Scientists and
legal scholars question the rationale for the use of insects to disperse
infectious GE viruses engineered to edit the chromosomes in plants,
warning that the technology could very easily be weaponized
A new DARPA
program is the first to propose and fund the development of viral
horizontal environmental genetic alteration agents with the capacity to
perform genetic engineering in the environment
The $27 million
project, called “Insect Allies,” is trying to take advantage of
insects’ natural ability to spread crop diseases, but instead of
carrying disease, they would spread plant-protective traits
The opinion
paper “Agricultural Research, or a New Bioweapon System?” argues that if
plant modification were really the ultimate goal, a far simpler and
more targeted agricultural delivery system could be used
There are also
serious concerns about environmental ramifications, as the insects’
spread cannot be controlled. It would also be impossible to prevent the
insects from genetically modifying organic crops
Genetic engineering (GE) is being used
in myriad ways these days, despite the fact we know very little about
the long-term ramifications of such meddling in the natural order.
For example, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA),
an arm of the U.S. Department of Defense, is now planning to use insects
to deliver GE viruses to crops, with the aim of altering the plant’s
genetic traits in the field.
The $27 million DARPA project, called “Insect Allies,” is basically
trying to take advantage of insects’ natural ability to spread crop
diseases, but instead of carrying disease-causing genes, they would
carry plant-protective traits. As explained by The Washington Post:1
“Recent advances in gene editing, including the relatively cheap
and simple system known as CRISPR (for clustered regularly interspaced
palindromic repeats), could potentially allow researchers to customize
viruses to achieve a specific goal in the infected plant.
The engineered virus could switch on or off certain genes that,
for example, control a plant’s growth rate, which could be useful during
an unexpected, severe drought.”
Insect Allies Project Raises Concerns About Bioterror Use
However, scientists and legal scholars question the rationale for the
use of insects to disperse infectious GE viruses engineered to edit the
chromosomes in plants, warning that the technology could very easily be
weaponized.2,3,4,5
The opinion paper6
“Agricultural Research, or a New Bioweapon System?” published October
4, 2018, in the journal Science questions DARPA’s Insect Allies project,
saying it could be perceived as a threat by the international
community, and that if plant modification were really the ultimate goal,
a far simpler agricultural delivery system could be used.
Jason Delborne, associate professor at North Carolina State
University, has expertise in genetic engineering and its consequences.
He told Gizmodo:7
“The social, ethical, political and ecological implications of
producing HEGAAs [horizontal environmental genetic alteration agents]
are significant and worthy of the same level of attention as exploring
the science underpinning the potential technology.
The authors argue persuasively that specifying insects as the
preferred delivery mechanism for HEGAAs is poorly justified by visions
of agricultural applications.
The infrastructure and expertise required for spraying
agricultural fields — at least in the U.S. context — is well
established, and this delivery mechanism would offer greater control
over the potential spread of a HEGAA.”
The team has also created a website8
to accompany the paper, the stated aim of which is “to contribute
toward fostering an informed and public debate about this type of
technology.” On this site you can also find a link to download the
38-page DARPA work plan. DARPA, meanwhile, insists the project’s goal is
strictly to protect the U.S. food supply. A DARPA spokesperson told The
Independent:9
“[S]prayed treatments are impractical for introducing protective
traits on a large scale and potentially infeasible if the spraying
technology cannot access the necessary plant tissues with specificity,
which is a known problem.
If Insect Allies succeeds, it will offer a highly specific,
efficient, safe and readily deployed means of introducing transient
protective traits into only the plants intended, with minimal
infrastructure required.”
Scientists from the U.S. Department of Agriculture are also
participating in the research, which is currently restricted to
contained laboratories. Still, many are unconvinced by DARPA’s claims of
peaceful aims.
The release of such insects could “play into longstanding fears among
countries that enemies might try to harm their crops,” says Dr. David
Relman, a former White House biodefense adviser and professor of
medicine and microbiology at Stanford. According to The Associated Press
(AP):10
“Guy Reeves, a coauthor of the Science paper and a biologist at
the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Germany, says the
technology is more feasible as a weapon — to kill plants — than as an
agricultural tool. As a result, he said DARPA could be sending an
alarming message regardless of its intentions.”
