BioWorld Today Columnist

Many of you just got back from Boston and the annual BIO convention. And while moving between events, you may have seen a few of the protesters who customarily show up at each meeting. Maybe you glanced at a few signs. Maybe you even tried to engage in some sort of dialog. But, thankfully, very few of you have ever had your own work set back by protestors who move beyond peaceful demonstrations to vandalism or sabotage.

Back in 1999, I wrote an article about forest biotechnology, an emerging area that was producing some interesting research but hadn't received much attention. Sequencing technology was just getting robust enough to make tackling some of the enormous tree genomes feasible, and there was a growing interest among timber companies in improving yields and grow times.

I spoke with Steven Strauss, a professor at Oregon State University who was using transgenic technology to halt the flowering of poplars - a means to make sure that other traits introduced to trees couldn't inadvertently spread into the wild. Just a few weeks before we spoke, AstraZeneca's sole foray into forestry, a small stand of genetically modified poplars in London, was destroyed by vandals claiming political motives.

The company has since halted all forestry research. About 18 months after I met Strauss, saboteurs damaged more than 1,000 of his trees, although the ability of poplars to sprout and regrow meant there was little permanent harm.

"People talk about what it feels like to be physically abused or robbed - you just feel violated, like your security is at risk," Strauss recalled recently.

"You get a sense of paranoia - you don't know what they're going to do next, if they're going to bomb your lab. That's what indeed makes it a form of terrorism. Luckily, the feeling was short-lived," he said.

Just last October, Lacey Phillabaum pleaded guilty to her role in destroying Strauss's trees, as well as to the much more notorious crime of firebombing the University of Washington's Institute of Urban Horticulture, which had to be replaced at a cost of $7.2 million.

It's easy to ignore a small straggling group of peaceful protesters as misguided or uneducated, and to brush off the isolated violence of a tiny irrational minority as freak occurrences - ones that have indeed decreased in recent years following enhanced law enforcement efforts. But while what you see at BIO may be in many ways unremarkable, more sophisticated dissent is actually setting back promising research.

One Step Back

Most Americans support (or at least are indifferent to) biotech, and according to the ongoing Eurobarometer surveys, growing numbers of Europeans are coming around, too - at least as the technology applies to nonagricultural applications.

Certainly in this country, we can credit biotech's improving image to lifesaving medicines, as well as our regulatory apparatus, which most Americans regard as strong, reliable and likely to look out for our safety.

But the institutions that enhance biotech's reputation also are beginning to choke off innovation. In February 1975, researchers organized by Nobel laureate Paul Berg held the Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA. They used the discussions to create a series of voluntary guidelines to limit and control recombinant DNA research and ensure safety - with an emphasis on containing engineered organisms.

The National Institutes of Health newly formed Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee (RAC) was endorsed as the primary vehicle for implementing the guidelines.

The meeting put the scientific debate into the public domain and allowed research to move forward. And in the intervening years, many of the Asilomar standards have been relaxed. Our fear of the unknown in "crossing the species barrier" has subsided as we've better learned that nature has been doing it for millions of years.

Strangely, however, the trend now seems to be moving in the opposite direction for many agricultural biotech applications.

Despite our much deeper understanding of genetics, a wealth of experience and an admirable safety record for genetically modified organisms, restrictions are being tightened, not loosened. And the reason comes down to skeptics akin to those you might have seen outside BIO.

In March, Roundup Ready alfalfa, developed by Monsanto and Forage Genetics International, had the dubious of distinction of being the first genetically modified crop to be pulled from the market following approval. A preliminary court injunction from the U.S. District Court for the District of Northern California made planting the seeds illegal pending the outcome of a further hearing, which was held at the end of April.

The case was brought by the Center for Food Safety (CFS), an activist group that believes genetically modified foods will "lead to uncontrolled biological pollution, threatening numerous microbial, plant and animal species with extinction, and the potential contamination of nongenetically engineered life forms with novel and possibly hazardous genetic material." Sounds rather similar to some of the concerns raised before Asilomar . . . or on signs commonly seen in front of BIO conference sites.

But CFS is making its opinions stick. It convinced a judge that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) erred in letting the product get on the market with only an Environmental Assessment rather than a full Environmental Impact Statement.

Two other recent cases brought by CFS also have sought to make government agencies more stringently enforce regulations at a time when the safety record of genetically engineered crops was leading to some relaxation of standards. If upheld successfully, complying with the requirements to do field trials may stifle the already struggling field of agricultural biotech, which has seen many small companies disappear and mostly just a few large players remain.

Current regulations draw dubious distinctions between genetic modifications made by irradiation and chemical mutagenesis and those made by transgenic approaches, the former being unregulated despite being arguably less targeted.

Nor is there any distinction made between modifications that might reasonably have a health or environmental impact and those that put a species at a disadvantage for survival in the wild (like Strauss's trees, engineered for sterility). Regulations call for complete containment, never mind the particulars, and government agencies once willing to show a little flexibility now are being forced by the courts to enforce outdated rules that stifle innovation.

"You can't put everything under a laminar flow-hood when studying trees and crops," Strauss said. "It used to be that USDA would, in effect, say, 'Well, you've got to do a good job, but we're not going to worry about every single pollen grain.' Now they're worrying about every pollen grain."

It may be that new techniques - for example, "cisgenic" gene transfers where the new trait is brought from the same species - eventually will force a re-examination of current standards. Unfortunately, right now it doesn't seem like science has the upper hand in the debate. And that's a pity - the world could really use what biotechnology has to offer.

Karl Thiel is a freelance writer who lives in Portland, Ore.