"Frankenfish Salmon" Coming Soon To A Restaurant Near You - And You Likely Won't Know

"Franken Salmon"(larger fish) compared to normal -natural sized salmon at same age.

The news in The Sunday Denver Post Business section that restaurants (along with university cafeterias) will be among the first to serve Franken fish salmon (late next year) ought to give pause to every serious citizen.  Unlike in Europe where governments are far more cautious, the U.S. under the Trumpies has Ok'd these genetically modified beasts for human consumption,  The primary provider is an outfit called 'Aquabounty' which also has performed a neat dodge in respect of telling those customers faced with this unnaturally large salmon,  According to Aquabounty CEO Sylvia Wulff:

"It's their customers not ours!"

Nice dump off!  So if any consumer gets ill for any reason, or has an allergic reaction, it's all on the secondary providers not the company that created these monsters. As far as how these entities are produced we are informed:

"To produce its fish Aquabounty injects Atlantic salmon with DNA from other fish species that make them grow to full size in about 18 months which is about twice as fast as regular salmon".

The company goes on to assert it's "a more efficient process given less feed is used", and so it's a lot cheaper to raise these mutants.   After the franken-salmon are created and lay eggs, they are shipped from the company's Canadian location "after first clearing regulatory hurdles".  We aren't informed what these hurdles are, but knowing the Trump swamp appointments,  they'd have to be minimal.  Thus, Trump signed an executive order last month directing federal agencies to "simplify" regulations for genetically engineered plants and animals.

It is also interesting this this order comes as companies are turning to a newer gene-editing technology (CRISPR) that makes it ,much easier to tinker with plant and animal DNA.  Think your chicken and fish are just fine, well maybe they are after the Norwegian rat DNA has been spliced into these.  In any case the use of such new technology is "blurring the lines around what should be considered a genetically modified organism."

How these creatures will affect human cells and metabolism we don't yet know. Stomach, pancreatic or liver cancers? We can't say..  All we know thus far is: a) several grocers including Kroger and Whole Foods will not sell the GMO fish, and b) there will be only minimal transparency.

In terms of the second, it may rival the application of differential calculus to know what exactly you are purchasing at the grocery in the years ahead.   It may not always be obvious what the heck you are buying.  For example, the disclosure regulation will start being implemented next year but mandatory compliance doesn't start until 2022.   That means some grocers may choose not to inform you of what's there, while others intend to bury the identity in the UPC code, and still others may just use an obscure coverall label such as "bio-engineered."

What does that mean anyway?  As Amy van Saun from the Center for Food Safety points out (ibid.):

"Nobody uses that term"

Adding that "genetically engineered" or "genetically modified" are more common.   But why use more common terms when you can baffle with bullshit?

Realizing this serious problem,  the Center is suing the U.S.  Food and Drug Administration over the approval of Aquabounty's version of salmon.  It is also among the groups asking grocers to pledge not to sell the unnatural fish.

The disclosure rules also don't apply to restaurants and similar food service establishments.  While most patrons may not mind what they eat as far as salmon, Greg Jaffe -  of the Center for Science in the Public Interest -   notes that "restaurants can make the information available to customers who want it."

Interestingly, Aquabounty's Wulff insists the company believes in transparency but "questioned why people would want to know whether the fish was genetically modified."   Well, for the same reason I want to know if the tomatoes I eat were produced using mouse genes, to enable longer shelf life.  But according to her:

"It's identical to Atlantic salmon except for one gene."

Well, then it's not "identical" to Atlantic salmon.  Besides, all these fussy people may just believe in the precautionary principle before they buy or consume a GMO entity.

By the precautionary principle it is not the activists who must demonstrate any negative or untoward effects attendant on consuming GMO foods. It is the GMO food producers' job to prove their products are safe.  Up to now they have not done so, all the corporate media banter and baloney to the contrary.  This is why we have insisted on proper labeling of GMO foods, not an outright ban on them.

As the Post article notes, a 2015 AP- GfK pol found that two third of Americans support labeling of GMO ingredients on food packages.  If any company or establishment is resistant to such labeling one must then wonder what it is they have to hide.

Only a totalitarian state dismisses citizens' desire for more information, especially concerning what they will be putting into their bodies.

