Insect Allies: Food security or bioweapon?
Scientists question U.S. idea to use bugs to alter plants’ genes
NEW YORK — A research arm of the U.S. military is exploring the possibility of deploying insects to make plants more resilient by altering their genes. Some experts say the work may be seen as a potential biological weapon.
In an opinion paper published Thursday in the journal Science, the authors say the U.S. needs to provide greater justification for the peacetime purpose of its Insect Allies project. Other experts expressed ethical and security concerns with the research, which seeks to transmit protective traits to crops already growing in the field.
That would mark a departure from the widely used procedure of genetically modifying seeds for crops such as corn and soy, before they grow into plants.
The military research agency says its goal is to protect the nation’s food supply from threats like drought, crop disease and bioterrorism by using insects to infect plants with viruses that protect against such dangers.
“Food security is national security,” said Blake Bextine, who heads the 2-year-old project at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, an arm of the U.S. Department of Defense.
The State Department said the project is for peaceful purposes and does not violate the Biological Weapons Convention. The U.S. Department of Agriculture said its scientists are part of the research, which is being conducted in contained labs.
The technology could work in different ways. In the first phase, aphids — tiny bugs that feed by sucking sap from plants — infected plants with a virus that temporarily brought about a trait. But researchers also are trying to see if viruses can alter the plant’s genes themselves to be resistant to dangers throughout the plant’s life.
Still, the research is raising concerns. “They’re talking about massive release of genetic modification by means of insects,” said Gregory Kaebnick, an ethicist at the Hastings Center bioethics research institute in Garrison, N.Y., who has studied genetic modification.
Kaebnick questioned how well the viruses and insects carrying them could be controlled. “When you are talking about very small things — insects and microbes — it might be impossible to remove them” once they are introduced into farmers’ fields, he said.
Though it’s not a household name, DARPA helped develop the internet, and its mission is to research potentially pivotal new technologies. The agency announced the Insect Allies project in 2016.
Guy Reeves, a co-author of the Science paper and a biologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Germany, says the technology is more feasible as a weapon — to kill plants — than as an agricultural tool.
Concerns that a new technology could be weaponized are to be expected, even if that’s not the intention, said Paul Thompson, a professor of agriculture and ethics at Michigan State University who is on an advisory board for DARPA.
“Once you make those kinds of breakthroughs, you are in a new world. It’s a morally ambiguous place. You wonder, ‘Is this something that we should never do?’ ” he said.