Is it safe to buy a used liver from a pig?

Transgenic crops, of course, are only the first wave of the genetically novel organisms we will see in the next few years: fish are being engineered to grow more quickly; cows are being modified to produce pharmaceuticals in their milk; even insects are being reprogrammed in the hope they might no longer carry infectious disease. And all of this is happening with what many scientists agree is still a rather sketchy understanding of how genetic mechanisms work and interact with the environment.

Unlike many critics of biotechnology, Caruso doesn’t demand that work be halted, but rather argues that in the face of such unknowns, our means of risk assessment must be sharpened.  In fact, in a neat bit of participatory journalism, Caruso actually tried it herself. She received a grant from the National Science Foundation and convened her own risk assessment panel to study “xenotransplantation”: the use of genetically modified pigs to grow replacement organs for human. But rather than viewing this simply as a technical issue, she stocked her panel with a variety of disciplines, from economics and medicine to zoology and anthropology.

One of the biggest concerns abut xenotransplantation is that it might introduce new and potentially deadly viruses into humans. But very quickly, the panel came up with a variety of issues well beyond the purely medical issue of patient safety, ranging from how to dispose of thousands of transgenic pig carcasses to the potential international competition to produce replacement organs at the lowest cost. Caruso’s grant didn’t let her pursue the xenotransplantation question further, but the exercise clearly demonstrated the power of a multidisciplinary approach to risk assessment.

So where do we go from here?  One can only hope that the meticulously-argued “Intervention” will receive a wide reading in Washington, where our national risk assessment policies are forged. We’re still at the early days of our efforts to rewrite the genomes around and within us, so there’s time for a sensible review of how we balance risks and benefits going forward. Otherwise, it’s hard to imagine that we will manage to avoid another thalidomide or Chernobyl, but this time with potential damages that could span continents and last for generations.

I recently wrote about another new book called “Follies of Science”, a look at 20^th century visions of the future. While most of those old images of robots and flying cars were charming and innocent, three pages were quite chilling. They featured magazine advertisements that breathlessly proclaimed the almost limitless benefits of lead paint, asbestos and radium.  Somewhere in the myriad upcoming products of genetic engineering and synthetic biology we’re almost certainly a creating the next generation’s equivalent of asbestos — or worse.  “Intervention” makes a strong case that it doesn’t have to be that way. And by now, you’d think we would know better.

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