Philip Bethge

Tag: genetic engineering

  • Totgespritzt

    Es steckt im Tierfutter, im Brot, in der Milch: Das Pestizid Glyphosat belastet seit Jahrzehnten die Umwelt, weltweit. Forscher warnen vor Missbildungen und Krebs. Wie gefährlich ist der Stoff wirklich?

    Von Philip Bethge – DER SPIEGEL 24/2015

    Das Unheil kam langsam über den Hof von Helge Voss. Zuerst gaben die Kühe weniger Milch, ihr Kot war mal dick, mal dünn, obwohl sie stets das gleiche Futter fraßen. Dann kamen die ersten Tiere nicht mehr hoch – als wären die Hinterläufe gelähmt. Einige Kühe blieben nach der Niederkunft einfach liegen und starben im Stroh.

    “Ich hatte Tiere, die haben auf keine Behandlung mehr angesprochen”, sagt Voss, Milchbauer in Kaaks, einem Dorf in Schleswig-Holstein. So etwas hatte es noch nicht gegeben auf dem Hof seiner Familie, nicht beim Vater und nicht beim Großvater, die beide auch schon vom Vieh lebten.

    “So eine Kuh muss glänzend aussehen, Fleisch auf den Rippen haben, und wenn ich die auf die Weide lasse, muss sie auch mal rennen wollen”, sagt Voss, 42. Doch nun, plötzlich, nur noch Hungerhaken im Stall, “zu dünn, zu langsam, zu stumpf das Fell”. Erst mal suche man die Schuld bei sich, dann sei er aber doch zum Tierarzt gegangen, “und der hat gleich auf Glyphosat getippt”.

    In deutschen Kuhställen geht eine mysteriöse Krankheit um. Manche Veterinärämter halten das Leiden für ein Hirngespinst paranoider Bauern. Einige Tierärzte dagegen sprechen von “chronischem Botulismus” und warnen vor einer Epidemie.

    Wenn sie über die Gründe für die schleichende Vergiftung sprechen, taucht immer wieder ein Wort auf: Glyphosat.

    –> Originaltext auf Spiegel.de

    Glyphosat ist das weltweit meistversprühte Herbizid; seit 40 Jahren ist es in Gebrauch und daher fast überall zu finden: im Urin von Mensch und Tier, in der Milch, im Tierfutter, in Organen von Schweinen und Kühen, in Hasen und Fasanen, im Wasser.

    Seit 2001 ist der Einsatz von Glyphosat in den EU-Ländern möglich. Ende des Jahres nun läuft die Zulassung aus. Die European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) wird Anfang August eine Empfehlung aussprechen, ob der Stoff für weitere zehn Jahre zugelassen werden kann. Gut möglich, dass zu diesem Anlass ein seit Jahren schwelender Streit eskaliert: darüber, wie gefährlich Glyphosat für Mensch, Tier und Umwelt ist.

    Auf der einen Seite steht die Agrarindustrie mit einer mächtigen Lobby, die seit Jahrzehnten die Unbedenklichkeit des Stoffes für Mensch und Tier beschwört. Auch das Bundesamt für Risikobewertung (BfR), das in der EU für die wissenschaftliche Einschätzung der Chemikalie zuständig ist, hält Glyphosat für weitgehend ungefährlich . Gerade hat das Amt einen 2000 Seiten starken Bericht an die EFSA verschickt. Darin setzen die BfR-Autoren die “akzeptable Tagesaufnahme” für den Menschen sogar um zwei Drittel herauf.

     

     

    Auf der anderen Seite kämpfen Umweltverbände und Ökoaktivisten, aber auch immer mehr unabhängige Wissenschaftler. Sie glauben, dass Glyphosat Missbildungen bei Säugetieren hervorrufen kann, Niere und Leber schädigt und Unfruchtbarkeit oder Krebs begünstigt. Ein Warnruf von höchster Warte schürt die Sorgen: Die International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), eine Vereinigung unter dem Dach der Weltgesundheitsorganisation, hat Glyphosat Anfang März als “wahrscheinlich krebserregend für den Menschen” eingestuft.

    Ist Glyphosat also harmlos genug zum Trinken, wie es manche Industrielobbyisten predigen? Oder ist es das DDT des 21. Jahrhunderts, hochgiftig und im Begriff, die gesamte Nahrungskette zu verseuchen?

    Wer sich um Klärung bemüht, bekommt es mit verschwiegenen Firmen zu tun, die Forschungsergebnisse als Betriebsgeheimnisse deklarieren. Kritische Studien werden schlechtgemacht, Wissenschaftler unter Druck gesetzt.

    “Die Industrie tut alles, um missliebige Forscher zu diskreditieren”, sagt der französische Toxikologe Gilles-Éric Séralini, einer der schärfsten Glyphosat-Kritiker. Séralini glaubt, dass die Zulassungsbehörden der Industrie seit Jahren in die Hände spielen, auch deshalb, weil sie Glyphosat nur isoliert auf Giftigkeit prüfen; nur den Wirkstoff an sich also – nicht aber die tatsächlich versprühten Mixturen. Séralinis Forderung: “Glyphosathaltige Pestizide sollten sofort verboten werden.”

    Glyphosat wurde erstmals 1950 in der Schweiz synthetisiert. Seit 1996 kommt es massiv zum Einsatz, vor allem zusammen mit gentechnisch veränderten Nutzpflanzen, denen die Chemikalie nichts anhaben kann. Die Kombination galt lange als ökologisch unbedenklich und äußerst wirkungsvoll: Glyphosat hemmt das Enzym eines für Pflanzen essenziellen Stoffwechselwegs. Gentech-Getreide wie etwa die Roundup-Ready-Sorten des Agrarriesen Monsanto widerstehen dem Killer. Wer also Glyphosat gegen Unkraut spritzt und gleichzeitig die Gentech-Saat verwendet, darf auf reiche Ernten hoffen.

    Jahrelang ging das gut. Doch die Bauern müssen immer größere Mengen des Pestizids auf die Felder sprühen, weil viele Unkräuter resistent geworden sind. Über 700 000 Tonnen des Stoffs produzieren Firmen wie Monsanto, Syngenta oder Bayer Crop Science inzwischen im Jahr. In Deutschland sind derzeit 94 glyphosathaltige Unkrautvernichter unter Namen wie Roundup, Glyfos oder Permaclean zugelassen.

    Gartenfreunde sprühen die Mittel in die Fugen zwischen den Terrassenplatten. Die Bahn hält damit ihre Gleisanlagen kahl. Deutsche Bauern wiederum machen mit den Pestiziden Tabula rasa, um Felder für die neue Aussaat vorzubereiten. Oder sie nutzen die Mittel für die sogenannte Sikkation : Raps, Kartoffeln oder Weizen werden kurz vor der Reife gleichsam totgespritzt, weil sie dann leichter zu ernten sind. Diese Technik erhöht die Pestizidrückstände in den Feldfrüchten. Für die EU kein Problem: Sie hat den Glyphosat-Grenzwert für Brot- und Futtergetreide einfach erhöht.

    Die größten Glyphosat-Mengen indes stecken in importierten Futterpflanzen. Als Tierfutter sind Gentech-Mais und -Soja etwa aus Argentinien oder den USA seit 1996 in der EU zugelassen. Das eiweißreiche Getreide ist billiger als Kraftfutter aus Europa und landet direkt in den Trögen jener Kühe und Schweine, deren Milch oder Fleisch in hiesigen Supermärkten angeboten werden.

    Doch was macht die Glyphosat-Flut mit der Umwelt? Schon lange steht das Mittel im Ruf, die Böden auszulaugen. Genpflanzen überleben die Behandlung zwar, werden aber anfälliger für Krankheiten, bleichen aus oder fallen Pilzen zum Opfer. Nun mehren sich die Anzeichen, dass Glyphosat auch Tier und Mensch schaden könnte.

    Ib Borup Pedersen, Schweinezüchter aus dem dänischen Spentrup, fütterte seine Schweine jahrelang mit Gentech-Soja. Irgendwann wurde er misstrauisch. “Jede Sojalieferung führte zu neuen Gesundheitsproblemen”, erzählt der Landwirt. Durchfall, Magengeschwüre und Blähungen plagten Pedersens 450 Sauen. Testweise ließ er das Gentech-Soja weg. “Die Tierarztkosten fielen um zwei Drittel”, erinnert sich Pedersen, “die Sauen wurden ruhiger und produzierten mehr Milch.”

    Nun wollte es der Schweinezüchter aus Jütland genau wissen. Fortan führte er Buch über die Herkunft des Schweinefutters und die Erkrankungen seiner Tiere. “Zwei Jahre und 32 000 Schweine später” hatte Pedersen “deprimierende Gewissheit”. Glyphosat im Futter, so zeigten seine Notizen, verschlechterte nicht nur den Allgemeinzustand der Sauen. Es häuften sich auch Fälle von Unfruchtbarkeit, Fehlgeburten und Missbildungen an Schädel, Wirbelsäule und Beinen.

    Pedersen hat die Horrorshow sorgfältig dokumentiert: Seine Fotos zeigen Ferkel mit nur einem Auge oder ohne Anus, Tiere mit deformierten Ohren, Schnauzen und Zungen, mit klaffenden Löchern im Schädel oder verkrümmten Beinen. Einige der Tiere ließ Pedersen ärztlich untersuchen. Überall im Körper fanden sich Glyphosat-Rückstände, vor allem in Lunge und Herz.

    “Ohne Zweifel ist Roundup der Grund für meine Probleme”, folgert der Züchter. Und er ist sich sicher, dass seine Erfahrungen keine Ausnahme sind.

    Auch in Pedersens Urin fand sich Glyphosat. “Das macht mir besonders Sorgen, weil ich mein Essen ganz normal hier bei uns im Supermarkt einkaufe”, sagt er.

    Pedersens Studie hat wissenschaftlich keinerlei Aussagekraft, weil sie anekdotisch ist, nicht systematisch. Und doch bestätigen seine Notizen, was Publikationen in Fachjournalen zeigen. Im Tierexperiment entwickelten Krallenfrosch- und Hühnerembryonen Missbildungen durch Glyphosat. Rattenembryonen, die mit verdünntem Roundup geduscht wurden, erlitten Skelettschäden.

