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Alexander Panchin: "GMOs are good"
Olga Fadeeva, Naked Science
What is GMO? When will medicine defeat cancer and HIV? How can genetic engineering affect rejuvenation, what to do with the worldwide problem of reducing tolerance to antibiotics and why is homeopathy ineffective? We talked about this with the famous biologist and popularizer of science Alexander Panchin.
Alexander Yuryevich Panchin is a biologist, winner of the Enlightener Prize for the book "The Sum of Biotechnology". Senior Researcher at the Institute of Information Transmission Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences named after Harkevich, member of the RAS Commission on Combating Pseudoscience and Falsification of scientific research. Member of the organizing committee and the Expert council of the Award. Harry Houdini, member of the board of the educational foundation "Evolution". Research interests: bioengineering and bioinformatics. Author of many scientific and popular scientific articles, participant of TV and radio programs.
– Alexander, why is GMOs not only not harmful, but also useful?
– People are afraid of GMOs because they don't understand what it is. Surveys show that only 29% of Russians imagine that genes exist not only in genetically modified plants, but also in ordinary ones. Approximately 80% believe that GMOs are very dangerous and harmful. Here, it is probably appropriate to refer to one of the largest reviews published in the journal Critical Reviews in Biotechnology (Nicolas et al, 2014), where about one and a half thousand publications on the topic of GMOs were reviewed. The authors concluded that GM organisms do not carry any additional dangers. – What is a GMO?
– This is a plant variety, a strain of a microorganism or an animal that has some genes changed in the laboratory. It is important to remember that genes change (mutate) in all living beings. This always happens and is called evolution. The difference between artificially mutable genes and those that mutate by themselves, in living nature, is only that in the first case we control this process, and in the second we do not. In addition, we change genes for some purpose. For example, to get a plant resistant to some virus.
Genetic engineering is a technology with which you can create a variety of organisms and, of course, if I wanted to do something harmful, I could. But geneticists do not have such a task. There is simply no commercial interest in this – people are trying to do useful things that will be in demand on the market.
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And since GM organisms are very different, it is quite strange to talk about the benefits or harms of GMOs in general. But we can talk about the advantages of specific GM varieties. Take, for example, the irrigation of fields with insecticides – chemical preparations for the destruction of pests. Useful insects also die with them. To prevent this from happening, we can create genetically modified varieties of plants that are resistant to pests. At the same time, the costs of using insecticides are also reduced. There are examples when it is impossible to grow a particular crop without genetic engineering. Once, due to a virus in Hawaii, almost all papaya was destroyed. Breeders tried to create papaya resistant to the virus, but nothing worked, but genetic engineers were able to.
With the help of genetic engineering, the quality of products can also be improved. For example, black tomatoes rich in antioxidants are about to go on sale in the USA. They have been tested on rodents and have shown good results in reducing the risk of cancer and some other diseases. Speaking of medicine. Almost all insulin produced today is obtained with the help of genetically modified microorganisms.
Not to mention the contribution of GMOs to increasing yields. Thanks to these technologies, more products can be obtained from one unit of area today, which means that there is no need to destroy natural ecosystems, cut down forests, and exterminate animals. I am already silent about the fact that it is necessary and simple to feed people, of whom there are already 7.3 billion people on the planet, and there will be even more. So there are a lot of benefits from some GMOs. But, alas, opponents of GMOs, as a rule, consider technology to be an absolute evil. – Maybe it is beneficial for someone to create such an image of GMOs?
– It is difficult to assess this, because the same agricultural companies have a lot of different interests. There are countries where farmers are given money so that they do not grow food, because certain corporations want to sell it more expensive. There are agricultural companies that don't grow GMOs just to advertise their products, because they know that most people have a GMO phobia. There are manufacturers of the same insecticides who are unprofitable by the very fact of the existence of GMOs.
Politicians forbid such things because their only task is to be elected for a new term. It is more profitable for them to support the bulk of the population in such matters than to go against the opinion of the majority. So I am not a supporter of conspiracy theories, as Pelevin said: "The world is ruled not by a secret lodge, but by an obvious mess." Do not suspect malicious intent where everything can be explained by human stupidity.
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– You talked about genetic engineering in medicine, are there any prospects to defeat diseases such as cancer, HIV, etc.?
