Things Consumed

 

Animals as biofactories.

I've lost several dear relatives to cancer, but I still have concerns about some of the research currently moving forward to treat the disease. Anti-cancer chicken eggs produced (news.bbc.co.uk, 1/14/07) describes the us of chickens as "biofactories" - the animals are re-engineered to produce drugs for humans.

Some of the birds have been engineered to lay eggs that contain miR24, a type of antibody with potential for treating malignant melanoma, or skin cancer. Others produce human interferon b-1a, which can be used to stop viruses replicating in cells.

The proteins are secreted into the whites of the eggs. It is a fairly straightforward process then to extract and purify them.

I happen to live in a culture that (a) does not believe in preventive medical care, and (b) has a very wealthy for-profit medical system, in which the drug industry takes in amazing profits from those who have the luck of being insured, but often at an enormous social and financial cost. Genetically re-engineering chickens to treat a largely preventable disease seems like a huge technological project designed not just to treat skin cancer, but also to be the most profitable means of dealing with a problem which might otherwise be prevented by making cheap sunscreen universally available.

In my culture, insanely expensive cures are better than cheap preventive measures. Yaay capitalism.

I also have my doubts about extracting products from animals, since we already have trouble not making our problems with by extracting substances from other people.

This article links to Go ahead for pharmed goat (also BBC) discusses this:

Currently, anti-thrombin is extracted from human blood plasma; but fears about the possible transmission of disease, such as vCJD, make doctors unwilling to expose their patients to plasma products unless they have no choice.

(vCJD (World Health Organization at who.int) is a disease humans can get by being infected by eating Mad Cow. More on that momentarily.)

The way around this problem with contaminated human blood: to genetically engineer goats to produce the needed protein in their milk.

The idea of drug-containing eggs and drug-containing milk is much less creepy than most of the other gm-animal announcements that came out in the recent past, which mostly involve taking blood and organs directly from engineered animals. All of these extractions seem harmless to people who have no ethical problems with killing animals to take things that we want or need (a group that I am not a member of), but they raise further concerns because we know so little about what we're doing.

The AIDS crisis hit during my lifetime, which revealed that we had little comprehension of viruses, prions, genetics, and the basic characteristics of blood beyond simple typology. The same folks who thought that you could basically transfer blood from just about anyone to anyone else of a similar type without problems haven't necessarily convinced me that I should receive drugs sucked out of goat milk without consequence. I'm enormously relieved that they're just talking about sucking proteins out of eggs and milk - since they're still mastering the blood concept, - but a greater mastery of understanding both genetics, what we and animals store in our flesh, and bodily fluids would make this super-new series of experiments more convincing.

We still don't really accept the existence of Mad Cow disease in the U.S., and in fact the beef industry is so afraid of it that it is illegal to TEST for it. (I've written on this before: here's another example (organicconsumers.org, with a massive index of mad cow-related articles at purefood.org/madcow.htm). That's something that you get from eating what most folks consider normal "food," which is how it spreads. So, we haven't even figured out how not to get a terrible brain-wasting disease from the standard American dinner, yet it's probably fine to inject us with something they've just invented from the milk and eggs of animals that have never been modified this way before?

Presumably, we learned something about the spread of primate viruses caused by extracting polio vaccines from primate kidneys, which may be connected with several human cancers, which you can read about at the website of the US Centers for Disease Control (cdc.gov). Thirteen or so years of spreading SV40 through immunization ended when a connection was made: the virus now turns up in certain kinds of cancer, and we're not sure why. The CDC also has a page on theories connecting AIDS with polio vaccines, which reveal that an experimental polio vaccine was tested on chimpanzees in an area what chimpanzees happen to carry a version of HIV, and where an experimental vaccine was tested on people in an area where HIV infections later appeared. While the theory is hotly disputed (in part because the scientists involved are alive and defensive), since no means of having the disease jump species has been conclusively established, it's worth examining all possible, plausible avenues, and ensuring that we understand how things work.

Just like with so many genetically modified organism (GMO) ideas, this seems like something that should stay in the universe of research for a while longer. The pressures of money-making drag new ideas out into the public with great haste, however, and so the pressure to accept every new invention is very high.

I'd like to think we (collectively) have learned from past mistakes, but I'd prefer not to be injected with goat milk proteins just yet.

I'm still willing to eat organic chevre cheese now and then from non-genetically modified animals. Just so you know, in case you happen to have a fresh ball of chevre, perhaps rolled in crushed peppercorns, and some fresh bread handy. And perhaps a bottle of sangiovese. But if goat milk stops being JUST goat milk, that may change. (Come to think of it, I don't know so much about goat milk right now...)
posted by Arlene (Beth)10:00 PM

Thursday, January 18, 2007