    Das Pestizid galt lange als unbedenklich, weil es auf ein Enzym zielt, das allein in Pflanzen wirkt. Aufruhr im Säugetierkörper richtet der Stoff aber wohl dennoch an. Er ist nah mit der Aminosäure Glycin verwandt und kann deren Platz im Stoffwechsel einnehmen.

    Forscher berichten, dass Glyphosat nerventoxisch wirken und das Hormonsystem durcheinanderbringen könne. Bei Embryonen stört der Stoff möglicherweise den Retinsäure-Stoffwechsel, der eine Schlüsselrolle bei der Entwicklung spielt.

    Auch einen immens wichtigen Enzymkomplex könnte er beeinflussen: den biochemischen Werkzeugkasten zur Entgiftung des Körpers. Ständig bombardieren toxische Substanzen aus der Nahrung Mensch und Tier. Enzyme bauen diese Stoffe in Leber und Niere ab. Normalerweise. Glyphosat könnte diesen Mechanismus hemmen. Ohne gut laufende Entgiftung jedoch wird der Körper zur Sondermüllhalde.

    Einer, der es genau wissen will, ist der Franzose Séralini. Seine Arbeitsgruppe im normannischen Caen erforscht seit Jahren die Wirkung von Glyphosat. Séralini badete menschliche Embryonal- und Plazentazellen in Roundup-Lösungen und protokollierte die vernichtende Wirkung der Chemikalie. Zum Erzfeind der Industrie wurde der Forscher aber erst, nachdem er Versuchsratten über zwei Jahre Roundup ins Trinkwasser geträufelt oder sie mit Gentech-Mais gefüttert hatte.

    Séralini untersuchte insgesamt 200 Ratten, analysierte Blut, Kot, Urin und Organe. Was er fand, beschreibt der Toxikologe als “alarmierend”. Nieren- und Leberschäden waren zu verzeichnen, die Weibchen entwickelten überdurchschnittlich häufig Brustkrebs. Die Hirnanhangdrüse war bei vielen Tieren vergrößert, der Stoffwechsel verändert.

    Im September 2012 veröffentlichte das Fachblatt “Food and Chemical Toxicology” die Studie. Danach brach in Séralinis Leben die Hölle los. “Innerhalb der ersten 24 Stunden protestierten über hundert Forscher gegen unser Paper”, erzählt er, “dann schlossen sich die Behörden, die Glyphosat zugelassen hatten, dem Widerstand an.”

    Séralini wurden “Falschaussagen” vorgeworfen, “Verwendung von Tieren für Propagandazwecke”, “Munitionierung für Extremisten”. Wenn sich der Forscher daran erinnert, in seinem kleinen, schmucklosen Büro in einem Seitentrakt der Université de Caen, klingt er verbittert. Der energische Toxikologe fühlt sich als Opfer einer Schmutzkampagne.

    “Es gab enormen Druck vonseiten der Industrie”, sagt Séralini. Mit Erfolg: Im November 2013 zog “Food and Chemical Toxicology” Séralinis Veröffentlichung zurück . Zufall oder nicht – ein halbes Jahr zuvor hatte das Fachmagazin den US-Ernährungswissenschaftler Richard Goodman in seinen redaktionellen Beirat berufen, einen ehemaligen Monsanto-Mitarbeiter.

    Der Streit um Séralinis Arbeit ist typisch für die Glyphosat-Debatte. Kritische Studien werden zunächst fachlich angezweifelt. Dann wird’s persönlich. Im Fall der französischen Rattenstudie bemängeln Kritiker , dass der Forscher die falschen Labor-

    ratten und vor allem zu wenig Tiere verwendet habe, um signifikante Aussagen machen zu können. Séralini hält dagegen. Inzwischen hat ein anderes Fachblatt die Studie neu publiziert. Die Reputation des Franzosen ist dennoch beschädigt.

    Bei der aktuellen Krebsstudie der IARC wiederholt sich das Muster. Die Experten sortierten Glyphosat in die “Kategorie 2A” ein, “wahrscheinlich krebserregend für den Menschen”. Sie berufen sich vor allem auf drei Studien aus den USA, Kanada und Schweden, die nahelegen, dass die Chemikalie das Risiko erhöht, an Lymphdrüsenkrebs zu erkranken. Außerdem gebe es “überzeugende Hinweise”, dass Glyphosat Krebs bei Labortieren und Erbgutschäden bei menschlichen Zellen hervorrufe, berichtet der IARC-Epidemiologe Kurt Straif.

    Straif und 16 weitere Experten von Weltruf haben an der IARC-Einschätzung mitgearbeitet. Ein Jahr lang diskutierten die Wissenschaftler, bevor sie im März ihr Urteil fällten. Die Ergebnisse publizierten sie im angesehenen Fachblatt “Lancet Oncology”. Die Pestizidhersteller beeindruckt das wenig; umgehend zogen sie gegen die Forscher zu Felde.

    “Wir sind empört”, wetterte Robb Fraley , oberster Techniker von Monsanto. Die IARC-Einschätzung widerspreche “Jahrzehnten umfangreicher Sicherheitsforschung der führenden Regulierungsbehörden der Welt” und sei “ein klares Beispiel einer tendenziösen Agenda”. Monsanto-Chef Hugh Grant diffamierte die Arbeit gar als “junk science”, zu Deutsch: Drecksforschung.

    Die Firma aus St. Louis in den USA beharrt darauf, dass Glyphosat weder Krebs, Missbildungen oder Erbgutschäden auslöse, noch die Fruchtbarkeit beeinträchtige oder das Hormonsystem störe. “Alle ausgewiesenen Glyphosat-Anwendungen sind sicher für die menschliche Gesundheit”, sagt Fraley. Was der Konzern angeblich mit mehr als 800 Studien belegen kann.

    An einer davon hat der Toxikologe Helmut Greim mitgearbeitet. Der weißhaarige Experte, gerade 80 geworden, war jahrelang einer der führenden Toxikologen in Deutschland. Längst im Ruhestand, arbeitet er immer noch als Gutachter, seine Basis ist ein kleines Büro an der Technischen Universität München in Weihenstephan.

    Jüngst hatte Greim 14 Tierversuchsstudien auf dem Tisch, die den Zusammenhang zwischen Glyphosat und Krebs ergründen. “Es gab keine Hinweise auf einen kanzerogenen Effekt”, sagt der Forscher. Kein Wunder, findet er: “Es fehlt ein plausibler Mechanismus, wie Glyphosat Krebs auslösen könnte.”

    Seine Ergebnisse fasste Greim Anfang des Jahres in einem Fachmagazin zusammen. Zu den Koautoren gehört David Saltmiras – einer der Cheftoxikologen von Monsanto und Mitglied der “Glyphosate Task Force”, eines Lobbyverbands.

    Und das ist die zweite Strategie der Industrie: Unliebsame Studien werden mit eigenen Arbeiten gekontert, die oftmals das komplette Gegenteil zum Ergebnis haben. Greim räumt das ein: Seine Metastudie sei durchaus als Antwort auf die Untersuchung des Franzosen Séralini gedacht.

    Andere Studien wiederum halten die Pestizidhersteller mit dem Verweis auf “Betriebsgeheimnisse” sorgsam unter Verschluss. Werden kritische Ergebnisse verheimlicht? Anfang der Achtzigerjahre zum Beispiel gab Monsanto Fütterungsversuche mit Ratten in Auftrag, eigentlich um die US-amerikanische Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) von der Harmlosigkeit von Glyphosat zu überzeugen. EPA-Vermerke von damals legen jedoch nahe, dass die Industriestudie eine “große Zahl” pathologischer Veränderungen der Rattennieren feststellte, Veränderungen, die einen Krebsverdacht begründen können.

    Inzwischen stuft die EPA Glyphosat als praktisch ungiftig ein. Auch das BfR in Berlin sieht keinerlei Gesundheitsgefahren durch den Stoff. Sind die Behörden den Taktiken der Glyphosat-Lobby auf den Leim gegangen, wie Kritiker meinen?

    Das BfR weist den Vorwurf der Industrienähe vehement zurück. “Eigenständige Bewertungen” von “mehr als 1500 Publikationen” seien durchgeführt worden. Doch wie kann das sein? Wie ist es möglich, dass ausgewiesene Experten zu so unterschiedlichen Einschätzungen über ein und denselben Stoff kommen?

    Das BfR bietet eine Erklärung an. Die Unterschiede, heißt es dort, hätten ihren Ursprung “in einem anderen methodischen Ansatz”. Regulierungsbehörden beurteilen Umweltchemikalien nämlich vor allem nach deren direkter Wirkung auf Versuchstiere im Labor.

    Das geht so: Forscher träufeln Ratten reines Glyphosat in verschiedenen Konzentrationen ins Futter. Dann bestimmen sie jene Glyphosat-Menge, die den Ratten gerade eben noch keine Schäden zufügt. Gleichzeitig messen sie, in welcher Konzentration der Stoff tatsächlich in der Umwelt vorkommt. Liegen die beiden Werte weit auseinander, geben die Kontrolleure Entwarnung. Bei Glyphosat ist das so.

    Anders die sogenannte gefahrenbezogene Bewertung, die zum Beispiel zum Votum der IARC führte: Unabhängig von der Dosis untersuchen die Forscher dabei, ob der Stoff ganz prinzipiell gefährlich für Mensch und Tier ist. Zudem werten sie Studien zu den in der Umwelt real beobachteten Folgen des Glyphosat-Regens aus. Solche epidemiologischen Studien haben den Nachteil, dass die Versuchsbedingungen nicht gut zu kontrollieren sind. Dafür bilden sie besser die Wirklichkeit ab.

    Zudem mehren sich die Hinweise darauf, dass Glyphosat nicht allein, sondern erst im Mix zum Killer werden könnte. “Pestizide wie Roundup enthalten etwa 50 verschiedene Moleküle”, sagt Séralini. Von einer “Mischung stark korrosiver Stoffe aus der Ölindustrie” spricht der Forscher. Die aggressive Chemie ist zum Beispiel notwendig, um die Pflanzenwände aufzubrechen. Erst dann kann das Glyphosat eindringen und sein Vernichtungswerk verrichten.

