FCGMOs Introduction Part 2

Robert Vavala Author

03/09/2018 Added

112 Plays

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Part 2 of the introduction for the Farmers, Consumers, and GMOs learning environment

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[00:00:00.740]Farmers, Consumers, and GMOs.
[00:00:02.750]This is part two of our introduction,
[00:00:05.360]and we're gonna stay with the idea
[00:00:07.100]that we're living in a changing world.
[00:00:09.310]And we're gonna take a look at a disease problem
[00:00:12.520]that seems to be a growing problem.
[00:00:14.230]Not from the perspective of farmers
[00:00:16.960]in dealing with the disease on their crop,
[00:00:19.340]but disease that many consumers deal with.
[00:00:22.730]And the disease that we'll talk about is diabetes.
[00:00:25.660]That's the ability of your body
[00:00:27.330]to control the blood sugar level.
[00:00:29.900]And there's a number of ways
[00:00:31.760]you could try to deal with that,
[00:00:34.040]diet, exercise, or a number of those factors.
[00:00:38.010]So let's take a look at how this problem is changing.
[00:00:41.540]What percentage of the US population has diabetes?
[00:00:47.310]Do you think it's less than 1%?
[00:00:49.430]Do you think it's about 1%?
[00:00:52.018]Or do you think it's all the way up to about 10%?
[00:00:56.350]This was in 2014 when I got this data, and I was surprised.
[00:00:59.800]About 10%, just under 10% of the US population
[00:01:04.640]is dealing with this disease.
[00:01:06.470]It's a growing problem.
[00:01:09.340]So let's think about the biology of diabetes.
[00:01:12.670]The key to being able to control the blood sugar level
[00:01:18.210]in your bodies is residing in the ability
[00:01:22.370]of a fairly simple protein
[00:01:25.330]that you have the instructions for in your genome.
[00:01:29.680]The protein's called insulin.
[00:01:31.560]Insulin protein acts like a hormone.
[00:01:33.990]It's made in one part of your body, and moves to others.
[00:01:37.020]And as it
[00:01:39.880]interacts with the cells in your body,
[00:01:42.120]it regulates how they take up, or don't take up,
[00:01:46.180]the sugar that's available to it as an energy source.
[00:01:49.570]And that's a critical capability that we take for granted
[00:01:53.810]when our bodies make insulin,
[00:01:55.490]and the insulin's working as it's biologically designed.
[00:01:59.710]But if you're diabetic, you aren't making insulin,
[00:02:02.810]or aren't making enough insulin.
[00:02:04.610]So prior to the 1980s,
[00:02:07.480]where did people with diabetes get their insulin?
[00:02:10.330]Did they get it from their diet such as soybean seeds?
[00:02:14.550]Did they get it from pigs?
[00:02:16.360]Or did they get it from cultured microbes?
[00:02:21.630]Well, the answer is they got the insulin from pigs.
[00:02:25.560]Now, they didn't get human insulin from pigs.
[00:02:27.870]They got pig insulins in their pancreas.
[00:02:30.140]Just like we make insulin in our pancreas,
[00:02:33.500]pigs make insulin themselves
[00:02:35.810]to control their blood sugar levels.
[00:02:37.480]So you can extract pig insulin from slaughtered pigs,
[00:02:43.010]and carefully try to purify the pig insulin,
[00:02:47.300]give it to patients with this diabetes disease,
[00:02:51.460]and in some cases, it works fine.
[00:02:55.320]In all cases, it's rather expensive.
[00:02:58.160]And in some cases,
[00:03:01.462]the patients would have a negative reaction
[00:03:04.940]to the pig version of the insulin protein.
[00:03:08.260]So there were numerous problems associated
[00:03:10.810]with trying to use pig insulin
[00:03:13.900]to control the insulin level in people with diabetes.
[00:03:18.210]There had to be a better solution.
[00:03:20.990]So it's something that the medical scientists worked on.
[00:03:25.030]So let's fast forward to today.
[00:03:27.300]Now where do people with diabetes get insulin?
[00:03:31.670]Do they now get it from soybeans?
[00:03:35.350]Do they get it from other people?
[00:03:37.430]Or do they get it from cultured microbes?
[00:03:39.620]They no longer typically use pig insulin
[00:03:42.930]as a source for diabetics.
[00:03:44.320]Where do they get it now?
[00:03:45.900]How have things changed?
[00:03:48.590]Well, the answer is they get the insulin
[00:03:53.270]from microbes that are cultured by pharmaceutical companies.
[00:03:57.730]Now what's interesting is these microbes
[00:04:00.870]have the ability to actually make the human version
[00:04:05.640]of the insulin protein.
[00:04:06.840]And the reason they can is because they're GMOs.
[00:04:10.120]They have a gene from humans
[00:04:12.940]that encodes the insulin protein
[00:04:14.880]transferred into their cells,
[00:04:16.860]and they can faithfully use that human gene information
[00:04:22.680]and make the human protein.
[00:04:24.470]And then that human insulin protein can be extracted
[00:04:28.790]and purified from the cultured cells.
[00:04:30.930]It's far less expensive than the extraction
[00:04:34.190]of pig insulin from the pig pancreas,
[00:04:38.000]and it's safer because it's the human version
[00:04:42.610]of the insulin protein.
[00:04:44.060]So because of the ability to do gene transfer
[00:04:48.090]from humans to microorganisms
[00:04:51.240]in the 1980s,
[00:04:54.190]an improvement in the status
[00:04:56.640]of people with diabetes was achieved.
[00:04:59.580]So that was obviously a case where the use
[00:05:02.430]of genetic engineering technology was beneficial,
[00:05:06.380]and generally, not controversial,
[00:05:08.930]not something that consumers opposed.
[00:05:11.580]So what we wanna be able to do
[00:05:13.540]in the Farmers, Consumers, and GMO learning environment
[00:05:17.320]is gain a better understanding
[00:05:19.370]of the biological difference between GMOs and non-GMOs.
[00:05:24.190]How are they really different,
[00:05:26.380]and how are they similar to each other?
[00:05:29.040]And then we can better evaluate the different kinds
[00:05:31.930]of applications for this GMO technology,
[00:05:35.410]and do a better job of deciding whether or not
[00:05:38.590]this would be a good choice, or not a good choice,
[00:05:42.760]or understanding some of the differences
[00:05:46.560]in people's opinion about the use of the technology.
[00:05:50.200]So we will continue our learning
[00:05:53.860]with Farmers, Consumers, and GMOs.

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FCGMOs Introduction Part 2

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