Biotechnology and Politics – What To Do?
It is obvious from research that within our century, biotechnology will give rise to a host of new issues to deal with that we never saw before. Whether they come from our country or somewhere else, they’re definitely on the way.
Sadly, there has been very little discussion about these issues in the presidential elections. It’s as if the candidates have no clue as to what it’s all about…. or they have been influenced to keep their mouths shut and allow BIG Pharma free reign.
Cloning is one issue that many of us have no idea how we’ll react to. A poll of Americans has shown that a sizable percentage believed that a cloned human would not have a soul. However, there’s a bright side to this: they might not object to cloned embryonic stem cells, at that rate, since to them clones have no life to take.
Then there is the matter of artificial DNA. One pictures the world of the movie “Blade Runner” with colorful replicant life forms living amongst us. But this isn’t too far off. In fact, in a recent science article in the Washington Post, experts have stated that “the technology is quickly becoming so simple, experts say, that it will not be long before ‘bio hackers’ working in garages will be downloading genetic programs and making them into novel life forms.”. When these feats are possible, government controls will have to rush to update themselves to regulate what can and cannot be done in this area.
Tampering with existing DNA in already-living people is becoming commonplace. “Gene therapy” is where genes are inserted into a patient’s cells and tissues to treat a disease, usually a hereditary one. The effect is to replace a mutant gene causing the disease with a healthy one. Although the technology is still in its infancy, it has been applied in some cases with some success. This raises some interesting questions for the medical malpractice lawyers: Will we one day see a child suing her parents for allowing her to be born with Down’s syndrome? When we use artificial genes to replace natural genes, have we created a chimera?
We’re told the most promising Covid-19 vaccines are DNA vaccines. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), a DNA vaccine “involves the direct introduction into appropriate tissues of a plasmid containing the DNA sequence encoding the antigen(s) against which an immune response is sought, and relies on the in situ production of the target antigen.” This means that, in contrast to the more widespread “conventional” vaccines which use a whole pathogen or fragment, a DNA vaccine involves the injection of a small part of the virus’s genetic code (DNA or RNA) to stimulate immune response in a patient without an infection.
This is a whole new technology that has never been proven to work or to be safe. Nonetheless, governments around the world are looking to BigPharma companies to rush develop such a vaccine and inoculate most of the world to attain herd immunity to coronavirus.
The Emerging Role of DNA Vaccines
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/715527_8
Advancing Novel Experimental Gene-based COVID-19 Vaccine, AAVCOVID
https://eye.hms.harvard.edu/news/harvard-ophthalmology-advancing-novel-experimental-gene-based-covid-19-vaccine-aavcovid
At the end of these developments lies the ultimate science fiction scenario: genetic engineering.
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Biological weapons have already been widely debated in politics already, and a biological weapon is nothing more or less than a super-germ created specifically to infect the enemy. So far, these germs have only been bred, not created from scratch. But beyond mere germs, what else could somebody do with a bio-engineering lab, a lot of scientists, a lot of money, and not much ethics? Perhaps breed a race of super-soldiers to conquer the world with?
Operation Paperclip was a secret program of the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA) largely carried out by Special Agents of Army CIC, in which more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians, such as Wernher von Braun and his V-2 rocket team, were taken from Germany to America for U.S. government employment, primarily between 1945 and 1959. Some of these scientists created in a laboratory a man-made biological plague that could spread through the population. Many scientists believe this plague is the real root of a spectrum of autoimmune diseases (autism, arthritis).
Get Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America |
The full House of Representatives passed an amendment offered by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) which directs the Inspector General (IG) of the Department of Defense to investigate the “possible involvement of DOD biowarfare labs in the weaponization of Lyme disease in ticks and other insects” from 1950-1975. Smith said the amendment was inspired by “a number of books and articles suggesting that significant research had been done at US government facilities including Fort Detrick, Maryland, and Plum Island, New York, to turn ticks and … insects into bioweapons”.
There is also the matter of ownership of intellectual property. Many biology labs have already rushed to patent life forms that they might create in the future. This makes sense when you consider the case of genetically altered food crops – a case in point is a new strain of corn that has been designed to be insect-resistant, already growing and yielding crops in Kenya.
Other cases are manufacturing human insulin through a genetically modified bacteria and erythropoietin manufactured from genetically altered mice. All of this is already being done, but laboratories want to maintain some property rights before they just release their newly-altered life forms into the wild. In fact, much of the advanced medical treatments today are being deployed with the use of biological engineering in some degree. One of the earliest approved uses was the FDA-approved genetically-engineered hepatitis B vaccine, introduced in 1986.
The purpose of this article is not to scare anyone or promote fear-mongering. Biotechnology is already out there in the world. But it cannot help but march forward, and sometime when the dust has settled, perhaps cloned or genetically engineered humans will be voting on what we can do to them, instead of the other way around.