    Rezepturen wie Roundup seien “bis zu tausendmal giftiger als Glyphosat allein”, sagt Séralini. Auch das BfR hat erkannt, dass der Mix eine wichtige Rolle spielt. Besonders giftige Beistoffe, die sogenannten Tallowamine, sind inzwischen zumindest in Deutschland verboten. Doch das Problem bleibt, findet Séralini – zumal die Giftigkeit des jeweiligen Potpourris überhaupt nicht getestet wird.

    Séralinis Arbeit ist die einzige Langzeitstudie weltweit, bei der Roundup verfüttert wurde. In allen anderen Fällen testeten die Forscher Glyphosat pur. Das jedoch sei “das falsche Produkt”, kritisiert Séralini, nämlich eines, “das auf dem Markt gar nicht existiert”.

    Ist der massive Einsatz glyphosathaltiger Pestizide also ein fahrlässiger, weltumspannender Feldversuch an Tier und Mensch? “DDT hat man früher auch als völlig untoxisch angesehen”, sagt Monika Krüger, emeritierte Veterinärmedizinerin, “dann hat man langsam gemerkt, dass da im Himmel keine Vögel mehr waren.” Die ehemalige Leiterin des Instituts für Bakteriologie und Mykologie der Universität Leipzig weiß zwar, dass der Vergleich nicht ganz stimmt – Glyphosat wird viel schneller abgebaut als das Insektengift DDT. Doch die Wissenschaftlerin will aufrütteln. Denn auch ihr gefällt nicht, was sie sieht.

    Krüger untersuchte die missgebildeten Ferkel des dänischen Bauern Pedersen. Sie entdeckte Glyphosat-Rückstände im Urin von Hochleistungskühen. Vor allem aber musste sie mehrfach zusehen, wie Bauern in Sachsen und Schleswig-Holstein einen Großteil ihrer Herde an den “chronischen Botulismus” verloren.

    “Die Lähmungen ziehen von hinten herauf nach vorn, können die Lunge erreichen”, erläutert die Professorin. Dann sacken die Kühe einfach zusammen, “abgemagert, mit aufgezogenem Bauch”.

    Das Gift von Bakterien des Typs Clostridium botulinum sei schuld an dem Leiden, sagt die 67-jährige Forscherin. Normalerweise fristen die Einzeller ein Hungerdasein im Verdauungstrakt. Andere Mikroorganismen halten sie in Schach. Bei erkrankten Kühen jedoch haben sie sich rasant ausgebreitet. Schleichend werden die Tiere von innen vergiftet.

    Warum kommt es zur Giftattacke? Krüger ist sich sicher: Das Glyphosat im Tierfutter ist schuld. Die Forscherin hat im Labor untersucht, wie Glyphosat auf die Mikroorganismen des Kuhpansens wirkt. “Ausgerechnet viele der nützlichen Organismen werden durch Glyphosat abgetötet”, erläutert sie. Dies störe die Pansenflora, die Botulismus-Clostridien könnten sich “massiv vermehren”.

    Ratten, deren Nieren anschwellen, missgebildete Ferkel, vergiftete Kühe, Menschen mit Lymphdrüsenkrebs – hängt all dies mit Glyphosat und Pestiziden wie Roundup zusammen? Der wissenschaftliche Streit könnte sich noch Jahre hinziehen. Ist es fahrlässig, solange einfach weiterzumachen wie bisher?

    Bauer Voss aus Dithmarschen jedenfalls will nicht mehr warten, bis sich die Forscher geeinigt haben. Er hat seine Konsequenzen gezogen.

    Voss verfüttert jetzt selbst angebaute Ackerbohnen und Raps an seine 75 Kühe. Glyphosathaltiges Sojaschrot aus Übersee mutet er ihnen nicht mehr zu. Seither gäben die Tiere wieder mehr Milch, sie seien fruchtbarer und gesünder.

    Bald will Voss seinen Hof ganz auf ökologische Landwirtschaft umstellen und Biomilch produzieren. “Diesen Irrsinn”, sagt er, “mache ich nicht mehr mit.”

    –> Originaltext auf Spiegel.de

  • Miracle Crop: India’s Quest to End World Hunger

    Miracle Crop: India’s Quest to End World Hunger

    Over one third of humanity is undernourished. Now a group of scientists are experimenting with specially-bred crops, and hoping to launch a new Green Revolution — but controversy is brewing.

    By Philip Bethge

    It may not make his family wealthy, but Devran Mankar is still grateful for the pearl millet variety called Dhanshakti (meaning “prosperity and strength”) he has recently begun growing in his small field in the state of Maharashtra, in western India. “Since eating this pearl millet, the children are rarely ill,” raves Mankar, a slim man with a gray beard, worn clothing and gold-rimmed glasses.

    Mankar and his family are participating in a large-scale nutrition experiment. He is one of about 30,000 small farmers growing the variety, which has unusually high levels of iron and zinc — Indian researchers bred the plant to contain large amounts of these elements in a process they call “biofortification.” The grain is very nutritional,” says the Indian farmer, as his granddaughter Kavya jumps up and down in his lap. It’s also delicious, he adds. “Even the cattle like the pearl millet.”

    –> Continue reading at DER SPIEGEL International

  • The Second Cooing: Raising Passenger Pigeons from the Dead

    The Second Cooing: Raising Passenger Pigeons from the Dead

    The world has been without passenger pigeons since 1914. Now, scientists want to bring them back. Geneticist Ben Novak has embarked on the project and has begun collecting passenger pigeon DNA from natural history museums. His “de-extinction” efforts are not without critics.

    By Philip Bethge

    The eye sockets of the slender pigeon are filled with light-colored cotton. Its neck feathers shimmer in iridescent colors, and it has a russet chest and a slate-blue head. The yellowed paper tag attached to its left leg reads: “Coll. by Capt. Frank Goss, Neosho Falls, Kansas, July 4, 1875.”

    Ben Novak lifts up the stuffed bird to study the tag more closely. Then he returns the pigeon to a group of 11 other specimens of the same species, which are resting on their backs in a wooden drawer. “It’s easy to see just dead birds,” he says. “But imagine them alive, billions of birds. What would they look like in the sky?”

    Novak has an audacious plan. He wants to resurrect the passenger pigeon. Vast numbers of the birds once filled the skies over North America. But in 1914 Martha, the last of her species, died in a zoo in Cincinnati, Ohio.

    Novak, a researcher with the Long Now Foundation, a California think tank, wants to give the species a second chance. At the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology in Berkeley, Novak used a scalpel to slice small tissue samples from the red-painted toes of the passenger pigeons kept there. He hopes to isolate tiny bits of DNA from the samples and use them to assemble an entire genotype. His ultimate goal is the resurrection of the passenger pigeon.

    “It should be possible to reconstruct the entire genome of the passenger pigeon,” says Novak. “The species is one of the most promising candidates for reintroducing an extinct species.”

    The art of breathing new life into long-extinct species is in vogue among biologists. The Tasmanian devil, the wooly rhinoceros, the mammoth, the dodo and the gastric-breeding frog are all on the list of candidates for revival. To recover the genetic makeup of species, experts cut pieces of tissue from stuffed zoological rarities, pulverize pieces of bone or search in the freezers of their institutions for samples of extinct animals.

    The Dream of “De-Extinction”

    The laboratory techniques to create new life with bits of genetic material were pure fantasy in the past. But now scientists believe that the vision could become reality, step by step. Experts in bioengineering, zoologists, ethicists and conservationists recently met in Washington, DC for a public forum on “de-extinction.”

    “Extinct animals are the most endangered species of them all” because “there is hardly anything left but the DNA,” says Stewart Brand of the Long Now Foundation, which co-hosted the meeting with the National Geographic Society. The current showpiece project in bioengineering is the rebirth of the passenger pigeon.

    The story of Ectopistes migratorius is a striking example of human hubris. When the Europeans arrived, the passenger pigeon was probably the most common bird on the American continent. The birds travelled in giant flocks, sometimes several hundred kilometers long. “The air was literally filled with pigeons,” naturalist John Audubon wrote in 1831, after observing the spectacle. “The light of noon-day was obscured as by an eclipse.”

    During their long migrations, the pigeons devastated entire forests. They descended upon their breeding grounds in eastern North America by the millions. There are historical accounts, for example, of a breeding ground in Wisconsin the size of Tokyo, where an estimated 136 million passenger pigeons came to breed. The noise was deafening.

    Living in a flock guaranteed the pigeons safety from predators. But the behavior also sealed their fate. When hunters discovered passenger pigeons as game birds, they were able to kill them with brutal efficiency, either by catching them in nets or shooting them with birdshot. They also placed pots of burning sulfur under trees until the birds, anesthetized by the vapors, dropped to the ground like overripe fruit.

    In some breeding areas, hunters slaughtered up to 50,000 passenger pigeons a day. The birds were shipped by the ton in freight cars and sold to be grilled at a few cents a dozen.

    Sequencing the Pigeon DNA

    By the time the establishment of a closed season for the birds was proposed in the US state of Minnesota in 1897, it was already too late. The last wild passenger pigeon was shot to death in 1900. Then, Pigeon Martha — named after Martha Washington, the country’s first First Lady — finally met her end at around noon on Sept. 1, 1914. She was the last surviving specimen in an unsuccessful program to breed the birds in captivity.

    Novak’s goal is to bring back the species, and he seems perfect for the job. In elementary school, he completed a project on the dodo, the extinct bird species from Mauritius. The passenger pigeon has fascinated him for years. “We caused the extinction of the species,” says the 26-year-old. “Now we have a moral obligation to bring them back.” To that end, the genetic detective is visiting natural history museums to take tissue samples from as many of the roughly 1,500 remaining samples of the skin and bones of the bird as possible.

    The passenger pigeon’s DNA has about 1.3 billion base pairs. Their sequence describes what the bird looks like, what its call sounds like and how it behaves. However, the animal’s genetic material in the museums is shredded into miniscule pieces, degraded by bacteria and contaminated with foreign DNA. But that doesn’t deter Novak. He and Beth Shapiro, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California in Santa Cruz, have begun to decode the bird’s DNA.

    The biologists have an ambitious plan. Bit by bit, they intend to match the DNA sequence of the passenger pigeon with that of its close relative, the band-tailed pigeon. Then they will essentially stamp out the divergent sequences from the band-tailed pigeon genome and replace them with synthesized passenger pigeon genetic material.