Deformed Animals Highlight Risk Of Gene Editing Technology

Deformed piglet resulted from Chinese efforts to resist viral infection. (From WSJ, Dec. 15-16, p. C3)

Crispr - let's reference - stands for "clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats" - serves as the immune system of bacteria, and has been used to fend off viral attacks.  RNA or ribonucleic acid is a molecule found in all cells.  Like DNA, RNA is a polymer, but much simpler. This is because the latter’s ribose sugar molecules are smaller than DNA’s deoxyribose sugar molecules. So there are fewer monomer units in all to make polymer chains. At the same time, while there is only one type of DNA, there are three types of RNA:

- Messenger RNA or mRNA: really a complementary copy of a DNA segment that conveys information from cell nucleus to cytoplasm. Once there it acts as a template for synthesis of a protein molecule.

- Transfer RNA or tRNA: as the name implies, it couples information in the nucleic acid base sequence to the amino acid base sequence in synthesized proteins.

- Ribosomal RNA or rRNA: forms the ribosomes of cells, from which proteins are made.

The diagram below summarizes the process:






Back in October, 2017,  we learned that scientists had created a new Crispr- based system to edit RNA instead of DNA in human cells,. This offered  a way around some of the ethical and scientific challenges to do with editing the human genome.  This was first reported in the popular press  (WSJ Technology section, Oct. 26, 2017) and referenced a paper published in Science the day before in which the research was described. The new RNA -editing system was dubbed "Repair" by the researchers (based at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard)  and was designed to correct a common mutation known to play a role in a number of diseases.

This came on the heels of  attempts by Junjiu Huang  and colleagues to use CRISPR/Cas9 to fix a gene known as HBB, which causes  the blood disorder beta-thalassemia.   The work was done on 86 very early embryos that weren't viable, in order to minimize some of the ethical concerns. Only 71 of the embryos survived, and just 28 were successfully edited. But the process also frequently created unintended mutations in the embryos' DNA. 


Subsequently, Marcy Darnovsky of the Center for Genetics and Society, a watchdog group, wrote in an email :

"This paper demonstrates the enormous safety risks that any such attempt would entail, and underlines the urgency of working to forestall other such efforts. The social dangers of creating genetically modified human beings cannot be overstated. No researcher should have the moral warrant to flout the globally widespread policy agreement against modifying the human germline,"

George Daley, a stem cell researcher at Harvard, agreed, asserting:

"Their data reinforces the wisdom of the calls for a moratorium on any clinical practice of embryo gene editing, because current methods are too inefficient and unsafe," he wrote in an email. "Further, there needs to be careful consideration not only of the safety but also of the social and ethical implications of applying this technology to alter our germ lines."   

These concerns have not been proffered without justification, as we've since learned of other misfires in the gene editing arena  - most of which concern deformed animals unexpectedly generated by the work. (cf. 'Deformities Shadow Gene-Editing Research', WSJ, Dec, 15-16)

What were some of these misfires? As reported in the WSJ piece:

- When Chinese researchers deleted a gene that limits muscle growth in mammals the creations exhibited enlarged tongues.

- Similar experiments on Chinese pigs led a number of them to develop  additional vertebrae.

- Gene-edited calves died prematurely in Brazil and New Zealand. 

- Merino sheep edited to try to generate new coat colors came out spotted like typical Pandas.

In the case of the deformed piglet highlighted in the image the Chinese scientist - Dr. Kui Li-  didn't even use CRISPR (preferred because it's more economical than older techniques) but an older editing method. That involved deleting a gene called MSTN from Chinese pigs in the embryonic stage. The edited cells were then infused into eggs, chemically fertilized in a lab an implanted into the womb of a surrogate.

The experiment did produce leaner pork (up to 12 percent leaner if both copies of the MSTN gene were deleted) but also 1 in 5 pigs that developed an extra thoracic vertebra.  According to Dr. Li, lab tests showed that the meat of the deformed animals was still safe to eat. Maybe, but I'd warrant you'd have a hard time convincing my Bajan biologist friend John Phillips of that! E.g.  

 He will not even touch any genetically modified plant-based foods especially those which include glyphosate.  John still cites a particular paragraph in the Bulletin of the Food & Water Watch, from 2016:

"Very little is known of the long term effects of what GMOs can do to your health because they've not been properly tested. But what facts we do have are alarming. Real lab rats fed GMOs have suffered kidney and liver damage, cancerous tumors and even premature death."

So there's no doubt he wouldn't look twice at genetically modified pork, especially coming from deformed animals.

This then goes to the other effort, conducted at Nanjing Agricultural University - to use CRISPR to edit MSTN out of rabbits to make them meatier.   The unexpected result? 14 of the 34 engineered offspring were born with enlarged tongues. Would John Phillips eat any of these?  "No way, not now or ever!"

The bizarre result led the participating scientists to warn of "abnormalities"  from gene editing in a 2016 research paper on their project as cited in the WSJ piece. As the authors wrote:

"Safety issues need to be addressed in future studies before the technology can be utilized."

To be sure, these Chinese scientists weren't worried about humans getting enlarged tongues if they ate the rabbits. But rather the potential effects from consuming meat from an animal that had been "genetically messed up" to use Mr. Phillip's parlance.  As Phillips put it in a recent email: 

"Would you eat a flying fish I produced from Crispr/Cas9 gene editing that had two heads, two stomachs, and no scales?  How about just one head, but no dorsal fin and crossed eyes? No, I didn't think so! So why eat pork from a genetically-edited  deformed pig, never mind it's just one additional vertebra?"

Still, the beat goes on, and the WSJ article reports that globally "at least a dozen gene -edited livestock projects are aiming to reach consumer markets."

There is also a very good chance we won't know exactly what the condition of the animals was (in terms of deformities)  when their meat is  offered for the markets. After all, in the piglet experiment that went awry the Chinese scientist (Dr. Li) insisted it "was safe to eat".   But what does that mean? Safe in terms of not causing kidney or liver disease, say like glyphosates in GMO foods?  What about the precautionary principle? Is that embraced? (I.e. it is the responsibility of the creators to prove their meat is safe, not for consumers to prove it isn't.)


So I guess we should just  take his word for it,  being a geneticist and all.  As for me, I believe I will stick to the non-gene edited meats,  originating from non-deformed pigs, chickens, beef etc.  - which I am sure will disappoint the Neoliberal market mavens. The same lot who assert Americans need to have many more babies, never mind they can't afford them.

USDA Mandating Of GMO Food Labeling Is Welcome - But Interpretations Will Be Necessary

John Phillips: Barbadian bio-geneticist and nutrition specialist, was one of the first to point out the links between consuming GMO foods and Alzheimer's.


First, let's dispel the nonsense that there is an "anti-science" agenda on the Left as much as on the Right (e.g. John Stossel,  "The War on Science Has A Surprising Source - The Liberal Left', Colorado Springs Gazette,  April 26).   In Stossel's case (he's long since been a shill for the libertarian, corporate Right though he began his career as a general debunker) he insists the Left is way worse than the Right's climate deniers e.g. bringing up the campus attacks on 'Bell Curve' co-author Charles Murray, e.g. "scientists can't even talk about whether genes affect intelligence".   But maybe Stossel never saw or read the excellent skewering of that sham treatise ('Behind the Curve', Review by Leon Kamin in The Scientific American, February, 1995, p. 99).  As Kamin concludes, "On close examination this scientific emperor is wearing no clothes."  In other words, it's plain old pseudo science which merits no respect.   See also:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2017/07/was-splc-wrong-to-educate-middlebury.html

Stossel also weighs in on GMO foods with such claptrap as:  "Some research on genetically modified foods became taboo because of protests from the left and may have prevented a second green revolution."  Which is horse manure.  In fact, the left activists mainly objected to cross-species genetic modification, i.e. inserting mouse genes into tomatoes to enhance shelf life. It was not an all- out protest to stop all research, and indeed John Phillips (see photo)has encouraged more work on other genetic modifications so long as the results conform to the precautionary principle. By the precautionary principle it is not the activists who must demonstrate "safety concerns" attendant on GMO foods,  it is the GMO food producers' job to prove their products are safe.  Up to now they have not done so, all the corporate media banter and baloney to the contrary.  This is why we have insisted on proper labeling of GMO foods, not an outright ban on them.  Every citizen is entitled to know what he or she is ingesting, and not merely taking the word of some "authority".

Recall that in July, 2015  the House of Representatives - by a 275- 150 vote passed the 'Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act'.   Also known by anti-GMO activists as the DARK Act, it pre-empted all state and local labeling laws, such as those Vermont and Colorado had written. So even if your state happened to pass an amendment or referendum to mandate GMO food labeling, this specious law can overturn it. Welcome to Neoliberal democracy!

Earlier, in June, 2015,  the FDA rejected a citizens' petition by activist groups demanding mandatory  GMO labeling. The FDA response noted that the petition presented no evidence that "such foods present any different or greater concerns than foods developed by traditional plant breeding"   Of course, this merely shows the FDA to be another co-opted federal agency, more driven to uphold corporate profits than citizen welfare. But hell, don't take my word, do some of your own research.

