Terrorists Could Use GMOs with Spider Toxin as Bioweapon
Earlier Warnings Went Unheeded

For immediate release
June 1, 2002

A Berkeley activist's attempts to alert the public to a new GMO's threat to butterflies & people last year went mostly unnoticed. At least that was what he thought until 9-11 changed everything. Now the new national priority being given to tactical assessment of terroristic threats has brought new urgency to the issue.

A local butterfly activist's attempt to alert the public to a new Genetically Engineered Organism's threat to butterflies & people last year went mostly unheeded. At least that appeared to be the case after several major media outlets failed to commit to fully investigate the issue, including the New York Times, according to Alan Moore, the executive director of the Butterfly Gardeners Association. The organization advocates for the conservation of butterflies and their habits and is based in Berkeley.

Now a terror management consultant has brought new urgency to the threat of this new 'bug' that reportedly churns out a particularly deadly form of genetically engineered poison that can also infect human liver and other tissue cells. He identified himself as Terry Hetrick, a consultant for Michael Baker, Jr., Corporation out of Alexandria, VA. He read Moore's first press release concerning the spider toxin on the internet at www.biotech-info.net/spider_toxin.html and told Moore he wanted to get more information from him.

Hetrick told Moore that he was interested in genetically altered viruses and similar organisms because he does crisis management consulting with an emphasis on terrorism planning. He said his work involves the preparation and response of incidents of chemical and biological terrorism.

He also told Moore that, "It is no secret that genetically altered viruses or recombinant viruses have been created and experimented with by many countries including Biopreparat in the former Soviet Union as a new source of bioweapon. Farmlands, including the use of bioweapons masked as pesticides, and even GE food has been discussed as possible tactics (targets) by terrorists. Seeing that article with its references to possible human health risk caused me want to learn more about this particular research and similar attempted avenues."

"A lot of it is common sense when you see the widespread destruction that the foot and mouth virus did overseas. People would be naive to think terrorists haven't also seen news reports. The Soviets were masters at genetic-engineering in their bio programs and since most of their scientists are now unemployed, in poverty, and offering services to the highest bidder -- you can do the math. Check out "Biohazard" by Ken Alibek, about the Soviet Bioweapons program by the man who ran it who is now a consultant living in the US."

"I was happy to be provide the materials I had collected when I researched this last year. I always wanted to get to the bottom of the significance of this as a human health threat." Moore said. Then a friend asked him, "How do you know who this guy really is? How do you know he is not working for some terrorist organization?" Moore was so concerned that he contacted the San Francisco branch of the FBI Investigative Analysis Unit to help confirm Hetrick's identify before giving him any more information.

Moore points out that the Institute of Science in Society in London reports that events surrounding the foot and mouth disease outbreak in the UK suggested that it may be linked to tests of GM vaccines against the foot and mouth disease virus in 'simulated' bio warfare emergencies.

Bacillus thuringiensis or BT, used as a biopesticide and Bacillus anthracis, the anthrax species involved in current bioweapons scare are related, Prof. Joe Cummins reports.

Bacillus anthracis the cause of anthrax poisoning is currently a great concern because of its employment as a terror weapon. Bacillus thuringiensis is both a major pesticide and the source of the genes used to produce insect toxins in GM crops. A third bacterium, Bacillus cereus, is a common soil bacterium and a common cause of food poisoning. The three species of bacteria are closely related, differing mainly in their plasmids (plasmids are circular DNA molecules that contain genetic origins of replication that allow them to replicate independently of the chromosome). The plasmids of the three species may readily be transferred from one species to another. The toxin genes from the three species are located on the plasmids. The ready exchange of plasmids bearing toxin genes between the three species has raised some concern. In the event that B. anthracis mated to transfer plasmids to B. thuringiensis, recombination could create plasmids bearing toxins both for anthrax and for killing insects. New strains of B. anthracis with unpredictable properties could arise.