    With the help of the genome created in this fashion, the scientists will create primordial germ cells for the passenger pigeon, which will then be implanted into young embryos of an easy-to-breed pigeon species. The scientists hope that once they have grown and mated, the pigeons will lay eggs that will hatch into passenger pigeons.

    Chickens in a Duck’s Egg

    The procedure is not only complicated, but also largely untested. But, says Novak, “all the necessary steps are being studied intensively right now.” For instance, he explains, biologists have already managed to insert primordial germ cells from chickens into duck eggs. The drakes that emerged a short time later actually carried the sperm cells of chickens.

    Novak is already thinking beyond the hatching of the first passenger pigeon. Once a flock of the birds has been created, he plans to release them into the wild. “The passenger pigeon was a keystone species in the forest ecosystems,” says Novak, explaining that the destructive force of the flocks led to a radical rejuvenation of forests. Thick layers of pigeon droppings fertilized the soil, which soon led to new growth. “Passenger pigeons are the dance partners of the forest,” the scientist raves. And the “ballroom” still exists.

    But even if scientists can pull off this feat, does it really make sense to bring a long-extinct species back into the world? “Conservation biology’s priority must remain that of ensuring a future for species (currently) existing on the planet,” retired Professor Stanley Temple of the University of Wisconsin-Madison says critically. He fears that species extinction could be trivialized in the future. “People might say: ‘Can’t we let them go extinct and bring them back later?’”

    Zoologist David Ehrenfeld of Rutgers University also criticizes the species resurrection projects, saying that they are “extremely expensive” and, in light of a global species crisis, downright absurd. “At this very moment, brave conservationists are risking their lives to protect dwindling groups of existing African forest elephants from heavily armed poachers, and here we are talking about bringing back the wooly mammoth,” he says.

    Ehrenfeld also doesn’t believe that revived species would stand much of a chance of survival. “Who will care for the passenger pigeon chicks?” he asks, noting that parental care is “critical” for the development of young birds.

    Darkened Skies

    But Novak rejects the criticism. “Passenger pigeon parents were never incredibly involved in raising their young,” he says. He also plans to teach the chicks the basics of passenger pigeon life by dyeing carrier pigeons and essentially using them as flight controllers for the returning species.

    “We’ll ferry them with homing pigeons down to wintering grounds and back to the breeding area,” he says. “After a few years, we have passenger pigeons that fly the same (routes) as their forefathers.”

    When that happens, clouds of passenger pigeons will darken the skies once again, and another dream could be fulfilled for Novak. “Part of me would really love a passenger pigeon as a pet,” says the scientist. And perhaps, he adds, the pigeon zoo could even be expanded.

    There are 50 extinct pigeon species worldwide, says Novak. He has already earmarked three of them for resurrection: the Japanese silver-banded pigeon, the Choiseul crested pigeon and the thick-billed ground dove.

    “I am a pigeon nut,” says Novak.

    Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

  • SPIEGEL Blog: Surrogate Mother (Not Yet) Sought for Neanderthal

    An interview published last week by SPIEGEL with American genetic scientist George Church has sparked frenetic media speculation about a supposed plan to bring the Neanderthal back from the dead. Church feels his remarks were mistranslated, but it was other media outlets that twisted his words.

    “Wanted: Surrogate Mother For Neanderthal,” screamed an article in the Berliner Kurier tabloid in the German capital on Tuesday, complete with an image of a grinning, bearded caveman. Britain’s Independent seemed positively creeped out by a Harvard professor who wanted to bring such beings back to life as some kind of “Palaeolithic Park.” Meanwhile, the Daily Telegraph implored: “Spare Neanderthals This Modern Freak Show.”

    Media and websites around the world — in Britain, Italy, Poland, Greece, Hungary, Russia, South Korea and Turkey — expressed interest in the idea of resurrecting the Neanderthal. By Wednesday morning, more than 600 sources on Google News had reported the story, with all citing SPIEGEL as their source. What happened?

    The source of the net furore was an interview SPIEGEL conducted with George Church. The Harvard University genetic researcher then provided an explanation to the Boston Herald for the sudden media fever. He blamed it on an error downstream of SPIEGEL. He said it had been incorrectly reported that he was looking for a surrogate mother to carry a Neanderthal clone.

    The sudden interest in the Neanderthal, our human cousin, may tell us a little bit about the diffuse fear of overly ambitious genetic researchers. But it tells us even more about the laws of tabloid journalism.

    In this case, the entire brouhaha arose in articles written outside of SPIEGEL’s domain. And it is important to us to communicate this because we make a significant effort to ensure that our stories are correctly translated when they appear on our English-language website. Occasionally mistakes slip through — as is inevitable with any site that relies heavily on translation — but when they do we are quick to correct them.

    In addition, we sent Church an English version of our interview the week before it went to print for authorization. This provided him with an opportunity to change any formulations that may have caused any room for misinterpretation. We did make some alterations later without checking, and have since apologized to him for introducing the word “hell,” which he did not say.

    A Storm of Coverage

    It should quickly be obvious to anyone following the hype over the Neanderthal surrogate mother closely that the storm of coverage didn’t break out until a week after the interview was published. Last Friday, we posted the interview, which we had requested from George Church because we had been fascinated by his latest book. The title alone, “Regenisis,” seemed promising.

    And Church didn’t disappoint in his interview. He laid out the great future he believes the still relatively young research field of “synthetic biology” will have. Regardless whether he was discussing the cloning of humans, the genetic optimization of Homo sapiens, the manipulation of the genetic code of all life forms or the re-creation of the Neanderthal, nothing was treated as taboo in his interview. In other words, it offered plenty of fodder for both controversy and thrilling entertainment.

    The interview first appeared in the German-language print edition of SPIEGEL on Monday, Jan. 14, and the raft of outraged reader letters reflected the intense interest the interview generated. Church has always presented himself as a bold and argumentative visionary who won’t hesitate to consider anything that might be scientifically feasible.

    Initially, few media outlets picked up the story. Nor did that change after we posted a short article focusing primarily on Church’s remarks on the potential for resurrecting the Neanderthal on SPIEGEL ONLINE in German. The hype machine got going shortly after that.

    It was only then that the story was given the decisive spin — by other media outlets. Early tweets on the interview, may have helped to set the tone, like one person who tweeted: “My life’s new ambition: Mate with a Neanderthal woman.” A short time later, the first journalist stumbled across the interview’s emotive word: “surrogate.” That’s when headlines like the one that appeared in the Daily Mail — “Harvard professor seeks mother for cloned cave baby” — were born. Subsequent tweets are already discussing the possibility of a film being made of the story.

    The question of whether a surrogate mother could be used for a possible future Neanderthal clone does in fact pop up in the interview. In the question, we cite a passage in Church’s book in which he writes that, “a whole Neanderthal creature itself could be cloned by a surrogate mother chimp — or by an extremely adventurous female human.”

    No Want Ad Implied

    It would have to be clear to anyone who gives that passage in the interview a critical read — and the same applies to both the German and English versions — that it is in no way intended as some kind of want or personal ad. Church didn’t mean it that way and we didn’t understand it to mean that either. Really, what Church was explaining is that he considers the rebirth of the Neanderthal to be technically possible. He also explains the steps that would be necessary to get there. The last step, someday, would be the search for a surrogate mother. He also says that he believes the chances are good that he might experience the birth of the first Neanderthal clone within his lifetime. We thought that statement alone was a bit of a reach, particularly given that Church is 58 years old today.

    We’re sorry that Church, who provided us with such fascinating insights into his research, has now become the victim of media hype. In the course of the past two decades, he told the Boston Herald, he has done perhaps 500 interviews about his research and this is the first one to spiral out of control quite like this.

    What’s perhaps most bizarre about the entire media hysteria over Church’s interview is that potential surrogate mothers are now contacting the geneticist. His concern — at least if things get to that stage — that he will have difficulty finding potential surrogate mothers appears to be unfounded.

    *Editor’s Note: At the request of George Church, five changes have been made to the above text. In particular, he wanted to avoid the impression that he had blamed a translation error on the part of DER SPIEGEL for the confusion that ensued following the interview’s publication.

     

  • Interview with George Church: Can Neanderthals Be Brought Back from the Dead?

    In a SPIEGEL interview, synthetic biology expert George Church of Harvard University explains how DNA will become the building material of the future — one that can help create virus-resistant human beings and possibly bring back lost species like the Neanderthal.

    –> Update: The Interview has sparked frenetic media speculation about a supposed plan to bring the Neanderthal back from the dead. Church feels his remarks were mistranslated, but it was other media outlets that twisted his words.

    George Church, 58, is a pioneer in synthetic biology, a field whose aim is to create synthetic DNA and organisms in the laboratory. During the 1980s, the Harvard University professor of genetics helped initiate the Human Genome Project that created a map of the human genome. In addition to his current work in developing accelerated procedures for sequencing and synthesizing DNA, he has also been involved in the establishing of around two dozen biotech firms. In his new book, “Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves,” which he has also encoded as strands of DNA and distributed on small DNA chips, Church sketches out a story of a second, man-made Creation.

    SPIEGEL recently sat down with Church to discuss his new tome and the prospects for using synthetic biology to bring the Neanderthal back from exctinction as well as the idea of making humans resistant to all viruses.

    SPIEGEL: Mr. Church, you predict that it will soon be possible to clone Neanderthals. What do you mean by “soon”? Will you witness the birth of a Neanderthal baby in your lifetime?

    Church: I think so, but boy there are a lot of parts to that. The reason I would consider it a possibility is that a bunch of technologies are developing faster than ever before. In particular, reading and writing DNA is now about a million times faster than seven or eight years ago. Another technology that the de-extinction of a Neanderthal would require is human cloning. We can clone all kinds of mammals, so it’s very likely that we could clone a human. Why shouldn’t we be able to do so?

    SPIEGEL: Perhaps because it is banned?

    Church: That may be true in Germany, but it’s not banned all over the world. And laws can change, by the way.

    SPIEGEL: Would cloning a Neanderthal be a desirable thing to do?

    Church: Well, that’s another thing. I tend to decide on what is desirable based on societal consensus. My role is to determine what’s technologically feasible. All I can do is reduce the risk and increase the benefits.