Unforeseen Ramifications Abound
Others are concerned about environmental ramifications, regardless of
whether the genetic traits being delivered to the plants are perceived
as beneficial or harmful. According to DARPA, none of the insects would
be able to survive for more than two weeks, but what if such guarantees
fail? What if nature finds a way? If so, the insects’ spread could be
near-unlimited.
Gregory Kaebnick, an ethicist at the Hastings Center bioethics
research institute in Garrison, New York, told the AP he’s concerned the
project may end up causing unforeseen environmental destruction, as
insects will be virtually impossible to eradicate once released. If it
turns out the genetic modification traits they carry are harmful, there
will be no going back.
Yet others, such as Fred Gould, an entomologist at North Carolina
State University who chaired a National Academy of Sciences panel on genetically modified food, believe the project’s stated goal of altering genetic traits of plants via insects is near-impossible in the first place.
However, while the research is still in its initial phase, they
already have proof of concept. In one test, an aphid infected a mature
corn plant with a GE virus carrying a gene for fluorescence, creating a
fluorescent corn plant.11
Open Scientific Debate Is Needed
Reeves questions why there’s been virtually no open scientific debate
about the technology. According to Reeves, who is an expert on GE insects,
the Insect Allies project is “largely unknown even in expert circles,”
which in and of itself raises a red flag about its true intent.
He told The Independent, “It is very much easier to kill or sterilize
a plant using gene editing than it is to make it herbicide- or
insect-resistant.”12 Felix Beck, a lawyer at the University of Freiburg, added:13
“The quite obvious question of whether the viruses selected for
development should or should not be capable of plant-to-plant
transmission — and plant-to-insect-to-plant transmission — was not
addressed in the DARPA work plan at all.”
How Horizontal Environmental Genetic Alteration Agents Work
As explained in the featured paper, the technology DARPA is using is
known as horizontal environmental genetic alteration agents or HEGAAs.
Essentially, HEGAAs are GE viruses capable of editing the chromosomes of
a target species, be it a plant or an animal. The specificity of HEGAAs
are dependent on:
The range of species the GE virus can infect
The presence of a specific DNA sequence in the chromosome that can then become infected
The image below illustrates how an insect-dispersed viral HEGAA would
disrupt a specific plant gene. As noted on the team’s website:
“Interest in genetically modified viruses, including HEGAAs,
largely stems from their rapid speed of action, as infections can sweep
quickly through target populations. This same property is also a serious
safety concern, in that it makes it hard to predict where viruses
geographically disperse to or what species they eventually infect.
Probably due to the complex regulatory, biological, economic and
societal implications that need to be considered little progress has
been made on how genetically modified viruses should be regulated when
the intention is to disperse them in the environment. It is in this
context that DARPA presented its Insect Allies work program in November
2016.”
Image credit: Derek Caetano-Anollés
The team also notes the use of HEGAAs are ultimately not likely to be
limited to agriculture, which is why it’s so important to have an open
discussion about the technology, its potential uses, misuses and
ramifications — including unintended ones.
In 2018, three scientific publications discussed the development of
“transmissible vaccines,” i.e., vaccines that would be transmissible
between humans and therefore would no longer require individual
vaccinations. Such products would also remove any possibility of
informed consent, which creates a really huge ethical dilemma. In the
past decade, at least seven scientific papers have focused on
transmissible vaccines.
The team also brings up the obvious point that insects will not be able to distinguish between conventional crops and certified organic crops,
which do not permit genetic engineering. Just how are organic farmers
to keep these insect vectors from altering their crops? They can’t, and
this could effectively destroy the organic industry as we know it.
DARPA Technology May Violate Biological Weapons Convention
According to DARPA, the technology does not violate the United
Nations (U.N.) Biological Weapons Convention. However, according to the
Science paper, it could be in breach of the U.N.’s convention if the
research is unjustifiable. Silja Voeneky, a specialist in international
law at Freiburg University, told The Independent:14
“Because of the broad ban of the Biological Weapons Convention,
any biological research of concern must be plausibly justified as
serving peaceful purposes. The Insect Allies Program could be seen to
violate the Biological Weapons Convention, if the motivations presented
by DARPA are not plausible. This is particularly true considering this
kind of technology could easily be used for biological warfare.”
The Science team also call for greater transparency from DARPA in
order to discourage other countries from following suit and developing
similar delivery technologies as a defensive measure.
