Has GMO Tech Already Gone Too Far?

Or, should we trust The Science™?

Many people have heard of GMO foods, but they are usually imagining things within the plant kingdom -- not the animal kingdom. Where has the trend in transgenic animals gone in the last decade or so? Let's take a look.

First a little backstory.

Milk resembling human breast milk has been produced by genetically engineered cows.

Chinese researchers announced in the journal PLoS ONE this week that they had engineered cows to secrete milk containing lysozyme, a protein found in human breastmilk that boosts the immunity of breastfed babies.

The researchers from the China Agricultural University and GeneProtein Biotechnology Company, both in Beijing, say alternatives to breastmilk are important because mothers are sometimes reluctant or unable to breastfeed.

"Modified bovine milk is a possible substitute for human milk," they wrote.

The researchers inserted human lysozyme genes into the nuclei of cells in the bodies of cows, and then used a technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer (the 'Dolly method') to clone the cows.

But what could go wrong?

If it has the same effects in humans, Maga said, the milk could someday help ease malnourishment caused by diarrhea, which is a leading cause of infant mortality in some developing countries. The modified cow milk wouldn't be just for babies; conceivably any malnourished person, or person lacking in gut bacteria, could benefit from drinking it.

But before that happens, transgenic milk must move to the human testing phase. In the United States and Europe, genetically modified food gets a bad rap, and so human trials will probably be much slower to happen here than in China.

"Any transgenic animal product that goes on the market has to undergo extensive characterization beforehand. I'm sure in China they have a program to do that just like they do here," Maga said. But the difference is, China has a lot more resources and personnel working on it, as well as a completely different attitude toward genetic modification (GM), she explained. "In this country and in Europe there's a very loud anti-GM lobby, with advocates claiming that GM is unsafe."

Keith Schneider, a food scientist at the University of Florida who studies food safety, concurs. "With as much flak as we have in this country over GM, it will probably take much longer than three years to make it through (the testing stage) to the market," he said.

By contrast, Sky News in Beijing reported that a man, Jiang Yao, recently tasted the human/cow transgenic milk, and had this to say about it: "It's good. It's better for you because it's genetically modified."

Now that we've all been through the COVID Scare, things are no longer looked at the same way. Most of the public is now aware of the fact that Big Science has lied to them. The Science™ is no longer trusted because it has proven to be driven by motives that do not align with safety. In fact quite the opposite.

We know this because of numerous court cases filed against Pfizer which have been thrown out. It's not that Pfizer was not implicated in the production of dangerous products marketed as vaccines -- but because the US government expressly allowed for that in contracts.

In United States ex rel. McBride v. Halliburton, a 2017 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and again in a 2018 decision from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, United States ex rel. Berg v. Honeywell Int’l, the courts dismissed fraud cases simply because the contractors in question cited “continuing government payments.”

And in 2018, the DOJ further diluted the False Claims Act via the issuance of the Granston Memo, which instructed government attorneys to reject more lawsuits filed under the Act.

In the two years which followed, dismissals of False Claims Act cases increased.

The newly proposed False Claims Amendments Act of 2021 would adjust the materiality standard to include instances where government payments have continued despite knowledge of fraud — this could affect Pfizer, which has contracts with the U.S. government to provide COVID vaccines.

But I'm sure that this milk is just fine. It might even be "safe and effective."

Scientists insist genetically modified foods are unlikely to pose a threat to food safety and in the United States consumers have been eating genetically modified foods for more decades.

However, during two experiments by the Chinese researchers, which resulted in 42 transgenic calves being born, just 26 of the animals survived after ten died shortly after birth, most with gastrointestinal disease, and a further six died within six months of birth.

Researchers accept that the cloning technology used in genetic modification can affect the development and survival of cloned animals, although the reason why is not well understood.

A spokesman for the Royal Society for the Protection of Animals said the organisation was "extremely concerned" about how the GM cows had been produced.

She said: "Offspring of cloned animals often suffer health and welfare problems, so this would be a grave concern.

"Why do we need this milk what is it giving us that we haven't already got."

Helen Wallace, director of biotechnology monitoring group GeneWatch UK, said: "We have major concerns about this research to genetically modify cows with human genes.

"There are major welfare issues with genetically modified animals as you get high numbers of still births.

"There is a question about whether milk from these cows is going to be safe from humans and it is really hard to tell that unless you do large clinical trials like you would a drug, so there will be uncertainty about whether it could be harmful to some people.

"Ethically there are issues about mass producing animals in this way."

Professor Keith Campbell, a biologist at the University of Nottingham works with transgenic animals, said: "Genetically modified animals and plants are not going to be harmful unless you deliberately put in a gene that is going to be poisonous. Why would anyone do that in a food?

"Genetically modified food, if done correctly, can provide huge benefit for consumers in terms of producing better products."

It's very easy to see why this hasn't gone as far as most people would have imagined. However, I don't think it's the ethical concerns that have so far stemmed the tide on the GMO cattle. The real reason is that creating these transgenic animals is complicated, and usually doesn't pan out so well. Most of the time there are only a handful of them that live to maturity, and they are unable to reproduce with other animals of the same species.

It would seem that the human antigen in cow's milk is the thing of the past. The Science™ is looking even further into the future this time. Now they're trying to produce cattle that have insulin in their milk.

"Mother Nature designed the mammary gland as a factory to make protein really, really efficiently," explained study leader Matt Wheeler, a professor of animal sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. "We can take advantage of that system to produce a protein that can help hundreds of millions of people worldwide."
...
"Our goal was to make proinsulin, purify it out to insulin and go from there," Wheeler said in a university news release. "But the cow basically processed it herself… The mammary gland is a magical thing."

To produce the transgenic cow, a segment of human DNA was inserted into the cell nuclei of 10 cow embryos. It contained coding for proinsulin, a precursor of the active form of insulin. Through genetic engineering, the human DNA was targeted for expression in breast tissue only.

The altered embryos were then implanted in the uteri of normal cows in Brazil, and one transgenic calf was born.

Once she matured, researchers used artificial insemination to try to impregnate her. When that failed, they used hormones to stimulate her to produce milk for the first time.

Though she made less than a successful pregnancy would have produced, the milk not only had detectable levels of human proinsulin but also insulin itself. Researchers didn't expect that.
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The next step is to re-clone the cow. Researchers are hopeful they will achieve greater success with pregnancy and full lactation cycles in the next generation of animals.

Eventually, the goal is to create transgenic bulls, mate them with the transgenic females and create a "purpose-built" herd. Even a small herd could quickly outpace existing methods for insulin production — without any need for highly technical facilities or infrastructure, Wheeler said.

"I could see a future where a 100-head herd, equivalent to a small Illinois or Wisconsin dairy, could produce all the insulin needed for the country," he said. "And a larger herd? You could make the whole world's supply in a year."

While all of this sounds exciting to scientists, it's very creepy to most people. Who wants to drink GMO FrankenCow™ Milk? Milk that is "unlikely to pose a threat to food safety."

I know what is unlikely to pose a threat to food safety -- natural foods!

Has anyone wondered why there are so many diabetic people to begin with? Why is that not "the science" we're looking for? Wouldn't it better suit mankind as a whole to heal people -- and not just treat their symptoms?

What about those kids dying from malnourishment because of diarrhea? Why are there so many who are malnourished? And why would there be so many adults lacking in gut bacteria? Shouldn't these be things the science is looking for?

It's like they're looking for a workaround for everything -- instead of addressing the root of the problem. This is not good science, it's tampering with multiple genomes because economic and political situations are bad.

Correct the economic and political issues -- and stop trying to play Victor Frankenstein.

What do you think?

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