    SPIEGEL: So let’s talk about possible benefits of a Neanderthal in this world.

    Church: Well, Neanderthals might think differently than we do. We know that they had a larger cranial size. They could even be more intelligent than us. When the time comes to deal with an epidemic or getting off the planet or whatever, it’s conceivable that their way of thinking could be beneficial.

    SPIEGEL: How do we have to imagine this: You raise Neanderthals in a lab, ask them to solve problems and thereby study how they think?

    Church: No, you would certainly have to create a cohort, so they would have some sense of identity. They could maybe even create a new neo-Neanderthal culture and become a political force.

    SPIEGEL: Wouldn’t it be ethically problematic to create a Neanderthal just for the sake of scientific curiosity?

    Church: Well, curiosity may be part of it, but it’s not the most important driving force. The main goal is to increase diversity. The one thing that is bad for society is low diversity. This is true for culture or evolution, for species and also for whole societies. If you become a monoculture, you are at great risk of perishing. Therefore the recreation of Neanderthals would be mainly a question of societal risk avoidance.

    SPIEGEL: Setting aside all ethical doubts, do you believe it is technically possible to reproduce the Neanderthal?

    Church: The first thing you have to do is to sequence the Neanderthal genome, and that has actually been done. The next step would be to chop this genome up into, say, 10,000 chunks and then synthesize these. Finally, you would introduce these chunks into a human stem cell. If we do that often enough, then we would generate a stem cell line that would get closer and closer to the corresponding sequence of the Neanderthal. We developed the semi-automated procedure required to do that in my lab. Finally, we assemble all the chunks in a human stem cell, which would enable you to finally create a Neanderthal clone.

    SPIEGEL: And the surrogates would be human, right? In your book you write that an “extremely adventurous female human” could serve as the surrogate mother.

    Church: Yes. However, the prerequisite would, of course, be that human cloning is acceptable to society.

    SPIEGEL: Could you also stop the procedure halfway through and build a 50-percent Neanderthal using this technology.

    Church: You could and you might. It could even be that you want just a few mutations from the Neanderthal genome. Suppose you were to realize: Wow, these five mutations might change the neuronal pathways, the skull size, a few key things. They could give us what we want in terms of neural diversity. I doubt that we are going to particularly care about their facial morphology, though (laughs).

    SPIEGEL: Might it one day be possible to descend even deeper into evolutionary history and recreate even older ancestors like Australopithecus or Homo erectus?

    Church: Well, you have got a shot at anything where you have the DNA. The limit for finding DNA fragments is probably around a million years.

    SPIEGEL: So we won’t be seeing the return of the caveman or dinosaurs?

    Church: Probably not. But even if you don’t have the DNA, you can still make something that looks like it. For example, if you wanted to make a dinosaur, you would first consider the ostrich, one of its closest living relatives. You would take an ostrich, which is a large bird, and you would ask: “What’s the difference between birds and dinosaurs? How did the birds lose their hands?” And you would try to identify the mutations and try to back engineer the dinosaur. I think this will be feasible.

    SPIEGEL: Is it also conceivable to create lifeforms that never existed before? What about, for example, rabbits with wings?

    Church: So that’s a further possibility. However, things have to be plausible from an engineering standpoint. There is a bunch of things in birds that make flying possible, not just the wings. They have very lightweight bones, feathers, strong breast muscles, and the list goes on.

    SPIEGEL: Flying rabbits and recreated dinosaurs are pure science fiction today. But on the microbe level, researchers are already creating synthetic life. New bacteria detect arsenic in drinking water. They create synthetic vaccines and diesel fuel. You call these organisms “novel machines”. How do they relate to the machines we know?

    Church: Well, all organisms are mechanical in the sense that they’re made up of moving parts that inter-digitate like gears. The only difference is that they are incredibly intricate. They are atomically precise machines.

    SPIEGEL: And what will these machines be used for?

    Church: Oh, life science will co-opt almost every other field of manufacturing. It’s not limited to agriculture and medicine. We can even use biology in ways that biology never has evolved to be used. DNA molecules for example could be used as three-dimensional scaffolding for inorganic materials, and this with atomic precision. You can design almost any structure you want with a computer, then you push a button — and there it is, built-in DNA.

    SPIEGEL: DNA as the building material of the future?

    Church: Exactly. And it’s amazing. Biology is good at making things that are really precise. Take trees for example. Trees are extremely complicated, at least on a molecular basis. However, they are so cheap, that we burn them or convert them into tables. Trees cost about $50 a ton. This means that you can make things that are nearly atomically precise for five cents a kilo.

    SPIEGEL: You are seriously proposing to build all kinds of machines — cars, computers or coffee machines — out of DNA?

    Church: I think it is very likely that this is possible. In fact, computers made of DNA will be better than the current computers, because they will have even smaller processors and be more energy efficient.

    SPIEGEL: Let’s go through a couple of different applications of synthetic biology. How long will it take, for example, until we can fill our tanks with fuel that has been produced using synthentic microbes?

    Church: The fact is that we already have organisms that can produce fuel compatible with current car engines. These organisms convert carbon dioxide and light into fuels by basically using photosynthesis.

    SPIEGEL: And they do so in an economically acceptable way?

    Church: If you consider $1.30 a gallon for fuel a good number, then yeah. And the price will go down. Most of these systems are at least a factor of five away from theoretical limits, maybe even a factor of 10.

    SPIEGEL: So we should urgently include synthetic life in our road map for the future energy supply in Germany?

    Church: Well, I don’t necessarily think it’s a mistake to go slowly. It is not like Germany is losing out to lots of other nations right now, but there should be some sort of engineering and policy planning.

    –> Read original interview at SPIEGEL Online International

    Is Church Playing God?

    SPIEGEL: Germans are traditionally scared of genetically modified organisms.

    Church: But don’t forget: The ones we are talking about won’t be farm GMOs. These will be in containers, and so if there’s a careful planning process, I would predict that Germany would be as good as any country at doing this.

    SPIEGEL: There has been a lot of fierce public opposition to genetic engineering in Germany. How do you experience this? Do you find it annoying?

    Church: Quite to the contrary. I personally think it has been fruitful. And I think there are relatively few examples in which such a debate has slowed down technology. I think we should be quite cautious, but that doesn’t mean that we should put moratoriums on new technologies. It means licensing, surveillance, doing tests. And we actually must make sure the public is educated about them. It would be great if all the politicians in the world were as technologically savvy as the average citizen is politically savvy.

    SPIEGEL: Acceptance is highest for such technology when it is first applied in the medical industry …

    Church: … yes, and the potential of synthetic life is particularly large in pharmaceuticals. The days of classic, small molecule drugs may be numbered. Actually, it is a miracle that they work in the first place. They kind of dose your whole body. They cross-react with other molecules. Now, we are getting better and better at programming cells. So I think cell therapies are going to be the next big thing. If you engineer genomes and cells, you have an incredible amount of sophistication. If you take AIDS virus as an example …

    SPIEGEL: … a disease you also want to beat with cell therapy?

    Church: Yes. All you have to do is take your blood cell precursors out of your body, reengineer them using gene therapy to knock out both copies of your CCR5 gene, which is the AIDS receptor, and then put them back in your body. Then you can’t get AIDS any more, because the virus can’t enter your cells.

    SPIEGEL: Are we correct in assuming you wouldn’t hesitate to use germ cell therapy, as well, if you could improve humans genetically in this way?

    Church: Well, there are stem cell therapies already. There are hematopoietic stem cell transplants that are widely practiced, and skin stem cell transplants. Once you have enough experience with these techniques you can start talking about human cloning. One of the things to do is to engineer our cells so that they have a lower probability of cancer. And then once we have a lower probability of cancer, you can crank up their self-renewal properties, so that they have a lower probability of senescence. We have people who live to be 120 years old. What if we could all live 120 years? That might be considered desirable.

    SPIEGEL: But you haven’t got any idea which genes to change in order to achieve that goal.

    Church: In order to find out, we are now involved in sequencing as many people as possible who have lived for over 110 years. There are only 60 of those people in the world that we know of.

    SPIEGEL: Do you have any results already?

    Church: It’s too early to say. But we collected the DNA of about 20 of them, and the analysis is just beginning.

    SPIEGEL: You expect them all to have the same mutation that guarantees longevity?

    Church: That is one possibility. The other possibility is that they each have their own little advantage over everybody else. What we are looking for is protective alleles. If they each have their own answer, we can look at all of them and ask, what happens if you put them all in one person? Do they cancel each other out, or do they synergize?

    SPIEGEL: You seriously envisage a new era, in which genes are used as anti-aging-cures?

    Church: Why not? A lot of things that were once left to luck no longer have to be if we add synthetic biology into the equation. Let’s take an example: virus resistance …

    SPIEGEL: … which is also achievable using synthetic biology?

    Church: Yes, it turns out there are certain ways to make organisms of any kind resistent to any viruses. If you change the genetic code …

    SPIEGEL: … you are talking about the code that all life forms on Earth use to code their genetic information?

    Church: Exactly. You can change that code. We’re testing that out in bacteria and it might well be possible to create completely virus-resistant E. coli, for example. But we won’t know until we get there. And I am not promising anything. I am just laying out a path, so that people can see what possible futures we have.

    SPIEGEL: And if it works in bacteria, you presumably could then move on to plants, animals and even humans? Which means: no more measles, no more rabies, no more influenza?

    Church: Sure. And that would be another argument for cloning, by the way, since cloning is probably going to be recognized as the best way of building such virus resistance into humans. As long as it is safe and tested slowly, it might gain acceptance. And I’m not advocating. I’m just saying, this is the pathway that might happen.

    SPIEGEL: It all sounds so easy and straightforward. Aren’t biological processes far more complicated than you would like to lead us to believe?

    Church: Yes, biology is complicated, but it’s actually simpler than most other technologies we are dealing with. The reason is that we have received a great gift that biology has given to us. We can just take a little bit of DNA and stick it into a human stem cell, and all the rest of it is self-assembled. It just happens. It’s as if a master engineer parked a spacecraft in our back yard with not so many manuals, but lots of goodies in it that are kind of self-explanatory. You pick up something and you pretty much know what it does after a little study.

    SPIEGEL: Do you understand that there will be people who feel rather uncomfortable with the notion of changing the genome of the human species?

