.

This week, the commission returns to Wellington, where it will hear from church groups, including Methodists, Presbyterians, Quakers and Jews.

It must deliver its report to the Government by June 1.

Cute, cuddly ... controversial

Ethical, safety issues arise as scientists try to bioengineer better food animals

February 19
San Francisco Chronicle column by Tom Abate

Student interns cuddled the three kids born just hours earlier at the veterinary lab of Jim Murray, an animal scientist at the University of California at Davis.

On the surface, the trio of young animals looked like any other newborn goats: awkward, spindly and cute.

But these kids didn't come into this world in the usual way. In September, when each was just a single fertilized cell, Murray used a fine glass needle to push a gene into each nucleus. The gene was supposed to increase the protein content of each goat's milk, which in turn would boost the cheese output at California dairies.

Murray's team then planted these gene-augmented embryos into surrogate nanny goats that gave birth last week to the latest controversy in biotechnology -- animals bioengineered to produce everything from more milk to leaner meat.

At a time when genetically engineered crops are stirring opposition, even the scientific backers of bioengineered animals are reluctant to push their creations into the market.

"To my knowledge, no transgenic animal has ever entered the food chain of the United States," Murray said.

In fact, what really worries scientists like Murray is that the controversy over biotech crops will stifle experiments to design animals that can better fill the meat and dairy appetites of a growing world population.

"Whether you like it or not, the past tells us that as people become more affluent, they tend to consume more meat," said Vernon Pursel, a biotech researcher at the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Beltsville, Md. "We're going to have to feed them on less (arable) space than we have now because the people are spreading out."

Critics say researchers with a vested interest overstate the need for bioengineered animals and overlook the risk that they might unwittingly create new health or environmental problems in the course of gene-splicing experiments.

"This is a technology in search of a need," said Margaret Mellon, a biotech critic with the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, D.C.

"You have scientists all around the world trying to get companies to take an interest in this technology" at a time when consumers are becoming leery of bioengineered crops.

At the moment, proponents and opponents of the technology are focused on the fate of a bioengineered salmon spawned with the help of a professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

In 1989, Berkeley's Boris Rubinsky was trying to figure out how fish survived in the Antarctic when he discovered that the fish had a promoter gene that pumped out extra doses of an antifreeze protein that was dormant in their bloodstream during warmer weather.

Rubinsky said the University of California patented his discovery and encouraged him to seek an industrial partner. The Berkeley professor eventually co-founded A/F Protein, a Canadian firm that put his promoter gene to a different use.

A/F spliced the promoter gene onto the salmon's growth hormone gene. The idea was to pump out growth hormone at a faster rate, which should allow the bioengineered salmon to grow to maturity more quickly than ordinary salmon.

Last year, A/F Protein asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for permission to put the faster-growing salmon on the market. "We have 10,000 fish swimming in a tank in Prince Edward Island," said Rubinsky. A/F would like to sell sterilized salmon eggs to aquaculture farmers, who would raise the fish for food.

FEARS OF 'FRANKENFISH'

Although Rubinsky said the company plans to sell only fish that can't reproduce, critics raised the specter that these "Frankenfish" would escape into the wild and outbreed native salmon. The FDA hasn't said when it will act or what it will do about the A/F Protein application.

Challenges to Rubinsky's technology continue on many fronts. Last week, for instance, the journal Nature published an article by Canadian scientists who suggested that the use of biotech stimulants to increase fish growth may yield fish with birth defects and other abnormalities.

Meanwhile, scientists meeting in San Francisco this week are debating why genetically engineered crops have become so controversial.

Kitty Smith, an economist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, will speak today at a symposium organized by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The event is being held at the Hilton San Francisco & Towers.

Smith suggested that experiments like Rubinsky's antifreeze salmon and Murray's milk-producing goats repeat the mistakes that caused opposition to the first generation of biotech grains.

The crops now on the market, Smith said, were bioengineered for greater disease resistance or faster growth -- improvements that benefited producers, not consumers.

"I don't see any market pull for animals that have characteristics that improve the ease of production," Smith said. "If animals were bioengineered for unique attributes that consumers perceived as valuable, like leaner, more healthful meats, there might be a demand for that."

Some animal bioengineers have already started to heed Smith's suggestion that they turn their attention away from production traits and toward what they hope will be a perceived benefit to consumers.

For instance, scientists at AviGenics Inc. in Athens, Ga., are in the early stages of trying to engineer disease resistance into chickens. Chickens today are raised in huge industrial operations that have a drawback -- diseases can spread quickly, decimating a flock.

To ward off infections, chickens are routinely fed antibiotics. In recent years, however, public health officials have become alarmed that the casual use of antibiotics is breeding bacteria resistant to current drugs.

FDA CURTAILS ANTIBIOTICS

Last year, the FDA began curtailing the use of some antibiotics in animal feed. AviGenics is working with Demegen Inc. of Pittsburgh to splice disease- fighting genes into chickens to fight conditions like salmonella.

"Our goal would be to create a chicken that requires less antibiotics," said AviGenics chief executive Carl Marharver. "What we're talking about is safer food products and poultry that have been administered fewer drugs. That's what consumers are saying they want these days."

Biotech critics are not impressed. Peter Rosset, executive director of Food First in Oakland, said initiatives like the AviGenics plan are only using biotechnology to cure the ills created by industrial farming operations in the first place.

Rosset would like to reverse the trend toward centralized agriculture, with its heavy reliance on biotech and chemical products, in favor of thousands of ecologically sound small farms.

