Pharming

DOCTOR MACDONALD’S GENETICALLY MODIFIED FARM

‘PHARMING’

‘For ‘pure’ biologists transgenesis is a superb means of investigation: one very instructive way to find out what a gene can really do, for example, is to take it out of one genome and put it into another, and see what difference it makes. Animals can also serve as ‘models’ for human genetic diseases…Through genetic engineering, too, animals can be given genes that endow exotic qualitites quite alien to that species…Tracy [the sheep] has been fitted with a human gene that produced the enzyme alpha-1-antitrypson (commonly abbreviated to AAT) and she obligingly secretes enormous quantities in her milk. AAT is aleady used in the United States to treat lung disorders, notably emphysema and cystic fibrosis, but present supplies come from human blood plasma and so are both limited and expensive…This method of production has been called ‘pharming’ – a felicitious pun…among the many human proteins that might be produced by pharming are factor V11, factor 1X and the enzyme AAT…In humans, deficiency of factor V111 leads to haemophilia A, while lack of factor 1X lead to haemophilia B, or Christmas disease… Pharming thus emerges as an outstanding outlet for genetic engineering. The kinds of genes that would be introduced would in general be highly specific in action, and should have little or no effect on the general wellbeing of the animal.’ Ian Wilmut, The Second Creation, Headline, 2001

Tracy, just like Dolly, astoundingly disarms us with a name;

like a bristling, fencing, aggro-man unexpectedly de-foiled -

for who could be scared of a sheep called Tracy,

who spares our colourless blood, invisible to her,

as us; what alchemist this bleating sheep, woolly Merlin -

from this shuman or humeep synthesis, creating enzymes

for human lungs, while simply standing on all fours -

stable as a table, modestly eating grass, looking around.

What principles of order, Evolution, Creativity,

must be drawn - then redrawn - for this strange

development; weird guddling among processes,

genes, physical prints. What frame of reference

gilded, enshrined to help us see properly what we do;

what this creature meant for healing might become –

what new contamination, abomination might result -

but what miracles denied if the technology is stifled:

animal as means of living production,

warm flesh factory, physical process -

beating the new and altered chemicals

around blood man-tampered, changed;

when change has brought whole species

crashing down, buried them in old mud.

What happens beneath the surface animal,

oblivious to new genetic dances, invented

steps - such strange, exotic couplings

beneath the light, inter-special mixing

to what ultimate end; might monstrous scripts

be written from genomic ink, flexible enough

to write the human and night shrew on one page -

or these exotic altered poems relieving suffering;

creatively adapted by the hand of man - apprentice

thus of Nature, learning on the job; what risk, hope,

dreams, are mixed up with the genes, in the vessel

of holy animal; the unconscious gift of themselves.

‘A company in Quebec has taken the gene that enables spiders to make silk webs and inserted it into goats, hoping to extract raw silk protein from the goats’ milk and spin it into silk…Another company is pinning its hopes on hens’ eggs which it hopes to turn into factories for all sorts of valuable human products, from pharmaceuticals to food additives.’ Matt Ridley, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, Fourth Estate, 2000

Milk-silk

Milk-silk; moon-colour, warm

and white as a wedding dress

danced and loved - collision

of strange molecules; weird

melding of textile and food -

wearing silk woven from milk.

Rippling, liquid swirl - will it go off,

souring - turning yellow, thickened -

jilted bridegown - contaminated

with bad events, stupid alteration

of our correct familial chemistry,