https://www.producer.com/2017/12/playing-god-prepared-use-gene-drive-technology/#.WjOxcOF9xTI.twitter
Playing
God: Are we prepared to use gene drive technology?
The Western Producer, 12/14/17, By Robert Arnason
EDITED
New biotech advancement allows scientists to reduce and even
eradicate certain species, such as weeds or disease-causing insects,
prompting a significant environmental debate.
* It’s a technology with incredible potential and tremendous risks
* It could also have tragic consequences for bats and birds.
* It could have unpredictable impacts on entire ecosystems.
The technology is called gene drive. Gene drive, in basic terms, is
a tool to spread a genetic alteration into a wild population of a
certain species.
“It is arguably the genetic technology with more social, ethical and
policy implications than any other to emerge in the last decade,”
Sally Otto, a University of British Columbia zoologist, wrote on the
Royal Society of Canada website.
A U.S. National Academy of Sciences report said that in 2015
researchers used a gene-editing technique called CRISPR/Cas 9 to
drive a targeted gene through about 99 percent of a population of
fruit flies and mosquitoes. The research was done in a lab rather
than in the field.
Entomologists are particularly interested in the potential of the
technology because insects reproduce frequently, making it possible
to drive a desired genetic trait through a large population of
insects in a short period of time. The trait could be something like
sterility, which would reduce the overall population of pests.
The opportunity to control agricultural pests could be limitless,
but many scientists are worried about the possibilities made famous
by former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: the known unknowns
and unknown unknowns of gene drive.
One of the major concerns is that it’s more powerful than
established biotechnology. According to Sally Otto, “What’s
different about this technology is it’s not just capable of
modifying a single organism, but spreading throughout a species….
(It’s) a much broader implication than genetic engineering of a
single individual.”
Controlling the geographic spread of the gene is worrisome, as is
the remote possibility of the gene spreading to other species.
For Patrick Tranel, a weed scientist at the University of Illinois,
the technical reality of gene drive is forcing policy makers to
answer a profound question: is it ethical to extinguish a species,
even a pest that spreads disease? “There are very few organisms in
the world that we have enough understanding that we would want to
(drive it) to extinction,” he said.
There’s also the secondary impact of that extinction. What would the
loss of an insect species mean to bats and birds that feed on that
insect? How does the loss of that insect, or a reduced population,
affect the entire ecosystem?
Using CRISPR gene editing to construct a gene drive
has been around only since 2015, but the scientific and ethical
debate over the technology is becoming louder.
A number of biologists say the only option is a complete ban of gene
drive because there are too many unknowns.
Polling in 2016 and 2017 shows that 40 to 50 percent of North
Americans think GM food is bad for their health.
With that level of public distrust, developers of gene drive
technology for agriculture could face massive public opposition and
severe regulatory hurdles.
In July of 2017, the U.S. Department of Defense’s Advanced Research
Projects Agency provided $65 million in funding to seven teams of
scientists to study gene drive.
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