The BT toxin genes are employed in crop genetic engineering. Currently, there has been little or no effort to evaluate the possible recombination between B. anthracis in the field and the endotoxin genes of crop plants. Such gene exchange could occur in the soil between GM plant debris and bacteria. Also, it is not unlikely that GM crops carrying anthrax genes could be produced either for vaccines or for bioweapons.

Developments in biotechnology makes it possible to greatly amplify the impact of traditional biowarfare agents and made the means to create bio-terror weapons available to a significant part of the population through training in genetic engineering.

"Reports that BT was found in bunkers used by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network is a cause of great concern when we consider these facts and their implications, says Moore.

There is an extensive history of the use of bio-warfare agents, and in recent years, bioterrorism has been a growing concern. An extensive biological warfare program in Iraq was discovered after the Gulf War of 1991. Revelations concerning the covert program in the former Soviet Union also attracted much public attention.

"There is an urgent need for an international organization to monitor and control all GM experiments as a matter of urgency. This would be similar to the International Atomic Agency that controls all nuclear experiments and activities around the world," Moore points out.

Moore's interest and concern with GMOs all began last year when researchers in the US reported that they had given viruses a gene for a toxin from one of the world's deadliest spiders to replace chemical pesticides and that the target species were butterflies and moths They planned to carry out field trials, although there are fears about the wisdom of releasing such viruses.

"Maybe using GMOs with deadly spider toxin or any biological toxin to replace chemical pesticides may not be such a good idea," Moore suggests. "The threat to human livers and human health has not being fully addressed. It is particularly fool hardy being that this same organism could be used as a bioweapon. It doesn't seem quite prudent to me that they would want to field test this as a pesticide. This is problem that really concerns us, said Moore. This is at least the third time that Genetically Modified Organisms, GMOs, have been targeted against butterflies and this may make BT-corn look like cotton candy."

"BT-corn may be not be that benign," Moore continues. "Recent reports of hogs that were fed BT-corn now showing reproductive problems may be a warning that these things may not be so healthy for people after all."

Glenn King of the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington and his colleagues had identified a unique family of toxins in the venom of a funnel-web spider. These neurotoxins are lethal when injected into insect tissues, yet have no effect if eaten by insects or other animals (Nature Structural Biology, vol 7, p 505).

King's team is engineering the gene for one of these toxins into baculoviruses, common viruses that infect certain moths and butterflies, and have long been used as "biopesticides." When the modified baculovirus infects a butterfly or moth, the insect's cells should start to produce the toxin, killing it faster than wild viruses. Because the host butterfly or moth dies quickly, before much virus can replicate, the modified virus shouldn't persist in the environment, say the researchers. Critics contend that the risk to butterfly and human populations and survival is not worth taking.

Could the genetically altered baculovirus containing the neurotoxin eventually infect humans? Might this then be used by terrorists as a bioweapon?

"Soon after GM virus were developed for insect control it was found that baculovirus were capable of infecting human liver cells," says Joe Cummins, Prof. Emeritus at the University of Western Ontario. "For that reason baculovirus vectors were developed to treat liver disease. Interestingly, the fact that baculovirus can infect human liver cells seems to have been ignored by those developing the virus for commercial pest control. I understand that there has been a great deal of pressure to hasten approval of the GM baculovirus for pest control."

There have already been several field trials worldwide of baculoviruses given a gene for a scorpion toxin (New Scientist, 21 January 1995, p. 6). However, most of the scorpion toxin made in infected insects fails to fold into the correct shape, says King. By contrast, tests in bacteria suggest that almost 100 per cent of the spider toxin should fold properly, making the virus deadlier.

Critics fear that the virus will spread into the environment and affect other kinds of butterflies and moths. "A containment environment could not possibly hold a virus," says McGavin, who opposed trials of a scorpion toxin virus in Oxfordshire in the 1990s. "If you could get a specific baculovirus it would be great, but baculoviruses do pass on {to other species}. I welcome a potentially environmentally friendly pest control but it's abundantly clear we need to be more firm about risk issues," comments George McGavin, an entomologist at Oxford University. "If we are not 100 per cent sure, it shouldn't be in the field."

