Frankenstein foods?
Genetically modified foods and the Bible
by Don Batten
Many people are unaware that most soybeans grown in the US have had a ‘foreign’
gene (from a microbe) implanted in them. This enables the plants to tolerate a weed-killing
chemical. So, the farmer can spray the whole field and the weeds die, but not the
crop plants. Much of the maize (corn) grown has a gene for a microbial toxin that
kills moth larvae that eat the ears of corn. Such genetically modified (GM) crops
are also ‘taking off’ in places like China. Consumer resistance is slowing
the acceptance of GM foods in places such as Europe and Australia.
GM foods come from plants or animals that have been genetically engineered to contain
genes from organisms of a basically different kind—such that the genes could
not normally be incorporated through regular breeding techniques. For example, scientists
in Australia engineered a pig to have a cow gene that produces cow growth hormone.
The gene can be switched on/off by feeding/not feeding the pigs a certain amino
acid in their food. In this way, the pigs grow faster and produce the lean meat
sought by consumers.
All this ‘engineering’ requires considerable skill on behalf of the
scientists involved. And for each success, there are many failures.
Arguments rage over the pros and cons of this controversial issue. What should Christians
make of it?
The Bible
Some have argued that even normal cross-breeding is not Biblical, so genetic modification,
by extension, would be improper. They cite
Leviticus 19:19 (‘Do not mate different kinds of animals’).
It is common for this to be related to the issue of keeping the original Genesis
‘kinds’ separate. However, that cannot be the point of this law, because,
by definition, these kinds could not interbreed anyway.
This command would have presumably prohibited the mating of a horse and a donkey
(to produce a mule), despite the fact that these probably descended from the same
created kind. The way the word ‘kind’ is being used here, as in some
other parts of the Bible, would loosely correlate with ‘types’ or ‘varieties’
(which would cover different breeds or species). This fits with the rest of the
verse, ‘Do not plant your field with two kinds of seed. Do not wear clothing
woven of two kinds of material.’
So why do most Christians feel perfectly comfortable about not just breeding mules,
but wearing shirts woven from wool/polyester mixtures? Because they see that these
laws were given to the covenant children of Israel ‘brought out of the land
of Egypt’ (Exodus
20:2), as part of a number of signs that they were a holy people, set apart
from other peoples, because the Messiah was to come from them (Galatians
3:16). Circumcision of males was one of these covenant signs commanded in
Leviticus but specifically abrogated as a necessity for Gentiles in the New Testament
(Galatians
5:1–12).
Without getting into a formal discourse, it would seem clear from the Bible that
when it refers to the Law (e.g.
James 2:10), it refers to the whole of the Law of Moses, without distinction.
Having been saved by grace (i.e. it is a gift), Christians are, rather, in the power
of the Holy Spirit, to fulfill a higher moral law, the ‘Law of Christ’
(Galatians
6:2) or ‘the Law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus’ (Romans
8:2, see
Ephesians 2:8–10).
God gave mankind dominion over the Creation (Genesis
1:27, 28). Part of this dominion mandate, after the Fall, is to grow food
(Genesis
3:19). The breeding of animals and plants to produce more food
and fibre has long been recognized as part of our dominion. This form of genetic
manipulation is not controversial (e.g. breeding wheat for rust disease resistance
so that crops yield more grain or do not need the use of chemical fungicides).
But what of genetically modified food? As shown, there is nothing in the Bible that
would prohibit this, but there is a principle: that of ‘loving your neighbour
as yourself’. If producing a GM food could harm someone, then clearly it is
wrong.
Are GM foods safe?
Evidence is mounting that the control systems in plant and animal cells are much
more complex than many of the practitioners of genetic engineering anticipated.
GM foods have been considered basically safe on the basis of a long-held dogma that
only DNA (genes) is the stuff of inheritance (information transmission) and only
this determines the characteristics of an organism. A corollary of this is that
one gene produces one protein. Recent discoveries undermine these simplistic notions
(details in box below).
This means that a gene inserted into a host cell of a basically different kind of
organism could, through various known mechanisms, produce dangerous byproducts other
than the intended protein. Even if the intended protein has been tested as safe,
the unforeseen byproducts may not be safe.
Also, the desired protein may be manufactured but have different effects to those
desired. This happened with an early example of GM where the gene for the blue pigment
in hydrangeas was successfully inserted into a rose. Of course, a blue rose would
bring the company producing it a lot of money. Unfortunately for the investors,
the blue gene did not produce a blue rose. Why not? Apparently the colour of the
particular pigment depends on the acidity of the cell sap, and the acidity in the
rose was so different to that of hydrangeas that the pigment did not produce a blue
colour in the rose!
Another danger relates to the insertion of a foreign sequence into a part of the
DNA such that it disrupts existing control mechanisms for protein manufacture. These
effects may be subtle—a little more or less of a given enzyme, for example.
But this could result in accumulation of a substrate in a given chemical pathway
such that it is mildly toxic, etc., whereas before GM it was below the threshold
for toxicity. Small changes can disrupt biochemical pathways and cause disease (many
diseases have probably arisen through such losses of genetic information since the
Fall).
