Conscious Choice: The Upside of Biotechnology

September 1999

The Upside of Biotechnology

by Ana Arias Terry

Skin. More often than not, we don’t think about it much, except perhaps for the occasional pimple that will unexpectedly decorate our nose or chin, reminding us of embarrassing (but hardly life-threatening) moments from adolescence.

But for the million-plus Americans who suffer from diabetic ulcers, severe burns or numerous episodes of skin removal to treat skin cancer, the need for skin represents a real and serious problem. Fortunately, biotechnology offers relief. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has blessed a living skin product to help these victims, and numerous other such products are coming up the line in the regulation lane.

The U.S. government defines biotechnology as "any technique that uses living organisms (or parts of organisms) to make or modify products, to improve plants or animals, or to develop microorganisms for specific uses." Over the past couple of decades, this definition has been expanded to include "the industrial uses of DNA, cell fusion, and novel bioprocessing techniques." Despite its scarred reputation due to questionable ethical and health implications particularly in the agricultural arena, biotechnology offers an upside in environmental and medical contexts.

Here to Stay

There’s little doubt that the biotechnology boom is growing by gigantic leaps and bounds. Currently more than thirteen hundred biotech companies exist in the U.S. alone with yearly revenues of $13 billion. And collaboration between scientists and industry seems to be gaining momentum as a way to help finance research. Emerging small biotech firms are becoming players in the industry through strategic partnerships with bigger firms, research institutions, and large international conglomerates such as Monsanto, Dupont, Dow Chemical, Upjohn, Eli Lilly, and Rhone-Poulenc.

During a lecture in 1998, chemist Nobel laureate Robert F. Curl theorized that while the 20th century belonged to physics and chemistry, the 21st century would be the biotechnology age. Jeremy Rifkin, long-time environmental pioneer and economist, believes we have entered this monumental epoch. In The Biotech Century, he attributes two developments to this new era: current genetic and computer revolutions and predicted scientific breakthroughs becoming prevalent commercial realities. "It is estimated that biological knowledge is currently doubling every five years, and in the field of genetics, the quantity of information is doubling every twenty-four months," says Rifkin.

Environmental Applications

Bruce Rittmann, a John Evans Professor of Environmental Engineering at Northwestern University, sees environmental biotech as very different from other biotech areas. For starters, this branch of biotechnology typically uses microorganisms not to make a product, but to destroy contaminants. "This means that environmental biotechnology is more of a‘service industry,’ compared to a‘manufacturing industry,’" he says. "Generally, people do not‘get rich quick’ from applying environmental biotechnology, but it certainly serves society’s needs."

Unlike its biotech cousins, environmental biotechnology also differs in that it deals with "real-world" contaminated media such as wastewaters, or contaminated soils and sediments. So not only does environmental biotech involve very large masses and volumes, but it also deals with media that’s replete with varying kinds of materials, including many indigenous microorganisms. The goal is to create conditions that induce the growth and activity of certain naturally occurring microorganisms — those that carry out the reactions desired by scientists.

"Rapid advances in our understanding of genetics, biochemistry, and ecology of microorganisms is showing us that microorganisms can do many more‘good things’ than we ever imagined," says Rittmann. "We now know that certain bacteria [as well as fungi and algae] can transform heavy metals and radionuclides [such as mercury, copper, cadmium, uranium, and cobalt] to less hazardous forms. Chlorinated organics (like solvents, pesticides, and PCBs) can be bacterially detoxified. Historically, we treated wastewaters and sludges. Now we can also treat contaminated groundwater, contaminated soil and sediment, contaminated gases, drinking water supplies, and more."

The Illinois Institute of Technology is conducting work on a genetically engineered bacterium that may offer a way to clean up land near explosives and polyurethane factories, which are contaminated with DNT (a carcinogen). A microbe has been effectively sequenced by the Institute of Genomic Research to soak up extensive amounts of radioactivity. Over 200 million tons of hazardous materials are being produced yearly in this country alone. Estimates put the cost of cleaning up toxic waste sites at more than $1.7 trillion, making bioremediation an expected growth component in the Biotech Century.

On other environmental biotech fronts, researchers are working on biofuels as substitutes for natural gas, oil, and coal. Sugar cane is already in use for car fuel, and ethanol is expected to provide 25 percent of auto fuel in the U.S. by 2050. There’s even more advanced biofuel research under way in the hopes of developing biofuels as complete replacements of fossil fuels. Recently, a new strain of E. coli bacteria was developed by researchers. It’s capable of consuming paper sludge, municipal solid waste, agricultural waste, and trimmings from the yard — and turning it into ethanol.

In the chemical arena, British firm ICI has come up with bacteria strains that can produce plastics with a number of properties, including varying kinds of elasticity. It can be used in many of the same ways that the traditional petroleum-based plastic is used and has the added advantage of being completely biodegradable.

Scientists have found a way to introduce a fungal pre-treatment process to paper, before mechanical pulping, that reduces energy consumption, enhances paper strength, and reduces the environmental impact of pulping. Marine biotechnology has brought to light enzymes pumped out by thermophiles — organisms that inhabit extremely hot environments. These enzymes could help scientists wipe out the need for many toxic organic solvents currently used in industrial chemical processes. And psychrophiles, which live in freezing environments, are expected to help scientists find a way to prevent frostbite.