– Genetic engineering has prospects of application for the treatment of three groups of diseases: hereditary, viral and oncological. As for some hereditary diseases in adults, the so-called gene therapy has already appeared. Take, for example, patients with hemophilia, in whom the gene responsible for the production of blood clotting factor does not work. With the help of a genetically modified neutralized virus, it is possible to deliver a corrected copy of this gene to the liver, where the necessary factor is formed. This helps to alleviate the symptoms.
Virus protection is associated with CRISPR/Cas9 technology. This is a very fashionable word in modern biology, a system of bacterial antiviral immunity. It is based on a protein that can cut DNA. There are ways to program this protein so that it cuts DNA in the place you need, including cutting almost any virus. That is, it is possible to supply such a protein to cells that, thus, will be resistant to viruses. Similar experiments have already been conducted on plants.
For example, tobacco was created that can cut some viruses infecting this type of plant. The same has been done on human cell culture (not yet on humans as a whole): they have been made resistant to HIV. In the future, this may be the approach that will help us finally defeat this disease.
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And the third direction is oncological diseases. Cancer cells are cells that seem to have gone mad, they divide indefinitely and form deadly tumors. Usually the immune system destroys them, but it happens that the cells of the immune system do not have the right receptors to recognize a cancerous tumor. And then, by transplanting certain genes, we can supply the immune cell with such receptors. Using this technology, some patients have already been cured of leukemia. – When will these achievements go to the masses?
– All these technologies are still, of course, in the experimental stage. Some drugs related to gene therapy have already entered the market, but what concerns the treatment of cancer and viral infections is under development. Such drugs will be released to the masses, I think, not earlier than in 10-20 years. – In this regard, I would like to ask a question about the problem that the World Health Organization voiced a few years ago – reducing tolerance to antibiotics. What does genetic engineering offer in this regard?
– Indeed, if you expose bacteria to constant exposure to antibiotics, they develop resistance. But there are measures that allow you to slow down this process. The first rule is to drink the entire course of antibiotics to the end. Because in this way you kill all the bacteria. If you drank only half of the course, then you left some of the bacteria that turned out to be more resistant. And when you, conditionally, cough at some friend of yours, you will infect him with a form of more tolerant bacteria. After a few such infections, a more stable form of bacteria will appear.
The second rule is not to drink antibiotics if there is no indication for this. Because in this way you make bacteria more adaptable, and when you really need one or another type of antibiotics, it may simply not help you – the bacteria will be stronger than the medicine, because they have developed resistance to it.
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If we talk about genetic engineering, then so–called bacteriophages can be used against bacteria - viruses that destroy bacteria and that can be developed in the laboratory. – What can we say about the prospects for rejuvenation?
– The most encouraging link between genetic engineering and rejuvenation was shown in one study that was conducted on rodents. With the help of viruses, an enzyme gene called telomerase was introduced into different animal cells. During cell division, DNA doubles, resulting in slightly shortened chromosomes, and in order for this shortening not to affect some important genes, there are sections at the ends of DNA - telomeres that protect DNA from shortening. With age, the length of telomeres in cells shortens. Telomerase completes telomeres, preventing this process. Cells gain the ability to divide more. Thus, the rodents' life was extended by 20%. There was an idea to do the same for people, but so far there have been no full-fledged clinical trials. We need a large number of volunteers who will inject themselves with these viruses and a placebo. And after the nth number of years, we will know whether it worked or not.
– I know that you are also engaged in debunking myths about the effectiveness of homeopathy. Tell us about it.
– Recently, a detailed report of the Ministry of Health of Australia was published, in which 57 systematic reviews of homeopathy were analyzed. And we came to the conclusion that there is not a single disease out of 61 considered in these reviews for which the effectiveness of homeopathy has been proven. These results are consistent with a lot of others previously published in scientific journals. That is, homeopathy does not work.
In order to test the effectiveness of any medical drug, it is compared with a kind of dummy, a placebo. And although placebo drugs probably have some kind of psychotherapeutic effect, it is pointless to treat serious diseases like flu or cancer with them. Exceptions are some symptoms like pain or nausea. Indeed, a person can believe in the effectiveness of a placebo, believing that it is a medicine, and he will have less pain or he will be less sick. Or he will feel that he has something less painful or he is less sick. That's not bad either. But we are now talking about the real effectiveness of homeopathy, of which there is no evidence.
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