In part 1, we noted that there has been great confusion and controversy over the meaning of Ellen White’s term, “amalgamation,” as used in the book “Spiritual Gifts,” first published in 1863.
“But if there was one sin above another which called for the destruction of the race by the flood, it was the base crime of amalgamation of man and beast which defaced the image of God, and caused confusion everywhere.”
“Every species of animal which God had created were preserved in the ark. The confused species which God did not create, which were the result of amalgamation, were destroyed by the flood.”
We saw that Harold W. Clark had argued, quite correctly, that in these passages Ellen White was trying to communicate an idea of biological mixing of species; we also saw that Frank Lewis Marsh argued, also quite correctly, that such mixing is not possible through sexual reproduction, because animals can only successfully breed within their own species (in fact, animals that can interbreed is the most common definition of a species), or with animals from a very similar species.
So what process could have been used to mix together very different types of animals?
Genetics
To understand this issue, we will need to learn a little about genetics. Genetics as a science got going around the year 1900. In that year, three researchers independently rediscovered the genetic principles worked out by Johann Gregor Mendel (1822-1884). In an 1865 paper published in an obscure scientific journal, Mendel described the results of many years of experimental breeding of garden peas. Mendel described how invisible “characters” determine visible characteristics.[i] Mendel correctly discerned that the “characters”—which later came to be called “genes”—come in pairs. In sexually reproducing species, one gene is donated by each parent, and the genes pair up again in the offspring.
From his garden pea experiments, Mendel correctly inferred some of the principles of genetics, including: 1) The Law of Segregation: Each inherited trait is defined by a pair of genetic “alleles.” Each parent donates one allele to its sex cell (sperm or egg), and when the sex cells unite in fertilization, the offspring inherit one genetic allele from each parent; 2) The Law of Independent Assortment: Genes for different traits are frequently inherited independently, so that the inheritance of one trait is not determined by the inheritance of another; 3) The Law of Dominance: Genes are either dominant or recessive. An organism with alternate forms of the gene will express the dominant form, and recessive genes do not manifest themselves unless donated by both parent organisms.
By the time Mendel’s 1865 paper was re-discovered by the larger scientific community, scientists had found thread-like bodies called chromosomes in the nuclei of cells. Each time a cell divides, it duplicates its chromosomes and passes copies to both cells. Scientists had observed that chromosomes come in pairs, and that in sexually reproducing organisms, parent organisms create sex cells into which one chromosome out of each pair is randomly donated. During fertilization, the sex cells join, and the chromosomes pair up again. This biological process mirrored Mendel’s laws of inheritance, so it was clear that chromosomes were the anatomical structures that controlled inheritance.
Chromosomes contain nucleic acid, a substance first isolated in 1869 by a Swiss scientist named Friedrich Miescher. Chromosomes also contain proteins, however, so scientists did not know whether the genetic information was carried in the protein or the nucleic acid, or some combination of the two. As early as 1884, some had surmised that the “genes” were in the nucleic acid, but most were betting on the protein, because protein molecules are generally more complex than nucleic acid.
In the 1920s, a British researcher, while studying the microbes that cause pneumonia, discovered that under some circumstances harmless strains could become virulent. It took another generation of intense research for scientists to discover why. In 1944, Oswald Avery discovered that when deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) from the virulent strains was transferred to the harmless strains, the latter became just as deadly as the former. Clearly, DNA contained the genetic information.
This is where were at the time of the Clark/Marsh debate in 1947. Scientists had long known that the “genes” were in the chromosomes, and they had just recently discovered that DNA was the organic chemical compound within the chromosomes that contained the genes. But no one knew much about DNA. That was to change six years later.
The Description of DNA
In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick were able to elucidate the chemical structure of DNA, building a correct three-dimensional model of it. They determined that DNA was a chain of molecules (a polymer) in the shape of a “double helix”—a double helix looks like a ladder twisted into a corkscrew. The two sides of the ladder are composed of alternating sugar and phosphate groups. Protruding from each sugar group is one of four nitrogenous bases: adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine. Each base binds with a base protruding from the other side of the ladder to form the “rungs” of the ladder. Adenine binds with thymine, and guanine binds with cytosine.
The DNA molecule contains the code—the instructions—for synthesizing the amino acids that form the proteins that build a living organism. The information is contained in the order of the four bases. Just as the information necessary for a computer program, CD, or DVD is expressed digitally as ones and zeros, the information necessary to build a living organism is carried in these four bases. The code (or at least that part of the code that is currently well understood) is written in units called codons, each of which specifies a particular amino acid. A codon consists of a sequence of three bases, for example GAG or TCA. The four bases can be assembled into sixty-four possible codons. Since proteins are constructed from only twenty amino acids, redundancy is built into the coding system. Each amino acid is coded for by between two and four different codons.
As an aside on origins apologetics, I note that since DNA is clearly a code, and as such is God’s “signature in the cell,” to use Stephen Meyer’s term. My first apologetics article on this site was about DNA. When you have a language that is designed to communicate intelligent information, there is always an intelligent mind behind that communication. Where there is a computer program, there is a programmer who programmed it. Where there is writing, there is a writer who wrote it. Where there is sheet music, there is a musician who composed it. Wherever there is information communicated through a language or code, some intelligent being created that information. This is a law of life to which there are no exceptions. The discovery that DNA was a code effectively ended undirected evolution as a plausible explanation for the origin and development of life.
For present purposes, however, what is important about DNA is that the same code is used in every living organism. Of course, in different living things, it spells out different genes and arrangements of genes—just as the same musical notes can spell out very different pieces of music, Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 or Count Basie’s One O’clock Jump—but the language is always the same throughout the living world.[ii] Because the same genetic code or language is used in all living things, genes from one plant, animal, or microbe, can be transferred to any other plant, animal, or microbe.
Genetic Engineering
In 1969, a graduate student at Stanford worked out a technology for cutting a gene out of one bacterium and splicing it into the DNA of another microbe.[iii] One of the breakthroughs leading to genetic engineering was the discovery of restriction enzymes. When a virus inserts its DNA through a bacterial cell wall, the bacterium’s restriction enzymes start chopping up the viral DNA at specific points along the polymer to defend the bacterium against the invader.[iv] Scientists realized they could use these enzymes as “scissors” to cut DNA. Another enzyme, called DNA ligase, bonds complementary ends of DNA together. After recombining the DNA, they then used free-floating loops of DNA called plasmids to vector in, or insert, the recombined DNA into bacteria.
For the first few years after “recombinant DNA,” as it was then called, became a thing, there were very serious concerns about safety, and few experiments were done. But these concerns fell away as scientists convinced themselves that the benefits of recombining DNA would outweigh the risks. In 1973, Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer, spliced genes from a staphylococcus bacterium with genes from a toad and inserted them into E. coli bactera. Gene splicing experiments proceeded in the 1970s, and the pace of such experiments accelerated in the 1980s.
In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court put the biotechnology business on a firm intellectual property basis by ruling that genetically engineered organisms could be patented.[v] From then on, it was obvious to all that genetic engineering had enormous commercial potential. Herbert Boyer established a very successful biotechnology company, Genentech. When I wrote my book, Genentech’s market capitalization (the number of shares issued multiplied by the price per share) was 28 billion dollars; I just looked it up, and it currently is $74 billion. The largest biotechnology firm, Amgen, had a market capitalization of $65 billion dollars when I wrote my book; today it is $126 billion. The whole biotechnology sector put together is worth over $1 trillion dollars. Investors have poured a lot of money into genetic engineering. What has this money bought?
1. Medical uses of gene-splicing technology
An early commercial use of the new gene-splicing technology—one that started Genentech on the road to success—was the production of insulin. Insulin was previously available only from the pancreases of pigs and cows. But porcine and bovine insulin are not identical to human insulin, and 5 percent of diabetics are allergic to nonhuman insulin. Bioengineers took the human gene that codes for insulin and spliced it into bacteria, so that the bacteria would produce human insulin. A simple process of fermentation could then produce plentiful and inexpensive insulin. Transgenic insulin has been commercially produced since 1982.[vi]
Similar techniques have been used to produce human growth hormone (hGH). In some children, the gene that should code for hGH is defective, causing a condition known as pituitary dwarfism. HGH was previously available only in very small quantities from the brains of cadavers, but hGH from cadavers was at risk of contamination by an infectious agent (a protein crystal called a prion) that causes Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which ends in dementia and death (Creutzfeldt-Jakob is the human equivalent of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy—“Mad Cow” disease). But hGH can now be produced in quantity by fermenting bacteria into which the human gene has been transferred. The hormone is thus more plentiful, cheaper, and carries no risk of Creutzfeldt-Jakob.[vii]
Other examples of substances that have been transgenically produced include Factor 8 (the absence of which causes hemophilia), interleukin-2 (for treatment of kidney cancer), hepatitis B vaccine, erythropoietin (for anemia), and whooping cough vaccine. Most hormones and enzymes can be produced in quantity by inserting the gene that codes for that substance into bacteria and allowing the bacteria to ferment. This use of gene splicing has been a triumph of the biotechnology industry.[viii]
2. Agricultural uses of gene-splicing technology
You have probably been eating genetically modified foods for many years. Farmers began planting genetically modified crops in 1996, when about 4.2 million acres of such crops were planted. By 2019, about 470 million acres worldwide were planted with genetically modified crops. Transgenic crops include corn, soybeans, cotton, potatoes, papaya, squash, canola, alfalfa, apples, and sugar beets.
One common use of transgenic technology was to engineer crops that produce their own insecticide. A species of moth known as the European corn borer (Ostrinia nubilalis) lays its larvae on corn, where the larvae feed on tassels, whorl and leaf sheath tissue, as well as on silk, kernels, and cobs. Corn borer larvae can destroy up to 30 percent of the U.S. corn crop each year.[ix] To combat it, farmers used massive amounts of insecticide, but insecticides also kill beneficial insects.
