Epicurus
02-02-2004, 06:39 PM
As you might guess, I am against this.
Collette
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=486659
GM rice to be grown for medicine
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
01 February 2004
GM crops specially engineered to produce drugs are to be grown commercially
for the first time, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.
An American biotech company plans to start growing medicines to treat
diarrhoea in modified rice this spring. Its proposals were examined last
week by regulatory authorities in California, but they have no power to
stop the planting.
The rice will usher in a second generation of GM crops, which are bound to
polarise opinion even more than those that have already caused controversy
around the world. Unlike current crops they could offer real benefits to
millions of people - but they also pose far greater health risks.
Top officials at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
believe that the danger is so great that the new crops should never be
grown in Britain. But Downing Street has cautiously endorsed them.
The possibilities for growing drugs in plants - dubbed "pharming" - have
been researched for years, with scientists developing a wide range of
vaccines and other medicines in several common foods in the laboratory. But
now Ventria Bioscience, based in Sacramento, is to break new ground by
planting 130 acres with two new varieties of GM rice that will produce
lactoferrin and lysozyme, infection-fighting chemicals that it will market
for use in oral rehydration products to treat severe diarrhoea.
It says that this could generate enough lactoferrin to treat at least
650,000 sick children, and sufficient lysozyme for 6.5 million patients. It
hopes to expand production to 1,000 acres within a few years.
The company will not disclose the site that it has earmarked for the new
crops because it is worried that protesters will destroy them. But its
plans have already caused alarm in California's rice-growing country.
Organic farmers, in particular, fear that the GM rice will contaminate
their crops; the company says that there is "no risk".
On Thursday the arguments were thrashed out before a meeting of the
California Rice Commission, which is drawing up a protocol of conditions
under which the rice can be grown. But Tim Johnson, the commission's
president, told The Independent on Sunday that neither it nor the state's
agriculture secretary, to whom it reports, has the power to stop the rice
being cultivated.
He said that the commission was instead concentrating on working out
precautions - such as the distance the GM rice must be from conventional
crops - to try to minimise risks.
The chemicals in the rice are relatively mild - they are found in mother's
milk - but they are likely to pave the way for a wide range of stronger
ones. Scientists, for example, have developed vaccines to treat diseases
ranging from measles to hepatitis B - and antibodies to treat cancer and
dental caries, provide contraceptives and prevent genital herpes - in
potatoes, maize, wheat, rice, alfalfa, carrots and tomatoes.
The company says that its plants "will become 'factories' that manufacture
therapeutic proteins to combat life-threatening illnesses". It adds that
"plants improved through the use of biotechnology" can produce them "for
innovative treatments for diseases such as cancer, HIV, heart disease,
diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, kidney disease, Crohn's disease, cystic
fibrosis and many others".
Collette
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=486659
GM rice to be grown for medicine
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
01 February 2004
GM crops specially engineered to produce drugs are to be grown commercially
for the first time, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.
An American biotech company plans to start growing medicines to treat
diarrhoea in modified rice this spring. Its proposals were examined last
week by regulatory authorities in California, but they have no power to
stop the planting.
The rice will usher in a second generation of GM crops, which are bound to
polarise opinion even more than those that have already caused controversy
around the world. Unlike current crops they could offer real benefits to
millions of people - but they also pose far greater health risks.
Top officials at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
believe that the danger is so great that the new crops should never be
grown in Britain. But Downing Street has cautiously endorsed them.
The possibilities for growing drugs in plants - dubbed "pharming" - have
been researched for years, with scientists developing a wide range of
vaccines and other medicines in several common foods in the laboratory. But
now Ventria Bioscience, based in Sacramento, is to break new ground by
planting 130 acres with two new varieties of GM rice that will produce
lactoferrin and lysozyme, infection-fighting chemicals that it will market
for use in oral rehydration products to treat severe diarrhoea.
It says that this could generate enough lactoferrin to treat at least
650,000 sick children, and sufficient lysozyme for 6.5 million patients. It
hopes to expand production to 1,000 acres within a few years.
The company will not disclose the site that it has earmarked for the new
crops because it is worried that protesters will destroy them. But its
plans have already caused alarm in California's rice-growing country.
Organic farmers, in particular, fear that the GM rice will contaminate
their crops; the company says that there is "no risk".
On Thursday the arguments were thrashed out before a meeting of the
California Rice Commission, which is drawing up a protocol of conditions
under which the rice can be grown. But Tim Johnson, the commission's
president, told The Independent on Sunday that neither it nor the state's
agriculture secretary, to whom it reports, has the power to stop the rice
being cultivated.
He said that the commission was instead concentrating on working out
precautions - such as the distance the GM rice must be from conventional
crops - to try to minimise risks.
The chemicals in the rice are relatively mild - they are found in mother's
milk - but they are likely to pave the way for a wide range of stronger
ones. Scientists, for example, have developed vaccines to treat diseases
ranging from measles to hepatitis B - and antibodies to treat cancer and
dental caries, provide contraceptives and prevent genital herpes - in
potatoes, maize, wheat, rice, alfalfa, carrots and tomatoes.
The company says that its plants "will become 'factories' that manufacture
therapeutic proteins to combat life-threatening illnesses". It adds that
"plants improved through the use of biotechnology" can produce them "for
innovative treatments for diseases such as cancer, HIV, heart disease,
diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, kidney disease, Crohn's disease, cystic
fibrosis and many others".