    Church: I think the definition of species is about to change anyway. So far, the definition of different species has been that they can’t exchange DNA. But more and more, this species barrier is falling. Humans will probably share genes with all sorts of organisms.

    SPIEGEL: First you propose to change the 3-billion-year-old genetic code. Then you explain how you want to create a new and better man. Is it any wonder to you when people accuse you of playing God?

    Church: I certainly respect other people’s faith. But, in general, in religion you wouldn’t want people to starve. We have 7 billion people living on this planet. If part of the solution to feed those people is to make their crops resistant to viruses, then you have to ask: Is there really anything in the Bible that says you shouldn’t make virus-resistant crops? I don’t think there’s anything fundamentally more religiously problematic about engineering a dog or a cow or a horse the way we have been doing it for 10,000 years versus making a virus-resistant crop.

    SPIEGEL: Virus-resistant crops is one thing. Virus-resistant humans is something altogether different.

    Church: Why? In technology, we generally don’t take leaps. It’s this very slow crawl. We are not going to be making a virus-resistant human before we make a virus-resistant cow. I don’t understand why people should be so deeply hurt by that kind of technology.

    SPIEGEL: Apart from religious opposition, biotechnology also generates very real fears. Artificial lifeforms which might turn out to be dangerous killer-bugs. Don’t we need special precautions?

    Church: We have to be very cautious, I absolutely agree. I almost never vote against caution or regulations. In fact, I requested them for licensing and surveillance of synthetic biology. Yes, I think the risks are high. The risks of doing nothing are also high, if you consider that there are 7 billion people who need food and are polluting the environment.

    SPIEGEL: Mr. Church, do you believe in God?

    Church: I would be blind, if I didn’t see that faith in an overall plan resulted in where we are today. Faith is a very powerful force in the history of humanity. So I greatly respect different kinds of faith. Just as I think diversity is a really good thing genetically, it’s also a good thing societally.

    SPIEGEL: But you’re talking about other people’s faith. What about your own faith?

    Church: I have faith that science is a good thing. Seriously, I’d say that I am very much in awe of nature. In fact, I think to some extent, “awe” was a word that was almost invented for scientists. Not all scientists are in awe, but scientists are in a better position to be in awe than just about anybody else on the planet, because they actually can imagine all the different scales and all the complexity. A poet sees a flower and can go on and on about how beautiful the colors are. But what the poet doesn’t see is the xylem and the phloem and the pollen and the thousands of generations of breeding and the billions of years before that. All of that is only available to the scientists.

    SPIEGEL: Mr. Church, we thank you for this conversation.

    Interview conducted by Philip Bethge and Johann Grolle.

    –> Read original interview at SPIEGEL Online International

  • Michio Kaku: ‘Eternal Life Does Not Violate the Laws of Physics’

    In his best-selling book “Physics of the Future,” American professor Michio Kaku lays out his vision for the world in 2100. Kaku, the son of Japanese immigrants, spoke to SPIEGEL about a future in which toilets will have health monitoring sensors and contact lenses will be connected to the Internet.

    SPIEGEL: Professor Kaku, in your book you write about how we will be like gods in the future. Are you saying that our grandchildren will be gods? Isn’t that a bit immodest?

    Kaku: Just think for a moment about our forefathers in the year 1900. They lived to be 49 years old on average and traveled with horse-drawn wagons. Long distance communication was yelling out the window. If these people could see us today with mobile phones at our ears, Facebook on our screens and traveling with planes they would consider us wizards.

    SPIEGEL: It’s still a big step to go from wizards to gods.

    Kaku: So what do gods do? Apollo has unlimited power from the sun, Zeus can turn himself into a swan or anything else and Venus has a perfect body. Gods can move objects with their mind, rearrange things, and have perfect bodies. Our grandchildren will be able to do just that.

    SPIEGEL: Let’s do a little time traveling. Close your eyes and imagine waking up on a September morning in the year 2112. What do you see?

    Kaku: More important than what I see, is what will be omnipresent. Intelligence will be everywhere in the future, just like electricity is everywhere today. We now just assume that there’s electricity in the walls, the floor, the ceiling. In the future we will assume that everything is intelligent, so intelligence will be everywhere and nowhere. As children, we will be taught how to manipulate things around us just by talking to them and thinking. Children will believe that everything is alive.

    SPIEGEL: We’ll ask the question in a different way. What will we experience on this morning in 2112?

    Kaku: When we wake up, the first thing we want to know is what’s going on in the world. So we put in our intelligent contact lenses and with a blink we are online. If you want information, movies, virtual reality, it is all in your contact lenses. Then we’ll drive to work.

    SPIEGEL: Driving? How boring!

    Kaku: Aw, you want to fly? Cars may even fly, but we will also be able to manipulate our cars just by thinking. So, if you want to get into your car, you simply think, and you call your car. The car drives itself, and boom, there you are.

    SPIEGEL: So our grandchildren will fly to work. And what will change there?

    Kaku: If you are a college student, you blink and you can see all the answers to the final examination by wearing your contact lenses. Artists will wave their hands in the air and create beautiful works of art. If you’re an architect, you will see what you are creating and just move towers, two apartment buildings around as you construct things.

    SPIEGEL: Why do we have to even bother leaving the house if all of our needs, questions and desires are played out virtually on our grandiose contact lenses?

    Kaku: Well, you will want to go outside because we are humans, and our personality hasn’t changed in 100,000 years. We’re social creatures. We like to size each other up, figure out who’s on first, who’s on second. But technology will be able to help with that. In 2100, for example, when you talk to people, you will see their biography listed right in front of you. If you are looking for a date, you sign up for a dating service. When you go outside and people walk by you, their faces light up if they’re available. If someone speaks to you in Chinese, your contact lens will translate from Chinese to English. We will still resist certain technologies, however, because they go against who we are.

    SPIEGEL: What’s an example of that?

    Kaku: The paperless office. The paperless office was a failure, because we like tangible things. If I give you a choice between tickets to see your favorite famous rock star or a video of a close-up of your favorite rock star, which would you choose?

    SPIEGEL: The concert tickets naturally.

    Kaku: That’s the caveman in us. The caveman in you says, “I want direct contact. I don’t want a picture.” The caveman in our body says once in a while, we have to go outside. We have to meet real people, talk to real people, and do real things.

    SPIEGEL: Speaking of real things, we were fascinated by the toilet of the future described in your book.

    Kaku: Yeah. You will still have to go to the bathroom because our biology hasn’t changed. But your toilet will have more computer power than a university hospital does today.

    SPIEGEL: The toilet as a supercomputer?

    Kaku: Your toilet will have a chip in it called a “DNA chip.” It will analyze enzymes, proteins and genes for cancer. In this way we will be able to fight cancer long before a tumor even has a chance to develop. We will be able to also detect other illnesses early and fight them. But we will still have the common cold. There are at least 300 different rhinoviruses and you need to have a vaccine for each one. No company is going to do that, because it is going to bankrupt a large corporation to make a vaccine for each of them.

    SPIEGEL: What a defeat! Comfort us — did you not just refer to the perfect body of Venus?

    Kaku: The nature of medicine will shift away from basically saving lives to perfection. We will be able to rearrange our own genome.

    SPIEGEL: I assume that you mean to make ourselves prettier, stronger and generally better?

    Kaku: Those ambitions will be there.

    SPIEGEL: As we get a better handle on genetic technologies, won’t there be more of an urge to create designer babies?

    Kaku: We need a debate about these issues. This is going to create societal problems. You have to have an educated public democratically debating how far to push our beautiful children and the human race.

    SPIEGEL: Will we eventually be able to conquer death?

    Kaku: Eternal life does not violate the laws of physics, surprisingly enough. After all, we only die because of one word: “error.” The longer we live, the more errors there are that are made by our bodies when they read our genes. That means cells get sluggish. The body doesn’t function as well as it could, which is why the skin ages. Then organs eventually fail, so that’s why we die.

    SPIEGEL: What can we do about that?

    Kaku: We know the genes that correct these things. So if we use genetic repair mechanisms, we might be able to repair cells so they don’t wear out, so they just keep on going. That is as real possibility. We will also be able to regenerate organs by growing new ones. That can already be done now.

    SPIEGEL: Then we will get rid of death?

    Kaku: In principle, yes.

    SPIEGEL: Then how will we decide who gets to live and who must die? Who will be allowed to have children?

    Kaku: I don’t think children or overpopulation are going to be a problem. When people live longer, they have fewer children. We see that in Japan, the US and in other countries where prosperity, education and urbanization are on the rise.

    –> Read original interview at SPIEGEL ONLINE International

    ‘It’s Nice to be Superman for an Afternoon’

    SPIEGEL: Okay, back to the toilet. What do I do when the toilet tells me that I have cancer cells?

    Kaku: You talk to the wallpaper, and you say…

    SPIEGEL: Excuse me, but you talk to the wallpaper?

    Kaku: As I mentioned, everything will be intelligent, even the wallpaper. You talk to the wallpaper, and you say, “I want to see my doctor.” Boom! A doctor appears on the wall. It’s a RoboDoc, which looks like a doctor, talks like a doctor, but it’s actually an animated figure. It will tell you what is going on in your body and answers all medical questions with 99 percent accuracy, because it has the medical histories of everyone on the planet available.

    SPIEGEL: Will we also have robot driving instructors and robot cooks?

    Kaku: Yes, of course.

    SPIEGEL: But aren’t robots still rather dumb, even after 50 years of research into artificial intelligence?

    Kaku: That’s true. ASIMO, the best robot around today has the intelligence of a cockroach. However, that will change. In the coming decades, robots will be as smart as mice. Now, mice are very smart. They can scurry around, hide behind things, look for food. I can see that in 10, 20, 30 years, we will start to have mice robots, then rabbit robots, cat robots, dog robots, finally monkey robots maybe by the end of the century. They will do dirty, dull and dangerous jobs for us. That means they have to feel pain too.

    SPIEGEL: Are you talking about machines with the ability to suffer?

    Kaku: We will have to build robots with pain sensors in them, because we don’t want them to destroy themselves.

    SPIEGEL: Then won’t we have to start talking about robot rights?

    Kaku: Once we design robots that can feel pain, that’s a tricky point. At that point, people will say, “Well, they’re just like dogs and cats.”

