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August 21, 2004
Genetic Savings & Clone: $50,000 per pet
Two kittens have been born using a new cloning method that may be safer and more efficient than traditional methods, a U.S. company said Thursday.
Genetic Savings & Clone promises to clone anyone’s pet -- for $50,000 or so -- and started with chief executive officer Lou Hawthorne’s own pet cat.
[As reported in this article in Wired News.]
You know, just in case you're concerned about running out of housecats once they evolve into something ferocious like the Australian dingo.
Posted by canton at 06:10 PM
Pet Dogs Became Dingoes
Once again, studies of mitochondrial DNA have revealed something interesting about the ancestral origins of species:
Aug. 3, 2004 — Dingoes, Australia's wild dogs, are descended from Asian domesticated dogs, not wolves, according to international research.
[Discovery Channel News, reporting on this PNAS abstract]
I love stuff like this. It reminds us that we humans (and our domesticated pets, for that matter) are not the pinnacle of evolution. More bad-ass stuff is yet to come. Take a look at this dingo, for example. Do you think Lassie would have a chance in an all-out claws and fangs battle with this puppy?
Kind of makes you wonder what house cats are going to evolve into...
Posted by canton at 05:48 PM | Comments (1)
August 20, 2004
Gulf War Syndrome and Monkey Viruses
Here's an article that brings up some tricky cause/effect questions:
Genes May Determine Who Developed Gulf War Syndrome [U. Buffalo news wire, Aug 9 2004]
The research showed that a certain gene predicted whether or not veterans who served in the Persian Gulf War would come with Gulf War Syndrome:
External or environmental factors do play a role in Gulf War Syndrome, said Vladutiu, but likely as triggers in those with a genetic predilection, rather than as the initial cause.
These triggers may be extreme exertion, heat, chemical exposures, infections, multiple vaccinations, emotional stress and a combination of these conditions or something else entirely.
This reminds me of another set of controversial studies, those focusing on people infected with Simian virus 40.
"Simian virus what?" Take note! SV40 is something YOU may have! Simian virus 40 used to be exclusively a Monkey Thing, but during the 1960's the virus hitched a ride into our species when we had the bright idea to manufacture polio vaccines from ground-up infected monkey kidneys. (Vegans take note.)
SV40, like HIV, can't be cured, and it probably spreads through sexual contact. Unlike HIV, it doesn't seem to harm you on its own. (There's a little controversy on this issue, however.) Without a doubt, SV40 doesn't kill you, so the chances are that someday it will become pretty much ubiquitous among humans, as will herpes and a whole host of other non-debilitating viruses.
So here's the problem with Simian virus 40. While on its own, SV40 may not be harmful to humans, when combined with asbestos, it's deadly. For a long time, researchers were puzzled by the fact that while some people who had minimal contact with asbestos died of asbestos-related cancer, other people who lived, worked, and breathed asbestos all day long for years never had any such problems. The breakthrough came when we realized that if you carried SV40, this made you susceptible to asbestosis. Our government, which was responsible for infecting millions of its citizens with SV40, tends to be a little hesitant to admit fault in all this. Understandably, there is some concern that people might not look kindly on preventative vaccination practices if this news got a lot of attention.
Anyhow, what's interesting about both these diseases -- Gulf War Syndrome and Asbestosis -- is that they seem to express themselves exclusively in the presence of certain environmental conditions. It kind of makes you wonder what other genes we have lurking inside of us, just waiting for the right circumstances for them to expose their secret nature...
Posted by canton at 06:34 PM
August 19, 2004
National Academy of Sciences: GM food safe!
The NAS recently published a report (available as a book, or as a free download from here) which says that genetically modified food is no way substantially different from non-GM food. It says that GM foods, just like regular foods, carry risks. The report admits that GM technology can cause these risks to pop up in unlikely places (e.g. GM insect-resistant celery that gives farm workers severe skin rashes) but stops short of saying that GM food is in any way less "safe" than non-GM food.
More specifically, the NAS report says that the substances that compose GM food can't be meaningfully distinguished from the substances in ordinary food. As such, the FDA is basically discouraged from treating GM food in a different way than regular food when it comes to safety.
Generally speaking, this report doesn't alarm me in any way. It puts forward the point of view that most reasonable science-minded folks hold, that GM food doesn't contain weird never-before-seen toxins, and that anyone who thinks that GM food is going to kill us is being a little foolish.
Unfortunately, it doesn't do much to promote GM food labeling. There are a lot of reasons we should require GM food to be labeled as such. For one thing, there are a lot of folks who don't want to help finance companies that are participating in the GM food industry. While GM food is probably safe for us, it's too early to tell whether or not it's going to mess up our ecosystem. Many consumers would like to vote with their dollars, and spend their money on traditional foods instead of jumping head-first into GM technology.
Also, while GM food is probably safe for most of us, it does risk killing a few of us. A while back, someone had the idea to improve the nutritional quality of soybeans by creating a transgenic soybean -- borrowing 2S albumin production from Brazil nuts. As it turned out, if you were deathly allergic to Brazil nuts, you would also be deathly allergic to this soybean. Consider the dilemma of someone who fears Brazil nuts. You grow up knowing that you're deathly allergic to Brazil nuts, and you learn how to avoid them and products that contain them. How would you cope if GM soybeans containing your allergen entered the market, but weren't labeled as such? Soybeans are everywhere, from baby food to breakfast cereal to McDonald's hamburgers.
So while a GM soybean is not "substantially different" from non-GM food, that is, while it doesn't contain weird proteins that we've never dealt with, that doesn't mean it's such a safe food that it doesn't require special FDA attention and labeling.
[Richard Caplan, U.S. Public Interest Research group] cites as a major weakness in the report its discussion of the potential allergenicity of genetically engineered crops. While the report authors agree that allergenicity should be evaluated "in every case" and that improvements to the current system are known and have been thoroughly discussed, it fails to call on the FDA to institute a mandatory pre-market assessment according to commonly accepted protocols like the one laid out by the Food and Agriculture Organization and World Health Organization.
U.S. PIRG has long supported a system that requires foods to be labeled if they contain genetically engineered ingredients, which would help to accomplish a recommendation of the report that the government should require that food labels include "relevant nutritional attributes so that consumers can receive more complete information about the nutritional components in GM foods introduced to the marketplace." The report also calls for a significant increase in transparency of data submissions, which would help remove the large cloud of secrecy surrounding whatever testing is done on genetically engineered crops. For example, a Monsanto study recently reported in Le Monde appears to show deleterious effects on rats in a feeding study of genetically engineered crops, but the company has failed to release it, claiming it as confidential business information.
"The fact is these foods are on our dinner tables right now," concluded Caplan. "Unfortunately there remains much work to be done to improve the system of oversight for genetically engineered food crops, and it starts by changing the current voluntary system at FDA to a mandatory one."
-- Environmental Media Services
Posted by canton at 04:07 PM