A genie in a bottle
Scientists suspected DARPA of developing biological weapons
Olga Dobrovidova, N+1
The plant genetic modification program of the American Defense Advanced Research Agency (DARPA) can be used to develop a new dangerous type of biological weapon, German and French scientists believe. Their article was published in the journal Science (Reeves et al., Agricultural research, or a new bioweapon system?).
In November 2016, DARPA announced the launch of the Insect Allies program for a total of $27 million in grants: the program involves the development and testing of virus delivery to plants for their genetic modification directly in the fields with the help of insects. In the summer of 2017, the agency signed the first four-year contract for this program, tomatoes and corn are used in experiments, and cicadas, whiteflies and aphids are considered as insects.
DARPA is positioning a program for such horizontal gene editing in the environment, for example, using CRISPR technologies (horizontal environmental genetic alteration agents, abbreviated HEGAA) as a way to help farmers in the fight against droughts, frosts, pests, plant diseases and other typical agricultural problems.
Richard Reeves from the Max Planck Society Institute for Evolutionary Biology and his colleagues believe that HEGAA technologies will not be particularly useful for American agricultural producers, and their implementation will inevitably face insurmountable barriers, which DARPA is silent about.
"As a result, the program can be universally viewed as an effort to develop biological agents for hostile actions and a method of their delivery, which would be a violation of the Biological Weapons Convention," the scientists write.
In particular, the authors of the article are confused by the fact that neither DARPA nor the developers of new technologies themselves say anything about the fact that so far there is neither a national nor an international market for plants genetically modified in this way, because there is no regulation in any country, including the United States, allowing their creation and turnover. In addition, they note that the main argument for using insects as a means of delivering viruses – the unavailability of spraying tools for some farms – is untenable in the case of American farmers for whom the program is allegedly being conducted.
"Probably, the DARPA program could work with HEGAA and agricultural equipment without the use of insects. It is important that in this way it would be possible to achieve all the advantages of this tool for conventional agriculture in peacetime. It is reasonable, in this case, to ask: why do we need insects at all?", the article says.
Scientists note that in some documents the DARPA program is also described as a means of protection against unspecified threats, but in this case insects as a means of delivery are even less convenient, if only because it is not so easy to quickly produce a sufficient number of them. But, in their opinion, "simple modifications" of the conditions of the program – like the rejection of the mandatory limitation of the life span of insects, which cannot exceed two weeks – "will create a new class of biological weapons."
"Let's clarify that we do not consider the Insect Allies program unsuccessful just because it has military funding... In our opinion, this is a bad idea due to the fact that obvious simplifications of the program using existing technologies will allow us to create a predictable rapid-action weapon that poses a threat to any crop," the researchers write.
In the summer of this year, DARPA announced the launch of a program aimed at developing multifunctional micro-robots and the components necessary for this. Participants of the program with funding of $ 32 million will develop these technologies for three years, as well as participate in competitions.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru