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June 02 2001
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How Is This For Scary -- The Plants You Eat May Someday Deliver an AIDS Vaccine?

 

A spinach packed with HIV suppressing proteins??

Researchers have investigated the idea of using plants as "factories" to produce and deliver vaccines, but Dr. Alexander Karasev of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is among the first to focus on HIV.

The Pennsylvania researchers focused on "tat" -- a protein that helps HIV reproduce within cells and, at the same, works to suppress the activity of the human immune system. For this reason, tat is an ideal target for the development of both a preventive vaccine and as a treatment for those already infected with HIV.

But why use plants to produce and deliver such a vaccine? The essential point is that vaccines are a very expensive business, so anything that can drive the cost down will be beneficial. Vaccines that grow naturally in plants would be much cheaper to harvest than those produced in the lab.

In their experiments, Karasev's team introduced a gene expressing the HIV tat protein into a common plant virus. Once spinach was infected with the virus, it began to work as a "plant factory" for production of tat.

Human trials involving plant-based delivery of a rabies vaccine have shown that the human immune response can be "primed'' to recognize rabies using this method, and Karasev is hopeful that researchers can reproduce the same results with HIV.

Annual Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology Orlando, FA May 22, 2001



Dr. MercolaDr. Mercola's Comments:

This is an example of what genetic engineering can come to. Not only do we have no proof that AIDS vaccines work, it would take decades to fully prove their safety in humans. This is one thing that the vaccine industry has been horribly negligent on.

Safety data.

It just isn't there. We have virtually no studies documenting the safety of these approaches.

So investigators are now coming up with some potentially serious suggestions. Genetically modifying common healthy foods to deliver experimental unproven vaccines.

Absolutlely incredible.

We need to be diligent about protecting the quality of our food and, as the other GMO article in this issue make very clear, this is a very significant issue. Leading scientists have come to recognize that these crops are an accident waiting to happen.

If you are not up to date on this topic please carefully review the links below.

Related Articles:

Health Risks of Genetically Modified Foods

Genetically Modified Crops Worry Some Scientists

Genetically Altered Plants Might Alter You

Americans Don't Know They are Eating Genetically Modified Food

Genetically Modified genes jump the "species barrier"

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