 Genetic Engineering Bioethics

Who we are  University of Chicago iGEM team  “International Genetically Engineered Machines” Competition  Create a genetically modified organism or “machine” every summer  10 weeks, 6-12 undergraduates and highschoolers  1 weekend at MIT  Lots of prizes

What is Genetic Engineering?

Who are Genetic Engineers?  Mother nature  Farmers  Scientists

Spider Silk  Creation of artificial spider silk by Nexia, a biotech company  Spider silk protein created by goats in their milk, then spun into silk  However, still not comparable to actual spidersilk

Insulin  Insulin—originally isolated from cows and pigs  1982 – Humulin, a biosynthetic human insulin  Attempting to optimize insulin production by expressing them in different things  Insert human insulin gene into bacteria

Penicillin  Directed evolution of penicillin strains  Inserted genes to make erythromycin (penicillin substitute) into E Coli, which totally worked

Genetic Engineered Foods I  Pest resistance  Herbicide tolerance  Disease resistance  Cold/drought tolerance  More nutrition  Soil remediation Pros

Genetic Engineer Foods II  Pusztai potato data  Pusztai reportedly fed rats potatoes genetically modified to have snowdrop lectin (which is an insecticide). the rats had stunted growth + immune system damage  Controversy: confusion over the lectin was from snowdrop (cool) or jackbean (poisonous)  research republished in october 1999, reviewed by 6 reviewers. "he paper did not mention stunted growth or immunity issues, but reported that rats fed on potatoes genetically modified with the snowdrop lectin had "thickening in the mucosal lining of their colon and their jejunum" when compared with rats fed on non modified potatoes" Case Study

Genetic Engineered Foods: Fears  "Human health effects can include higher risks of toxicity, allergenicity, antibiotic resistance, immune-suppression and cancer. As for environmental impacts, the use of genetic engineering in agriculture could lead to uncontrolled biological pollution, threatening numerous microbial, plant and animal species with extinction, and the potential contamination of non-genetically engineered life forms with novel and possibly hazardous genetic material." (  Unintended harm to other organisms  Reduced effectiveness of pesticides  Gene transfer to non-target species  Allergies  Unknown effects

Genetic Engineered Foods IV  Royal Society of Medicine says no ill effects from GM foods  US National Academies of Sciences says no ill effects from GM foods  Sources:  RSM:  US NAS:  What people are worried about are LONG TERM effects; everything is based on only 15 years of research Official Word on Safety

Ethics good summary of fears:  crossing species boundaries? (blurring the line btwn people and other things)  disease transmission - antibiotic strains of stuff that weren't antibiotic  alteration of animals for food  Altered species w/ human genes - humans?  genetic alteration of kids/eugenics  Foodchain issues/local, global effects