Biotech Ethics

I blogged last week about GM wheat: Biotech’s Real Customer: Will GM Wheat Producers Repeat Monsanto’s Error?

Now this week comes this press release, from Monsanto: Monsanto Company Invests in Developing New Technologies for Wheat With Acquisition of WestBred Business

Monsanto Company (NYSE: MON) announced today it is expanding its strong seeds and traits portfolio to include wheat. The company has acquired the assets of WestBred, LLC, a Montana-based company that specializes in wheat germplasm, the crop’s seed genetic material. The investment will bolster the future growth of Monsanto’s seeds and traits platform and allow farmers to benefit from the company’s experience in drought-, disease- and pest-tolerance innovations.

“The U.S. wheat industry has come together to call for new technology investment, and we believe we have game-changing technologies – like our drought-tolerance and improved-yield traits – that can meaningfully address major challenges wheat growers face every season,” said Carl Casale, executive vice president of global strategy and operations for Monsanto. “Through WestBred, we’ll be able to deliver advances in breeding and biotechnology to deliver a step-change in yield while creating a springboard for new partnerships and collaboration opportunities that create additional value for farmers….”

Two points worth noting:

1) Monsanto’s plan seems to focus on engineering relatively-uncontroversial traits like drought-tolerance. According to the press release, “the company’s plans do not include further development of the first-generation Roundup Ready® trait in wheat.” (Roundup tolerance has been criticized for its potential to allow farmers to use more of the herbicide, something that raises obvious environmental worries.)

2) The press release is 100% focused on farmers and the wheat industry. Nothing in the press release shows any indication that Monsanto considers consumers — the people who will end up eating the wheat — to be a significant stakeholder. So maybe my question should be: Will Monsanto repeat Monsanto’s error? Of course, it’s possible that this isn’t an error at all; maybe Monsanto is (now) powerful enough, and GM is well-enough established in North America, that Monsanto knows it can ignore consumers as stakeholders. But at very least you’d think they’d be careful about sending what might be an unpopular message.

The popular assumption is that business hates regulation. That’s not quite true. Like individual people, business likes laws and regulations — within reason, laws and regs protect us, and provide a degree of regularity to life. But of course, we’d also all like to have some input into the form those laws and regs take.

From the San Jose Mercury News: Online gene testers propose their own regulations

After gene-testing businesses were criticized by state regulators last year for marketing to California residents without a license to perform clinical laboratory tests, the industry decided it was time for new regulations — which it decided to write.
A bill drafted by 23andMe and introduced by state Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Van Nuys, would exempt gene-testing firms from requirements faced by other kinds of labs while adding new privacy protections for consumers….

Worth noting:

The bill amends the California Business and Professions Code to distinguish conventional lab services from “bioinformatics services,” which use mathematical algorithms to identify ancestry and disease risk. That’s appropriate, the companies say, because they don’t actually perform the scans themselves — they are simply Web portals that disclose the results of tests performed by contract labs, which are licensed.

This sounds suspiciously like an attempt to fragment moral responsibility.
Also:

Additionally, SB 482 would not require physicians but rather experts with either a master’s or a doctorate to approve the mathematical algorithms used to interpret genomic data. The tests are not diagnostic but merely educational, the companies say.

“Merely educational,” eh? They why do company websites refer to things like “taking control of your health,” etc.? And, company websites aside, given the buzz about genetic testing, how many customers are going to make the reasonable assumption that a genetic test must have some diagnostic significance?

From Maui Weekly: Council Reviews Taro Bill

For those who arrived at the Maui County Council Chambers on Thursday, June 25, anticipating a consensus on a proposed ordinance to ban genetically engineered (GE) kalo, or taro, in Maui County, it soon became very clear that a decision may hang in the balance for some time.

After listening to hours of testimony Thursday afternoon, the council’s Economic Development, Agriculture and Recreation Committee reconvened on Monday, June 29. However, Monday’s hearing, which many hoped would yield a vote to push the bill to the full council, generated a flurry of uncertainties from several committee members.

Seems to me this small, local debate serves as a neat case-study, and presents many of the same issues that arise in the debate over GM more generally, including:

• Trouble defining what counts as “genetic modification;”
• Mistrust of science;
• Super-mistrust of corporate science;
• Questionable scientific competency on the part of relevant government authorities;
• Difference of opinion within the farming community;
• Commercial interests trying hard not to look like commercial interests (and hiding behind the public interest);
• The trading of silly rhetorical barbs (one side is “anti-science” and the other side is “patriarchal.” Ug.)

Here’s an interesting article about the history and future of GM wheat in the U.S.

From the High Plains Midwest AG Journal: Future of biotech wheat lies with growers, providers

As the wheat industry continues its long progress toward the development of a commercially viable biotech wheat seed, it’s important to recognize where the industry has been, as well as where it hopes to end up.

U.S. Wheat Associates Vice President, Director West Coast Office John Oades said discussions over biotech wheat varieties have been going on in one way or another for more than a decade. Many segments in the industry have had differing opinions, he said, on just what the solution should be to the question of biotech wheat. The industry as a whole, though, has come a long way from the early days of biotech research….

Amazingly, there’s practically no mention of consumers here. There’s brief mention of “some resistance in the European Union and Japan to transgenic crops.” But that’s it.

“Biotech companies, the scientific community and governments need to work through problems together,” Oades said. “Change is most often met with skepticism. We must continue to widen our communication to bring key customers to the table and share good solid refereed science.”

Does anyone recall why Monsanto was caught off-guard with regard to resistance to GM crops? The standard account, at least, is that they made the mistake of focusing on making sure GM seeds would be acceptable to their customers — farmers — and didn’t think enough about the end-users, namely the consumers who would end up eating GM foods — or refusing to.
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p.s., here’s the “Biotechnology Principles for Commercialization” document referred to in the article.

Not all agricultural biotech involves genetic modification.

Check out this press release from Genome British Columbia, about a research project based at my alma mater, the University of British Columbia, that will use biotech tools to attempt to develop a molecular test for fecundity (egg-laying capacity) among females of a species of predatory mites that is used to control another species of mites that feeds on commercial crops:
Genomic tools will help facilitate the shift to greener crop protection

Pesticide-free crops are one step closer to reality with the launch of a Genome BC research project that will test the egg-laying capacity of predatory mites as a method of standardizing and improving biocontrol programs.

Two-spotted spider mites are a continuing plague to growers in BC and around the world, where they feed on and damage greenhouse vegetables and ornamental flowers and plants. But current biocontrol methods for controlling spider mites, though widely diverse, are not fully meeting the needs of growers.

Synthetic pesticides are losing popularity among ecologically conscious consumers and growers alike. Alternative methods rely on the use of predatory insects and mites – natural enemies of spider mites.

The predatory mite, P.persimilis, (Pp) is the most frequently released natural enemy of spider mites used for the control of these pests on greenhouse and outdoor crops. Although they have been commercially produced for many years, the batch-to-batch quality of Pp populations, as defined by their egg-laying potential, remains inconsistent.

Some individuals and groups claim to be anti-biotech quite generally: they think all biotech is a bad idea. But such a position runs aground on the sheer diversity of ways in which the basic tools of biotech can be applied.

One key complaint about GM foods is that, so far, none of them has been engineered to have any properties that consumers much care about. Mostly they’ve been engineered to be herbicide-resistant, drought-resistant, and so on — all of which stands to benefit farmers, and thus holds the potential to lower food prices, at least in theory. But so far there’s been nothing that really brings the benefits of the biotech revolution to my dinner plate.

So this announcement of a partnership between Monsanto and Dole might have been thought of as changing all that. But for better or for worse, it doesn’t.

From the Globe and Mail: Tastier broccoli, spinach?

Monsanto Co. and Dole Fresh Vegetables Inc. are formalizing a partnership to breed broccoli, spinach and other vegetables that would be more attractive to consumers.

The five-year collaboration, announced Tuesday, will focus on creating variations of broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce and spinach, the companies said in a statement.

The focus of their efforts is to breed more colourful, tastier vegetables that are less susceptible to bruising and have a longer shelf-life.

“If I buy broccoli on Saturday or Sunday and try to cook it on Wednesday, it’ll get wilty,” Monsanto spokeswoman Riddhi Trivedi-St. Clair said of one of reasons for the program.

She also stressed that these new variants will not be genetically modified like the company’s corn seed and soybean products….

Maybe I should be posting this on a non-biotech-ethics blog. Because it’s about food that is not — I repeat not — genetically modified. Nope, not this food. No GM here. Nothing to see, folks. Move along, move along….

I wonder sometimes: is biotech is just too sexy for governments to turn down? I mean, setting aside the qualms some people have about some kinds of stem cell research, biotech is just cooler than cool. It’s new. It’s hip. It promises cures for the diseases that afflict us and for vexing environmental problems. What sane politician wouldn’t want to invest public money in a technology like that?

