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Wednesday, July 4, 2001 Pity the poor mad scientist The biotechnology boffins can't understand why everybody seems out to get them. All they want to do is save the world, reports Gay Alcorn. The world's biggest biotechnology convention, in California last week, needed a motivational speaker, so organisers hired a Canadian mountaineer, Alan Hobson, who had been saved from leukaemia last year by a remarkable procedure called a "stem cell transplant". Hobson showed his mostly middle-aged audience of scientists and business executives a video of him on top of Mount Everest, declaring: "If you persist enough you can do the dreams". The biotechnologists saw Hobson as a metaphor for their own struggles. Last year he was told he would shortly die from leukaemia, but the stem cell transplant has made him a "human hybrid" whose blood now contains the DNA of his brother, Eric. Hobson delighted the convention delegates by telling them that "in the palm of your hands lies the health and welfare of 6 billion people, the entire world population". They believe it themselves, firmly convinced that they will shortly be able to cure cancer, diabetes, Parkinson's disease, and Alzheimer's and then go ahead and feed the globe. Despite their optimism, there was a sense of anxiety among the 14,000 participants at the BIO2001 convention, and when Hobson repeated his mantra, "Can, Will", they took it personally, jumping to their feet for a standing ovation. Protesters drifted away from the convention in the Californian beach city of San Diego, but the delegates knew it didn't mean they had no public relations problem. Surveys released last week showed a burgeoning consumer revolt, with almost 60 per cent of Americans, especially the highly educated, opposing the introduction of genetically modified (GM) food into supermarkets (even though more than half of foods in the US already contain such ingredients). The Americans dominate the industry and have been mostly sanguine about genetically modified foods. But that is changing, with three-quarters wanting what the Europeans and Australians have - mandatory labelling of food that has been genetically tampered with. Industry gets excited that salmon can be grown twice as big as conventional fish, offering cheaper salmon and bigger profits. But the vast majority of people don't want it. The medical stream of biotechnology, the manipulation of living organisms for the use of human beings, promises a revolution in disease prevention and control. Already, the era is upon us, with 400 genetic tests available to help patients assess their risk of disease. Since scientists announced this year that there are 30,000 genes in each cell, industries are scouring the keys to genetic therapies, patents and profits, although cures for major diseases remain, for now, elusive. Medical biotechnology's image is threatened by mavericks who have pledged to clone a human being in the next few years, despite countries, including Australia, looking to ban human cloning for reproductive purposes. Ethicists and right-to-life advocates warn that scientists cannot control what they have started. Carl Feldbaum, the president of the convention's host, the Biotechnology Industry Organisation (BIO), told the delegates they had to listen to those on the Left and Right who "portray us as godless or as playing gods", as well as those who warn that "humans are not morally equipped to use the great power conferred on them by technology, especially biotechnology". Despite the sense at the convention that humanity was on the cusp of a revolutionary golden age, the conference's core was old-style capitalism, with dreams of big profits as dizzying as those predicted by the dot com entrepreneurs of the late '90s. In the US, biotechnology revenues reached $US23 billion last year, accordingly to BIO, which represents industry, academic institutes and other groups. Australia neglected biotech until recently but is aggressively trying to catch up to countries like Israel and Canada. Canberra announced this week that biotechnology was now worth $1 billion a year. Australia had a contingent of about 300 delegates at the conference from government, academia and industry, with Victorian Premier Steve Bracks and his Queensland counterpart, Peter Beattie, vying for national pre-eminence. Bill Wickson manned the booth for Biomira, a spin-off company from the University of Alberta in Canada, that is conducting clinical trials, including in Australia, for a non-toxic vaccine for metastatic breast cancer. At an earlier trial, those not using the treatment survived 9.2 months and those who did survived 26.5 months. With American authorities giving it fast-track status because of its potential, it could be on the market by 2004. Wickson said it would eventually be offered to women who have a high risk of breast cancer, or earlier stages of cancer. He was blunt about why Biomira was at the convention. "We have to get out there and get known in the US to have a better share price for our investors. Some people believe were about 28 per cent undervalued. You look at companies in the US who are at phase two in clinical trials and they're worth more than we are and we're close to commercialisation." He talks of $US500 million ($975 