Undoubtedly, a lot of the naïveté arises from the evolutionary indoctrination
of many of the scientists doing the GM research. Perhaps underlying the belief that
tinkering with the genetics of living things will, without too much care and effort,
improve them, is the belief that life arose as an accident. If life is an accident,
then surely a little bit of intelligence applied to it can improve it. With the
knowledge we now have of the complexity of even the most basic of living things,
there is no excuse for believing that living things are simple, and to be easily
improved. And are the GM organisms ‘improved’? Genetically modified
pigs have a high incidence of gastric ulcers, arthritis, enlarged heart, dermatitis
and renal disease.1
There is an incredible inter-relatedness of cellular processes. A cell is in fact
‘irreducibly complex’—that is, almost everything has to be there
for it to function properly. So, to deal with a given gene in isolation, as if it
works without reference to other genes or the existing proteins in the cell, is
extremely naïve, even dangerous.
Conclusion
In principle, there is nothing morally wrong with GM foods, but in practice, I believe
that many of the efforts are dangerously naïve. Testing needs to be very thorough
to make sure that GM foods are indeed safe to eat. On the other hand, products that
are not eaten, such as cotton, may demand less stringent testing. Such GM plants
may enable, for example, large reductions in pesticide use, which would be good
for the safety of agricultural workers as well as beneficial to the environment.
Scientists who are Christians should have a respect for what God has created, realizing
the supreme intelligence that went into creating the various kinds of living things.
They would therefore ‘hasten slowly’ in genetically modifying foods.
On the other hand, they would realize that deleterious changes in organisms have
occurred since the Fall. It may even be possible to recognize and repair some of
these changes to make food safer to eat.
Discoveries that undermine the one gene → one protein
idea
(technical details)
-
The number of genes identified in the Human Genome Project, about 35,000, is far
less than the known number of human proteins, which is more than 100,000. In other
words, there are many more proteins than there are genes to code for them.
-
Cells are able to ‘edit’ the information copied from a gene on the DNA
to produce various different proteins. This is called ‘splicing,’ which
is done by a very complicated protein complex called a ‘spliceosome,’
though no-one yet knows how it does its editing to produce the desired proteins.
One particular gene has been found to produce over 500 different proteins in this
way!1 This discovery means that
a certain gene inserted into the DNA of an organism might not produce only the protein
that the scientist desires. Or any of it! Since the cell environment of the host
DNA determines the editing, different, unanticipated proteins could be produced
from the donated gene.
-
DNA replication depends on many different proteins, so DNA replication and inheritance
depend on the cell environment. Several different enzyme complexes actually check
the accuracy of the copying. Without their action, the error rate is about 1 in
100; with their checking, the error rate is a low one in 10 billion—that’s
like typing out this article five million times and having only one error overall.
The experience of cloning animals has also revealed the importance of ‘imprinting’
in inheritance. Imprinting involves certain genes being turned off by the cell such
that gene expression in the cloned offspring is affected.2
-
For a protein to become functional after it is manufactured as a string of amino
acids, it has to fold into its appropriate three-dimensional shape. It was once
thought that it was only the sequence of the amino acids, which is determined by
the gene on the DNA, that determined the folding. However, now we know that protein
folding needs other proteins called chaperones to arrive at the correct
shape. The host cell may have different chaperones and this could cause a different
folding to occur, producing a protein with different characteristics to those desired.
-
Prions are infectious proteins, possibly the cause of diseases like Mad Cow Disease
and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. These rogue proteins cause certain other proteins
to take on their shape, and so they replicate in a cell, causing damage. This means
that a new protein manufactured in a host cell could act as a prion as it interacts
with proteins not present in the donor organism, replicating itself and causing
havoc.
References
- Black, D.L., Splicing in the inner ear: a familiar tune, but
what are the instruments? Neuron 20(2):165–168,
1998. Return to text.
- Jerlströlm, P., Genomic
imprinting, CEN Tech. J.
13(2):6–8, 1999. Return to text.
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Further reading
References and notes
- Commoner, B., Unraveling the DNA myth—the spurious foundation
of genetic engineering, Harper’s Magazine, February 2002, <www.mindfully.org/GE/GE4/DNA-Myth-CommonerFeb02.htm>,
26 February 2002. In this article, evolutionist Barry Commoner attacks the dogma
of the central role of DNA on the basis of the importance of proteins in the replication
and expression of DNA. However, all the proteins that replicate DNA and modify protein
manufacture (DNA replication enzymes, error-checking enzymes, spliceosomes, chaperones)
are themselves coded by the DNA—another problem for chemical evolutionary
theories on the origin of life. For more, see <www.creation.com/origin>.
Commoner’s objections really show how little we know about how DNA controls
the processes in living cells, especially growth and development. Recent discoveries
about methylation and the role of histones in gene expression are only the tip of
the iceberg. Much treasure is yet to be mined from the DNA that does not code for
proteins, much of which has been labelled by some evolutionists as ‘junk’
DNA (they don’t know what it does, so it is labelled ‘junk’—reminiscent
of the vestigial (‘junk’) organs debacle of the past). See Walkup, L.K.,
Junk DNA: evolutionary discards or God’s tools?
Journal of Creation. 14(2):18–30,
2000. Also, ‘Not junk after all,’
this issue p. 9. Return to text.
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