Hey science fans
        If our GM-condoning colleagues can quote the NY Times  -  which has
gone sadly downhill since I lived in the USA  -  then I'll pass along this
precis from the Wall St Jungle.
Please note
>*give beneficial insects such as honeybees immunity to diseases and
>pesticides

Are we enjoying the new millennium yet?

R


From: Laurel Hopwood <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:      biotech bugs
To: [log in to unmask]


January 26, 2001
Bioengineered Bugs Stir Dreams Of Scientists; Will They Fly?
By SCOTT KILMAN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
(edited by Laurel)

According to this story, lab experiments in Phoenix are being carried out
on "biobugs."
examples:
*engineer a male moth that can pass a fatal flaw on to any egg it
fertilizes.  Then fly over cotton country and drop millions of these
modified males, enough to crowd out wild males in the quest for mates. The
result: a lot fewer bollworm babies next season.

Other goals:
*give beneficial insects such as honeybees immunity to diseases and
pesticides.
*  a way to attack harmful insects without chemicals.
* to fight diseases that annually kill or maim millions of the world's
poorest people.
* Several teams are modifying insects so they can no longer transmit the
parasites behind malaria, dengue fever and Chagas' disease.
* Europe has issued a patent on the idea of using a modified mosquito to
deliver a vaccine every time it bites someone

The story discusses unknown risks from being released into the wild.
* "superbugs"
* some biobugs would bite people, tests involving them raise tricky issues
of informed consent.

According to this piece, this summer, Dr. Staten (who directs the U.S.
Department of Agriculture's Animal and
Plant Health Inspection Service laboratory in Phoenix) wants to move his
fluorescent charges to a giant cage in a cotton field, to make sure the
genetic tinkering doesn't cause some unanticipated behavioral change.
Scientists and regulators believe this would be the first time a
genetically modified insect was studied outdoors, at least in the U.S.

He needs permission from the USDA, and it plans to publish a notice in the
next few months soliciting public comment.

Who would police biobugs that bite people is unclear.

The medical establishment also has some biobug decisions to make. It's
standard procedure that people who are subjects of clinical research must
give their consent What about people who may be bitten by future biobugs?

Some scientists think that transposable elements, nicknamed "jumping
genes," can on rare occasions
leap from one species to another. What would happen, they ask, if a gene
implanted to give honeybees protection from an insecticide somehow landed
in a crop pest? "

Dr. Staten has managed to keep the bollworm from establishing itself in
California's cotton-rich San Joaquin Valley. Releasing these bugs isn't
controversial because they haven't been genetically modified, just
sterilized.

Dr. Staten figures that so much more remains to be learned about genetic
engineering that nobody can make
any guarantees now about what a biobug might do. It will still be a couple
of years before a booby-trapped pink bollworm is ready for test release in
the wild. And even if everything goes as he expects, Dr. Staten says,
biobugs won't fly unless the public accepts some measure of uncertainty
about them.

- - -

-
Robt Mann
consultant ecologist
P O Box 28878   Remuera, Auckland 1005, New Zealand
                (9) 524 2949