Genetically Engineered Organisms: Assessing Environmental and Human Health Effects

by Letourneau; Deborah K.

• ISBN13: 9780849304392
• ISBN10: 0849304393
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-09-26
• Publisher: CRC Press

Summary

Genetic engineering suggests new avenues for constructing useful products, but it also poses hazards to the health of the environment and the public. Delineating those hazards is complicated, difficult, and important at every level of risk assessment and risk management decision-making. Risk assessment and risk management may be further complicated by the need to discover more detailed information than is usually available. Genetically Engineered Organisms: Assessing Environmental and Human Health Effects gives credence to good science and to the notion that we do not have to argue about the ecological and human health effects of genetic engineering. Instead, it supports the position that we can undertake the painstaking science necessary to identify and understand those effects. Written by researchers who have done cutting edge research in disciplines such as botany, entomology, plant pathology, and other agricultural and environmental sciences, this book elaborates critical research on pollen movement, spread of transgenes in natural communities, fitness effects, resistance development, and unpredicted impacts on target and non-target organisms. These topics are explored in contexts ranging from Bt corn events and viral resistant oats to transgenic salmon and altered malarial vectors. Many chapters address theoretical and informational gaps that research presents to questions of biosafety, and some offer historical insights into factors that may affect risk assessment and risk management decision-making at the community, national, and international levels.

Table of Contents

Variability and uncertainty in crop-to-wild hybridization	1	(16)
Terrie Klinger
Factors affecting the spread of resistant Arabidopsis thaliana populations	17	(16)
Joy Bergelson
Colin B. Purrington
Bt-Crops: Evaluating benefits under cultivation and risks from escaped transgenes in the wild	33	(66)
Deborah K. Letourneau
Joy A. Hagen
Gaden S. Robinson
Resisting resistance to Bt-corn	99	(26)
David A. Andow
Ecological risks of transgenic virus-resistant crops	125	(18)
Alison G. Power
Impacts of genetically engineered crops on non-target herbivores: Bt-corn and monarch butterflies as a case study	143	(24)
John E. Losey
John J. Obrycki
Ruth A. Hufbauer
Transgenic host plant resistance and non-target effects	167	(20)
Angelike Hilbeck
Release, persistence, and biological activity in soil of insecticial proteins from Bacillus thuringiensis	187	(36)
Guenther Stotzky
Survival, persistence, transfer: The fate of genetically modified microorganisms and recombinant DNA in different environments	223	(28)
Beatrix Tappeser
Manuela Jager
Claudia Eckelkamp
The spread of genetic constructs in natural insect populations	251	(64)
Henk R. Braig
Guiyun Yan
Ecological and community considerations in engineering arthropods to suppress vector-borne disease	315	(16)
Andrew Spielman
John C. Beier
Anthony E. Kiszewski
Environmental risks of genetically engineered vaccines	331	(24)
Terje Traavik
Methods to assess ecological risks of transgenic fish releases	355	(30)
William M. Muir
Richard D. Howard
Controversies in designing useful ecological assessments of genetically engineered organisms	385	(32)
Anne R. Kapuscinski
Index	417