"We need to conceive of other ways of rearing animals in integrated crop/livestock operations on a family scale," Rosset said. Properly run small farms would produce both crops and livestock more efficiently than giant corporate farms, he said.

Rosset's prescription would require an economic and social re-engineering that would reverse a decades-long decline in the farm population, as technology has increasingly replaced labor -- keeping a lid on food prices in the process.

One USDA economic report found that food expenditures, as a percentage of disposable income, fell from 13.8 percent in 1970 to 10.7 percent in 1997.

"Consumers in this country take our cheap, high-quality food for granted," said Matt Wheeler, a biologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign. "And the way we're getting it is because of technology."

SELECTIVE BREEDING

Wheeler, who specializes in pigs, said bioengineering is simply the next step in a series of genetic alterations that began 9,000 years ago when humans began domesticating animals. Ever since, breeders have selected animals with desirable traits and cross-mated them to increase the prevalence of those traits.

Since the 1940s, the rise of artificial insemination technology has accelerated breeding trends, allowing agriculture scientists to create large herds quickly by using sperm harvested from prize males to inseminate thousands of females. In the hog kingdom, leanness has been one of the most desired traits.

"From the 1930s, breeding practices have taken hogs from 50 percent fat to 10 percent fat," Wheeler said.

The transformation of dairy cows through technology has been equally profound. UC Davis Professor Juan Medrano, an authority on milk production genes, said a national database tracks the milk output of cows sired by specific males in order to identify the best breeding stock.

In the dairy world, technology has also given cows a bigger role in improving the herd. UC Davis animal scientist Gary Anderson explained how embryo transfer allows prize cows to have many more offspring than they would naturally.

Scientists use hormones to stimulate egg production. Eggs are fertilized by the best available sperm. These well-bred embryos are implanted into surrogate cows.

"We breed the best 1 percent of cows to the best 1 percent of bulls," said Wheeler, the professor from Illinois. Over time, such practices have boosted milk output to the point where a single cow today produces as much milk as 2 1/2 cows did in 1940, he said.

Biotech scientists like UC Davis' Murray fear public concern over bioengineering may halt animal improvements beyond those made possible through artificial insemination or embryo transfer. His experiments take time. He won't know for a year, for instance, whether his gene insertion caused any increase in the milk protein content of his experimental goats.

"We're not there yet, but we can see a day when we could engineer out the gene that makes some people allergic to milk," he said. "But I'm afraid that we could lose this whole technology."

By the same token, biotech critics see gene splicing as an invisible line that animal scientists shouldn't cross.

"There are too many unanswered questions, too many largely unstudied potential health risks," said Rosset of Food First. "We'd want a whole gamut of risk assessment research to be funded and carried out before we started eating these animals."

Victory for 'our name GM sites' campaign

February 18
Independent (UK)

All GM crops growing anywhere in Europe will have to be made public under a new EU law agreed after secret British sites were exposed.

The new law, finalized last week, will force the Ministry of Agriculture to change its policy and reveal precisely where modified crops are being cultivated.

However, in a separate development, Nick Brown, the Minister of Agriculture, is refusing to disclose which British farms have been hit by BSE.

The new GM law – approved by the European Parliament on Wednesday and agreed by governments and the EU Commission after three years of hard negotiations – imposes the toughest rules on growing GM crops in the world. And it lays down that every EU country will have to place details of the sites of all crops, whether commercial or experimental, on a public register.

The register was proposed by the European Parliament, but opposed for many months by the Commission and some governments, led by Britain. Negotiations between these parties broke down over the issue last autumn, throwing the entire law into danger.

But it was revealed in October that top-secret GM trials were under way in five English counties, even though the Government had promised that all of them would be made public. They were so hushed up that even Michael Meacher, the Environment minister, was kept in the dark.

Mr Brown subsequently published some details of the sites on his ministry's website. And, in the succeeding weeks, Mr Meacher persuaded him to accept the planned EU registers.

David Bowe, Labor MEP for Yorkshire – who conducted the negotiations which led to the law – said the registers should be in operation by next year: "The public has a right to know."

Tim Yeo, the shadow Agriculture Minister, praised The Independent on Sunday's "tenacity" in getting the Government to drop its opposition to the disclosures, which had long held up agreement on the law. "You have been the only newspaper that has championed this terribly important cause, and you can now take credit for the result," he said.

Patrick Holden, the director of the Soil Association, called the disclosure provisions "really excellent news". "There is no question that, without The Independent on Sunday, we would not be where we are now," he said.

But, even as the provisions were agreed, new evidence emerged of the Ministry of Agriculture's secrecy. It has long kept a list of the farms whose cattle have suffered from BSE. There are now 35,146 names on it, covering about half of all British beef-producing herds, but the ministry refuses to reveal their names even to help safeguard meat. Richard Guy, who runs the Real Meat Company and promises customers that his beef comes from herds that have never had a case of BSE, wrote to the ministry asking if he could double check his suppliers against its list.

But the ministry replied that the information could not be disclosed because it "was collected for animal health purposes and not to identify to the public those farms on which BSE has been found".

Mr Guy said: "This is the same old cover-up." He understood that the information was collected to give "the public the opportunity to act on such information to avoid, or not, produce from the known source. I find it hard to believe it was ever meant to provide highly secretive lists for the ministry to keep locked away."

Steer clear of GM labels

February 16
National Post column by Neville Nankivell