Military Wants a Swine Flu Greenhouse

[Grinchie]

Source: Wired.com

Leave it to Darpa, the Pentagon’s far-out research arm, to suggest gardening as a swine flu fighter. The agency is looking for proposals for a facility that can manufacture mass quantities of plants that have been genetically modified to yield antibody proteins:

The 2009 H1N1 swine flu pandemic has highlighted the national need for larger scale vaccine manufacturing capabilities…Requested are approaches that demonstrate a proof-of-concept facility capable of growing adequate plant biomass for the production of protein at 10 kg per month.

Darpa’s not specific about how the vaccines would go from plant to patient, but edible vaccine-laced crops are one out-there possibility. Between 2000 and 2003, clinical trials at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research used potatoes, tomatoes and bananas to vaccinate against the Norwalk virus, E-coli and Hepatitis B. But the vaccine plants weren’t as potent as an injected virus, and ensuring a consistent dosage proved difficult.

Plants become vaccine carriers by being implanted with genetically altered proteins. For example, plant cells might be injected with genes to produce a specific anti-H1N1 antibody. Crops grown with the cells express that antibody, which could then be extracted and processed.


Read more: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/07/military-wants-a-swine-flu-greenhouse/#more-14702

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It's all so simple and innocent, isn't it? Is it any wonder why they refuse to Label Genetically Modified Foods?

Let's make it so the germs can become resistant in a farm field before even touching a human host.

[RC]

1. Unintended consequences? Wadat?