Cory Doctorow, of BoingBoing complains about bad science, reporting GM Chinese cows express milk with some proteins found in human milk, UK press reports "OMG! Cows give breast milk!" GM is a common European abbreviation for genetically modified.
Scientists at the China Agricultural University, have produced 17 genetically modified cows which produce milk they assert is chemically indistinquishable from human breast milk in the ways measured. (See article below fold.) The look forward to not only improving human nutrition, but also breeding future cows to produce pharmeuceticals. But this doesn't convince Cory Doctorow.
The researchers claim the milk contains lysozyme (an antimicrobial protein), lactoferrin (a protein involved with the immune system) and alpha-lactalbumin. The researchers claim that this milk would be a suitable substitute for human breast milk, but do not cite any studies or data to directly support this claim.
The reporting on this in the UK press is textbook bad science. Writing in April, the Telegraph's science reporter Richard Gray describes the cows as "physically identical" to non-transgenic cows (presumably he thinks that DNA exists solely in the realm of pure maths (sic) or possibly in the astral plane). He also credulously repeats the claim that because this milk contains proteins found in human breast milk, it will be a suitable substitute, and implies that there is some benefit known to arise from drinking breast milk into adulthood.
At this point, I don't know what to think but he has my attention. What an amazing idea that consumers could be put on a new kind of diet, with something as ubiquitous as milk, perhaps, without some people even knowing about it.
Doctorow Found this 'Green Cow from Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from nuskyn's photostream
In Great Britain, Rupert Murdoch is widely viewed as the "Donald Trump" of global media, after he bought Sky News in what many suspect, or allege is a right-wing effort to slant the news. Doctorow points to Sky's reporting as the worst.
Doctorow also points out that the Beiging correspondent who wrote the original news article, as if it were a public relations, or marketing campaing for the vitures of genetic modification interviewed dairy workers on the farm to get the quote that "It's better for you because it's genetically modified."
An article by-lined "Holly Williams, Beijing correspondent" describes the cows' milk as "human breast milk" (the leap from "cow's milk with some proteins found in human milk" to "human milk" being rather a large one). Like the Telegraph, the Sky report is mostly a critique of EU rules and conventions on GM food, and has the thinly veiled subtext of "Our Eurocrat lords and lefty loonies are holding back nutrition."
Yikes, it sounds as if our European friends are challenged by the same kind of right-wing attacks on sensible food regulation as "lefty loonies" holding back progress delivered by free market capitalism, by imposing authoritarian regulations.
Doctorow closes by noting that neither the Telegraph, or other european newspapers, or the Beijing newspaper they used as a source quoted, or linked to the original scientific paper, so I do not want to be equally remiss.
strong>Characterization of Bioactive Recombinant Human Lysozyme Expressed in Milk of Cloned Transgenic Cattle (Plos One)
Bin Yang1, Jianwu Wang1, Bo Tang2, Yufang Liu1, Chengdong Guo1, Penghua Yang1, Tian Yu1, Rong Li2, Jianmin Zhao2, Lei Zhang2, Yunping Dai1, Ning Li1*
1 State Key Laboratory for Agrobiotechnology, China Agricultural University, Beijing, People's Republic of China, 2 Beijing GenProtein Biotechnology Company, Beijing, People's Republic of China, published Characterization of Bioactive Recombinant Human Lysozyme Expressed in Milk of Cloned Transgenic Cattle
From their abstract:
There is great potential for using transgenic technology to improve the quality of cow milk and to produce biopharmaceuticals within the mammary gland. Lysozyme, a bactericidal protein that protects human infants from microbial infections, is highly expressed in human milk but is found in only trace amounts in cow milk.
We have produced 17 healthy cloned cattle expressing recombinant human lysozyme using somatic cell nuclear transfer. In this study, we just focus on four transgenic cattle which were natural lactation. The expression level of the recombinant lysozyme was up to 25.96 mg/L, as measured by radioimmunoassay. ... The gross composition of transgenic and non-transgenic milk, including levels of lactose, total protein, total fat, and total solids were not found significant differences.
Thus, our study not only describes transgenic cattle whose milk offers the similar nutritional benefits as human milk but also reports techniques that could be further refined for production of active human lysozyme on a large scale.
And, from their paper:
There is great potential for using transgenic technology to improve the quality of cow milk and to produce biopharmaceuticals within the mammary gland. Lysozyme, a bactericidal protein that protects human infants from microbial infections, is highly expressed in human milk but is found in only trace amounts in cow milk.
The gross composition of transgenic and non-transgenic milk, including levels of lactose, total protein, total fat, and total solids were not found significant differences.
Cory Doctorow asks the right questions, and I agree with his concerns that more research be done on possible health impacts of humans drinking transgencic "breast milk" through-out our whole adult lifetimes, before we convert the worlds diary industry to these new, and "improved" cows.