    SPIEGEL: When will machines become a threat, like HAL from the movie ‘2001?’

    Kaku: At some point we can plant a chip in their electronic brains that shuts them down when they start to develop dangerous plans.

    SPIEGEL: But won’t they be intelligent enough to take the chip out themselves?

    Kaku: Sure, but that won’t happen until after 2100.

    SPIEGEL: How comforting.

    Kaku: Then we always have the option of making ourselves even smarter.

    SPIEGEL: Are you referring to the old science fiction idea that our brains are immeasurably smart?

    Kaku: Exactly, and spending the whole day calculating Einstein’s theory of relativity. I don’t seriously believe that. It goes back to the caveman in us. What do cavemen want? Cavemen want to have the respect of their peers. They want to look good to the opposite sex. They want prestige. If we’re stuck inside a computer calculating Einstein’s theory of relativity, who wants that?

    SPIEGEL: The idea that one day we will all be Supermen or Superwomen sounds really tempting though.

    Kaku: I think what’s going to happen is we will have avatars. They will have all these powers that we want — to be perfect, superhuman and good looking.

    SPIEGEL: Great! Does that mean we can send our avatars to meetings that we don’t want to attend?

    Kaku: You will send your avatars to the Moon or on virtual trips or whatever. But you also have the option of shutting it off and getting back to normal again. The average person will not necessarily want to be Superman, but they may want the option of being Superman for an afternoon. It’s nice to be Superman for an afternoon, but then to say, hey, “let’s go out and have a beer with friends.” Do you see what I’m saying?

    SPIEGEL: Yes, of course. Atavism beats out the avatar. But just how strong are these caveman impulses? Could there one day be a movement against all of this new technology?

    Kaku: Such movements always accompany technological changes. When the telephone first came out, it was very controversial. Throughout history, we only talked to friends, relatives, kids. That’s it, period. Then comes the telephone. There were many voices denouncing it, saying we had to go back to talking to our families, so on and so forth.

    SPIEGEL: You claim in your book that we are the most important generation that has ever lived. Doesn’t every generation think that?

    Kaku: Out of all the generations that have walked the surface of the Earth, we’re the only ones to witness the beginning of the process of becoming a planetary civilization. We decide whether humanity survives.

    SPIEGEL: What do you mean by “planetary civilization?”

    Kaku: We physicists rank civilizations by energy. A Type 1 planetary civilization uses all the energy that is available on the planet. In a hundred years, we’ll be Type 1. We’re on our way there. We will control the weather. We will control earthquakes and volcanoes eventually. Anything planetary, we will control. Type 2 is stellar. We will control stars, like Star Trek. Then Type 3 is the entire galaxy, where we’ll control the Milky Way galaxy.

    SPIEGEL: Hold on a second. We aren’t even close to that now!

    Kaku: No, we are in a transition. We still get our energy from dead plants, oil and coal. Carl Sagan did a more precise calculation. He figured out that we’re actually Type 0.7. So we’re on the threshold of being Type 1. We will have two planetary languages, English and Mandarin. Look at the Olympics. That’s planetary sports. Look at soccer, another planetary sport. The European Union is the beginning of a planetary economy, if it ever gets off the ground correctly.

    SPIEGEL: We are having a few tiny problems with that last one.

    Kaku: Well, nevertheless, when I look at the larger sweep of things, I see that we are already coming together. We’re entering the birth of a planetary fashion and we are already seeing the birth of planetary culture. Democratization of the world marches on.

    SPIEGEL: What is one thing from the world you imagine that you would like to have today?

    Kaku: Well, I wouldn’t mind having a few more decades to live and, for example, to see the first starship. Also, it’s a shame that I cannot live in the 11th dimension.

    SPIEGEL: What do you mean by that?

    Kaku: The energy of wormholes, black holes and of the Big Bang. You would have to be a Type 3 civilization before you can begin to manipulate that energy. That’s the province of my field of research, string theory.

    SPIEGEL: I think that’s where we can no longer keep up. Professor Kaku, we thank you for this interview.

    Interview conducted by Philip Bethge and Rafaela von Bredow

    –> Read original interview at SPIEGEL ONLINE International

  • Oozing Biofuel: Algae Could Solve World’s Fuel Crisis

    Genetically modified blue and green algae could be the answer to the world’s fuel problems. Bioengineers have already developed algae that produce ethanol, oil and even diesel — and the only things the organisms need are sunlight, CO2 and seawater.

    Biochemist Dan Robertson’s living gas stations have the dark-green shimmer of oak leaves and are as tiny as E. coli bacteria. Their genetic material has been fine-tuned by human hands. When light passes through their outer layer, they excrete droplets of fuel.

    “We had to fool the organism into doing what I wanted it to do,” says Robertson, the head of research at the US biotech firm Joule Unlimited. He proudly waves a test tube filled with a green liquid. The businesslike biochemist works in a plain, functional building on Life Sciences Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

    His laboratory is sparsely furnished and the ceiling is crumbling. Nevertheless, something miraculous is happening in the lab, where Robertson and his colleagues are working on nothing less than solving the world’s energy problem. They have already created blue algae that produce diesel fuel.

    Scientists rave about a new, green revolution. Using genetic engineering and sophisticated breeding and selection methods, biochemists, mainly working in the United States, are transforming blue and green algae into tiny factories for oil, ethanol and diesel.

    Betting Millions on Algae

    A green algae liquid sloshes back and forth in culture vats and circulates through shiny bioreactors and bulging plastic tubes. The first tests of algae-based fuels are already being conducted in automobiles, ships and aircraft. Investors like the Rockefeller family and Microsoft founder Bill Gates are betting millions on the power of the green soup. “Commercial production of crude oil from algae is the most obvious and most economical possible way to substitute petroleum,” says Jason Pyle of the California-based firm Sapphire Energy, which is already using algae to produce crude oil.

    The established oil industry is also getting into the business. “Oils from algae hold significant potential as economically viable, low-emission transportation fuels and could become a critical new energy source,” says Emil Jacobs, vice president of research and development at Exxon Mobil. The oil company is investing $600 million (€420 million) in genetic entrepreneur Craig Venter’s firm Synthetic Genomics.

    (-> read original interview at SPIEGEL ONLINE international)

    The technology holds considerable promise. Indeed, whoever manages to be the first to sell ecologically sustainable and climate-neutral biofuel at competitive prices will not only rake in billions, but will also write history.

    Do-it-yourself diesel barons launched the biofuel industry decades ago when they used old French-fry grease to fuel modest agricultural machines. Today, hundreds of thousands of cars run on ethanol derived from grain. In the United States, for example, more than 40 percent of gasoline contains ethanol additive. The fuel is produced in huge fermenters the size of blimps, by fermenting a mash of corn or rye with yeast.

    But ethanol as a biofuel has a bad reputation. One hectare (2.47 acres) of corn produces less than 4,000 liters of ethanol a year, and 8,000 liters of water are required to produce a liter of ethanol. Besides, crops grown for ethanol take away valuable farmland for food production. The last growing season marked the first time US farmers harvested more corn for ethanol production than for use as animal feed. One of the adverse consequences of the biofuel boom is that it is driving up food prices.

    Astonishingly Productive

    For this reason, many environmentalists now believe that growing energy plants is the wrong approach. Algae, on the other hand, do not require any farmland. Sun, saltwater, a little fertilizer and carbon dioxide are all the undemanding little organisms need to thrive. And because they consume about as much CO2 during photosynthesis as is later released when the oil they produce is burned, algae-based fuels are also climate neutral.

    Algae are also astonishingly productive. A hectare of sunny desert covered with algae vats can yield almost eight times as much biofuel per unit of biomass in a year than corn grown for energy purposes.

    Sapphire is one of the pioneers of the industry. CEO Pyle has a vision of transforming desert areas into fertile, energy-producing land. “We have to grow algae like rice, in shallow patties of water on thousands of hectares,” he says. This, he says, is the only way to produce algae-based oil in large quantities and at competitive prices.

    Sapphire expects one barrel of its green petroleum to cost between $70 and $100 in the future, which is significantly cheaper than petroleum. However, as with grain production, this requires the use of high-performance varieties. According to Pyle, his company has optimized the yield, resistance to disease and “harvest capability” of the green algae it uses. Sapphire’s engineers are already testing their green miracle algae at a small plant in New Mexico. Together with Monsanto, which produces agricultural chemicals, and industrial gas company Linde, the algae makers plan to explore commercial opportunities at a 120-hectare site soon.

    ‘We Simply Have to Build It’

    But the Sapphire algae can only be a beginning, because they merely enrich the oil internally. To obtain the oil, the algae must be harvested and the oil extracted in a costly and complex process.

    To overcome this obstacle, other scienty way to produce algae-based oil in large quantities and at competitive prices.

    Sapphire expects one barrel of its green petroleum to cost between $70 and $100 in the future, which is significantly cheaper than petroleum. However, as with grain production, this requires the use of high-performance varieties. According to Pyle, his company has optimized the yield, resistance to disease and “harvest capability” of the green algae it uses. Sapphire’s engineers are already testing their green miracle algae at a small plant in New Mexico. Together with Monsanto, which produces agricultural chemicals, and industrial gas company Linde, the algae makers plan to explore commercial opportunities at a 120-hectare site soon.

    ‘We Simply Have to Build It’

    But the Sapphire algae can only be a beginning, because they merely enrich the oil internally. To obtain the oil, the algae must be harvested and the oil extracted in a costly and complex process.

    To overcome this obstacle, other scientists are developing algae that don’t even have to be harvested. Instead, they essentially ooze the fuel of the future. Evolution has not yielded anything that produces biofuel from CO2 on a large scale, explains biologist Venter, “which is why we simply have to build it.”

    The first of these miracle organisms can already be admired in the Joule laboratory. The bioengineers’ tools include culture mediums, incubators and, most importantly, databases containing the DNA sequences of thousands of microorganisms. Robertson and his team search the databases for promising gene fragments, which they then isolate and inject into the genetic material of blue algae.

    ‘You Could Put Our Product in Your Car’

    Dozens of varieties of the microorganisms, also known as cyanobacteria, bob up and down in bulbous beakers at Joule. A green brew fills small photobioreactors, which are used to test the blue algae under various environmental conditions. “Here we simulate for example the day-and-night rhythm of Texas,” says Robinson, explaining one of the experiments. The company has a pilot plant in Texas.

