The scientist talks about the reasons for the next attack on GMOs

"Society's attitude to GMOs is consistently negative"

Ekaterina Shutova, Newspaper.Ru

What is the reason for the next attack on GMOs, who benefits from it and whether it is worth waiting for an increase in human life expectancy, "the newspaper.Ru" was told by Alexander Panchin, Candidate of Biological Sciences, senior researcher at the A.A. Harkevich Institute of Information Transmission Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences, blogger, popularizer of science.

– Zero – so many people in the world have died as a result of the use of GMOs. Almost all the insulin needed for diabetics is obtained using genetically modified organisms. Then what is the reason for such activity of opponents of GMOs?

– A sociological survey was conducted in America, which showed that approximately 82% of Americans are in favor of labeling GMOs. But the same survey showed that 81% of respondents are in favor of mandatory labeling of products containing DNA! DNA is present in all living organisms, and the population simply does not understand this. Apparently, people also do not understand what GMOs are, and therefore they are afraid of this terrible three-letter word. This situation plays into the hands of, for example, some trading companies that receive more profit from goods with the label "does not contain GMOs".

According to VTSIOM polls, three quarters of Russians admit that they are willing to pay more for non-GMO products. The opponent of GMOs, actively rocking the boat, is also the chemical industry, which produces pesticides. GMOs resistant to pests are unprofitable for them. And there are also people who travel on this very label, create black lists of products that, in their opinion, contain GMOs, and so on.

– And how to treat scientists who oppose GMOs?

– You need to understand that such scientists can be counted on the fingers of one hand. They're just really loud, and they're on TV all the time. In the USA, 89% of all scientists believe that GMOs are no more dangerous than conventional products. There are even more supporters of GMOs among biologists. I do not know anyone among my colleagues who would oppose GMOs.

– Why do we need GMOs at all? After all, there is an opinion that plant varieties and animal breeds obtained by breeding are able to fully provide the world's population with food.

– If you stop using pesticides, you won't be able to grow anything. GMOs are an alternative to pesticides, including those harmful to health. Therefore, it is not only a question of providing food, it is also a question of providing high-quality food. In addition, GMOs allow you to grow the same amount of products on a smaller area, since the plants are not eaten by pests, and this causes less damage to the environment. And sometimes it is simply impossible to grow "non-GMO".

Here is another example: in Hawaii in the 1950s and 1960s, almost all papaya crops disappeared due to an outbreak of a viral infection. For decades, Hawaiians have been trying to breed papaya resistant to the virus by breeding methods, but nothing worked until they came up with GM papaya. GMOs also contribute to biodiversity: in the north, you can grow plants that are resistant to cold, in the south – to drought.

Or, for example, you need vitamin A, but it is expensive to get it chemically. Therefore, you can simply create with the help of genetic engineering "golden rice", rich in beta-carotene, from which vitamin A is obtained, and grow it for free.

– What stupid and unprovable arguments are the opponents of GMOs?

– One of the stupidest is that GMOs lead to a sex change in people.

– What is the advantage of GMOs over breeding?

– Firstly, breeding requires more time. Secondly, in the case of GMOs, we know exactly everything about the end result: which gene was used, whether the protein is toxic. In the case of breeding, we do not know what genetic changes led to the resulting trait.

– Science is not aware of any fact of harm from GMOs. Were there unsafe breeding results?

– There were unsafe cultivation results. For example, in the USSR they tried to grow borscht of Sosnovsky. And this led to problems because he escaped into the wild and became a weed that was difficult to fight. If a person touches it, and then stretches out his hand to the sun, there will be a severe burn. My classmate was hurt like that, not much, really.

– Gene therapy is also a genetic modification aimed at making changes to the genetic apparatus of human somatic cells in order to treat diseases. Is the method of obtaining GMOs and gene therapy the same technique?

– They are different, because it's one thing when you want to modify one cell, from which a whole organism will grow, and another thing when you want to change part of the cells of an adult organism. A typical problem: a person has hemophilia, blood does not clot because there is a mutation in the gene that is responsible for blood clotting. Then you can take the gene that is needed for blood clotting, and a special virus that tries to deliver this gene directly to the liver cells.

If you take another virus, it will embed the gene into other cells. Thus, slightly different technical approaches are used in gene therapy. Gene therapy is a very promising technology, but its contribution to the well–being of mankind is still incomparably less than the contribution of genetic engineering of plants and microorganisms.

– Do you think it is possible that in the future GM people will be created who live much longer than they do now?

– Experiments have already been carried out on mice, when many gene modifications were made to them before birth, as a result, the mice lived about 1.5 times longer. Other approaches are needed to prolong the life of an adult mouse. Now it is possible to extend the life of adult mice by 20-30%. In general, it seems to me that prolonging a person's life is a matter of time. And no laws of physics contradict the prolongation of life. Whether we will live to create technologies that significantly prolong life depends on how intensively we will develop biotechnologies.

– Genetics was recognized as a pseudoscience in the USSR. And what is happening with the domestic genetic engineering now?

– There is an obvious deterioration of the situation in the legislation, because people who do not understand genetic engineering are trying to pass laws in this area, having listened to very strange people like Irina Ermakova, who believes that men descended from hermaphrodite Amazons. The second point concerns science. Genetic engineering is an area where it is difficult to keep up with the world level. Simply because it is possible to adapt existing biotechnologies to those crops that grow in Russia. We are engaged in this, and even have certain scientific achievements. But it is impossible to commercialize these developments with us: the risks are too high that some anti-money law will be adopted and your business will simply be closed.

Society's attitude to GMOs is consistently negative. And in many ways this negative attitude is caused by poorly working journalists who create videos on a topic that they do not understand, escalate fears and do not listen to professional molecular biologists.

– If we talk about disputes between supporters and opponents of GMOs, how does this confrontation in Russia differ from Western countries? And what is the reason for this?

– Public and scientific discussions about GMOs in Russia and in the West have a similar character. The difference is that in the West, politicians are advised by real experts. Therefore, GMOs are allowed and used in the USA. In Europe, the green lobby opposes GMOs. They pursue noble goals, but at the same time they lack education. They do not understand that the same genetic engineering can help the environment, for example, reduce the use of pesticides in the fields. As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Where the "green" lobby is weaker, for example, in Spain, GMOs are actively grown. In Russia, they are considering a very strange bill that could harm the development of biotechnologies. It does not prohibit the import of GMOs, but prevents the cultivation of domestic varieties.

– To what extent do bioethics and bioethical principles interfere with modern science? After all, if bioethics had been so strong earlier, we would never have received the results of such experiments as the "Third Wave", the Stanford prison experiment or the Milgram experiment.

– Bioethics, on the one hand, is very necessary, on the other – it has stepped too far. After Dr. Mengele's experiments, everyone grabbed their heads and realized that bioethics was necessary. And various principles began to appear: you can not put experiments on people without their consent, you can not expose animals to unnecessary suffering. But the specialists who came up with all this have long since retired, and their followers realized that all the main issues have already been resolved. And they brought the matter to the point of absurdity.

For example, if you can order a live oyster in a restaurant and cut it with a knife, watering it with lemon juice, then you will not be able to do the same with an oyster in the laboratory. The scientific publication was wrapped up because bioethical principles were not observed. The field of human cloning and the field of human embryo research are particularly affected by bioethics. I think that soon some promising country will rebuff all the commissions and say: "We will conduct experiments in this area!" Investments will immediately run to this country, and a huge number of influential companies will open there.

– But this country will not be Russia?

– Most likely, it will be China. And there could be Russia!

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru13.05.2015