Check out this story, from the NY Times, on public investment in biotech: Despite Odds, Cities Race to Bet on Biotech

Where a textile mill once drove the economy of this blue-collar town northeast of Charlotte, an imposing neoclassical complex is rising, filled with fine art, Italian marble and multimillion-dollar laboratory equipment. Three buildings, one topped by a giant dome, form the beginnings of what has been nicknamed the Biopolis, a research campus dedicated to biotechnology…

At a recent global biotech convention in Atlanta, 27 states, including Hawaii and Oklahoma, paid as much as $100,000 each to entice companies on the exhibition floor. All this for a highly risky industry that has turned a profit only one year in the past four decades….

One of the questions in biotech ethics that is least talked about (outside of academic circles) is the question of what economists call “opportunity costs.” Every dollar invested — wisely or foolishly — in biotech is a dollar not invested in something else. Now, public investment in business ventures is not exactly unique to biotech. Even prior to the obvious recent example of General Motors, governments at all levels have for many years — centuries, in fact — invested in business ventures they’ve seen as contributing to the public good. Sometimes that’s a good idea, and sometimes it’s not. Even a fan of biotech has to wonder whether the governments mentioned in the NY Times article are really doing the calculations carefully.

I don’t know much about biofuels, but I’m usually skeptical when I hear it proposed as a really significant source of energy. Could biofuel be produced on a scale similar to the production of petroleum-based fuels? I usually picture a gushing oil well, spewing thousands of gallons of crude oil, and then try to imagine a factory fermenting biomass to turn out biofuel at a similar rate. Hard to picture.

Maybe my pessimism was unjustified.

Here’s a bit of info about the potential for producing biofuels in large quantities, in a story from Cleantech Group, LLC: Biorefineries alive and well, say experts.

…ZeaChem plans to break ground on its first biorefinery in eastern Oregon by the end of the year, and has a contract with Portland, Ore.-based GreenWood Resources to provide a dedicated crop of poplar trees (see ZeaChem starts work on first biorefinery).

The company’s first commercial facility, expected to open in 2013, plans to generate 25 million gallons of ethanol per year, with larger follow-on facilities pumping out 100 million gallons per year, Eggeman said. ZeaChem plans to sell the ethanol to petroleum companies to blend directly into fuel…. [emphasis added]

Some quick online research suggested that a traditional oil well might produce something on the order of a few million gallons of crude per year (I don’t know how much actual gasoline that would be reduced to.) So at least the numbers cited above, if accurate, suggest that my knee-jerk skepticism was unwarranted.

Last Friday, I did a 45-minute live interview on CJSR’s Skeptically Speaking, (“the world’s only skeptical talk show” — FM88.5 in Edmonton, Alberta). The topic was ethical issues in biotech. The conversation covered ethical issues personal genomics and gene patenting, as well as whether biotechnology is pushing us toward the realization of the dystopia envisioned in the movie Gattaca.

Here’s the webpage with the podcast of the interview: Biotechnology Ethics. Thanks again to my wonderful hosts, Desiree and Sean.

Barriers to access to your own genetic info is a big issue right now, and likely to get bigger.

From Genomeweb’s Pharmacogenomics Reporter: Illumina’s New DTC Sequencing Service Addresses Ethical Quandary by Requiring Prescription

In launching its consumer whole genome sequencing service this week, Illumina will involve the physician much more directly in educating and advising its customers than other direct-to-consumer genomic firms currently do.

Debuting the service here at the Consumer Genetics conference, Illumina said that it will charge $48,000 to analyze patients’ DNA by whole-genome sequencing. But unlike DTC genomics firms, which allow customers to order gene scans over the Internet and receive sample collection kits in the mail, Illumina’s service will require a prescription from their doctor or from a physician in Illumina’s Personal Genome Network before obtaining their genomic-risk data….

Some will wonder: Why make it harder for people to buy your product? Illumina is really just trying to stay ahead of the regulatory curve, here. Lots of people are worried — rightly or wrongly — that consumers are likely to misinterpret genetic information, and maybe to make foolish choices based on what they fail to understand.. People like Ron Bailey like to argue that people just don’t need to be protected from that info. How many documented cases are there of people be hurt by genetic info? Any?

Food for thought: should we think of this in terms of barriers to individuals gaining information, or in terms of limits on a commercial transaction under conditions of information asymmetry? Does the difference in framing make a difference? Or is that a false dichotomy in the first place?