The Genetics Controversy - Agri-culture: Reconnecting People, Land and Nature - page 130

tomatoes, strawberries and potatoes, thereby conferring the host plants
with a new mechanism for frost tolerance.
Maize, soya beans, oilseed rape and other oil crops could be modified
to alter their saturated fat content. A potato with a higher starch content
would absorb less oil during frying, providing an alternate method of
producing lower fat products such as chips and crisps. Some fruits and
vegetables will be adapted to contain higher levels of vitamins C and E.
Blue cotton has been engineered through the transfer of a gene from an
unnamed blue flower, potentially eliminating the need for dye. In time,
fruits and vegetables could be produced in different colours, though
whether we would want this is another matter. Another possibility is that
fruits and vegetables will be engineered with genes from pathogenic viruses
and bacteria so that, when consumed, they will encourage the production
of antibodies without the recipient having been exposed to the harmful
organism. Vaccine potatoes that confer resistance to E.coli -caused diarrhoea
have already been tested, and banana vaccines are under development. In
time, oral vaccines in fruits could replace conventional vaccines. A far more
difficult problem is the genetic engineering of nitrogen fixation, with the
distant possibility that cereals could fix their own nitrogen with the help
of rhizobia associated with their roots, thereby reducing or even eliminat-
ing the need for inorganic nitrogen fertilizers. But the process would have
to involve engineering symbiotic bacteria, and then persuading them to
create stable and heritable relationships with the cereal.
The many potential agricultural and medical applications of genetic
modification do, however, raise fundamentally important ethical issues.
Xenotransplantation, involving the transplant of animal organs into
humans, could meet the high demand for organs for transplantation. In
the UK, there are more than 5000 people on the waiting list for organ
transplants. Genetic modification offers the opportunity to create new
organs in modified pigs. But, to date, the risks of encouraging the spread
of retroviruses from pigs to humans outweigh potential benefits. Genetic
modification also opens the way to the body-part shop; companies in the
US are already working on creating skin, veins, bone, liver, cartilage and
breast tissue. It also raises the spectre of pollution-tolerant humans -
individuals with genes that confer tolerance to poisonous chemicals who
would be able to, or perhaps made to, work in places where such pollution
is widespread. Human reproductive cloning , once thought to be far away
in the realms of science fiction, is likely one day to become fact. New
information on an individual's genes could also be misused, with the
possible emergence of a new genetic 'underclass' unable to get life insurance.