GENETICS

I have begun to see the biotechnology industry in a new (almost comical) light. There is much more to the picture than I was taught at the extension office.

Hybridization by crossbreeding, artificial selection, and selective breeding, including using mutations such as Golden Promise barley, has doubled the amount of grain harvested per acre since the Green Revolution started in the late sixties. If not for genetically engineered strains of rice developed back then, faceless, starving children on the cover of magazines would still be common. Forty years ago a fair crop of soft white wheat was sixty bushel an acre, today it's a poor crop when you don't get one hundred. Hard red wheat was averaging only twenty bushel an acre in the fifties, now it's closer to sixty.

These traditional breeding methods are designed to select preexisting genetic traits from the gene pool of a species or a closely related species. No new information is created in the process. As another example, I've been raising rabbits for twenty years, starting with a pair given to me for a job bonus. I've finally succeeded in getting the colors and other features just the way I like them. My original pair were quite small with black spots on a white body. Never believing that the world's problems were strictly black and white, when one bunny of a litter of eight mutated gray, I kept her for years, breeding her to one of the 'normal' rabbits. She produced one or two gray bunnies each time she kindled. Last year I accepted a New Zealand White male from a sister, whose son had tired of the chore. Breeding the New Zealand with a gray mini-lop produced a litter of gray and white, half-lops. That is only one of the ears drooped, all the children who visited loved them, especially my nephew. More to my pleasure, these crossbreeds are five to seven pounds at eight to ten weeks, compared to the four pound mini-lops. I promised my nephew that when he was ready to take responsibility for them, I would give him a pair of these mutants.

Today's description of biotechnology holds little resemblance to past references. Now they have added test-tube babies, sperm banks , cloning, and gene manipulation. This powerful technology allows the transfer of genetic information between species that could never happen naturally, the anti-freeze protein from fish to tomato, for instance. If kept on the right track, there is a slight chance that we'll manage to keep up with the population growth.

In the sixties there were only two billion people on Earth. There are now about six billion, and in forty years there will be nine or more! Those folks in the industry better start cloning ready to eat sheep or truck sized potatoes instead of headless organ growers.

Those bio-scientists know of the population problem, they provide the figures. They also know approximately how much food can be grown on today's agricultural acres using all available technology. According to the latest government harvest reports we're growing less than a month's worth of reserves. So why are they even thinking of growing replacement parts that will let us (at least the wealthiest of us) live longer? Is there a connection between using sterile corn to produce hybrid corn and introducing that hybrid corn to feed an overpopulated world? Is there a plot to sterilize the people? (maybe a theme for Scott's next comic book!)

In August, protesters uprooted fields of genetically altered crops in the fear of mutant DNA being spread to other plants. Proponents of biotechnology tell us not to worry, uncontrollable natural mutations by the trillions are made every year. Like I said, the world's problems aren't all black and white, there are many shades of gray. We need to experiment and take some risks in order to feed everyone, but lets stay on track.

Knowing that hybrid plants tend to produce some weird offspring, that only the first progeny (F1)are predictable, and without even taking mutations into account, I can see cause for concern. What if those headless organ growers decide not to let their parts be taken? Headless organ growers can be very unpredictable.