Dialogue: Our chance to use GM to make things better

By OWEN MCSHANE*

In the 1980s many of us hoped that New Zealand manufacturing and innovation would develop so we would be the Switzerland of the South Pacific.

It wasn't to be. However, the gods must favour us, because we are being given a second shot at it.

When the Government announced its decision on the report of the Royal Commission into Genetic Modification, the Prime Minister emphasised that we could not afford to turn our back on the opportunities offered by this new technology.

Unfortunately, many seem to believe that the only GM opportunities are in producing food. Therefore, many insist that GM and organic farming are inherently incompatible and we must choose one or the other with no middle ground.

One of that never-ending stream of pessimists who dominate Radio New Zealand's Sunday Supplement attacked controlled field trials by asking: "Haven't these scientists ever heard of pollen and seeds?"

All the scientists I know have heard of pollen and seeds. Being scientists they also know that cows and sheep have no pollen or seeds and nor do bacteria and yeasts. Furthermore, they have heard of seedless grapes. They have even heard of secateurs which can cut off plant-heads before they flower.

This proud display of ignorance reflected the common belief that GM is all about producing edible crops. That's only one of many applications. However, that is probably not the most useful or valuable route for New Zealand.

The Government's rules maintain a moratorium on field trials except when they are designed to promote human health. This might just send us down the most productive route to a high-value economy. The Green protests might have done our agribusiness a huge favour.

In the past, pharmaceuticals were typically discovered by screening plants and organisms for useful clinical activity. If some plant or other organism showed promise (such as the green-lipped mussel), the next step was to isolate the active compound. Then scientists would find some way to synthesise it, so it could be manufactured under the highly controlled conditions of purity and dose standard needed to achieve registration with organisations such as the United States Food and Drug Administration.

In the 1970s, the Auckland Cancer Society laboratories developed an active anti-cancer drug called meta-amsa. It cost the society about $1 million to bring meta-amsa to clinical trial. At that stage the know-how was licensed to Warner Lambert to develop and register the compound as a viable pharmaceutical. Warner Lambert estimated this process would cost about $US200 million ($487 million) to complete.

Furthermore, New Zealand companies had neither the scale nor the capital to justify the facilities needed to manufacture such drugs in our own backyards.

But GM means that now we truly can. Our advanced knowledge of DNA and cell processes means we can design or clone active pharmaceuticals and diagnostics from the molecular ground up.

This means we can turn to the most advanced and effective production plants on the planet for their manufacture - the cows, sheep and plants of our own green fields.

The FDA has announced that drugs that are manufactured in these bio-factories will proceed to trial and registration quicker and at lower cost than chemically manufactured drugs because the animals' natural production systems are inherently safer and less prone to human error.

AgResearch at Ruakura has modified some cows so they will produce a protein in their milk in sufficient quantities to carry out the tests and trials needed to see if this drug can fulfil its promised efficacy against multiple sclerosis.

If it is successful, New Zealand will have a huge new business opportunity. Instead of having to license a Swiss or other company to manufacture the drug, we can just breed some more cows. And we are very good at that.

These proteins are worth millions of dollars a kilogram. Organic carrots are small beer by comparison. And there's no reason GM cows and organic carrots cannot live side by side.

Similarly, many plants will be become mini-pharmaceutical factories. Ironically, tobacco seems a likely prospect for producing antibodies against cancer. These plants will be so valuable that we could pay worried Greens handsomely to cut off their stems well before they flower. They could practise on hemp.

We have several comparative advantages. New Zealand farming has always been science-based and our scientists are used to working with plants and animals in the field. Furthermore, our animal herds are free of scrapie and BSE, which enhances our safety profile.

We are already at the leading edge of bio-production, as the Ruakura herd should demonstrate. Similarly, PPL Therapeutics has modified sheep to produce a protein used to treat hereditary emphysema and cystic fibrosis.

Within the labs, the Auckland Cancer Society teams were designing and developing anti-cancer drugs based on binding to DNA before anyone else in the world, and even before the word biotechnology had entered the language.

We have also have a unique natural resource: visitors to Rotorua admire the steam and hot pools without realising that they are standing in the middle of an extraordinary ecosystem that stretches from White Island to Ruapehu. These boiling pools, geysers, vents and mud pools are teeming with life in the form of extreme thermophiles - bacteria that are happy at temperatures near boiling point and which tolerate highly acid and alkaline environments.

However, they need GM to make them truly useful.

This genetic modification is not as simple as we hoped when we started work in 1982.

But one day extreme thermophiles will prove highly valuable in all manner of productive processes. And if these heat-loving bacteria escape into the environment, they freeze and do no damage.

In the meantime, our GM plants and animals will be targeted at curing the diseases of our time. This market will grow because as the population ages degenerative diseases will become more widespread.

The so-called cancer epidemic is in fact an epidemic of people living to a ripe old age. You don't find much cancer where the average lifespan is only 35. It is not the Somalis' organic diet that protects them from cancer; it is their untimely death.

So the Green activists who plan to tear up crops and kill animals should pause and consider the consequences.

One day they may be lying in bed with advanced cancer while an oncologist delivers a truly caring bedside homily which goes something like this: "Your case is highly advanced. Ten years ago, we had high hopes of a cure from some GM plants but I seem to remember you tore them all up. There is nothing we can do. Of course we are all deeply saddened by your plight. But as you sow ... "

* Owen McShane, of Kaiwaka, is a research consultant and public policy analyst.

nzherald.co.nz/ge

Report of the Royal Commission on Genetic Modification

GE lessons from Britain

GE links

GE glossary