December 26, 2004 We ought to ban the splicing of drugs into food By Les AuCoin For The Register-Guard How's this for an idea? Let the commercial businesses inject drugs into you without your knowledge or approval. That's the effect of a new form of genetic agriculture called biopharming. It is the process of splicing pharmaceuticals into the genes of commercial crops. Industry expects to begin marketing transgenic seeds of this kind in two or three years. But it won't be allowed to in this state if the Oregon chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility has its way. The organization, which includes physicians and nondoctors, plans to introduce a bill next year in the Oregon Legislature to ban such agriculture for four years. This would buy time to learn more about possible adverse effects of such genetically altered crops. ``I want to take a drug when I have a need for it - and not before,'' says Rick North, director of Physicians for Social Responsibility's Campaign for Safe Food. Oregon currently permits no biopharmaceutical crops for cultivation. North and his group want to keep it that way. Anyone who has suffered an allergic reaction to a drug or medicine would likely agree. I'm just enough of an old shoe to like the idea of the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker. Each does his or her own thing. You know what that thing is and you make your purchases. Biopharming, on the other hand, would be like buying a bagel from the baker and ingesting a dose of paraffin. Biopharming opponents have some impressive research on their side. The National Research Council has concluded that beneficial biopharming effects produced in a greenhouse could pose a threat to humans in the open market. In a 2002 report, the council reported that an additive grown in corn since 1997 could potentially poison consumers. A group called Oregonians for Food and Shelter will likely fight the bill in Salem. The organization is essentially a front for such industries who might profit handsomely from biopharming. Rather than naming itself, ``Chemical Companies and Agribusiness Executives Who Know What's Best for You and Your Body,'' it seems to prefer, ``Oregonians for Food and Shelter.'' The group has muscle. In 2002, it helped raise $5.5 million to defeat a ballot measure that would have required labeling of genetically modified foods. It will lobby furiously against the biopharming moratorium. And why not? The biotechnology, pharmaceutical and agribusiness industries see a whole new world of profits in biopharming. According to a recent report in The Oregonian, a privately held biotech company in College Station, Texas, is working to produce children's vaccines that can be delivered in a snack rather than through a syringe. You can almost hear moratorium opponents playing hearts and flowers now. They'll speak of the Yankee ingenuity and the promise of genetic food breakthroughs that could fight such maladies as AIDS, herpes simplex virus, hepatitis B and E. coli. I don't know of anyone who wants humans to be infected by those diseases. That's not the point. The point is our food supply does not and should not be the delivery mechanism for drugs. As for ProdiGene Inc., the Texas biotech firm, its cultivation of crops for medicinal purposes has had a troubled history. In 2002, a half-million bushels of soybeans in Nebraska had to be destroyed when inspectors found that the soybeans had been exposed to an experimental ProdiGene corn containing a vaccine for traveler's diarrhea. I, of course, have always been stoutly opposed to traveler's diarrhea. But I just think we need doctors and pharmacists - not biotech firms - to give us vaccines against it. As Rick North of Physicians for Social Responsibility says, ``I don't want to be exposed to (drugs) without knowledge of what (they) do and what their side effects are.'' Seems reasonable enough to me. Former U.S. Rep. Les AuCoin (lesaucoin@excite.com) is an Ashland writer.