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In the Defense Department, a recent agency project looks futuristic: Millions of virus-carrying insects descend on crops and then genetically modify them to withstand droughts, floods and foreign attacks, thus ensuring safety of food supply.
But in a warning published Thursday in the journal Science, a group of independent scientists and lawyers opposed the research, which has not yet left the laboratory. They argue that the project is not so different from the biological weapons design – banned by international law since 1975 – that could invade and destroy acres of crops.
The dispute is the latest episode in an ongoing international debate on the pursuit of what is known as dual-use research: technological breakthroughs that may be beneficial or threaten human well-being. As gene editing tools become increasingly accessible, scientists, ethicists, and policymakers are evaluating the good, essential discoveries that could be made to humanity in relation to their harmful potential.
"Once you develop an insect-spreading virus, it's hard to imagine how you can control it," said Guy Reeves, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Germany. who contributed to the criticism.
"You have not released a transmissible virus – you have released a disease," he added. "The United States knows better than to return to a biological arms race."
The Advanced Defense Research Projects Agency, or Darpa – which funds the research – responded to the criticism with their own rebuttal published Thursday.
"With all these new technologies that are going to be revolutionary, there is an inherent potential for dual-use," said Blake Bextine, head of the research program, in an interview. "What we have done in this program is to be very open."
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Darpa launched the Insect Allies research program in 2016 with a budget of 45 USD. million over four years to transform agricultural pests into vectors capable of transferring protective genes into plants during a growing season. It would be exponentially faster than modifying crops through a gene, which would give specific traits to a species on several generations. (Gene campaigns have been proposed to reduce mosquito fertility by stopping diseases such as malaria.)
Researchers from four institutions – the Boyce Thompson Institute in New York, Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, and the University of Texas-Austin – have since experimented with targeted gene therapy that, hopefully, it will help farmers deal with frost and disease problems.
Critics have, however, asserted that publication of new search results could constitute a "preliminary instruction manual" for the development of offensive biological weapons. Beyond enhancing the resilience of crops, insects could easily be manipulated to carry viruses that destroy plants, said Dr. Reeves.
He added that maize, an essential source of nutrition for hundreds of millions of people in Latin America and Africa, is one of the main species targeted by research.
Foreign military programs are often "motivated by the perception of the activities of their competitors," warn critics, and "the mere announcement of this program may motivate other countries to develop their own capabilities in this area – in fact, they may have already done so. "
Researchers have suggested improving pre-existing methods of crop protection, such as aerial spraying, but Darpa program officials consider these tools to be expensive and imprecise. They also said that the critics misled their research by suggesting that these viruses would permanently alter a plant's genome. This is not the case, said Dr. Bextine.
"If you see a drought coming, you can deploy the system to maintain a period of difficulty and then return to a natural state," Dr. Bextine said. "We develop futuristic tools, but they rely a lot on reality. It's a biology that we understand very well.
Darpa included the Ministry of Agriculture, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration and other regulators throughout the project. Researchers must also include at least three killers switches, or emergency brakes, in their systems for safety.
Dr. Reeves was not satisfied.
"I think this project was decided in a silent corridor – an agency with little intentional oversight and insane ideas – and the Pentagon's personalities will be as shocked as I am," he said.
Darpa's officers acknowledged that the work of their agency often involved a calculated risk. Nevertheless, they consider that it is at the heart of their mission to consider the benefits.
"We are happy that people are asking questions," said Dr. Bextine. "But food security is national security. It stabilizes our society.
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