Genetically Modified Insects (S&T Committee Report)

Lord Patel Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, start by thanking the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, for his masterly chairmanship of the committee. I also thank our special adviser and the clerk of the committee for all their help. I was delighted to be co-opted on to the committee, as I was not a member of the Science and Technology Committee.

Before I address the issues in the report, I should like briefly to talk on a personal level. I often visit Tanzania, the country of my birth, as I am involved in a charity that trains doctors and nurses to treat women who suffer from obstetric fistula. On a visit two years ago, I went to the northern Serengeti—some of your Lordships may have been there—to observe the great migration of wild animals. It is an incredible spectacle. A tent—albeit a luxury one—in the bush surrounded by wild animals is an ideal culture medium for the breeding of tsetse flies, which transmit the vector- borne African trypanosomiasis, or sleeping sickness, caused by a protozoa. It is different from American trypanosomiasis, which causes Chagas disease. Over three days in the bush I must have been bitten more than 100 times. My driver tried to reassure me by saying, “You don’t have to worry until you’ve been bitten 1,000 times”. His interpretation of statistics was slightly different from mine.

Although the number of sleeping sickness cases is falling through the use of traditional methods, the current methods obviously are not working well in controlling tsetse flies—including the chemicals that are used to sterilise the flies. For these and other insect vector transmission diseases, traditional methods of control are not adequate for diseases such as those already mentioned—Chagas, malaria, dengue, Lyme disease and now Zika. The genetic modification of insects has to be an additional method of controlling these and other emerging insect-borne diseases. And rest assured, there will be other diseases on the horizon that are both insect and fly-borne.

Genome editing with engineered nucleuses that act as molecular scissors is a type of genetic engineering in which DNA is inserted, deleted or replaced in the genome of an organism. Most people have heard of genes, even if it is not clear what all genes do. A gene is the name given to a section of DNA. Genes produce proteins that influence everything, including diseases. Offspring inherit genes from their parents. Genetics is the science of studying and manipulating genes. It is now more than 50 years since Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA—by the way, this is Crick’s centenary year.

Genetics has contributed to many important scientific developments, including: understanding and treating diseases such as cystic fibrosis; developing drugs for the treatment of cancer such as Herceptin, which is used in the treatment of breast cancer; and enabling the manufacture of human insulin to treat diabetes. With the more recent advances in gene editing, we now have the ability to manipulate genes in many different ways to treat human diseases and, in agriculture, to improve crop output. As we read recently in the media and saw on yesterday’s “Horizon” programme, we now have the ability to use gene editing techniques to grow human organs in animal chimeras.

The genetic modification of organisms is not new. It dates back to 1970. One of the early results of genetic modification was insulin production by bacteria through the insertion of human genes into bacterial DNA: producing pure insulin by synthesising the human protein. Similar technologies produce proteins of growth hormones, blood-clotting factors and others. Also, the hepatitis B and human papilloma virus, or HPV, vaccines are produced using similar techniques. Genetic modification has the potential now to develop new types of cancer vaccines in future.

In the context of today’s debate, the company Oxitec, spun out of Oxford University, has applied a technique for controlling populations of insect vectors that carry diseases. Our committee chairman, the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, mentioned in his opening remarks the control of diseases such as malaria, dengue, Chagas disease, Chikungunya and now Zika, which I am sure the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, will address. I did threaten him that I would speak about Zika and he gave me a bad look. I am sure that he will have something to say, and that most of us read his excellent article on Zika in his Times column.

I believe that the genetic modification of insects as vectors of organisms that cause much human death and misery will become a key component of vector control to reduce, or even eliminate, risk to humans from some of these diseases. If techniques of genetic modification and gene editing to control, treat or eliminate disease are to become more acceptable to the public, then, as is addressed in chapter 5 of our report, public concerns and anxieties have to be addressed from the outset. Recent coverage of gene editing being used to treat human diseases helped raise public awareness, particularly of the benefits of such biotechnology, as did the reports in the media following the publication of our report. History shows that the genetic modification of organisms is an area of high public interest. It raises public anxiety and ethical issues, sometimes real but most of the time perceived, that need to be addressed. The mostly positive comments in the media, as I mentioned, are helpful.

It was suggested to us in our inquiry that public perception of GM insect technology is likely to be influenced by attitudes developed in response to the public debate on GM crops, often promoted through misrepresentation of the science and its effects. We therefore recommend in our report that early action should be taken to inform debate and involve the public in relation to the genetic modification of insects to control human diseases—and the methods used are both for the control of insect populations and for population replacement strategies.

It has to be said that, despite the ethical and safety concerns that were highlighted to us, we did not hear any suggestion that GM insect technology should not be explored. We recognise that the public debate that relates to the use of technology for public health initiatives should be considered separately from the debate that relates to the use of technology for agriculture. In our recommendations we see a strong role to be played by the Government in initiating such a debate, but the Government’s response in this area was lukewarm. I therefore hope that the Minister will take the opportunity today to put on record a strong commitment that the Government will lead the debate in these and other areas of potential benefit from the technology, such as gene editing and the control and treatment of diseases.

While I admit a bias, I believe that the use of gene editing and genomic modification technology in prevention and treatment offers huge potential for the future of medicine.