Introduction to genetic engineering

Genetic engineering is a technology for manipulating the hereditary substance. This substance consists mainly of DNA, found in the nucleus of every cell in an organism. A small part of DNA, less than five percent, consists of genes. Genetic engineering was invented a time when it was believed that each gene is responsible for a specific property. So it was believed that by extracting a specific gene from one species, one could transfer the property to another species. The dream was that this would make it possible to "tailor" organisms, creating for example crops with "desired" properties. However this idea turned out to be basically wrong.

Outdated principle

In parallell with the development of genetic engineering, science discovered that the "one gene - one property" idea is incorrect. It turned out that the effects of a gene is dependent on its environment. In a different environment than its natural one, a gene is likely to have different effects, some of which are impossible to predict. This includes the possibility that the gene may cause unpredictable appearance of poisonous or harmful substances.

So while some scientists spent billions of dollars mainly of corporate money in developing genetic engineering, other scientists realized that the whole idea behind it was basically erroneous. It is most unfortunate that the scientists developing GE were unable, or perhaps unwilling to stop these projects when its basic untenability was discovered (some of them became millionaries from GE patents).

Insufficient knowledge of DNA

In recent years, the insight has dawned to scientists that our knowledge about DNA is much smaller than formerly believed. For example, it was believed as late as in the middle of the 1990-ies that 95 percent of DNA, that does not constitute genes, was just "junk DNA", useless remains of the genetic history of the organism. This turned out to be wrong. It seems that this DNA has various functions including regulation of the genes. The knowledge of this is very incomplete. The knowledge of DNA is very incomplete also in several other ways. This makes it completely impossible to foresee the effects of the insertion of a foreign gene into an organism.

Undue intervention from corporte and political interets

So at the time that genetic engineering was applied for making genetically manipulated organisms, it had become evident that science knows much too little to be able to master the outcomes of this technology. The only responsible thing to do in such a situation would of course be to stop the application of the technology. Unfortunately corporate and political forces became so involved in backing this technology that the warnings from responsible scientists were ignored.

The approval of GE was made possible because of the great dependence of applied science on corporate sponsoring. This has made it difficult or impossible for scientists to express impartial and independent opinions uncomfortable to scientific investors, see Dysfunctional science.

There is a steadily growing worldwide resistance against the release and commercial use of genetically engineered organisms, see "Regions in the world banning some or all GE crops". If it had not been for the heavy promotion of GE by USA and its close ally UK, because of strong pressure from powerful multinational GE corporations, there would most likely already have been a world-wide ban. We can only hope that a global ban comes before too much damage is caused.

Already instances of irreparable damage to the ecology have been reported. For example there has been an uncontrollable spread of genetically engineered genes to wild populations of plants related to maize and rapeseed. This means that invaluable sources of biodiversity, of varietes for future breeding, are damaged. Also uncontrollable spread of genetically engineered genes by microorganisms has been reported. These are but a few examples among a growing number of alarming reports about complications from genetic engineering.

The situation presently can best be described as an irresponsible and unscientific experimentation with mankind and with the global environment with unpredictable outcome.

For more details, go to the ""Step three - fast track" page.

Introductory information about gene technology

If you have forgotten most of what you learnt about biology it is good to read some very simple introductory texts that everybody can understand: