Genetic Engineering

Activists rejoiced last week when a hard-fought battle over international standards for labeling genetically modified food came to an end — finally — after decades of debate. But the agreement, which many say opens the door for labels to be placed on such foods, will probably have little effect on food labels in the U.S. for the foreseeable future. And that could be a good thing, some scientists said. "The public gets bogged down on whether [crops are] genetically engineered or not. We think that's a distraction," said Pamela Ronald, a professor of plant pathology at UC Davis.

My mom's first day of motherhood was one of the happiest of her life. It was also one of the worst. She had accompanied my dad from Sri Lanka to Washington State University in 1968, so he could complete his doctorate as a Fulbright Scholar. The school was in Pullman, a small town near the Idaho border. Fluent in English, she worked as a university librarian. During her pregnancy, at age 30, she received care from one of Pullman's few obstetricians. She endured labor without drugs, and I was born healthy in 1972.

Fourth-generation farmer Greg Massa was in the middle of the rice harvest and he was dirty, angry and depressed. The price of the gasoline that powers his water pumps and rice harvester has never been more expensive. A late planting season, hot summer and rising expenses had ensured a less-than-stellar harvest, with the U.S. Department of Agriculture forecasting a 13% drop compared with last year.

Take a glance at Andrew Niccol's body of work, and it becomes apparent that the filmmaker is interested in exploring otherworldly realities. The first movie he wrote and directed, 1997's "Gattaca," presented a society in which children are born with only their parents' strongest hereditary traits — creating an environment in which people are judged by their gene pools. A few years later, he made "S1m0ne," a 2002 film about a computer-generated woman who becomes a famous actress.

New laboratory tests have found that veggie burgers and meat-free corn dogs made by natural foods brand Morningstar Farms contain genetically modified soy and the controversial genetically altered feed corn, StarLink, that has not been approved for human consumption. The tests, commissioned by the activist group Greenpeace, highlight the difficulty that even natural foods companies are having in assuring customers that their products do not contain genetically modified ingredients. Kellogg Co.

One newly bioengineered salmon, endowed with a gene from an eel-like fish, grows five times faster than its natural cousins. Another genetically modified salmon produces antifreeze in its blood so it can survive icy waters that swirl through oceanic fish farms. A tropical zebra fish, infused with the green fluorescent gene of a jellyfish, glows in the dark -- a living novelty that promoters hope will be a must-have for the home aquarium.

With a global population pressing against food supplies and vast areas of the ocean swept clean of fish, tiny AquaBounty Technologies Inc. of Waltham, Mass., says it can help feed the world. The firm has developed genetically engineered salmon that reach market weight in half the usual time. What's more, it hopes to avoid the pollution, disease and other problems associated with saltwater fish farms by having its salmon raised in inland facilities. The Food and Drug Administration has yet to approve what would be the nation's first commercial genetically modified food animal.

Wouldn't you think with all of the genetic engineering going on scientists could create either a Democrat with fiscal responsibility or a Republican with a social conscience? WOODY McBRIDE Manhattan Beach

Over the last two decades, the use of modern genetic engineering technology to produce pharmaceuticals and new crop plants has given rise to prodigious scientific, humanitarian and financial successes. But its application to animals for food has lagged behind despite the fact that animal protein is expensive and increasingly sought-after worldwide. The reason for the lag is not technical difficulty. Thousands of animals with genes deleted or added have been engineered for scientific purposes; the catalog of available lines resembles the telephone directory of a small city, and these animals have made incalculable contributions to the understanding of mammalian gene function in health and disease.

Fast-growing salmon. Pork containing heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids. These are two examples of products you might see in your local supermarket soon -- animals developed not through conventional breeding but through genetic engineering. On Jan. 15, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration decided how it will regulate genetically engineered animals, for the first time paving the way for such animals or their products to be sold as food and medicine.

In a potential breakthrough in cancer research, scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have genetically engineered patients' T cells — a type of white blood cell — to attack cancer cells in advanced cases of a common type of leukemia. Two of the three patients who received doses of the designer T cells in a clinical trial have remained cancer-free for more than a year, the researchers said. Experts not connected with the trial said the feat was important because it suggested that T cells could be tweaked to kill a range of cancers, including ones of the blood, breast and colon.

A group of senators has asked the Food and Drug Administration to abandon its approval process of genetically engineered salmon as food, threatening to push legislation to strip the FDA's funding to study the fish if the agency does not comply. Eight senators sent a letter dated July 15 to the FDA asking it to "immediately cease" consideration of such salmon, a product brought before the agency by AquaBounty Technologies 15 years ago. AquaBounty's proposal calls for the embryos of the fish to be sterilized in Canada before being shipped to Panama, where the males would be exposed to estrogen and sex-reversed.

Activists rejoiced last week when a hard-fought battle over international standards for labeling genetically modified food came to an end — finally — after decades of debate. But the agreement, which many say opens the door for labels to be placed on such foods, will probably have little effect on food labels in the U.S. for the foreseeable future. And that could be a good thing, some scientists said. "The public gets bogged down on whether [crops are] genetically engineered or not. We think that's a distraction," said Pamela Ronald, a professor of plant pathology at UC Davis.

Leather, tulle and silk may be the stuff of runway dreams, but when it comes to most U.S. apparel, cotton is king. Almost 75% of clothing sold in the U.S. contains at least some of the tufty fiber, according to the 2010 Cotton Inc. Retail Monitor, a survey of mass retailers. Farmers in this country will grow 8.16 billion pounds of cotton during the current growing season. Add China, India and the 100-plus other countries that cultivate cotton, and the yield is 62 billion pounds produced annually worldwide.

Cancer treatments, such as radiation and chemotherapy, are more shotgun-scattered than precision-targeted. They damage bystanding healthy cells as they attack the tumor tissue, causing nasty side effects. Scientists would like to focus these therapies more narrowly on the cancer cells alone, and researchers in Toronto have come up with a new strategy. With a flick of a genetic switch, they've made cancer cells ultra-sensitive to radiation, thus killing tumors that normally withstand the treatment.

Soybeans, corn, cotton and canola ? most of the acres planted in these crops in the United States are genetically altered. "Transgenic" seeds can save farmers time and reduce the use of some insecticides, but herbicide use is higher, and respected experts argue that some genetically engineered crops may also pose serious health and environmental risks. Also, the benefits of genetically engineered crops may be overstated. We don't have the complete picture. That's no accident. Multibillion-dollar agricultural corporations, including Monsanto and Syngenta, have restricted independent research on their genetically engineered crops.

A federal judge has dismissed two lawsuits by activist Jeremy Rifkin challenging the government's regulation of genetic engineering, a lawyer for Rifkin and a trade group said Tuesday. Judge Gerhard A. Gesell ruled that Rifkin had no legal right to sue at this point, said Andrew Kimball, one of Rifkin's lawyers, and Dick Godown, president of the Industrial Bio-Technology Assn.

A Food and Drug Administration advisory panel debated Monday whether to endorse the safety of genetically engineered salmon, but instead urged the agency to require more studies to demonstrate the fish's safety. The North Atlantic salmon developed by AquaBounty Technologies Inc. of Waltham, Mass., would be the country's first genetically engineered food animal. The Veterinary Medicine Advisory Committee did not vote on the FDA's preliminary findings that the fish was safe for people to eat and did not pose a significant environmental risk.