8 October 2002

BIOTECH’S MAGIC CURES AN ILLUSION/CLONES CAN SUFFER TOO/AMERICAN CLONED FOOD ON ITS WAY

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: "The principal beneficiary of America's foreign assistance programs has always been the United States... Foreign assistance programs have helped create major markets for agricultural goods..." - statement on the USAID website quoted in 'USAID and GM Food Aid' (October 2002)
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/MultimediaFiles/Live/FullReport/5243.pdf

1. Clones can suffer too
2. American cloned food on its way
3. They promised magic cures, but success is an illusion

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1. Clones can suffer too

Leader, Independent on Sunday (London) October 6, 2002, Sunday

Our revelation today that milk and meat from cloned animals and their offspring may soon be on the market should cause farmers and ministers to stop and think where they are taking agriculture and food. The public's rejection of GM produce, and its enthusiasm for organic food, has shown clearly that it does not want such a hi-tech future. But ministers - despite their protestations that they want more environmentally friendly agriculture - continue to be blinded by science, and to acquiesce in the drive towards the ultimate in factory farming. The concern is not so much about health risks from cloning, but about the suffering it causes animals, the clones and their surrogate mothers.

 Scandalously, despite the importance people attach to animal welfare, it is not taken into account in the legislation and controls that would be applied to cloned produce. The number of cloned animals at present is small.

 To mass-produce them may never be economic. But we cannot rely on that. Now is the time to get the controls in place, to insist that if the science causes suffering it should not be allowed. There are few benefits; as an expensive technology it will produce expensive food for wealthy consumers, not help to feed the world. The Government has neglected to consider this issue properly, let alone draw up regulations. It should do so urgently, before another step is taken towards bringing on the clones.

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2. American cloned food on its way

Independent on Sunday (London) October 6, 2002, Sunday
Geoffrey Lean
Environment Editor

Food from cloned farm animals is heading towards dinner tables, after being cleared by America's top scientific body. US farmers already have cloned cattle, pigs and sheep and have been waiting for official clearance before putting their milk and meat on the market. Experts say that once cloned food goes on sale in America, probably as soon as next year, it will be extremely hard to stop it being exported to Britain. Animal welfare experts are deeply alarmed at the prospect of what they describe as "the ultimate in factory farming", because studies show that cloning inflicts particularly great suffering. Today is the Church of England's first Animal Welfare Sunday, an annual event on which Anglicans will be asked to speak out against cruel farming and switch to organic or free-range food. Millions of shoppers are bound harbour suspicions about cloned food, after the widespread rejection of GM produce - but the Food Standards Agency admits that it would not automatically be labelled. The new report - by the US National Academy of Sciences - concluded that there is no evidence that cloned produce poses "a food safety concern". Dr Kim Waddell, director of the two-year study, told the Independent on Sunday late last week: "We cannot envisage any problem from a theoretical standpoint, and there is nothing to suggest that there would be one."

 Though cautiously worded, and accompanied by calls for further studies, this assurance is likely to lead the US Government's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) - which commissioned the report - to give cloned food the go-ahead over the next few months. Cloning has progressed rapidly since the creation of Dolly the sheep at Edinburgh's Roslin Institute five years ago. Now at least 14 firms in the US, Japan, Canada and Australia - mainly linked with universities - are carrying it out commercially. One company - Prolinia, in Athens, Georgia - has even successfully cloned a cow after it had been slaughtered. It boasts: "This breakthrough has the potential to revolutionise beef cattle production by allowing producers to select cells from the highest quality meat, after it has been graded, to clone animals to stock their herd."

 Producers say milk, butter and cheese from cloned animals is likely to be the first food to go on sale, probably next year. Meat would probably first be produced from the offspring of clones, because the technique is expensive, but this could change as costs fell. Veal from offspring could again go on sale next year, and pork the year after. Animal welfare charities are appalled at the prospect of the technology spreading. They point out that many cloned embryos abort and that many that are born alive have health defects: Dolly has developed arthritis. And they add that breeding herds of identical animals would leave them particularly susceptible to disease. Julia Wrathall of the RSPCA said: "We can see no benefit at all from going down this road. Animals would presumably be cloned for high production, and they are already being pushed beyond the limit." She said the Government failed to implement recommendations from official inquiries for controls on the technology. US farmers have been pouring away milk from cloned cattle, after being asked by the FDA voluntarily to not sell it until there is an official ruling. The Government says that Britain has no specific laws controlling produce from cloned animals, though it would have to be shown to be the same as its conventional counterpart. That, by definition, is what cloning produces.

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3. They promised magic cures, but success is an illusion

Independent on Sunday (London) October 6, 2002, Sunday

If the completion of the Human Genome represented the peak of biotechnology excitement, last week represented a dismal trough. Biotech is a science on the cutting edge and well used to painful setbacks, but the double blow suffered over the past five days will take a lot to recover from. The new problems - centred on two health scares arising from biotech-derived treatments - come at a time when, globally, the industry is fighting a rearguard action for survival. Money for research is running down, the demand for bigger and better computers is rising, and, most crucially, the actual business of turning theory into drugs is proving far longer and more troublesome than anyone expected.

The issue of failing to meet expectations is a complex one. Over the past decade, the biotech industry has spoken so convincingly about the potential unleashed by cracking the genetic code that it has created a giant appetite for success with both investors and the general public. Now the industry is being forced into the quiet admission that the miracles are going to take some time, and share prices everywhere have plunged in response. A breakthrough that might have rescued biotech's reputation last week will probably be added to the industry back-burner. The announcement that scientists had mapped the genetic code of malaria-bearing mosquitoes was combined with the prediction that a cure for the disease is around the corner. More sober analysis suggests a much longer time frame.

Last week's news from France had an even more undermining effect. Biotech scientists have spent years working on a gene-based therapy to cure the fatal "bubble baby" syndrome of children born without immune systems. Just when it appeared that the gene therapy had produced the "miracle" cure all had hoped for, French doctors discovered that one child patient had gone on to develop leukaemia. Although British doctors have vowed to continue with gene therapy trials, French authorities have halted their work on the project. Further testing may bring up explanations for the development, but the issue casts a huge shadow over gene therapies. It has reminded the world in general that gene maps have not yet created a "new paradigm" for drug discovery.

French doctors were also responsible for exposing an even more significant setback for the biotech industry. After four years of research, Nicole Casadevall has cast doubts on Eprex, a protein-based kidney treatment that is the best-selling genetically engineered drug in the history of medicine. Eprex itself is the star product of the US drugs giant Johnson & Johnson, bringing in annual sales of $ 3.4bn (pounds 2.3bn). More critically, it is the leading product in a whole class of drugs developed over the past decade whose total annual value is more than $ 13bn. Other drugs makers using the technology include the biotech giant Amgen and the Swiss titan Roche.

The French allegation - that the protein leads to a damaging blood condition called "aplasia" - has cast a big cloud not just over this class of drugs, but over a long-standing cornerstone of biotechnology. The whole technology by which the drug was produced now looks challenged, which could draw in many more drugs produced by other companies. Particularly shocking is the length of time this has taken to emerge - suggesting that other biotech treatments deemed safe may in fact be ticking time-bombs. The incident has produced the predictable response from the biotech researchers, who point to the pitfalls of any new science. The biotech industry will certainly suffer from these two blows, but the long -term victims may be the drug companies. As many analysts are now concluding, traditional drugs companies were among the biggest believers in the potential of biotech. They allowed its promises to divert them from the traditional approaches to drug discovery, and are now paying the price with meagre pipelines.