spiked-science | Article

'[Scientists have fused the DNA of a monkey with that of a jellyfish so as to make it glow green]. The results will be reported in the New England Journal of Evil!' (1)

So it was that the news update on the US comedy programme Saturday Night Live reported the first successful birth of a genetically modified (GM) primate - the monkey now known as ANDi (named after 'inserted DNA' backwards).

The Saturday Night Live skit on ANDi was followed by the rather less amusing outbursts of George Stephanopoulos on the US TV programme This Week, the following Sunday morning (2). Among other negative comments, Stephanopoulos suggested that GM work on primates was highly dangerous because it could lead to a new species of rich people.

Thankfully Stephanopoulos does not speak for the majority of Americans and his voice was not typical. Most comments at least attempted to balance the positive and negative. 'What is of interest, I think, in Gerry Schatten's work is the possibility that one could learn about certain types of diseases in ways that we really couldn't in humans', Patricia Backlar, an ethicist at the Oregon Health Sciences University, told the New York Times. 'But there's also the issue there that maybe we shouldn't do this on non-human primates.'

What made this particular monkey so controversial? To make ANDi, Schatten and other scientists at the Oregon Regional Primate Research Center injected a genetically modified virus into the unfertilised eggs of a rhesus monkey. The green fluorescent protein gene from the jellyfish was chosen because it is well-studied and simple to identify in the GM organism.

The viral vehicle carried the green gene into 224 rhesus-monkey eggs, which were fertilised with sperm a few hours later. Of the 224 fertilised eggs, 126 grew into successful embryos and the best 40 were transferred into 20 surrogate-mother monkeys. Five pregnancies resulted with one set of twins miscarrying. Of the three successful births, only ANDi showed signs of the green gene.

ANDi does not glow green and, in fact, is not expressing the green gene in his protein at all. This is a concern; although ANDi is carrying the gene it is not being used. For GM to be useful the inserted genes must be able to do their job and not simply lie dormant along with masses of other junk-DNA. However, the two still-born twins did express the green gene in their protein. It is also possible that ANDi will pass his green gene along to offspring, who will express the gene; but that will not be known for several years.

A success rate of less than half a percent, and an uncertain success at that, is an unlikely platform for the development of genetic babies. Many commentators have pointed out that 'GM people', rich or otherwise, are not going to follow in ANDi's footsteps anytime soon. That much is true. It is also true that the success rate of such technology in humans would likely be much higher than that for rhesus monkeys. In vitro fertilisation techniques are much more developed in humans than other primates (childless rhesus monkey couples do not place demands upon a country's health service, whereas childless human couples do).

But whatever the technological potential unleashed by ANDi, the discussion about a new species of rich people is beside the point and painfully defensive.

Transgenic primates are, without doubt, the way to go

ANDi was created, in the first instance, as proof of the principle that GM primates are possible, and that GM models of disease in primates can therefore be achieved. This is potentially an important step in understanding devastating illnesses such as Alzheimer's and AIDS, as well as many other neurodegenerative and immunological diseases. Although GM technology is well developed for use with rodents (rats are clearly cheaper than monkeys), GM rodent models for these types of diseases are severely limited. Transgenic primates are, without doubt, the way to go.

Beyond the use of primates to model human diseases, however, there is the real possibility of GM-modified humans to enhance health. Engineering eggs so that a gene confers resistance to disease could conceivably reduce the chance of individuals developing diseases like cancer or AIDS.

The complaint that this technology might also be adapted to create a better-looking or more intelligent human trivialises the intent of the work, and maligns it unnecessarily. As a recent report by the American Association for the Advancement of Science noted, our obligation to future generations should certainly encompass efforts to make life better for our children and subsequent descendants. This includes eliminating deleterious genes and thereby improving the health of future generations (3). Sadly, Schatten, ANDi's creator, is himself somewhat equivocal regarding the extension of GM to humans. He was quoted in Newsweek as being emphatically against 'extrapolation of this work to people' (4).

UK scientists have been equally equivocal - and occasionally downright hostile - towards ANDi. Patrick Bateson, chairman of the UK Royal Society's working group on GM animals, argued that 'this sort of work must be subject to stringent monitoring of any harmful effects on the animals' welfare'. John Clark, head of the genetics division at the Edinburgh Roslin Institute, said that although the birth of ANDi made it more feasible to manipulate human DNA, there was no justification for doing so. Martin Evans, who led a team at Cardiff University to create a GM mouse model of cystic fibrosis, was quoted in New Scientist magazine as acknowledging the potential benefits of GM monkeys, but suggesting that they were 'far more ethically objectionable [than mice]' (5).

Comments such as these can only encourage serious critics like David King of the Campaign Against Human Genetic Engineering, whose call for 'a global ban on human genetic engineering' was widely quoted in the UK press (6).

These statements suggest a lack of perspective, where the potential for human betterment is sidelined against the supposed interests of rhesus monkeys and an almost mystical expectation of disaster. The only truly positive comment I could find came from Simon Fishel, head of the IVF clinic at Park Hospital, Nottingham:

'We've been striving for hundreds of thousands of years to eliminate human diseases. If we get to the stage in human development where the only way to do that is to attack the errors in our blueprint, then we have to try to attack those errors�I see this as positive research.'

Let's not let our fears about a brave new world allow the sad old world to squander the potential that ANDi represents.

Stuart Derbyshire is an assistant professor in the University of Pittsburgh Department of Anaethesiology. He is a contributor to Animal Experimentation: Good or Bad?, Hodder Murray, 2002 (buy this book from Amazon (UK) or Amazon (USA)).

(1) Saturday Night Live, 13 January, 2001

(2) See the transcript for This Week Sunday, 14 January, 2001

(3) See the report by the American Society for the Advancement of Science

(4) See the Newsweek article

(5) See the New Scientist

(6) See the Independent, the Daily Telegraph, the Guardian