"Genetic engineering is evil". Discuss.

[baratron]

Disclaimer: this is cut & pasted from a rant I was having on irc earlier this evening. I haven't checked the exact mechanism for vaccine production or gene therapy against a textbook before posting this, so it's subject to memory. The basic principles are ok, though.

Genetic engineering is defined as the use of genes from other organisms spliced into micro-organisms to produce a useful product. It is not the same thing as genetic modification or "Frankenstein food". Genetic engineering uses specifically micro-organisms, that is bacteria and/or viruses - not macroscale food-type crops.

Genetic engineering produces insulin for diabetics. We take the gene that produces insulin, cut it out of human DNA with restriction enzymes, grab a handy bacterium, cut open a circular plasmid of DNA that's loose inside the bacterium, and splice the human gene in. Let the bacterium reproduce, and it produces the desired product.

Being against genetic engineering means that you want to deny life to the people who can't take animal insulin for whatever reason, because they NEED those gene-spliced bacteria to be able to produce human insulin for them. How else can we produce human insulin? It's not something that can be donated, because a healthy person produces only as much insulin as they need. It means you are against most vaccines, as vaccines are produced using genetic engineering. ("Traditional" vaccination means giving someone cowpox so they don't get smallpox. We haven't done that in a century.) It means you are against thyroxine for the many millions of people with some degree of thyroid failure, or against human growth hormone for children with restricted growth conditions or messed-up pituitary glands. To pick a less life-threatening example, it means you're against "vegetarian" cheese. Most hard cheeses contain rennet, which is an extract from the stomach of dead calves. "Vegetarian" cheese uses non-animal rennet produced by genetic engineering.

Gene therapy is another form of genetic engineering which is being trialed to treat people with inherited disorders such as sickle cell anaemia, cystic fibrosis and haemophilia. iirc, you take the correct gene, splice it into a bacterium, then splice THAT into a virus. Viruses are clever. The way they normally attack us is by splicing THEIR DNA/RNA into ours, and forcing our cells to make many copies of the virus. That's why herpes is with you forever, because it "lives" inside your cells. Given that a virus ALREADY splices its genetic material into ours - all you need to do to make it useful is to make sure that what it splices in helps in some way. So, if you put the gene that someone with, say, haemophilia is missing into a virus and introduce this modified virus to their body, it runs rampant and inserts itself into cells. That then means a small number of their cells contain the gene for making clotting factor. Only a small number will, the rest don't - but anything is better than nothing. Repeated therapies increase the number of modified cells in the sufferer's body.

I don't agree with putting fish genes in tomatoes, either - but that's not genetic engineering.

Comments

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

Remind me (or not) one day to talk about the person in my history class discussion class who blithely asserted that everybody knows that technology has never done anything good for humanity before continuing on with their comment.

[ailbhe]

But I like the wheel!

And fire. Fire is good.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

You're right, of course, but I certainly understand people's confusion. After all, your insulin-making description only needs an "and then the bacterium spits the gene into a plant" step for it to describe the kind of genetic transformation I work with. (We autoclave stuff scrupulously, which makes me very happy, The world does not need more antibiotic-resistance genes, and we've got to use something for selection markers.)

[barakta]

Well I know less than you do on this, but I hesitate to say anything is evil without knowing a reasonable amount about it. Thanks for clarifying genetic engineering, and genetic modification - that's useful!

I have had my rage against the Stupid this week for trying to convince me "chemical free" shampoo was better than normal shampoo. I wouldn't have minded, but the person in question is an astrophysicist and should know better about "chemical free" and question if they advertise on that lie, if they aren't perhaps being less than honest about everything else...

*gnash gnash* I hate 'bad science'!

hmm, 'normally'?

[bondagewoodelf.livejournal.com]

The way they normally attack us is by splicing THEIR DNA/RNA into ours

Actually that's only retroviruses. "Regular" viruses only have their DNA/RNA transcribed and duplicated by us making more virus proteins and viral DNA/RNA. At least that's what I remember from Biochemistry 101.

Re: hmm, 'normally'?

[baratron.livejournal.com]

I did say I hadn't checked all the details against a textbook :) The explanation I gave is what's taught at GCSE level, which is the exam people take here aged 15-16, and is assumed to be the basic knowledge of the population at large. (Pretty much everyone takes at least GCSE Single Science.) I have to admit I'm not altogether comfortable with the whole DNA transcription thing - it wasn't part of the syllabus when I did the subject (like the rock cycle), and it's one of those things I've had to learn since.

Re: hmm, 'normally'?

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

HIV is a retrovirus, so they probably use it as an example of viral reproduction to make it all relevant and trendy...

The best explanation of transcription, translation, replication etc I've ever read was a free magazine given to me. A copy of the Watchtower, in fact. It was excellent for four pages until they got to the bit that said "This is so cool that it proves God exists!"
Er, whatever.

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

Interesting that you make this distinction between genetic modification and engineering. I've never heard that before, which is odd given that I spent 4 years of my life making a GM animal. The processes are actually the same - to make an genetically engineered (and this phrase is used) animal or plant with a particular gene added, you take the gene you want from elsewhere, plus a promoter from the organism you'll be inserting into, stick the two together in a plasmid and the plasmid into a bacterium, so you can test for ages that the construct works, and then insert that plasmid into fertilised eggs / seeds of the organism in question.

