SAN FRANCISCO -- Some high-tech insect experiments soon may be flitting out of the laboratory: Mosquitos genetically modified to eliminate malaria. Silkworms engineered to produce bulletproof vests. Bollworm moths designed to self-destruct before they can wipe out cotton crops.
Damian Dovarganes, Associated PressThomas Miller, a professor of entomology at the University of California, Riverside, holds a petri dish with genetically modified pink bollworm larvae.
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Genetically engineered insects hold the promise of benefiting millions, eradicating diseases and plagues that cause famine.
But despite such good intentions, many scientists are alarmed that few safeguards exist to keep unintended consequences from harming humans or the environment.
Fast-reproducing insects anchor food chains around the globe. Yet the impact that genetically engineered bugs could have on ecosystems is only now being explored, even as researchers push to release biotech insect experiments into the wild.
Such questions could be vitally important, particularly since many researchers are engineering insects designed to change the genetic makeup of their very species.
Unlike with biotech crops or livestock, which are at least designed to be controlled, the goal of much of this insect research is to introduce genetically engineered traits into natural insect populations -- for example, rendering tsetse flies incapable of carrying deadly sleeping sickness, a disease that afflicts millions in Africa.
No biotech insect experiment has been conducted outside a laboratory yet, but a few projects are getting close -- a prospect that prompted the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology, in a report released last week, to call on the federal government to adopt strict regulations.
"Usually, biotechnology seems to move more quickly than the regulations," said Michael Fernandez, Pew's science director. "But in this case, we have the time."
No U.S. law specifically addresses biotech bugs. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's written policy on engineered insects asserts regulatory authority only over "plant pests," requiring that any outdoor experiment get federal approval.
Bob Rose, a USDA scientist, said federal agencies can and probably will assert authority over many of these projects -- with some creative categorizing. For instance, the USDA has authority to regulate insects that cause disease in animals. Mosquitoes are livestock pests and Rose said genetically engineered malaria fighters could be brought under USDA's authority in that way.
Biotech insect research is still in its infancy. Still, he concedes more explicit regulations as called for by Pew would eliminate many of the regulatory loopholes being exploited by biotech companies.
For example, no regulator stepped in to monitor the GloFish, a fluorescent zebra fish recently put on the market, because no federal agency was specifically tasked with overseeing biotech house pets.
The USDA has received only one application for an open air-test of an engineered insect, the cotton-destroying pink bollworm moth in Arizona, which could occur this year.
Other insect projects developing in mostly unregulated territory include industrial products, like the attempt to make silkworms mass-produce spider silk. By weight it is stronger than steel and tougher than the artificial fibers now used in body armor worn by troops in Iraq and elsewhere.
Still other researchers are engineering honeybees to be more disease-resistant, and medflies to be less damaging to crops.
In the case of the pink bollworm, Thomas Miller of the University of California, Riverside, genetically modified the pest so that it is sexually active but unable to reproduce properly. The idea is that the biotech bugs would mate in the wild, passing on a lethal gene instead of offspring-creating genes to the young.
The test in Arizona would not involve the lethal gene yet -- instead, scientists plan to release thousands of bollworms with genetic markers to determine just what it takes to overwhelm natural reproduction among wild bollworms.
Miller concedes that more research needs to be done on environmental impact before biotech insects can be widely released.
"I have no idea," he said, "what they're going to do out in the wild."
Damian Dovarganes, Associated PressMiller examines the larvae of a pink bollworm.
Click photo for larger image.
First Published: January 26, 2004, 5:00 a.m.