CARLOSMATEO Hernández Rojas - Madrid (ESPAÑA
Lately it is heard speak of new therapies genicas for the treatment of different illnesses.
Some obtained pharmacists of hybrid of mice and men, the antibodies monkey clone them, they are presented as the great hope against the cancer. Pigs manipulated genetically will provide us of kidneys and livers, and it will be enough with eating up a banana to be vaccinated.
This wave of optimism also moves to the field of the feeding, where the scientists which new prophets of a happy world, offer us vegetables and fruits that repel the insects and that they are harmless to the deterioration. However, these possibilities also open new and serious challenges to the environment and the health.
Today we can have consumed without knowing it, corn or soya manipulated genetically, with what we will have exposed to our organism to bacterias against those that don't serve the antibiotics. Tomatoes with fish genes to resist the step of the time, watermelons without seeds, peaches with flavor to grape... it is not science-fiction.
These and other foods trans-génicos or manipulated genetically they are already part of our diet or they will make it very soon and, although serious doubts exist on their effect in the health, we can find them in any supermarket.
The European Union has rejected the Spanish application recently of cultivating two types of altered cotton genetically for Monsanto, the multinational leader in biotechnology.
These cultivations had been rejected by the European Parliament, for the one who you/they supposed "a clear risk for the health."
Although in Spain they were possible to prohibit these and other cultivations, anything would prevent them to be cared of other countries. six years ago one had to have signed a protocol regulator of these agreement products with the Agreement it has more than enough Biodiversity approved in River, but half dozen of countries, in front of the approach of 132 they made fail the summit of Cartagena of Indies (Colombia).
United States that controls 90% of the market, opposed himself, with what the interests of the industry have prevailed on those of the health and the environment, as diverse ONGs has denounced.
In any event, the industry producer of organisms trans-génicos has powerful allies, and not only in the government from United States.
Anything less than the UN, in short the FAO, in charge of looking in the entire world after the agriculture and the feeding, has declared recently that the biotechnology— prefers this term to that of genetic manipulation—it is "a powerful instrument to feed a growing world population."
This organism points out that in the year 2020 will have 7.500 million inhabitants in the planet and most (6,3) he/she will live in the Third World.
This will force, according to Monsanto to that it is necessary to produce 75% more than food in that date.
The UN and the impeller laboratories of the genetic manipulation coincide in their predictions, as well as in proposing the foods trans-génicos like solution for a world super-town.
However, this argument is rebutted by ONGs like Greenpeace that it considers it "ridiculous."
For Ricardo Aguilar, "it is shameful that it is wanted to use the hunger like excuse to manufacture these foods. If it was truth, the countries of the Third World would be the most favorable to them, but they have been those that more they have been opposed in Cartagena of Indies.
They are the big multinationals those that win and a lot of effrontery is needed to maintain that posture, mainly when in the European Union they put on tickets to take place more than the established shares and cultivations are destroyed."
It is not of missing that the developing countries are the most opposed to the cultivations trans-génicos. Farmers' thousands have been ruined because of the synthetic production of foods like the vanilla or the sugar.
The manufacturing companies of seeds trans-génicas seem to look for the economic dependence of the Third World, more than their development. Seeking protection in the GATT, the Treaty of Free Trade that supports the intellectual property, Monsanto prohíbe to the buyers of their seeds (25 more expensive% that the normal ones) to keep them of a crop for another.
In United States an army of inspectors takes charge of watching over the barns and that it is fined the offenders. In the India, where the practice of keeping the seeds is millennial, the farmers have played violent protests and they have burned cultivations transgénicos.
To avoid conflicts and to increase benefits, Monsanto has developed the technology Terminator that believes plants sterile transgénicas. It is guaranteed this way that the alone farmer can obtain new seeds of the company.
However, the Indian Secretary of Agriculture, Som Pal, it has gotten them to be prohibited in their country.
Another aspect of the biotechnology, stood out by the FAO and the makers, is that the application of pesticides and fungicides will decrease thanks to the plants with genetic resistance to the badges. "One of the cultivations improved by Monsanto, the cotton, it has been protected genetically against insects, what has avoided the application of more than three million liters of pesticides", Jaime assures Costa, technical director of this laboratory in Spain.