Your new gene is under the control of the promoter you put in with it, so unless the construct happens to enter the host DNA in the middle of a vital gene or control region, all should be fine. You breed the organism for a few generations to be on the safe side, obviously. Using a virus as in gene therapy has the same risks of insertion in places that may cause harm, although in gene therapy you aren't modifying the germ line for reproduction, which may be the distinction you're making?

Personally I'm against GM being used in crops for political reasons - sneaky selling of infertile seeds to people who don't realise it, and people who won't realise they will need to buy expensive pesticides for evermore. On the other hand, they're trialling bananas with vaccines in, and considering a huge problem with vaccination is keeping the vaccine stable, usually needing refrigeration, that has huge potential (many vaccines and viruses for research are produced simply by injecting them into host cells to breed - chicken eggs being the obvious handy example)

But generally, I agree with you. :)
I wonder if we could get the Daily Mail to picket supermarkets selling veggie cheddar?
To quote Kary Mullis, inventor of PCR, "Why trouble, when you can get a bug to do it for you?"

[baratron.livejournal.com]

I only teach biology up to GCSE level, so my knowledge stops there. But this is the definition that's taught in GCSE Biology (if you take 3 separate sciences - Double Award Science doesn't include genetic engineering) and that is given in the syllabuses and textbooks. It may turn out to be another of those things like the Octet Rule in chemistry, where what you're taught at GCSE is simple, satisfying and completely wrong :/

Learning more about molecular biology has been on my list of things to do ever since I found out how much of it is actually chemistry. Someone left a university level textbook on Virology lying around at work the other week, and I ended up reading the first few chapters while the kids were working.

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

Oh dear. Sounds like the science textbooks Richard Feynman had to proofread - where stuff is simplified and then made 'relevant' and 'interesting' and just so wrong...

What is the Octet Rule, anyway? Is that the one about wanting 8 electrons in your outer shell to be a happy well-adjusted atom?

The molecular biology in A-level bio is fab, but I would say that as it conned me into spending the next decade on it! I have a very readable textbook (but heavy as in 800 pages of A4) if you want some cool bedtime reading. I have some small ones on viruses and development but I'm not sure if they're comprehensible without the general bio knowledge.

[mjl]

Maybe it's a subset, but surely genetic modification would also be genetic engineering? You say "Genetic engineering uses specifically micro-organisms", but checking a few definitions (with answers.com), they all seem to be more general than that - human/scientific changes of genetic material in living things/cells.

I'm guilty of having views about these things without properly understanding, and/or not saying what I actually mean. There's not much of that kind of thing that I'd object to in itself - the objections are of course to just some of the uses. Just looking at, say, the Greenpeace website, their headline is "Say no to genetic engineering", but in fact their specific points are much more reasonably defined.

It's something we struggle with at work - what we actually want to achieve and how we want to achieve it is easily enough for a 7 page document (indeed, we have a 7 page document on it). But then we have to get that message across on the back of a postcard to people that have no understanding of the subject, which is pretty tricky to do without over generalising and over simplifying. It would be nice if we could count on more than a few people to read more than a headline and a paragraph, but we can't...

[mjl]

That last bit isn't necessarily a defense for whoever you were arguing with on IRC, of course. It's one thing to have to oversimplify when you have limited communication, but if you're going to have an argument with someone that actually has some understanding, then you should understand the details as well.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Greenpeace promoting Bad Science is one of the reasons I don't support them. Same with Friends of the Earth. In theory, I'm a woolly ecological liberal who tries to be as green as humanly possible, but in practice, I can't give my support to organisations who use Fear Of Science instead of rational argument.

There was a language issue with the person I was arguing with on irc, and he did eventually agree with me, so it was all okay in the end. But the media really is bad for understanding scientific concepts and conveying them in simple terms to the population at large. Gah.

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

What have FoE been saying?

Having had to work a fair bit with them and other 'stakeholders', I've ended up with a lot of respect for FoE especially their lawyers, but none for Greenpeace.

Completely agree with you on the media. The Independent used to be rather good, but then the science editor left or something and it went downhill.

[barakta]

Yes that is my problem with a lot of 'eco-friendly' and 'green' organisations. That they will handwave over the science or make sweeping generalisms about a mainstream product claiming that their version is better/safer/more-eco...

I'm all for more eco-friendliness, but I would have to be sure that they were actually more friendly from start to finish of production, and that the difference wouldn't be better spent making something else more eco.

angeoverhere did her PhD on media portrayal of science and she's fascinating to talk to on the subject. I rarely read science in mainstream press these days, finding out most things from friends, or slashdot. I really ought to get a subscription to New Scientist with some of my birthday money.

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

I'm borderline working in the field (I only play with DNA in computers, not actual living things) and I haven't heard this distinction in terminology before.

I certainly don't think any of these techniques are intrisically evil, but I do think it's worth paying attention to what is being done with them, good and bad.

I also confess I don't quite understand the degree of opposition to fish genes in tomatoes - the reaction is strong enough that there's clearly something that triggers many people sense of "fundamentally wrong". But DNA is DNA, and from an evolutionary perspective, allowing viruses (engineered or not) to mess with your DNA is far "worse". But of course, that's "natural".