Human genes in your food? Rice to be genetically modified with DNA...

Hubris. Wasn't anyone paying attention during Jurassic Park? "If there is one thing the history of evolution has taught us, it's that life will not be contained. Life breaks free. It expands to new territories, it crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously, but, uh, well, there it is!....I'm simply saying that, uh, life finds a way."

Watchdog groups and environmentalists fear there is a small chance the proteins genetically engineered into the company's rice could accidentally get incorporated into rice grown for human consumption.

"Our position is that they don't need to put these into food crops," says Doreen Stabinsky, a science adviser for conservationists Greenpeace USA.

"We know that accidents happen. They've happened already," she adds, referring to a 2002 announcement by the USDA and US Food and Drug Administration that genetically modified corn from the ProdiGene company – designed to grow enzymes for medicinal and industrial use – was discovered growing in two soybean plots in the states of Iowa and Nebraska. NewScientist

I thought it was pretty well known that Jurassic Park is a cautionary tale about genetic engineering. The usage of dinosaurs as the product of genetic cloning was simply a means to an end. Crichton was more concerned with the morality of science and man's attempts to mess with nature.

Michael Crichton has said in an interview that "Biotechnology and genetic engineering are very powerful. It suggests that [science's] control of nature is elusive. And just as war is too important to leave to the generals, science is too important to leave to scientists. Everyone needs to be attentive."

My point is that seemingly every time they try to grow GM crops outside of a lab it gets loose and contaminates other crops, as in the case of cross-pollination from Starlink corn.

While I'm worried about cross pollination and the effects it could have on the environment, there is no reason to think there is anything unsafe about eating rice with human genes. We already eat animals that share the majority of our genes. Cows, being mammals, share a majority of their genes with us. Chimps share about 98% and mice share 85%, yet people in some cultures eat both of those animals with no discernible ill effects. We even share as much as 40% of our genetic code with some plants! So if you're worried about ingesting some humans genes, you should probably stop eating, well, everything. We share at least some genetic information with everything alive on Earth, since we all descended from a common ancestor.

Besides, how can we call these genes human genes? Only about 1% of our genes make us human, as compared to say a chimp. The rest of our genes have been coding for chimps (well, the chimp like ancestors we share with them) long before any humans hit the scene. Since the chimps were here first, wouldn't it be more proper to say that the rice is being modified with chimp genes? Of course it's possible that the genes the rice is being modified with are of the 1% or so that makes us human, but I think you see my point.

Point taken. It's not so much the genetics that bother me, it using a food crop to produce a pharmaceutical. I just tend to distrust these blithe assurances that concerns about safety and contamination were "based on perception, not reality".

The thing is, in 2003, 2 years after it was banned they were still finding that 1% of the corn harvested in the US was Starlink-contaminated. Starlink corn was thought to be safe as well, until they found out some people were allergic to it.

Well...scientist have given us white mice through 'genetic modification' (selective breeding) but growing a human ear on the back of one is a whole different order of weirdness.

Interesting chimera article. Scientists are such idealists. The author and a few commenters assume that this technology will be but to the most benign use, but I wonder. After all, the apex of pharmacology has given us recreational Viagra. I think it's highly likely that a good portion of market share may go to things like stem-cell induced breast implants.

Can we make blood flavored rice next?

Cash -- IMO, it is not intellectually honest to compare bioengineering with historical ("thousands of years") genetic modification of plants and animals by cultivating/breeding.

This is a plan to put an animal gene into a plant -- something I doubt Mendel would have imagined (or wanted).

And Jay -- how do you know that these genes (specifically, breast milk) are not "different" genes? And the last I read, the "close" connection man has is with other animal life, not with plant life.

The most commonly prescribed hormone for women is based on pregnant mare urine -- but that estrogen is not bio-identical. For many women, like me, it is not only non-effective but potentially harmful. There is also some research that suggests it could be linked to breast cancer (foreign floaters in the body).

I spent the bulk of my career working in agriculture -- but I think this rule is wrong on many grounds.

Read Beggars & Chooses (trilogy by Nancy Kress). Scientists rarely think about -- much less discuss -- possible unintended consequences of inventions.

Just because we can does not mean we should.

I've said this since attending my first bio-tech conference in, erh, 1998?