"Ecological considerations for the impact of recombinant baculovirus insecticides have been studied extensively. Impact on non-target insects is extrapolated from insects of related phylogeny, a practice difficult to defend. The recombinant baculovirus were very persistent and capable of reshaping an ecosystem."

"Baculovirus is a circular DNA duplex, it replicates in the insect cell nucleus and replication is prone to the generation of defective genomes by deletion. The mode of virus replication seems to make the recombinant virus highly unpredictable and prone to generating potentially undesirable variants. This important finding has not yet influenced the risk analysis of recombinant baculovirus insecticides and gene therapy vectors."

"The most disconcerting finding is the one showing that replication of the baculovirus is inherently unpredictable, says Cummins. "There may be some who believe that we should all have unlabelled liver gene therapy with our salads.

BT-corn has genes from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis spliced into the plant genes and its toxin is carried by wind-driven pollen to the leaves of milkweed where they can poison monarch caterpillars feeding on milkweed. "I think this clearly shows transgenic corn could be a serious threat to monarchs," said Rebecca Goldburg, a senior scientist with the New York-based Environmental Defense Fund in a story published by the San Francisco Chronicle about BT-corn. "I doubt if it would push them over the edge by itself, but it adds substantially to the other risks they face."

King thinks engineering toxin genes into viruses is preferable to adding them to plants, such as BT-corn. Not only does it mean that people do not have to eat plants that produce insecticidal toxins, but only target insects will be affected, he says. "These viruses can be exquisitely specific, right down to infecting individual species," King claims. "This means that only the pest insects will be killed whilst beneficial insects such as bees remain unaffected."

Moore makes the point that the industry states that BT-corn alone could not push monarchs and other butterflies over the edge, but a combination of other Monsanto and industry innovations just might. "Now we have Roundup ready crops and spider poison enhanced butterfly pathogens to deal with. Roundup ready crops are a direct threat in that they target milkweed, the monarch's host plant, as well as a whole spectrum of annual and perennial weeds for elimination. Many of these weeds are host plants for other butterflies as well," says Moore. There are also fears that the toxin gene might be transferred to other viruses.

A recent study by Doug Stocco in the Department of Cell Biology and Biochemistry at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Lubbock, Texas shows that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, significantly disrupts the steroids that control reproduction and fertility. The impact of such chemicals is profound in that it reduces reproduction in humans, other mammals, birds, amphibians along with a range of other vertebrates.

Jenny Cory of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Oxford agrees transfer of the toxin gene is unlikely, but thinks further tests would be helpful. "It's a vicious circle," she says, "you have to do a risk assessment before you do the experiment but we don't know all the risks without doing field experiments in the first place."

"We need to educate the American consumer on the threats of GMOs to human health and butterflies, says Moore. That is why we had joined Bay Area Rage, Global Exchange, the Bay Area Seed Interchange Library, the Berkeley Ecology Center, and the Organic Consumers Association in bringing this issue before the public.

Prepared by New Scientist authors Mark Robins and Michael Le Page (New Scientist issue: 17th June 2000), Alan Moore of the Butterfly Gardeners Association and Prof. Joe Cummins of University of Western Ontario

Alan Moore/Butterfly Gardeners Association
1563 Solano Ave. #477, Berkeley, CA 94707
510-528-7730 bflyspirit7@aol.com http://www.butterflyspirit.org

Prof. Joe Cummins/University of Western Ontario
73 8 Wilkins St., Ontario N6C4Z9 Canada
(519) 681-5477 jcummins@julian.uwo.ca

For more information contact the Butterfly Gardeners Association at bflyspirit7@aol.com or the New Scientist Washington office at 202-452-1178 newscidc@idt.net http://www.newscientist.com

Genetically Engineered Spider Toxin Threatens Butterflies & People-Aug. 6, 2000 Press Release