Imagine bacteria that could spread through our bodies to scavenge mercury or other pollutants and then extrude them from a pimple. Or plants that continue to photosynthesise under very low light conditions, or food crops that can survive in highly salinated soils. Such boons are the promise of biotechnology. We expect to be able to manipulate life at its most basic level to help solve some of our most pressing problems, such as food security, habitat loss and pollution. Yet dazzling as such prospects are, I believe we should be cautious about diving into the deep end of the gene pool before we have learned to swim.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, genetics was my passion and preoccupation. The discipline was young and vigorous, and I was fortunate enough to head Canada鈥檚 largest genetics laboratory, at the University of British Columbia. I am proud of the contribution my lab made to the field, and continue to delight in the technical dexterity and profound insights being gained. In the early 1980s, however, I deliberately chose to refrain from any experimentation involving recombinant DNA. I stopped applying for government grants and finally terminated my career in active research.
I did so because it had become clear by the 1970s that genetic engineering comes with vast social, political and economic ramifications. I very much wanted to be involved in the wider dialogue about the implications of biotechnology, for good and bad. If I had been carrying out research using the latest techniques, my vested interest in utilising the technology would have robbed me of any claim to credibility. I left research so that I could continue to engage in the debate. Ironically, today I am dismissed by some in the biotechnology community as lacking credibility because I am no longer doing research.
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Genetic engineering is indeed an exciting and revolutionary field, and I have no doubt that discoveries and applications of huge benefit to humankind lie ahead. However, today鈥檚 biotechnologists are often so entranced by their advances and insights that they have lost perspective on what we know and can do and what we don鈥檛 have a clue about. It鈥檚 what we don鈥檛 understand that concerns me.
When I tell students today what the leading ideas were on gene activity, chromosome structure and the mechanisms of development and differentiation when I was doing research in the 1960s, they laugh in disbelief. In 2006, the best ideas of 1961 seem ludicrously off the mark. I have to remind these students that by the time they are tenured professors, today鈥檚 best ideas will seem every bit as quaint, although I doubt they believe me. They find it difficult to understand that in any revolutionary area like biotechnology, most of our current ideas are wrong. That鈥檚 not a denigration of the field, it is the very way science progresses.
鈥淏y the time today鈥檚 students are tenured professors, our best ideas will seem quaint鈥�
Right now, biotechnology presumes that genes exist and function in isolation. So take a fish gene that makes antifreeze, insert it into a plant, and voila, you have a frost-resistant crop. This ignores the fact that a gene is a part of a greater whole 鈥� the genome 鈥� which has been selected and honed to turn off and on whole suites of genes in proper sequence and timing, from fertilisation to maturity. We are just beginning to tease apart and reveal this network of gene relationships and connections. A fish gene transferred into a plant finds itself in an alien context, leaving us little ability to anticipate the consequences.
Contrary to the extravagant claims of the biotech industry, there is nothing subtle about genetic engineering. It is still a crude science, and one in its infancy. We are manipulating the very basic instructions that govern life on Earth, yet our knowledge of how genes are incorporated into hierarchies of organisation and function remains spotty and incomplete.
With so many unknowns, why is biotechnology the darling of investment bankers and universities? The answer is simple: money. Biotechnology sounds as if it can make dreams come true, so it gets the grants. There is a powerful incentive to 鈥済et product to market鈥� to make that investment pay off. This means cutting corners. It means getting biotech crops into fields before it is clearly understood what they could do to an ecosystem, and it means lobbying governments to ensure that engineered products are treated no differently than conventional ones.
I am as excited by genetics as I ever was. There is so much to learn with the tools now available, but there has to be a way to take a more precautionary approach without hampering scientific discourse. Surely we can demand that researchers find out more about what their 鈥渕inor modifications鈥� to the DNA of an organism will mean, both to the organism and to the ecosystem in which it is to be embedded. The world deserves nothing less.
