Vetting Modified Animals

Genetic engineering is proving to be an increasingly useful tool, effective at everything from protecting plant species to helping humans battle disease. It’s also getting progressively easier to harness, which is why we’re seeing a quickly growing community of do-it-yourself genetic engineers (or biohackers) emerge. Many of these DIY scientists are focused on improving animal species for better breeding, but some skeptics are afraid some well-intentioned scientist somewhere might accidentally home-brew a deadly pathogen or open some other sort of Pandora’s box of genetic devastation.

To this end, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is moving to regulate the work done by these so-called rogue genetic engineers. They’ve now released a revised draft of their guidelines for regulating animals with intentionally altered genomic DNAs. Prepared by the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine, the guide covers animals that have been produced using any genome editing technologies or genetic engineering.

“This guidance addresses animals whose genomes have been intentionally altered using modern molecular technologies, which may include random or targeted DNA sequence changes including nucleotide insertions, substitutions, or deletions, or other technologies that introduce specific changes to the genome of the animal,” the draft reads. “This guidance applies to the intentionally altered genomic DNA in both the founder animal in which the initial alteration event occurred and the entire subsequent lineage of animals that contains the genomic alteration.”

Regulation Woes

As expected, this isn’t sitting well with DIY geneticists. Biohacker David Ishee uses genetic engineering to attempt to rid dogs of many of the disorders that go along with high-end breeding. In an interview with Gizmodo, he said that he knows that what genetic hobbyists like him do is actually beneficial. Plus, it’s not that complicated. “It should be straightforward,” he said. “The animals just get molecular surgery to fix a broken gene that causes their bladders to explode. Then those animals can become the founders on a healthy generation of Dalmatians and breed the disease away in a few years.”