Start with the well known study by Arpad Pusztai in which he fed lab rats potatoes that had been genetically engineered to contain lectin (from a snowdrop bulb to make them pest resistant). When he processed the results he found that the rats which consumed these high-tech potatoes showed evidence of organ (liver, stomach) damage and poor brain development. Pusztai's study went down as the very first independent study (i.e. one not sponsored by a biotech corporation) to examine the effects of bio-engineered foods. Tragically, Pusztai’s boss, the Director of the Rowett Institute, attempted to suppress the revelations in the GMO potato study. According to a report -article from In These Times (Jan. 10, 2000);

"He fired Pusztai, broke up his research team, halted the six other similar projects his team was then working on and seized his data"

Interested readers can read more on the expose of the PR peddlers and their hands in the Pusztai debacle here:  http://www.inthesetimes.com/issue/24/03/bleifuss2403.html

Again, this tactic ought to come as no big mystery, considering that a multinational like Monsanto (the biggest GMO producer) has more power, heft than most nations

More recently, according to a 2016  Bulletin from 'Food & Water Watch' :

"GMO ingredients are hidden in 70 percent of processed food in this country. This is only a 'best guess'  because no one knows for sure as they are not labeled. Also, very little is known of the long term effects of what GMOs can do to your health because they've not been properly tested. But what facts we do have are alarming."

The Bulletin then references:

"Real lab rats fed GMOs have suffered kidney and liver damage, cancerous tumors and even premature death."

Among the other alarming facts is the horrific link to glyphosate as exposed by my long time friend and Barbadian geneticist and nutritionist John Phillips, who has noted:

"Among other toxins and other health-disrupting contaminants, GMO foods contain glyphosate, a horrifically destructive chemical that saps nutrients from foods and quite literally makes them toxic to consume."

 Phillips also tied the prevalence of glyphosate to the increasing numbers of people with Alzheimer's in the U.S. This disease destroys the brain and renders victims little more than zombies.  According to Phillips,  glyphosphates multiply the structures known as tangles in the brain. In concert with a sticky substance known as beta amyloids, the result can be Alzheimer's disease such as took out Janice's cousin Desmond, e.g.


And is now wreaking havoc with her sister-in-law, Krimhilde. 

By contrast, European incidence is lower per capita - attributed to their GMO labeling laws. Why the desperate refusal to label GMOs in the U.S.? Because it would cut into the profits of the biggest GMO producers like Monsanto which now rings up $11.8 billion a year in sales. 

Anyway, the latest news (NY Times, Sunday, 'What Will GMO Labels Tell Consumers?) is that the United States Dept. of Agriculture has mandated a new GMO labeling scheme to come into effect by 2020. The problem is that it will not carry the freighted letters "G.M.O," or "genetically modified".  The reasoning, according to the article is that the initials and words are "stigmatized".   Transl.  The terms G.M.O. and 'genetically modified'   are way too transparent and truthful so a more euphemistic, PR friendly substitute is needed. (As if we didn't already have enough mushy words in our language.)

The replacement term will be "bioengineered" (BE) .  It's bloodless, technical and relatively obscure, so will not likely make anyone squirm.  But be advised it still means genetically modified, and that means it still designates foods that have not met the standard of the precautionary principle.

In addition, it is well to point out the new labels will not apply to all genetically modified foods.  Thus, any foods that have been modified using the CRISPR technique will not have the "BE" label.  All such foods will have been introduced by maybe deleting a snippet of genetic information - or by inserting a more desirable trait from one breed into another. 

Labels will also be exempt from highly refined sugars and oils, such as made from genetically modified sugar beets and corn.  Not surprisingly, consumer groups oppose such a move which would drastically reduce the number of foods to carry any label.

If you're not satisfied with this labeling rubric now is the time to weigh in (at the USDA site). The public has until July 3rd to comment on the proposed guidelines.

Appreciating The Dangers Of "Benevolent" Gene Editing Of DNA Using Crispr

Back in October we learned that scientists had created a new Crispr- based system to edit RNA instead of DNA in human cells offering a way around some of the ethical and scientific challenges to do with editing the genome.  This was first reported in the WSJ Technology section on Oct. 26 this year and referenced a paper published in Science the day before in which the research was described. The new RNA editing system was dubbed "Repair" by the researchers (based at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard)  and was designed to correct a common mutation known to play a role in a number of diseases.

