Future with biotech: the good, the bad, or the ugly?
His research was directly related to our field of interest. He had received the prestigious (considered the most prestigious in most scientific circles) award for the "discovery of Introns in eukaryotic DNA".
This phrase completely changed my attitude towards the talk, as well as my enthusiasm level for it. My senses were immediately taken from my mobile phone, and I diverted my focus onto the stage. He was to arrive in a few minutes, and I continued to read about my new interest in biochemistry.
I found him to be a distinguished British biochemist and molecular biologist who had the University of Sheffield as his Alma mater for his Bachelor's and doctorate degrees. He had worked in Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory alongside The DNA wonder-boys, Watson and Crick.
He arrived, and the saying "never meet your heroes" embodied itself for me in the form of the Dr. He started by complaining about the microphone, the podium placement, and many other things. The topic for the talk was the "Importance of Genetically Modified Organisms", and he hovered over the distribution of GMOs around the world, how they have nearly solved world hunger and ended with him asking for "inputs" for his charity and organisation, that distributed GMO seeds to farmers across the globe.
Everyone thought he was winding up ahead of time, but then surfaced what seemed to be the main topic, but could also have been an innocent digression of a scientist.
He started vehemently defending GMOs, not against generalised or genuine allegations or concerns, but only against a particular worldwide NGO dedicated to protecting the environment against threats, by exposing them to world media. This took me by surprise for a couple of reasons.
First, I failed to understand why an esteemed scientist had to get involved with the murky politics that entangled itself with environmental legislation.
Second, I found it to be propaganda. I could not fathom why anyone running a business would need to diminish another business. I had no way of finding out if his claims that the NGO was actively trying to hinder his company personally by inciting legislative changes in the countries he was operating in were valid. But it was pretty apparent the said organisation was indeed trying to hinder the general sale of GMO-based plants and their seeds, citing a plethora of downfalls to the GMO revolution. They claimed environmental, ecological, and genetic shortfalls to GMOs, all of which, at first glance, seemed baseless to me, a biotechnology and biology student, who for the past five years had been learning how GMOs had saved Indian lives.
The query session ensued, and he answered all questions quite earnestly, to his own credit. But the questions were difficult. He was asked about phylogeny being harmed and about supercrops. The answers seemed ambiguous, with the statement that "such a thing has not yet been observed" being repeated.
We returned to class and, with our ecology professor, spent the entire lecture discussing the talk. Our professor shared his views, which seemed quite balanced, and on the same lines as mine. GMOs are not evil, but that doesn't mean they don't have evils.
The question arises… do the evils outweigh the benefits, or are they too many to ignore once we know all about them?
First up is the notion that by changing the genome of organisms (irreversibly, in most cases), humans are "meddling with nature." This might be the primary blockade for adopting the GMO revolution on a larger worldwide scale. Any GMO-based company must have faced pushback from a consortium of genetic purists and their organisations at every point. But this campaign has not been as effective in first-world countries, whose economies are majorly run by monopolistic capitalist firms, whose primary aim is turning a profit. In recent years, these nations have seen an increase in GMO seeds, plants, and meat.
The issue arises in lesser developed countries, whose governments are more in control and have stricter legislations and stringent regulations regarding what comes onto the market.
But it is a fact that GMO crops are indeed better overall. Then why is it that people are against them? Or is it even the people? Is it just these NGOs that are assuming a façade of popular or public opinion? According to a 2014 study on GMO legislation worldwide (Paarlberg, R. (2014). A dubious success: the NGO campaign against GMOs. GM crops & food, 5(3), 223-228.), it is the latter. The study's abstract quotes, "When it comes to GMO food crops, anti-GMO campaigners have thus won a remarkable yet dubious victory. They have not prevented rich countries from using GMO animal feed or GMO cotton, yet farmers and consumers in poor countries need increased productivity for food crops, not animal feed or industrial crops. Today's de facto global ban on GMO food crops therefore looks suspiciously like an outcome designed by the rich and for the rich, with little regard for the interests of the poor."
But this perspective does warrant exploring how positive the impact of GM crops and foods is on the nutrition and efficacy of the market, as well as how sustainable they are.
An aspect that can be investigated is herbicide resistance. Today, over 85% of GM crops are herbicide-resistant. (Network, C. B. A., Slater, A., Martynkiw, V., & Rehn, T. (2015). Are GM crops better for the environment? GMO Inquiry 2015.)
This invariably means that herbicide would be used more widely since the crop is resistant to the herbicide and not the herb itself. And sure enough, almost every study tracking the use of pesticide types suggests that herbicide sales will only continue to increase. While there is a slight chance that the advent of HR GM crops might be completely uninfluential on herbicide sales, it would not be a far-off assumption to make.
This means that instead of making GM crops resistant to chemical factors such as herbicides and pesticides, it would be a much wiser undertaking to make herb-resistant and insect-resistant crops. While this is under research and has been made possible in many crops such as Bt cotton (Kranthi, K. R., & Stone, G. D. (2020). Long-term impacts of Bt cotton in India. Nature plants, 6(3), 188-196.), we are still years off making a majority of organisms truly resistant.
A part of this is also the formation of superbugs. These are hypothesised to be insects that feed on food crops, but due to the high use of insecticides caused by the insecticide-resistant GM crops, they become highly resistant to the said insecticide. And it isn't only superbugs per se that could be a cause for concern.
Another concern is the insect resistance of crops. Developing such resistance is tough, and it is even tougher to consolidate all possible pests into the resistance mechanism (since a single species rarely has a single feeding insect). Although resistance decreases the population of one of the pests, the molecular mechanism ends up removing a major competition for a secondary pest.
A typical example of this is the bacterial Bacillusthuringiensis mechanism that has been widely employed in crops such as cotton and soybean, giving them the names Bt cotton and Bt soybean. Here, the bacteria, when activated due to infestation, secretes certain defence proteins, called crystallised proteins (or cry), using its inherent cry genes. This mechanism protects the crop from 2 insect families, namely the bollworms and the borer insects, using three different gene sections (cry IAB, cry IAC and cry IIAB). The reduction in the population of these families has led to the populations of a historically minor pest of the cotton plant, the mirid bugs, to increase. This has been extensively researched in China, where there has been a direct correlation between the rise of Bt cotton with the increase of mirid bugs (Lu, Y., Wu, K., Jiang, Y., Xia, B., Li, P., Feng, H., ... & Guo, Y. (2010). Mirid bug outbreaks in multiple crops correlated with the wide-scale adoption of Bt cotton in China. Science, 328(5982), 1151-1154.).
This is just one example of an intermingling of a handful of species, and no one knows how many more such examples are currently out there in practice, creeping unnoticed.
This puts into scale that we are venturing into new territory with nothing to hide behind. Mad scientists can no longer shout ignorance and genuine false hypotheses in an age of science where every discovery is an extension of the old.
In India, ever since the Green Revolution of the late 20th century, we have embraced research in GM crops and seeds with open arms. This will be necessary in a country where agriculture drives more than a third of the economy and must be protected to keep already impoverished populations from starving. Although Bt cotton remains the only legal GM crop currently cultivated in India, brinjal, tomato, and others will follow quickly, pioneered by GM mustard, which is in the last clearance stage. There is no denying that we need innovations such as golden rice, which will be monumental in reducing malnourishment, as well as preventing deficiency diseases such as night blindness, for example. (Stein, A. J., Sachdev, H. P. S., & Qaim, M. (2008). Genetic engineering for the poor: Golden Rice and public health in India. World Development, 36(1), 144-158.)
There is no doubt that reconsiderations need to be made on both sides. GMO revolutionists need to understand the ethics of the old world and manage them to promote their inventions further. Anti-GMO activists need to understand the need for these life-savers and understand that only by allowing the research on these organisms can we reach a state in which we will see actual resistance to the environment in crops and effective measures in human health, such as reinforced foods and gene therapeutics. The old guard must let down while keeping control for the new order to rise and flourish for the greater good. If such a balance is not struck, future biotechnologists will be as good as Prometheus, who opened Pandora's box and distributed fire to the world. Some were indeed cold and needed it, while others were simply looking to burn stuff.
Biohackers (Josiah Zayner, for example) are on the rise and claim complete control over their bodies. They inject themselves with muscle serums (although to no effect), only to demonstrate the power of genetic engineering and how independently it can be used. CRISPR, however, shows humanity light at the end of this afflicted and treacherous tunnel called genetic disorders. It promises therapy with no side effects. Not yet, but certainly in the future.
It would be highly hypocritical of me (and not to mention convenient) to weigh both sides and state that both are equal and that no progress can be made without expressing an opinion of my own. I believe that everything related to genetic engineering is the future. The future may turn out to be good, bad, or ugly. It is no different from the invention of gunpowder, dynamite development, or nuclear fission discovery. All have saved lives, improved connectivity, and created a source of seemingly endless energy. But these, in the wrong hands, have proved fatal.
Genetic engineering is no different. There will be people who misuse it, those who do not care for it, and those who will remain forever against it. But the tide is upon us. And it is, in my opinion, a much better strategy to ride it rather than stand and drown. We need GMOs, but responsibly and sustainably. The age where mad science could be ignored and even tolerated has passed. We can no longer do science without thinking of the big picture and the consequences of our said science.
We future scientists hold more power in our laboratories than anyone else has ever before. That makes our mistakes count just that much.
~ Mandar Tijare
Image References:
https://biologydictionary.net/intron/
https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/india/is-bt-cotton-a-success-governments-gm-mustard-move-reignites-20-year-old-debate-9463061.html
https://www.cropscience.bayer.eg/en-eg/pests/pests/cotton-bollworm.html
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