However, they have been resistant insects to the toxins inserted in the plant, according to the expert in cultivations trans-génicos Miguel Altieri, of the University of California.
One also has knowledge of insects able to find the less altered fabrics genetically, for that that for this scientist, the immunization in front of them "it is condemned to the failure."
According to Altieri, it is impossible to control that these animals pass from a cultivation trans-génico to another that is not it and raze the crop.
Another point happens with the resistant genes to virus that can give place to new more dangerous viral hunts; and with the genes that repel the weeds that can cause overgrowths super.
"The resistant cultivations to the herbicides will probably increase the use of the same ones, as well as the production costs", he notices.
NEW VIRUS
The consequences for the ecosystem are even worse. Plants have been developed with insecticide capacities that you/they can threaten the existence of insects and beneficial and even indispensable mushrooms for the plant and for other species.
The effects to great scale are not still known with certainty.
The incorporate toxins to the DNA of the plants can move to the floor and the water, affecting other vegetable organisms and animals.
The genetic combinations are unforeseeable. We can attend new varieties of insects and microorganisms against those that any defense doesn't exist.
Also, if a plague appears, all the cultivations are affected. This is especially preocupante in countries with fragile ecosystems or that they depend economically on the agriculture.
"The illnesses of the plants, the plagues of insects and the overgrowths have increased with the development of the monkey-cultivation, and in the plantations managed intensively and manipulated genetically he gets lost the genetic diversity soon", Altieri points out.
Which are the risks for the man? Besides the derived indirect consequences of their interaction with other organisms of the ecosystem, new or altered genetically, there are real dangers because of the ingestion of products trans-génicos.
According to a survey of the International Society of Chemotherapy, carried out among investigators of 25 countries, 57% of them considers that the risk of marketing without restriction resistant corn to antibiotics is "unacceptable."
The organism in charge of looking after the security of the foods and medicines in united States, the FDA, declared the industrial ones some months ago they should watch over that these products "they are not present neither in the foods neither in those derived of the new varieties of plants."
SUPER BACTERIAS
Investigators of the State Institute for the Control of Quality of the Agricultural Products, in Holland, they have demonstrated that the resistant genes to antibiotics, introduced in the food, can "to transfer their resistance to the existent bacterias in the stomach and to create bacterias that cannot be annihilated super neither with the most potent antibiotics."
Some of these discoveries bother extraordinarily to the centers where they have been discovered, since many of them receive grants of the pharmaceutical industry.
One of the biggest world authorities in vegetable proteins, the professor Arpad pusztai, it was forced to abandon the Institute Rowett, in Scotland, after develar that the altered food genetically could damage vital organs of the rats. Otos scientists confirmed its discoveries.
This way the Doctor Vyvyan Howard, of the University of Liverpool, it has pointed out that the potatoes transgénicas affect to the growth, metabolism and immune functions of these animals, with what thinks about the doubt of if it will happen equally in the human beings.
GENES FOR THE HEALTH
However, some of the organisms modified genetically are not designed to take place more or cheaper, but to cure illnesses.
The Autonomous University of Madrid has just presented for example, the discovery of a gene of vegetable origin for the treatment of the cancer.
The therapeutic possibilities of plants and animal transgénicos seem every day adults. The tobacco can even become an important source of hemoglobin if human genes are inserted in the plant.
Of there to the vegetable blood it is still a road that will take in being traveled, but it is already profiled. Starting from the yeast used to manufacture bread it has been possible to synthesize hormones human esteroideas. Another possibility that promises to transform the medicine, mainly in the countries of the Third World it is the employment of fruits and vegetables like eatable vaccines.
One already works with bananas against the flu and the rubella and with potatoes against the hepatitis B. The animals are also an inexhaustible source of resources.
The pigs transgénicos will be good for the production of organs for transplantes and the onco-mice that they study scientific as Mariano Barbacid is being good as models to study the behavior of the human organism, without necessity of experiencing directly with him.
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