Crispr - let's reference - stands for "clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats" - serves as the immune system of bacteria, and has been used to fend off viral attacks.  RNA or ribonucleic acid is a molecule found in all cells.

Like DNA, RNA is a polymer, but much simpler. This is because the latter’s ribose sugar molecules are smaller than DNA’s deoxyribose sugar molecules. So there are fewer monomer units in all to make polymer chains. At the same time, while there is only one type of DNA, there are three types of RNA:

- Messenger RNA or mRNA: really a complementary copy of a DNA segment that conveys information from cell nucleus to cytoplasm. Once there it acts as a template for synthesis of a protein molecule.

- Transfer RNA or tRNA: as the name implies, it couples information in the nucleic acid base sequence to the amino acid base sequence in synthesized proteins.

- Ribosomal RNA or rRNA: forms the ribosomes of cells, from which proteins are made.

The diagram below summarizes the process:











Bio-Scientists, while they've long believed RNA to be a good therapeutic target, have actually focused on a less known enzyme -  Cas9 - for making edits in DNA, in their initial work with the Crispr system.

Let's note here RNA editing in general carries fewer potential scientific risks and - unlike DNA, cells constantly produce more RNA.  What kind of risks are we referring to in respect of DNA editing?  Well, not too long ago, Junjiu Huang  and his team of researchers attempted to make use of
a new technique called CRISPR/Cas9, which many scientists are excited about it because it makes it much easier to edit DNA.  In their process the Chinese team tried using CRISPR/Cas9 to fix a gene known as the HBB gene, which causes  the blood disorder beta-thalassemia.   The work was done on 86 very early embryos that weren't viable, in order to minimize some of the ethical concerns. Only 71 of the embryos survived, and just 28 were successfully edited. But the process also frequently created unintended mutations in the embryos' DNA. 

The worrisome aspect of the research is that  some of those mutations are critical to development and survival.   The report, in the journal Protein & Cell, was immediately condemned by other scientists and watchdog groups, who argued the research was unsafe, premature and raised disturbing ethical concerns.

Subsequently, Marcy Darnovsky of the Center for Genetics and Society, a watchdog group, wrote in an email :

"This paper demonstrates the enormous safety risks that any such attempt would entail, and underlines the urgency of working to forestall other such efforts. The social dangers of creating genetically modified human beings cannot be overstated. No researcher should have the moral warrant to flout the globally widespread policy agreement against modifying the human germline,"

George Daley, a stem cell researcher at Harvard, agreed, asserting:

"Their data reinforces the wisdom of the calls for a moratorium on any clinical practice of embryo gene editing, because current methods are too inefficient and unsafe," he wrote in an email. "Further, there needs to be careful consideration not only of the safety but also of the social and ethical implications of applying this technology to alter our germ lines."

Scientists have been able to manipulate DNA for years. But it's long been considered taboo to make changes in the DNA in a human egg, sperm or embryo because those changes could become a permanent part of the human genetic blueprint. One concern is that it would be unsafe: Scientists could make a mistake, which could introduce a new disease that would be passed down for generations. And there's also fears it this could lead to socially troubling developments, such as "designer babies," in which parents can pick and choose the traits of their children.

All of this in tandem explains the current switch to RNA editing - given that if "off target" changes occur the RNA edits are potentially reversible.  RNA editing also allows researchers to revise the therapy more easily as more research is done.

In the words of Elizabeth McNally, Director of the Center for Genetic Medicine at Northwester University's Feinberg School of Medicine:

"Crispr editing of RNA creates more opportunities for things we can do therapeutically"

But let no one think this editing is easy. Omar Abudayyeh, one of the co-authors of the Science paper,  noted the research team spent more than 18 months studying different Cas13 enzymes  to find the most effective to adapt for RNA editing in human cells.  (In nature there are many different Cas13 enzymes that bacteria use to target and cut RNA as art of their defense system.)

For her own part, Dr. McNally is hard at work on efforts to use the Crispr system to treat forms of muscular dystrophy. Meanwhile in September, Alnylam Pharmaceuticals reported positive results in a trial of a so-called RNA interference drug called patisiran. This drug stops production of a disease -causing protein to treat a rare nerve disorder: familial amyloid polyneuropathy.

There are new treatment fronts ready to open with the Crispr technique, we just have to be patient. Alnylam spent 15 years developing its RNA editing therapy.