million) sales a year for the breast cancer treatment and $1 billion a year for another product for lung cancer, also in trials. There were dollar signs in the eyes of delegates. There was also fear that public enthusiasm for new treatments could be slowed, if not halted, by libertarian scientists unwilling to accept limits. This year, a Kentucky fertility doctor, Panayiotis Zavos, announced that he and a team of foreign scientists were fast-tracking cloning to help infertile couples. That would mean offspring would have the genes of only one adult, rather than a mixture of a mother and father. In animals, cloning has proved extremely difficult, with most resulting in deformities and early death, but Zavos says science cannot be halted. "This country was built on cowboys," he said. "Cowboys are the guys that get the job done." A more immediate threat to the industry is President George Bush's pending decision on whether to allow federal funds to be used in research on embryonic stem cells. These are cells from days-old embryos which have the ability to grow into healthy cells and tissues and which scientists believe hold the best hope for cures for ailments from Parkinson's to paralysis. Australian governments are grappling with this issue, and Bush is being pressured by anti-abortion groups to ban federal funding outright because it destroys the embryo (even if the cells come from IVF embryos that would otherwise be destroyed). The moratorium on funds is holding up two applications for funding from America's National Institutes of Health, one of which is from Melbourne researchers Alan Trouson and Martin Pera. Yet another complication is that scientists, while supporting a ban on human cloning for reproduction, support therapeutic cloning. That would allow cloning a patient's own tissue for use in treatment, but politicians and the public don't seem to understand the distinction. Craig Venter, whose company Celera was, with a public venture, the first to break the human genetic code, told the convention about Pennsylvania lawmakers who were asked where the human genome resides. One third said the brain, one third said the gonads and the rest didn't know. It exists in every cell. "It is important that we don't go too far with the legislation if we don't understand the issues," said Venter. While the public sees clear benefits in medical biotechnology, even if it fears its excesses, it is deeply sceptical of inserting genes of one plant or animal organism into another to make food more pest resistant, more hardy, or more nutritious. There is no evidence that the foods are unsafe for human consumption, but critics fear that the long-term health consequences are unknown and that escape of the foreign products could irreversibly contaminate traditional crops. Critics such as Greenpeace also believe biotech companies have a strategy to flood the market with GM foods so that they are so prevalent it would be impossible to halt or reverse their growth. For instance, about 90 per cent of the world's corn and soya beans are grown in the US, Argentina and Brazil, with only Brazil resisting GM food. If it succumbs, then the already growing problem of stopping food companies getting GM-free food would be almost insurmountable. The biotech industries, including the world's largest agribusiness company Monsanto, have joined forces to form the Council for Biotechnology Information. The PR initiative last year spent $US30 million in advertising to extol the benefits of "genetically enhanced" food. The companies say such food could eradicate malnutrition in Africa, Asia and South America through pest and drought resistant food, as well as products such as the well-publicised Golden Rice. The rice, still at the greenhouse stage, is infused with daffodil genes and a bacteria gene to add vitamin A, and its developers say it has the potential to dramatically reduce malnutrition and blindness in Third World children. Florence Wambugu, a Kenyan scientist and former employee of Monsanto, released a book during the convention extolling the potential of genetically engineered food for developing nations. Those who "reject biotechnology do so on full stomachs", she wrote. Maize crops can be devastated by an insect pest, she said. Banana farmers can lose their entire harvest to a disease called black sigatoka. Wambugu does not deny the risk of "gene escape", where genes introduced to GM crops can be transferred to other organisms via the wind or insects, but says such problems can be managed. "Far from making us prey to global capitalistic forces that are beyond our control, biotechnology will empower us to shape the future of our continent.'' Greeenpeace rejects the suggestion that its concern is middle-class, arguing that the industry uses products like Golden Rice as a public relations smokescreen. There was a growing backlash, said Greenpeace genetic spokesman Craig Culp, because the technology was new, relatively untested, and because the industry failed to engage in debate when the technology was being developed. "Their hope was that it would become so widespread that it would be a fait accompli by the time people became knowledgeable," he said.. http://www.smh.com.au/news/0107/04/features/features1.html * * * ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn