Scientists using the “second generation” of genetic manipulation technology have used gene-editing to alter the DNA of breed of cattle so that they supposedly do not grow horns. At around the same time another group of scientists claim to have injected human cells into monkeys to create chimeras, as in the ancient Greek myths of beings part lion, part snake. Earlier this year a group of Chinese researchers claimed to have deliberately gene-edited monkey clones with a mental disturbance. What few realize is that all this is taking place almost entirely without any serious health and safety regulation. Is this what mankind really needs at this juncture?
Gene-edited hornless cows
Scientists at the biotech company Recombinetics have filed a patent on cattle it has genetically engineered to not grow horns using gene-editing methods. They claimed the process to be safe and effective. However tests by scientists at the US Food and Drug Administration revealed that the CRISPR gene-editing process resulted in “unexpected alterations” of the genome, including “complex genomic rearrangements at or near the target site in 34 mammalian genome editing experiments.”
The FDA researchers found gene-editing errors in the genome of the animals that were being overlooked. They identified major unintended effects. The gene scissors used, known as TALENs, are often described as highly precise. However, the FDA research showed that apart from the desired gene sequences being inserted into the genome, DNA originating from genetically engineered bacteria used in the process was also inserted. Specifically, they found presence of unintended antibiotic resistance genes in the gene-edited cattle. Recombinetics reports that it is also developing a precision gene-editing breeding method to eliminate the need to castrate pigs. Unintended effects?
Human Monkey Brain?
In another recent application of the gene-editing technology, an international group of scientists working in China have used gene-editing to produce human-monkey chimeras. According to the Spanish paper, El Pais, a team of researchers led by Prof Juan Carlos Izpisúa Belmonte from the Salk Institute in the USA have produced monkey-human chimeras. The report says that the research was conducted in China “to avoid legal issues.” That should give pause.
Belmonte’s team states that the research is aimed at solving the problem of lack of organ donors as well as organ transplant rejection. Belmonte apparently has managed to produce both pig embryos and sheep embryos which contain human cells. They took cells from an adult human and reprogrammed them to become stem cells, which can give rise to any type of cell in the body. They are then introduced into the embryo of another species, such as the monkey or sheep or pigs.
Commenting on the implications of using gene-editing to produce human-animal chimeras, Prof Robin Lovell-Badge, a biologist from London’s Francis Crick Institute admits potential problems:
“How do you restrict the contribution of the human cells just to the organ that you want to make?” he said. “If that is a pancreas or a heart or something, or kidney, then that is fine, if you manage to do that. [But] if you allow these animals to go all the way through and be born, if you have a big contribution to the central nervous system from the human cells, then that obviously becomes a concern.”
Other controversial China CRISPR gene-editing experiments have involved adding human brain genes, MCPH1, or microcephalin to monkeys. The gene-editing scientist, Bing Su, claimed, based on very small test results, that the monkeys seemed to be “smarter.” Bing Su and collaborators at the Yunnan Key Laboratory of Primate Biomedical Research exposed monkey embryos to a virus carrying the human version of microcephalin. They generated 11 monkeys, five of which survived to take part in a battery of brain measurements. The monkeys each have between two and nine copies of the human gene in their bodies. University of Colorado geneticist, James Sikela is critical:
“The use of transgenic monkeys to study human genes linked to brain evolution is a very risky road to take.”
CRISPR Dangers
CRISPR is defined as a “RNA-guided gene-editing platform that makes use of a bacterially-derived protein (Cas9) and a synthetic guide RNA to introduce a double strand break at a specific location within the genome.” The widespread experimenting with CRISPR-CAs9, the currently most widely used, has only been around since about 2015.
Geneticists back in the 1970’s were restricted to costly labs using highly trained scientists and strict controls. With CRISPR gene editing, the process is extraordinarily cheap and seemingly easy to use. As one critic described it,
“anyone can buy some CAS9 for a few hundred bucks, any halfway decent lab can use it to alter the DNA of anything…We might be able to wipe out entire species on a whim…”
Lack of Regulatory Oversight
In 2018 European Court of Justice ruled that organisms that arise from a new technique called directed mutagenesis (gene-editing) are GMOs as defined by the EU GMO Directive. As such they should be regulated in the same strict way as GMOs produced in the EU using older techniques. The ruling was greeted as a sane, rational step to insure the health and safety of people and the planet is priority.
The interests backing CRISPR and other gene-editing, were not pleased. However, immediately the ECJ ruling was attacked as a departure from “science based decision making” and “backward looking and hostile to progress,” even though the judges carefully consulted a variety of expert scientists. The powerful GMO industry lobby has organized an effort to have the new EU Commission create “a new legal regulatory framework for these new techniques,” one that is far less restrictive we can be sure.
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F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation
- Author Name: F. William Engdahl
- ISBN Number: 978-0-937147-2-2
- Year: 2007
- Pages: 341 pages with complete index
List Price: $25.95
Special Price: $18.00
This skilfully researched book focuses on how a small socio-political American elite seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival: the provision of our daily bread. “Control the food and you control the people.”
This is no ordinary book about the perils of GMO. Engdahl takes the reader inside the corridors of power, into the backrooms of the science labs, behind closed doors in the corporate boardrooms.
The author cogently reveals a diabolical world of profit-driven political intrigue, government corruption and coercion, where genetic manipulation and the patenting of life forms are used to gain worldwide control over food production. If the book often reads as a crime story, that should come as no surprise. For that is what it is.