About a century ago, scientists noticed that a bacterium named Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) produces a spore that contains protein crystals that are harmless to humans but toxic when ingested by insect larvae. A Bt toxin insecticide was produced, but why spray Bt toxin onto the plants when you can make the plants produce their own? Bioengineers have done just that, transferring the bacterial gene that codes for the toxin into the corn plant’s genome. The resulting transgenic corn, called Bt corn, produces its own insecticide, decreasing the need for spraying or dusting.[x]
By switching to Bt corn, farmers in the United States and Canada reportedly experienced average yield increases of 7 percent in 1997; meanwhile, the use of artificial insecticides declined 30 percent in 1998.[xi] Cotton, tobacco, tomatoes, potatoes, apples, rice, broccoli, and walnuts have all been engineered to produce their own Bt insecticide.[xii] At least eighteen insecticidal transgenic crops have been field tested, so the future will see more such plants come under cultivation.[xiii] By 2003, about eighty percent (80%) of the soybeans and about forty percent (40%) of the corn (maize) planted in the United States was genetically modified; almost all Americans have eaten genetically modified corn and soybean oil.[xiv]
Commercial cotton farmers rely on large quantities of insecticides, including calcium arsenate, DDT, and toxaphene, to kill the boll weevil (Anthonomus grandis), a beetle whose life-cycle includes a larval stage. Monsanto, a leading biotechnology company, has developed and patented a Bt cotton called “Nucoton.” According to a 1996 report, Monsanto licenses Nucoton to farmers for $32 an acre, but the farmers save from $50 to $60 an acre that they would have spent applying pesticides to a nontransgenic cotton crop.[xv] By 2003, 73 percent of cotton grown in the U.S. was genetically modified. Several southern states, including Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi reported that more than 90 percent of their cotton crop was genetically modified.[xvi]
In addition to pesticides, farmers spend a lot of money on fertilizer. They do not want weeds, because weeds divert nutrients away from the cash crop. But eradicating weeds without also killing the crop is a delicate and expensive business. Monsanto has an herbicide called “Roundup,” which they market to suburban gardeners as well as commercial farmers. The active ingredient in Roundup is glyphosate. Monsanto has developed genetically modified soybeans with built-in immunity to glyphosate. Farmers can now spray for weeds with Roundup and other glyphosate-based herbicides without hurting their soybean crops.[xvii]
Monsanto has also engineered glyphosate-tolerant canola, cotton, corn, and sugar beets.[xviii] Other companies have modified crops to be resistant to a variety of herbicides, including glufosinate[xix], bromoxynil, imidazolinone, and sulfonylurea.[xx] One of Monsanto’s competitors, Novartis, developed a broad-spectrum herbicide and simultaneously developed a gene named “Acuron” to make crops resistant to the new herbicide. Novartis planned to market Acuron-modified corn in the 2003 season and plans to market Acuron beets, wheat, soybeans, rice, canola, cotton, and sorghum at a later date.[xxi]
Humanitarian concerns motivate some uses of the gene splicing technology. In poorer countries, millions do not get enough vitamin A in their diet. Around 350,000 children go blind each year as a result. A Swiss scientist named Ingo Potrykus developed transgenic rice that incorporates DNA from daffodils. Because it is full of vitamin A and beta-carotene, the modified rice is yellowish and is called “golden rice.” Golden rice could potentially prevent thousands of children in developing countries from going blind.[xxii]
Charles Arntzen, a scientist at Arizona State University, is developing a transgenic banana with a built-in vaccine. This would allow vaccine manufacturers in Third World countries to make vaccines with simple food processing technology that they already have.[xxiii] According to reports, a vaccine for Hepatitis B has been built into genetically modified bananas. One dose, in the form of a single banana chip, will cost just one cent, as opposed to $15, and there is no need to refrigerate the banana chips. Arntzen has also developed transgenic potato and tomato vaccines.[xxiv]
Genetically modified crops are viewed with suspicion in Western countries, where food is already plentiful and relatively inexpensive. They have met with a warmer reception in Third World countries, which feed themselves largely through subsistence farming. Third-world farmers cannot afford fertilizers and pesticides. They need agricultural solutions that are self-contained, and do not require extensive training or infrastructure. Transgenic crops meet this need, because the technology is in the seed itself, and the farmers can plant the seeds and raise the crop just as they always have.[xxv]
Sweet potatoes, for example, are a staple crop in Kenya, but pests such as weevils and the feathery mottle virus can destroy 75% of a crop. In 1992, Florence Wambugu, a Kenyan scientist, began genetically engineering the sweet potato to defeat the feathery mottle virus. She spent three years at Monsanto’s laboratories developing a transgenic sweet potato, and field tests have been successful.[xxvi]
3. Transgenic animals
Genetic engineers have created hundreds of varieties of transgenic animals.[xxvii] The most widely used technique for making a transgenic animal is called microinjection. The scientist isolates the strand of DNA to be transferred, prepares a solution with multiple copies of the gene, and injects, with an extremely tiny syringe, a “picoliter”—a millionth of a millionth of a liter—of the gene solution into an undivided, fertilized egg. The injected gene diffuses to the chromosomes of the egg and inserts itself into the genome at random positions on the chromosomes.[xxviii]