Gene Drive Technology Needs International Governance
In related news, Simon Terry, executive director of the
Sustainability Council of New Zealand, is calling for gene drive
technology to be brought under international governance,15,16,17
as this kind of technology can make an entire species infertile in a
relatively short amount of time, depending on the species life cycle.
Gene drive is yet another application for CRISPR.
In short, it’s a genetic engineering technology that allows you to
propagate a specific set of genes throughout an entire population,
including its offspring, which allows you to genetically alter the
future of an entire species. Gene drive has been proposed as a means to
control pests, including mosquitoes and possum.
However, there’s no known way to control it. As an example, while New
Zealand would like to use gene drive to eradicate possums, it would be
virtually impossible to prevent the spread of the gene drive to other
areas, and in Australia, the possum is a protected species.
Gene drive has also been considered as an answer for barnyard grass, a
pesky weed among Australian farmers, but a prized commodity in India.
Likewise, Palmer Amaranth is considered a weed in the U.S. but an
important food source in Central America, Africa, India and China. As
noted by Terry, “One man's pest could be another's desired plant or
animal,” and creating national regulations for a technology that can
wipe out an entire species globally simply isn’t enough.
Should We Use Technology That Can Eradicate Entire Species?
In a 2016 report,18
the Institute of Science in Society (ISIS) discussed the creation of
transgenic mosquitoes, carrying genes against a malarial pathogen. Using
CRISPR/Cas9, a gene drive was created that makes virtually all progeny
of the male transgenic mosquitoes’ carriers of this antimalaria gene.
However, the transgene was found to be unstable in female mosquitoes,
and key safety issues were also raised, including:
To what extent might crossbreeding or horizontal gene transfer allow a drive to move beyond target populations?
For how long might horizontal gene transfer allow a drive to move beyond target populations?
Is it possible for a gene drive to evolve to regain drive capabilities in a nontarget population?
According to ISIS, answering these questions is “crucial in the light
of the instability of the gene drive in transgenic female mosquitoes.”
As noted in the report:
“When these females bite animals including humans, there is
indeed the possibility of horizontal gene transfer of parts, or the
entire gene-drive construct, with potentially serious effects on animal
and human health.
Cas9 nuclease could insert randomly or otherwise into the host
genome, causing insertion mutagenesis that could trigger cancer or
activate dominant viruses ...
Finally, the ecological risks of gene drives are enormous … As
the gene drive can in principle lead to the extinction of a species,
this could involve the species in its native habitat as well as where it
is considered invasive. As distinct from conventional biological
control, which can be applied locally, there is no way to control gene
flow …
[B]ecause the CRISPR/Cas gene drive remains fully functional in
the mutated strain after it is created, the chance of off-target
mutations also remain and the likelihood increases with every
generation.
‘If there is any risk of gene flow between the target species and
other species, then there is also a risk that the modified sequence
could be transferred and the adverse trait manifested in nontarget
organisms.’ (This commentary has not even begun to consider horizontal
gene flow, which would multiply the risks manyfold.)”
DARPA Brushes Off Concerns
James Stack, a plant pathologist at Kansas State University and a
member on the advisory panel of DARPA’s Insect Allies project, believes
the concerns raised in the Science paper are unfounded. He told The
Washington Post:19
“I don’t understand the level of concern raised in this paper,
and to jump ahead and accuse DARPA of using this as a screen to develop
biological weapons is outrageous.
There’s risk inherent in life and you just have to manage it
well. And I think as we move into a more crowded planet it’s going to
put increasing demands on our food systems, our water systems. We’re
going to need all the tools in the tool box that we possibly have.”
Unfortunately, recent history demonstrates we’ve not been very
capable of managing these kinds of man-made risks very well at all. Just
look at Roundup-resistant GMO food, for example, or electromagnetic field radiation from cellphones
and wireless technologies, both of which have been shown to cause
significant health and environmental problems since their inception.
There’s virtually no evidence to suggest mankind is very good at
predicting the potential outcomes of our technological advancements, so
unleashing gene-altering technologies that cannot be recalled or
reversed seems foolish in the extreme. As mentioned, the Insect Allies
project may be particularly detrimental for organic and biodynamic farming, as it would be completely impossible to prevent these gene-altering insect vectors from infecting organic crops.
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