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7 . BiotechnologY,,. and the fight against famine.·

Biotech and the fight against famine by Michael L. Riordan

Biotechnology, the now-glamorized application of new genetic engineering and cell-culturing methods, is not ~ing employed solely to produce exotic molecules like interferon. Sci-entists and researchers are also turning their attention to the more mundane problems of food _production and ani-mal disease that are of critical impor-tance to the developing countries.

An agricultural revolution, say spe-cialists, is badly needed. Winston Brill, a plant bacteriologist at the Uni-versity of Wisconsin, told The ·wash-ington Post recently that "the previous dramatic rate of yield increase result-ing from breeding and proper fertiliza-tion seems to be approaching a limit." Chemical-based agriculture is also beginning to take its toll on the environment. And because it is capital-intensive and requires a lot of spe-cialized information, it is often far from ideal for use in the third world. ·

But experts assert that biotechnol-. ogy could change all that. Over 20 bushels a year per acre of corn produc-tion, for instance, are. expected to .be added by the turn of the century as genetic engineering and tissue cloning open the horizons for increasing crops' resistance to disease.

In the past few months alone, sev-eral advances have been announced . Researchers at Monsanto Company

successfully inserted bacterial genes into cultured plant cells, which were then ·grown into whole plants. Tl).is astoundingly powerful technique could -eventually confer many advantageous traits - such as the ability to self-fertilize- upon crops like com and wheat, thereby decreasing the need for expensive fertilizers and augmenting survivability in extreme climates.

Researchers at Cetus-Madison. Cor-poration, an industrial genetics firm, at Washington University and at the Uni-

. vers i ty of Penns y I v.ani a have announced similar success in moving · foreign genes-into plant cells. Dr. Ken-neth Barton of Cetus, while hedging to some extent by saying that "what we're doirig now still has to be consid-ered basic research,,· acknowledges that "the technology ~f manipulating plants genetically is growing very quickly."

As do most scientists in the field, Dr. Barton finds it hard to estimate when t\lis new technology will actually pro-duce improved crops, but he says that · "within the next year, something could come out of laboratories around the

·world that could eventually e_nd up as a new crop in a farmer's field."

Although most of the cutting-edge research on agriculturally applied genetic engineering is being conducted in the United States and Europe, bio-technology is increasingly recognized as a priority by third world countries .

Dr. M. S. Swaminathan, Director of the International Rice _Research Institute in the Philippines, writes in a· recent issue of Science magazine that "nearly every developing country has plans or programs 'for harnessing the tools of biotechrtology for national development."

Plans for international biotechnol-ogy institutions are already being for-

malized . Citing the "urgent need for broader and more effective interna~ tiona!. cooperation in the field of genetic engineering and biotechnol-. ,. ogy," the United Nations Industrial Developm~nt ·organization (UNIDO) is creating the International Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnol-ogy, which will have at least 50 scien-tists, I 00 trainees and an annual budget

of $8.6 million. Biotechnology may also soon lead

to a long-term increase in meat produc-tion in the third world. Using gene-splicing techniques, researchers at the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and at Genentech, the San Francisco-based genetic engineering company, have produced a new, experimental vaccine to increase immunity to foot-and-mouth disease. This highly contagious viral infection of cloven-hoofed animals causes major livestock losses in many developing countries where the disease is endemic, particularly in Africa, South America and Asia.

Production of a successful vaccine promises to be a boon both commer-cially and from the development stand-point, as it may help to halt a disease that can kill up to 50 percent of infected calves.

Dr. Douglas Moore, a member of the USDA's research team, thinks that small-scale field trials of the vaccine on cattle in Argentina, Colombia or Brazil could begin "sometime later this·. year," with a efficacious vaccine per-haps ready by "the mid-1980s. "-

Michael L. Riordan, an Inter Depen-dent intern, is a sllldent at Johns Hopkins University's School of Medi- · cine and is concurrently enrolled at its School of Advanced International Studies.