Posted on 02/27/2005 9:54:50 AM PST by kingattax
Each year, about 350 million people worldwide are chronically infected with hepatitis B virus. Spread through blood and other bodily fluids, this virus puts them at high risk for cirrhosis, chronic liver disease and liver cancer -- diseases that kill about 1 million people each year. Yet through the magic of biotechnology, the lowly spud may change that. For centuries, potatoes have saved lives with their nourishment. Now they'e tackling diseases spread by viruses and bacteria. Using potatoes with a protein gene (called antigens) from HBV spliced into them, researchers have produced high levels of immunity-providing antibodies in volunteers who ate them. Their findings, reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Online, should lead to cheaper, safer and easier-to-deliver vaccines.
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
Thanks, but not thanks. I'd rather some mad scientist didn't alter my foods.
Oh and BIGGIE Size those Freedom Fries for the boys please. Gotta keep their immunizations up to date you know.
Just about every food bought and eaten in the last 50 years or so has been enhanced or altered by the proper application of science. Even if you grow your own, unless you buy special seeds, even they have been enhanced.
This could be a biggee for us folks up here in Idaho...lol
lol..there ya go ...keep growin those spuds
One day, I'll tell y'all 'bout my invitation to the Bonneville County Potato Festival...lol...I got to watch the crowning of the Potato Festival Queen and EVERYthing...sometimes we take ourselves WAY to seriously...lol
You are right. Plants often mutate spontaneously in the wild by themselves regularly.
Kewl, we can trade stories, I can tell you about
seeing the Turpentine Queen and Little Miss Pine Seedling.
Only place I ever saw people walking around with a racoon
on a LEASH.
Selection and crossbreeding is NOT gene splicing and altering. Corn is still corn, and beef is still beef.
If I want clamato juice, I'll buy it; I do not want clam flavored tomatoes from splicing clam proteins into tomato plants, and not just because that would potentially kill my clam-allergic wife.
These are two vastly different processes.
So "edible vaccines" wouldn't really be eaten, notes Dr. Thanavala. Rather, they probably would be powdered and ingested in gel capsules.
nice pic..is that you ?
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