If the transgene integrates before the first cell division, every cell in the embryo will contain at least one copy. If it integrates or is injected after the first cell division, only some of the cells of the resulting animal will contain a copy of the transgene. When this happens, the animal is called a mosaic. The tortoise-shell cat is a naturally occurring mosaic. Some of its cells have the gene for orange fur, and some have the gene for either white or black fur. Another method for creating transgenic animals is to introduce foreign embryonic cells into young embryos. The resulting animal will contain cells (and genomes) from two different organisms. These animals are called chimeras.[xxix]
The first transgenic animal to be patented was a mouse developed for medical research. Scientists at Harvard designed it to be susceptible to cancer-causing chemicals and to succumb to breast cancer.[xxx] Another early experiment involved linking the gene that codes for human growth hormone to a regulatory sequence controlling a gene for binding metal ions, and inserting this combined genetic mechanism into mice. When the mice were fed zinc, the gene that codes for hGH was switched on, causing the mice to grow twice as large as normal.[xxxi]
It is relatively easy to create transgenic fish, because fish eggs are fertilized and develop outside the fish’s body, obviating the need to extract and reinsert the egg into the mother.[xxxii] Transgenic rainbow trout, goldfish, and carp have been produced.[xxxiii] The “antifreeze gene” from the arctic flounder was inserted into the Atlantic salmon, allowing the salmon to live in colder waters. The gene that codes for a rainbow trout’s growth hormone has been inserted into catfish and carp embryos, causing the transgenic fish to grow 60 percent faster than regular fish.[xxxiv]
Increasingly, fish are farmed in large hatcheries rather than caught in the open ocean. Aqua Bounty Technologies has introduced a growth gene from Chinook salmon and a promoter sequence from ocean pout into its farmed Atlantic salmon, causing them to grow four times faster than normal salmon. These “AquAdvantageä” salmon do not grow larger than normal, but mature in one-fourth the normal time span. Obviously, it is far more efficient and profitable to grow and sell four fish crops in the time it previously took to grow one.[xxxv]
Officials at Aqua Bounty argue that AquAdvantageä salmon are not larger at sexual maturity than normal salmon, invalidating the key assumption of the computer simulation.[xxxvi] Moreover, Aqua Bounty states that they engineer all of their fish to be both sterile and female—a claim that is less than reassuring, given that a fictional bioengineer at “Jurassic Park” made an identical claim regarding his dinosaurs.[xxxvii]
Some transgenic animals are created for the same reason that scientists made transgenic yeast and bacteria—to produce medically useful substances. This use of transgenic animals, which is a cross between agriculture and pharmaceuticals, is called pharming.[xxxviii] (Pharming is also the name of a Dutch company in the industry.) Pharming typically involves transferring a human gene into a bovine (or other mammalian) genome, in the hope that the cow will produce the desired substance in its milk. The story of one pharming project illustrates this technique.
The human body normally produces a protein called alpha-1-antitrypsin (AAT), which is necessary to the proper functioning of our lungs, and the lack of which causes emphysema and cystic fibrosis. Replacement therapy works, but supplies are limited. Scientists at Pharmaceutical Proteins Limited (PPL), a Scottish company based at Roslin Institute, set out to engineer transgenic sheep that could produce AAT in their milk.
First, the scientists isolated the human gene that codes for AAT and joined it with a regulatory sequence in the sheep’s DNA that causes the gene to express itself in the mammary glands.[xxxix] The researchers next experimented by inserting the transgene into mice eggs to create a mouse that would produce AAT in its mammary glands. They successfully created mice that produced AAT, but not in large enough quantities to justify trying the technique with larger mammals.
An astonishing fact about the human genome is that most of our DNA, about 95 percent to 97 percent of it, does not code for any protein. Geneticists had assumed that this huge proportion of our genome was simply useless “junk DNA”—perhaps some legacy of evolution. When portions of junk DNA intrude upon sections of DNA that code for proteins, these intruding strands are called introns. Assuming that introns would merely interfere with the normal expression of the gene, the researchers at PPL had excised or edited out the introns from the AAT gene. But when the initial experiments with mice failed to produce the protein in sufficient quantities, the researchers started tweaking the gene.
They discovered that the gene actually worked better with the introns than without them. “We left some of these random bits of DNA in the gene, essentially as God provided it,” stated one of the researchers, “and that produced high yields.”[xl] This story illustrates that although we may not understand the role “junk DNA” plays in regulating organic processes, it is becoming very clear that non-coding DNA has a role. It is not “junk.”
The PPL bioengineers next injected 550 sheep eggs with the gene that had succeeded in mice. Of these 550 eggs, 439 survived and were implanted into ewes. The ewes gave birth to 112 lambs, of which only five had incorporated the transgene, and only three of the five actually produced AAT-enriched milk. But one of these, a sheep dubbed “Tracy,” was a winner—she produced thirty grams of AAT per liter of milk. PPL has bred—the old fashioned way—two herds of AAT-producing sheep from Tracy’s offspring.[xli]
Obviously, it takes a lot of work to get a pharming operation going, but once there is a herd that produces the desired substance, the animals can produce it in large quantities and without the moment-by-moment supervision necessary in fermenting-type operations.