Medical Uses

According to the World Health Organization, "It is now almost universally accepted that defects in human DNA are responsible not only for congenital malformations and hereditary diseases, but also predispose individuals to mental illness and diseases such as cancer, asthma, and diabetes." As such, extensive international investment is being placed on human genetics by medical charities, aid institutions, biotech companies, research entities, and governments.

The Human Genome Project, a joint-effort by government agencies including the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Energy, expects to map and sequence every one of the 100,000 human genes by 2005 (with a price tag of over $1 billion). The focus is to better understand how genes interact with one another and with the environment on a large scale to induce healthy function and structure, and to better understand diseased states. The prospect of using genes opens the door for treating or curing diseases by replacing or supplementing defective genes with normal ones, or bolstering immune systems.

While other governments have initiated similar human genome projects as have private commercial entities, genome initiatives have also been set up for animal species, microorganisms, and plants.

According to Rifkin, "...we are now splicing, recombining, inserting, and stitching living material." One of the most revolutionary — and questionable — technological tools in biotechnology thus far is recombinant DNA. "Recombinant DNA," says Rifkin, "is a kind of biological sewing machine that can be used to stitch together the genetic fabric of unrelated organisms."

While the issue of transgenic animal clones to "harvest" organs for human transplantations bubbles with controversy, a more benign application is that of moving away from transplants into fabricating human-made organs or tissues from our own cells. Besides skin, which is already available, cartilage for urological, craniofacial, and orthopedic applications is likely to be the next most widely used tissue in humans, according to researchers David Mooney, of the University of Michigan, and Antonios Mikos, of Rice University.

Scientists also are looking at bone fabrication to repair serious bone fractures caused by diseased periodontal tissue or accidents. Other applications include developing ways to grow new breast tissue from buttocks or legs for women whose breasts have been removed due to lumpectomies and mastectomies. Some researchers are looking at ways to grow heart valves and blood vessels, while others have identified particular molecules to inhibit vessel growth that may starve tumors.

According to the American Heart Association, in 1997 only 2,300 of the 40,000 Americans in need of a new heart received one. Scientists at the University of Toronto have recently begun a project to grow new hearts, though it’s likely to take ten to twenty more years for them to reach that goal.

"The holy grail of tissue engineering," contend Mooney and Mikos, "remains complete internal organs." Over 30,000 people die yearly due to liver failure. And there are scores more who also die because of other critical organ needs. Scientists are studying the properties of liver, kidney, intestine, and bladder cells with the hope of one day fabricating fully functional neo-organs on demand.

There are numerous other beneficial medical biotech applications in process or on the way. Already, some individuals have had implanted in their spinal columns small tubes containing cells that release substances to kill chronic pain. Then there’s the benefit of umbilical cord blood, once discarded as medical waste, and now collected and stored by a number of companies on behalf of clients with genetic or inherited ailments. This blood contains a rich supply of stem cells, which can be used in place of bone marrow to treat leukemia, lymphoma, anemia, and other illnesses.

Additional examples of beneficial biotech medical applications include: artificial human chromosomes, which could someday cure diseases by introducing genetic "cassettes" into cells; and stored sperm samples, which have given infertile couples the chance to choose donor characteristics. Genetically engineered medicines, drugs, and protein therapies may treat strokes, AIDS, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, multiple sclerosis, lung congestion, meningitis B, hepatitis C, hormonal disorders, blood clots, arthritis, and hair growth; they also promise alternative delivery systems such as less intrusive, injectable biodegradable venues for drugs, medicines, and therapies; heart pumps that can keep hearts pumping for seventeen months while a patient waits for a donor.

There’s more. Researchers are investigating ways to check the impact of insects that carry deadly human diseases. An anti-venom derived from immunized chicken eggs could become an affordable and plentiful reality for developing countries, where many die from snakebites.

Social Implications

Issues of safety, ethics, profit motivation, and availability to the haves and have-nots abound in assessing environmental and medical biotech applications. Agencies such as the World Health Organization, the FDA, and the NIH will continue to play a significant part in constructing, enforcing, and regulating safety and ethical principles and guidelines.

As for ways to decouple profit from safety concerns, views vary. For Alan Marcus, a professor of history and director of the Center for Historical Studies of Technology and Science at Iowa State University, "The only way I know is the traditional way: huge penalties imposed by governments if things go wrong in some way that should have been foreseen."

For William Hoffmann, director of Communications and Community Affairs for the Institute of Medical Biotechnology at the University of Minnesota, the matter goes beyond regulatory bodies that serve the public’s interest. "I believe that individuals themselves will need to share the burden of becoming better informed about biotechnology and related safety issues." As for ethics, he says, "We have to recognize that some people will always behave unethically in an imperfect society." Beyond using regulatory bodies and the courts to punish wrongdoing, "ethics need to be the subject of continuing public dialog to ensure that ethical standards reflect the interest of the society as a whole."

Ultimately, however, the questions we ask regarding the effects of biotechnology in agriculture need to be applied to environmental and medical biotech as well. Why? Because we’re not the only ones on the planet. Even "beneficial" applications may have an effect on the larger world. Thus, when we weigh the pros and cons of even the most seemingly benign applications of biotechnology, we must remember that we are making an assessment not just as individuals or even a society, but as representatives of a much larger and fragile ecosystem.

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