THERE was a sense of d茅j脿 vu this week with news reports of a US company that wants to plant strains of rice engineered to produce human proteins. Headlines such as 鈥淗uman genes in your food?鈥� and references to Frankenstein brought back memories of the late 1990s when much of Europe was swept by hysteria over the prospect of genetically modified (GM) food.
The company, Ventria, hopes that the proteins will be useful for treating babies with diarrhoea who become dehydrated (see 鈥淩ice relations鈥�). GM sceptics who worry about eating human genes can rest easy. Ventria鈥檚 proteins would have to be purified, and people have been given GM human proteins for years: insulin and growth hormone to name but two.
The one real concern is that plants grown for medicines might contaminate the food chain, something the US agricultural system has so far appeared powerless to prevent. Before 鈥減harming鈥�, as it is known, takes off big time, the question of how to keep food and medicinal crops separate must be solved.
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