Pharming Group, based in the Netherlands and Wisconsin, has developed a shortcut called “nuclear transfer.” Under this method, which is essentially cloning, the transgene is introduced into fetal cow cells. Those fetal cells that incorporate the transgene are isolated and their nuclei placed in cow eggs from which the original nuclei have been removed. The resulting transgenic embryos are then implanted in the wombs of surrogate mother cows and carried to term, making it possible to generate only female transgenic calves modified to produce the biopharmaceutical product.[xlii]
One of the weirdest transgenic experiments involves tweaking the human gene that codes for hemoglobin to make hemoglobin more efficient at oxygenating tissue. Hemoglobin is a blood protein that carries oxygen from our lungs to our body tissues. But only about 30 percent of the oxygen is released into the body’s tissues; the rest returns to the lungs and is exhaled. The crocodile version of hemoglobin is far more efficient than the human version, allowing crocodiles to stay underwater for about an hour before surfacing to breathe. A group of scientists in England is redesigning the human hemoglobin gene to make it more like the crocodile gene. Clinical trials to test the new hemoglobin on humans were underway in 1996.[xliii]
Scientists have spliced genes that affect visible characteristics. Japanese researchers transferred a gene for bioluminescence from the North American jellyfish into mice. The resulting mice glowed green under ultraviolet light.[xliv] Scientists have also transferred a firefly gene—called “luciferase”—into a tobacco plant. When watered with a solution of the proper chemicals, the resulting tobacco plant glows in the dark.[xlv]
Austin, Texas-based Yorktown Technologies is betting that there is a market for genetically engineered aquarium fish. Researchers at the National University of Singapore transferred a gene from a sea anemone into the freshwater zebra fish, causing the zebra fish to take on a bright red hue and glow under ultraviolet or black light. Yorktown Technologies purchased the right to sell these fish in the United States. In December 2003, Yorktown began distributing the ornamental “GloFish,ä” marking the first time an entire transgenic animal has been sold as a consumer product.
4. The Future
Scientists are currently only touching the surface of transgenic organisms. This process will greatly speed up in the twenty-first century, as the genomes of various crops and animals are decoded more or less simultaneously with the human genome. . . . From now to 2020, the pace of creating transgenic animals will vastly accelerate because we will have the complete genome of thousands of life forms on the earth to guide us.[xlvi]
Since any gene can be transferred from any living thing to any other living thing, the possible combinations and uses are almost endless. “It is a fact that this technology, and extensions of it which can be logically foreseen, give mankind the possibility to find out more about the basic processes of life than ever before, and to create life forms in ways that nature never intended.”[xlvii]
What is the future of biotechnology? So far, we have discussed only small transgenic modifications—a gene that codes for one protein is transferred from one species to another; a plant is modified to make its own pesticide, or to tolerate herbicides or viruses. What about big changes to the genome—true genetic engineering that radically changes the shape of an organism? In ancient mythology, a creature called a chimera was part eagle, part goat, and part serpent. Will genetic engineers ever be able to produce true chimeras?
In order to make major changes to the shape of an organism, we will need to learn how thousands of genes work together to produce wings, eyes, scales, feathers, teeth, and other body parts. This is where gene mapping and genomics come in. The genomics puzzle is coming together. Scientists have recently discovered master genes that direct thousands of other genes in the work of forming a human or animal body. These are also called “homeobox” genes or “selector” genes. The most famous of these is called “eyeless,” because it turns on the cascade of genes necessary to build an eye. Scientists experimenting on fruit flies noticed that when this gene was deleted, the resulting fly had no eyes.[xlviii] In 1995, Swiss scientists placed the “eyeless” gene in different parts of a fly genome, creating a fly that had seven sets of eyes growing on its body, including on the wings, the legs, and even the antennae.
These inappropriately placed eyes were real. They possessed all 800 essential eye units: the red pigment, the bristles between each unit eye, the lens, the light-sensitive cells inside, etc.[xlix] Scientists estimated that the “eyeless” gene supervises over 2,500 separate genes that are involved in making an eye. To celebrate the discovery, the journal Science published an issue with a picture of a multi-eyed fly on the cover.[l]
Homeobox genes appear not only in fruit flies and mice but in most other animals studied so far, including humans. Researchers have found that they can freely interchange homeobox genes between very different types of species.[li] For example, mice have an “eyeless” gene called Pax-6; researchers found that transferring Pax-6 into the fruit fly genome caused the fly to develop eyes just as its own gene would have. Even the squid version of “eyeless” will, when inserted into the fly genome, cause fly eyes to develop.[lii] Master genes from mice and even squid work just fine in the fruit fly genome. The mapping and study of homeobox genes is an important step in unraveling how DNA controls visible morphological features.
Futurist Michio Kaku predicts that between A.D. 2020 and 2050, scientists will probably be able to identify many of the genes that shape crucial body organs, but it will probably be decades after that before we are able to manipulate them with much dexterity. In a book section entitled, Beyond 2050: Angels in America, Kaku discusses what would be necessary in order to genetically engineer a human to grow its own wings and fly with them (like an angel, hence “angels in America”).[liii]
We could start by isolating the homeobox genes in birds that control the development of wings and transfer these to the human genome. But this would not work, because only birds have the cluster of genes needed to make wings. Inserting the master gene for wings into a human genome, if it had any effect, would probably only trigger the development of analogous human appendages, such as arms. Although the genome for birds may be sequenced early in the twenty-first century, identifying the thousands of genes necessary to form wings might take decades after that. Scientists would then have to determine how these genes act together to produce bones, muscles, tendons, feathers, the blood supply, and many other things—which might take further decades.
Aerodynamics would also have to be considered. Bird’s bones are hollow, reducing their weight and making flight easier. Human bones are thick and solid, and our wingspans would have to be around twenty feet to achieve flight. But the muscle power necessary to flap wings of this size would exceed anything possible with the human frame. Scientists would have to reengineer the human body, developing massive back muscles and lighter but stronger bones.
