Word: pollens
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...including the transgenic foods created through genetic engineering, are potential sources of allergens. That's because the transferred genes contain instructions for making proteins and some proteins?those in peanuts, for example?cause allergic reactions. Then there is the problem of "genetic pollution," as opponents of biotechnology term it. Pollen grains from such wind-pollinated plants as corn, for instance, are carried far and wide. The continuing flap over Bt corn and cotton?the gene of a common soil bacteria (Bacillus thuringiensis), a natural insecticide, is transferred to the plants?has provided more fodder for the debate. Ecologists are concerned...
...that modern urban society is too clean for the kids' own good. A hundred years ago, children's immune systems would have faced all kinds of bacterial and viral infections. Today those immune systems don't know what to do in our supersanitized environment, so they wind up attacking pollen, dust mites and other usually innocuous substances instead. In the worst cases, a dangerous overreaction occurs that can shut down the lungs, killing the child...
Then there is the problem of "genetic pollution," as opponents of biotechnology term it. Pollen grains from such wind-pollinated plants as corn and canola, for instance, are carried far and wide. To farmers, this mainly poses a nuisance. Transgenic canola grown in one field, for example, can very easily pollinate nontransgenic plants grown in the next. Indeed this is the reason behind the furor that recently erupted in Europe when it was discovered that canola seeds from Canada--unwittingly planted by farmers in England, France, Germany and Sweden--contained transgenic contaminants...
Even more worrisome are ecological concerns. In 1999 Cornell University entomologist John Losey performed a provocative, "seat-of-the-pants" laboratory experiment. He dusted Bt corn pollen on plants populated by monarch-butterfly caterpillars. Many of the caterpillars died. Could what happened in Losey's laboratory happen in cornfields across the Midwest? Were these lovely butterflies, already under pressure owing to human encroachment on their Mexican wintering grounds, about to face a new threat from high-tech farmers in the north...
...there more potential pitfalls? There are. Among other things, there is the possibility that as transgenes in pollen drift, they will fertilize wild plants, and weeds will emerge that are hardier and even more difficult to control. No one knows how common the exchange of genes between domestic plants and their wild relatives really is, but Margaret Mellon, director of the Union of Concerned Scientists' agriculture and biotechnology program, is certainly not alone in thinking that it's high time we find out. Says she: "People should be responding to these concerns with experiments, not assurances...