It has come to light that an ongoing research program funded by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), is working on a project using gene-editing techniques like CRISPR to infect insects with modified viruses that could help make America’s crops more resilient.
Many scientists are alleging the project is nothing short of biological warfare, reports Newsweek. The program, called “Insect Allies,” was first announced in 2016.
According to the DARPA website, the research program is “pursuing scalable, readily deployable, and generalizable countermeasures against potential natural and engineered threats to the food supply with the goals of preserving the U.S. crop system.”
In a somewhat scary use of words, the researchers claim the nation’s food security can be threatened by “naturally occurring threats to the crop system, including pathogens, drought, flooding, and frost, but especially by intentional acts.
Using the HEGAAs system
DARPA says that by creating and applying these “targeted therapies” to mature plants limited to one growing season, they could be a much-needed alternative to pesticides, selective breeding, slash-and-burn clearing, and quarantine. The focus is on protecting mature plants that are more susceptible to quickly emerging threats.
Actually, DARPA doesn’t exactly say what threats they are talking about specifically, but food security is an important consideration in our changing world. They are talking about utilizing a natural and efficient two-step delivery system to transfer modified genes to plants: insect vectors and the plant viruses they transmit. Basically, there are three fucus areas – viral manipulation, insect vector optimization, and selective gene therapy.
Genetically altering a species, be it plant or insects – is fraught with problems, not the least is that it takes several generations before you get what you want. But DARPA is looking at introducing genetically modified viruses that can edit chromosomes directly in the fields.
The system is known as horizontal environmental genetic alteration agents (HEGAAs). Instead of using traditional methods, like spraying them in the fields, they want to spread them using insects – like leafhoppers, aphids, and whiteflies. They are already testing this system on corn and tomato plants.
Why Biological Weapons?
Why biological weapons, indeed? A group of researchers led by Richard Guy Reeves, from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Germany, published an editorial in the journal Science October 5, alleging that “Insect Allies” isn’t exactly what it says it is. Instead, they claim DARPA is potentially developing insects as a means of delivering a “new class of biological weapon.”
“In our opinion, the justifications are not clear enough. For example, why do they use insects? They could use spraying systems,” Silja Voeneky, a co-author of the letter and professor of international law at the University of Freiburg in Germany, told The Washington Post. “To use insects as a vector to spread diseases is a classical bioweapon.”
Blake Bextine, program manager for Insect Allies, is less concerned. “Anytime you’re developing a new and revolutionary technology, there is that potential for [both offensive and defensive] capability,” Bextine told The Washington Post. “But that is not what we are doing. We are delivering positive traits to plants… We want to make sure we ensure food security because food security is national security in our eyes.”
Bextine says the project recently achieved its first milestone — testing whether an aphid could infect a stalk of corn with a designer virus that caused fluorescence. According to the Washington Post, “the corn glowed.”
This journalist will leave it up to readers to decide whether or not genetically modifying insects and viruses is such a good idea, especially when we’re talking about the food we eat.