Genetically modifying the human body to grow usable wings would involve modifying every other organ and system in the body, and hence most of the genome. And although we completed, in the year 2000, the mapping of the human genome, what we actually have is just a map of the positions of the four bases (A, T, G, and C). In other words, we have a DNA map—we do not have a gene map. We do not yet know where all the genes are, what they all do, and how they work together.
The biotechnological capability that we already have does not translate into creating true chimeras with traits of multiple animals. Such chimeras will require knowledge that will not be available until after 2050, perhaps not even until the twenty-second century. “True chimeras are probably beyond the reach of biotechnology for perhaps a century or more,” notes Kaku.[liv] But the fact that such feats of genetic engineering are even being discussed shows what biotechnology will be in the future.
Notes:
[i] For a variety of reasons, Mendel’s work did not reach the scientific mainstream during his lifetime. These reasons included: (1) Mendel published his results in 1865 in a small local journal, The Proceedings of the Brünn Natural Science Society, in Moravia (now the Czech Republic), only about 140 copies were published, and most were sent reciprocally to other scientific societies where they sat on shelves unread; (2) Mendel was an Augustinian monk—he was not good at self-promotion; (3) Mendel employed more mathematics in his work than biologists were accustomed to seeing; (4) a colleague of Mendel’s urged him to repeat his experiments on hawkweed, a plant that—unbeknown to either of them—reproduced both sexually and asexually, with the result that Mendel was unable to reproduce his garden pea results and may have lost confidence in his original results. The three scientists who independently rediscovered Mendel’s laws were Hugo de Vries (1848-1935), Carl Correns (1864-1933), and Erich von Tschermak-Seysenegg (1871-1962).
[ii] This fact has been used to argue that every living thing evolved from a single ancestral cell, but it can as easily be used to argue that everything was created by one God. At the announcement of the completion of mapping the human genome, for example, Bill Clinton stated: “Today we are learning the language in which God created life.”
[iii] Lear, John, Recombinant DNA, the Untold Story (New York: Crown Pub., 1978), pp. 39-52. Peter Lobban was the graduate student who worked out the protocol.
[iv] When this happens, the bacterium tags its own DNA (with a methyl compound added to the cytosine bases), essentially telling its restriction enzymes, “This is my DNA—don’t cut it.”
[v] Diamond v. Chakrabarty, 447 U.S. 303; 100 S.Ct. 2204; 65 L.Ed.2d 144 (1980) In 1972, Ananda Chakrabarty, an engineer with General Electric, applied for a patent for a genetically engineered bacterium capable of breaking down crude oil. Chakrabarty collected bacteria from hazardous-waste dumps and found four different strains of the Pseudomonas bacteria that lived on various components of oil. He took the genes that allowed these four strains to live on oil (the genes were found in plasmids, rather than in the genome proper) and inserted them into a single bacterium. The idea was to use the genetically engineered bacteria to help clean up oil spills. The Supreme Court held that although a naturally occurring organism is not patentable, a genetically engineered one is: “Here, by contrast, the patentee has produced a new bacterium with markedly different characteristics from any found in nature and one having the potential for significant utility. His discovery is not nature's handiwork, but his own; accordingly it is patentable subject matter under § 101.” See also Christopher Lampton, supra, at pp. 102-106; Linda Tagliaferro, Genetic Engineering: Progress or Peril? (Minneapolis, MN: Lerner Publications Co., 1997), pp. 77-95; Nossal, G.J.V., Reshaping Life, (Cambridge, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1985-1989), pp. 126, 127.
[vi] See, e.g., Sheldon Krimsky, Genetic Alchemy: The Social History of the Recombinant DNA Controversy (London and Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982), p. 288; Lampton, Christopher, DNA and the Creation of New Life (New York: Arco Pub., 1983), pp. 82-83; Nossal, G.J.V., Reshaping Life (Cambridge, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1985-1989), pp. 43-45; Genetic Engineering: Opposing Viewpoints (San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, 1990), pp. 22, 23.
[vii] Kaku, Michio, Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century (New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1997), p. 223; Lampton, at p. 85; Nossal, at pp. 42, 43; Caskey, C. Thomas, “The Future of Biotechnology,” in Biotechnology (Washington, D.C.: Joseph Henry Press, 1996), p. 54; Levine, Joseph, and David Suzuki, The Secret of Life (Boston: WGBH, 1993), pp. 161-164; Aldridge, Susan, The Thread of Life: The Story of Genes and Genetic Engineering (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 45.
[viii] Kaku, at p. 223.
[ix] Levidow, Les, “Regulating Bt Maize in the United States and Europe: A Scientific-Cultural Comparison,” Environment, Dec. 1999.
[x]Aldridge, Susan, The Thread of Life: The Story of Genes and Genetic Engineering (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 209, 210; “Harvest of Fear: Exploring the Growing Fight over Genetically Modified Foods,” (2001) Frontline/NOVA.
[xi] Levidow, supra.
[xii] Moses, Vivian and Sheila, Exploiting Biotechnology (Switzerland: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1995), p. 172; Fox, at pp. 37, 38; Milius, S. “Bt broccoli test: Refuges cut pest resistance,” Science News, March 4, 2000.
[xiii] Obrycki, John J., “Transgenic Insecticidal Corn: Beyond Insecticidal Toxicity to Ecological Complexity,” Bioscience, May 2001.
[xiv] Fact Sheet, “Genetically Modified Crops in the United States,” Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology, August 2003.
[xv] Feder, Barnaby J., “Out of the lab, a Revolution on the Farm,” The New York Times, March 3, 1996, in Genetic Engineering: A Documentary History, Thomas A. Shannon, ed. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999), pp. 82, 83. There was a report that Monsanto’s Bt cotton failed to control the boll weevil in field tests. Fox, at p. 148, citing J. Rissler and M. Mellon, eds. “Bt Cotton Fails to Control Boll-worm,” Gene Exchange (Union of Concerned Scientists), vol. 7, no. 1 (1996). There is always the race against resistance. Insects can become resistant to the Bt toxin just as to any other insecticide. Mutations alter the molecules in the lining of the stomach to which the Bt protein crystals bind, such that the crystals no longer bind. In order to slow such mutations from spreading throughout the pest population, federal regulations mandate that farmers plant a certain percentage of nontransgenic crop to allow the nonresistant pests to survive. The regulations allow growers to choose one of the following three plans: (1) Plant a maximum of 80 percent Bt cotton along with 20 percent non-Bt, with the option of spraying the latter as needed with anything but foliar Bt insecticides; (2) Plant a maximum of 95 percent Bt cotton along with 5 percent non-Bt, but the latter cannot be sprayed with any insecticides; (3) Plant a maximum of 95 percent Bt cotton along with 5 percent non-Bt, with the latter planted in the same field with the Bt and sprayed only if the 95 percent is sprayed with non-Bt foliar insecticides. Weaver, Tara, “Protecting Farmers’ Investment in Bt Cotton,” Agricultural Research, February 2001. See also Mike Holmberg, “Those who need Bt technology most have the most to lose when resistance develops,” Successful Farming, May-June 1999.
[xvi] Fact Sheet, “Genetically Modified Crops in the United States,” Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology, August 2003.
[xvii] Aldridge, at p. 211; Paarlberg, Robert “The Global Food Fight,” Foreign Affairs, May/June 2000, in Biotechnology, Lynn Messina, ed. (New York: H.H. Wilson and Co., 2000), p. 148; Hodgson, John, Bio-Technology: Changing the Way Nature Works (London: Cassel, Equinox, 1989), p. 74. Interestingly, bioengineers got the idea from a natural plant parasite called Agrobacterium tumefaciens. This parasite infects scratches or cuts in plants, causing a cankerous growth called a crown gall. Agrobacterium invades plant cells and releases a free-floating strand of DNA called a Ti plasmid. Part of the plasmid inserts itself into the chromosome of the plant. The inserted DNA converts the plant into a factory that produces food for Agrobacterium. Genetic engineers have modified the Agrobacterium Ti plasmid for use as a “vector” to transfer foreign genes into plants. They remove the genes that create the canker, thus “disarming” the plasmid, but retain the genes that allow for the insertion of DNA into the plant chromosome. They then splice the genes they want to introduce into the plant into the disarmed plasmid. Hodgson, at p. 72. The state of the art for creating transgenic plants has advanced beyond this elegant but elaborate method for transferring genes. In 1987, scientists showed that a .22 caliber blank cartridge could serve to literally shoot DNA into plant cells. Now, bioengineers use a “gene gun,” to shoot genes into a plant. See, e.g., Paarlberg, at pp. 147, 148; Kaku, at p. 224.
[xviii] Fox, at pp. 68-74; Holmberg, Mike, “Transgenic Beets,” Successful Farming, Feb. 2000.
[xix] Aventis Cropscience (A Swiss company formerly known as Hoffman-LaRoche) developed the first rice genetically modified to be glufosinate-resistant. The folks at Aventis got ahead of themselves. Three U.S. Government agencies regulate various aspects of genetically modified food. The FDA and the USDA had approved Aventis’ glufosinate-resistant rice for human consumption. But the EPA had not approved glufosinate itself for use with rice, although it had approved glufosinate for use with corn, cotton, and rapeseed. Aventis had to bury 2,272 metric tons of rice in a landfill in southeast Texas. “Aventis to dispose of GM rice,” Food & Drink Weekly, May 28, 2001.
[xx] Fox, at pp. 68-74.
[xxi] Fairly, Peter, “Novartis Debuts PPO Herbicide and Tolerance Gene,” Chemical Week, Feb. 24, 1999. The herbicide is called a PPO herbicide because it kills plants by inhibiting an enzyme in the photosynthetic machinery—protoporphyrinogen oxidase (PPO). The “Acuron” gene codes for a variant of PPO engineered to resist the inhibitor. One drawback of transgenic herbicide resistance is that some cash crops are closely related to weeds and could donate their herbicide resistance to their weed cousins. Oilseed rape, for example, is a valuable crop in some areas and a nuisance weed in others. Should the herbicide-resistance gene cross from the cash crop to the weed, one farmer’s herbicide-resistance cash crop has created another farmer’s herbicide-resistant weed. See Wilson Wall, Sexing the Parrot: Changing the World with DNA (London: Cassell, 1999), pp. 164, 165.
[xxii] “Harvest of Fear: Exploring the Growing Fight over Genetically Modified Foods,” Frontline/NOVA (2001); Bailey, Ronald, “Dr. Strangelunch: or Why we should Stop Worrying and Love Genetically Modified Food,” Reason, Jan. 2001; Frontline/NOVA interview with Charles Arntzen, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/harvest/interviews/arntzen.html.
[xxiii] Tagliaferro, Linda, Genetic Engineering: Progress or Peril? (Minneapolis, MN: Lerner Publications Co., 1997), pp. 26, 27; “Harvest of Fear: Exploring the Growing Fight over Genetically Modified Foods,” Frontline/NOVA; “Edible Vaccines,” Pediatrics, Jan. 2001.
[xxiv] “Hepatitis B,” Environment, Nov. 2001.
[xxv] Cyrus Ndiritu, a former director of the Kenya Agriculture Research Institution, states. “I'd like to make something clear. It is not multinationals that have a stranglehold on Africa. It is hunger, poverty and deprivation. If Africa is going to get out of that, it has to embrace GM technology.” Lynn J. Cook, “Millions Served,” Forbes (December 23, 2002). http://www.forbes.com/global/2002/1223/064.html.
[xxvi] “Harvest of Fear: Exploring the Growing Fight over Genetically Modified Foods,” Frontline/NOVA (2001). See also Paarlberg, Robert, “Promise or Peril? Genetically Modified Crops in Developing Countries,” Environment, Jan. 2000; Lynn J. Cook, “Millions Served,” Forbes (December 23, 2002).
[xxvii] Wilmut Ian, Keith Campbell, and Colin Tudge, The Second Creation: Dolly and the Age of Biological Control (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), p. 30; Fox, at p. 93.
[xxviii] Aldridge, at p. 114.
[xxix] Aldridge, at pp. 114-116; Wilmut, Ian, et al., at pp. 34, 35
[xxx] Fox, at p. 94.
[xxxi] Nossal, G. J. V. and Ross L. Coppel, Reshaping Life (Cambridge, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1985-1989), p. 106; Fox, at p. 94.
[xxxii] Aldridge, at p. 116.
[xxxiii] Nossal, et al., at p. 107.
[xxxiv] Aldrige, at p, 117. See also “The Coming of Biotech Animals,” Nutrition Research Newsletter, March 2001, citing, C. Lewis, “A New Kind of fish Story: The Coming of Biotech Animals,” FDA Consumer (Jan.-Feb. 2001).
[xxxv] “Harvest of Fear: Exploring the Growing Fight over Genetically Modified Foods,” Frontline/NOVA (2001); “Biotech Brief: Fast Growing Fish,” Sierra, July 2001.
[xxxvi] “5 Myths about Transgenic Salmon” from Aqua Bounty’s official website: http://www.aquabounty.com.
[xxxvii] “Harvest of Fear: Exploring the Growing Fight over Genetically Modified Foods,” Frontline/NOVA (2001). See also “The Coming of Biotech Animals,” Nutrition Research Newsletter, March 2001.
[xxxviii] Levine, Joseph, and David Suzuki, The Secret of Life (Boston: WGBH, 1993), pp. 158-190; Wilmut, Ian, et al., at pp. 32-42; Fox, at pp. 93-122.
[xxxix] Levine, et al., at pp. 167, 168.
[xl] Levine, et al., at p. 169.
[xli] Levine, et al., at p. 170. See also Wilmut, Ian, et al., at pp. 36-39.
[xlii] “Pharming Announces Birth of First Female Transgenic Calves through Nuclear Transfer,” PR Newswire, January 27, 1999.
[xliii] Aldridge, at pp. 120-122.
[xliv] Associated Press, “Japanese researchers create glowing mice,” June 13, 1997.
[xlv] Roth, Ariel, Origins (Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald Pub., 1998), pp. 277, 278, citing Ow, Wood, DeLuca, de Wet, Helinski, and Howell, “Transient and stable expression of the firefly luciferase gene in plant cells,” Science, 234, pp. 856-859 (1986); De Wet, Wood, DeLuca, Helinski, and Subramani, “Firefly luciferase gene: structure and expression in mammalian cells,” Molecular and Cellular Biology, 7(2), pp. 725-737 (1987).
[xlvi] Kaku, at p. 223.
[xlvii] Nossal, G.J.V., Reshaping Life (Cambridge, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1985-1989), p. 118.
[xlviii] This is typical of genetic research. Geneticists delete or disable genes, then see what happens to the organism. The method has been compared to someone who, wanting to know how an automobile is assembled but being unable to see inside the plant, kidnaps a worker on the way into the factory each morning. If the automobiles coming out of the plant that day lack seats, then he knows the kidnapped worker’s job was to install the seats.
[xlix] Halder, G., et al., “Induction of ectopic eyes by targeted expression of the eyeless gene in Drosophila,” Science, 267:1788-1792 (March 24, 1995).
[l] Kaku, at pp. 235, 236. (“It’s the paper of the year,” remarked one observer, “This is Frankensteinian science at its best.”)
[li] Kaku, at p. 237.
[lii] Incidentally, how is it that mammals and insects, which are thought to have evolved separately for more than 500 million years, share the same master control gene for eye morphogenesis? It seems extremely unlikely, if the DNA copying error theory of evolution is true, that two creatures that supposedly began evolving (accidentally mis-replicating their DNA) along separate ancestral lines shortly after life appeared would share the same genetic control mechanisms. More likely, one Designer created everything, using the same “off the shelf” design solutions in many different creatures.
[liii] Kaku, at pp. 238-240.
[liv] Kaku, at p. 240.