    The program is as complex as it is costly. Nevertheless, success appears to be proving the genetic engineers right. The microbiologists at Joule have created blue algae strains that pump so-called alkanes outward through their membranes. Alkanes are energy-rich hydrocarbons contained in diesel fuel. “You have to persuade the cell that it stops growing and makes the product of interest and does it continuously,” Robinson explains. In contrast to ethanol, the end product is not a low-quality fuel, but a highly pure product that contains no sulfur or benzene. “You could put our product in your car,” says Robinson.

    The laboratory algae are now doing their work in high-tech bioreactors, where carbon dioxide is constantly bubbling through shimmering green panels that look like solar collectors. Robertson’s ultimate goal is to derive about 140,000 liters of biofuel a year from one hectare of land — a yield 40 times as high as with corn grown for ethanol. Joule has bought about 500 hectares of desert land in New Mexico to build a first commercial plant.

    Large Amounts of CO2 Required

    But will the laboratory creations really work as well in open fields as they do in the lab? Calculations show that some algae plants will likely consume more fertilizer and energy per hectare than grain crops. And the carbon dioxide in the air won’t be enough to feed the microalgae. Scientists estimate that a commercial algae fuel plant would require about 10,000 cubic meters of CO2 a day. Whether and how large amounts of the gas could be derived from the exhaust gases of large coal power plants, for example, and then brought to the algae farms, remains unclear.

    The farms could also require enormous tracts of land. In a recent article in the journal Science, researchers at Wageningen University in the Netherlands calculated that, in theory, an area the size of Portugal would have to be filled with algae pools to satisfy Europe’s current fuel needs. A “leap in microalgae technology” is needed to at least triple productivity, say experts.

    Pyle and Robertson are convinced that this increase is possible. They insist that algae technology can be used to meet a significant portion of our energy requirements in the future. “There is certainly enough non-arable land with enough solar radiation and enough CO2 and water sourcing in the world,” says Robertson. Another important advantage, he adds, is that algae-based fuel could easily be pumped into the oil industry’s existing pipelines and refineries, and that cars and aircraft would not have to be modified to accommodate the biofuel.

    But even the pioneers admit that the switch to algae-based fuel will likely take a while longer. Sometimes completely mundane things still stand in the way of the green revolution.

    The algae growers at Sapphire, for example, face competition from little 10-legged creatures. “Shrimp think algae are good food,” says CEO Pyle. “If you don’t pay attention, you will ultimately have a shrimp farm.”

    Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

    (-> read original interview at SPIEGEL ONLINE international)

  • Brooke the Immortal: An American Child May Hold Secrets to Aging

    Brooke Greenberg is almost 18, but she has remained mentally and physically at the level of a toddler. An American physician is trying to uncover the child’s secret. He wants to give mankind the gift of eternal life.

    By Philip Bethge

    It is possible that the key to immortality is hidden in this delicate girl, who is only about 76 centimeters (2 feet, 6 inches) tall and weighs seven kilograms (15.4 pounds). Her arms and legs are as fragile as the branches of a young tree. Her laugh sounds like the whimper of a puppy; she has hazel eyes. And when Brooke Greenberg wants her mother she stretches out her tiny arms, shakes her head slowly, and twists her face into a lopsided moue.

    “Come here, Brooke, yes, you are a pretty girl.” Melanie Greenberg, 49, picks up the fragile looking child and gently strokes her back. “She loves being held,” says Greenberg, a mother of four. Brooke’s sisters are named Emily, Caitlin and Carly. Brooke is the second youngest. She will be 18 in January.

    Other girls her age are driving, going out dancing and sleeping with their first boyfriends. But for Brooke it’s as if time had stood still. Mentally and physically, the girl remains at the level of an 11-month-old baby.

    “Brooke is a miracle,” says her father, Howard Greenberg. “Brooke is a mystery,” says Lawrence Pakula, her pediatrician. “Brooke is an opportunity,” says Richard Walker, a geneticist with the University of South Florida College of Medicine. They all mean the girl from Reisterstown, a small town in the US state of Maryland, who may hold the answer to a human mystery. At issue is nothing less than immortality: Brooke Greenberg apparently isn’t aging.

    She has no hormonal problems, and her chromosomes seem normal. But her development is proceeding “extremely slowly,” says Walker. If scientists can figure out what is causing the disorder, it might be possible to unlock the mysteries of aging itself. “Then we’ve got the golden ring,” says Walker.

    He hopes to simply eliminate age-related diseases like cancer, dementia and diabetes. People who no longer age will no longer get sick, he reasons. But he also thinks eternal life is conceivable. “Biological immortality is possible,” says Walker. “If you don’t get hit by a car or by lightning, you could live at least 1,000 years.”

    An Unprecedented Case

    Brooke Greenberg was born prematurely on Jan. 8, 1993 at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. She weighed only 1,800 grams (about four pounds) at birth. It soon became clear that she wasn’t normal. Almost all of her organ systems were altered. Her hips were dislocated, so that her legs pointed awkwardly toward her shoulders. She’d hardly been born before she was placed in a cast.

    The first six years were torture for Brooke and her parents. On one occasion, seven holes in the child’s abdominal wall had to be repaired. Because food kept entering her windpipe instead of her stomach, a gastric feeding tube had to be inserted. She fell into a 14-day coma when she was four. Then doctors diagnosed a brain tumor (the diagnosis later proved to be incorrect). “The Greenbergs had gone out already and made the preparations, buying a coffin and talking to the rabbi,” pediatrician Pakula recalls.

    Pakula practices in a medical building near the Greenbergs’ house. He wears a tie adorned with cartoonish hippopotamuses. A tall stack of paper — Brooke’s file — sits on his desk. “This can’t be lost,” says the doctor, placing his hand on the documents. He knows what a treasure the file represents.

    The most surprising thing about Brooke is that she hardly ages at all. Her body stopped growing when she was two years old. She hasn’t grown a centimeter or gained a pound. Pakula injected the girl with growth hormones, but nothing happened. He studied the medical literature and consulted specialists worldwide. “She was presented to everybody who was anybody in the medical world at the time,” says the 77-year-old pediatrician, “but she didn’t match anything any physician had seen before.”

    The Greenbergs waited and hoped — one year, two years, 10 years — but nothing happened. Their daughter’s facial features have remained unchanged. There are no signs of puberty. “Brooke’s nurses, her teachers, even her father can’t consistently sort photos of her chronologically,” says Pakula. Only the girl’s hair and fingernails are growing normally.

    ‘She’s a Miracle’

    At the family’s house in Reisterstown, Howard Greenberg points to photos on the walls: Brooke at three, next to her one-year-old sister Carly, who was already bigger than she was at the time; Brooke in a playsuit on her 12th birthday; Brooke at 14, at her Bat Mitzvah, the Jewish rite of initiation.

    Greenberg hurries from picture to picture. Brooke looks the same in all the photos. Her mouth is always slightly lopsided and her eyes just a tough too far apart. “She’s a miracle.” It’s something that has to be said, again and again. “What’s she missing in life? Nothing. She hasn’t got a worry in the world. She isn’t broken. We’re the ones who are broken.” This is the father’s way of explaining away his daughter’s condition. “If you look at it that way, it makes it much more bearable,” he says later on.

    At first Melanie Greenberg took care of Brooke on her own, but now she has help. Feeding Brooke through the tube takes 10 hours a day. She goes to a school for disabled children from 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Much of the rest of the time she spends in her room, sitting in her bed and watching television, or bobbing back and forth in her light-blue baby swing.

    “She can do this all day,” says Melanie Greenberg, lifting her daughter into the air and carefully placing her on her thin little legs, with her feet twisted inward. “It was not easy, it was very hard,” she says, “but I’m sure there is a reason for Brooke to be here. Something is in her, something that could help millions of people.The Disassociated Body

    Richard Walker, a retired professor of medicine and specialist in the biology of aging, lives in a house on a lagoon in the coastal town of Indian Rocks, Florida. He became aware of Brooke Greenberg in 2005. “I thought right away that she had a unique mutation in key genes that control development and aging,” he says. Walker contacted the Greenbergs and convinced the father to let him take a sample of Brooke’s blood so that he could study her genetic makeup. He examined the number and condition of the chromosomes. He analyzed the so-called telomeres at the ends of chromosomes, the length of which provides information about the age of cells. He filled tiny reagent reservoirs made of biochips with pieces of genetic material, and tested the activity of a wide range of genes.

    The results are as sobering as they are fascinating. “We haven’t found anything unusual so far,” says Walker, “but that wasn’t a disappointment; it was actually an incentive to keep on searching.”

    The girl’s uniqueness lies precisely in the fact that her genetic material seems normal, whereas she is obviously not normal, says the professor. Despite the surprisingly unremarkable genetic analysis, complete chaos prevails inside the girl’s body.

    Her brain is hardly more developed than an infant’s, but her bones have a biological age of about 10 years. Her teeth, including her baby teeth, are like those of an eight-year-old. The length of the telomeres, on the other hand, corresponds to her actual age. In addition, the development of various organ systems, like the digestive tract, is what the professor calls “disassociated.”

    “Different parts of her body are developing at different rates, as if they were not a unit but parts of separate organisms,” Walker explains. He believes that there is only one explanation — a failure of central control genes.

    Normally, a carefully orchestrated genetic program allows a tiny egg cell to grow into an adult body. But if this master plan is impaired, the marvel of growth goes awry. Walker believes that this is precisely what has happened with Brooke. Genes that play an important role in physical development are either inactive or defective. “If we identify those genes, we might be able to understand the development and subsequently the aging of the body,” says the scientist.

    An Eccentric Theory

    Walker believes that aging is merely the continuation of the body’s development. He uses the image of a house to illustrate his point. First the house is built. When it’s finished — or, in the case of the body, when sexual maturity is reached — the construction crew would normally leave the site. But in normal people the construction workers stay and keep building, according to a plan that’s been fulfilled and a construction supervisor who says nothing but nonsense. Soon the crew builds things like contorted bay windows and shaky dormers. Supporting beams are suddenly sawed off, and then walls start falling. Finally the building collapses completely — and death catches up with the body.

    “Aging happens when developmental genes merely run out of meaningful information and subsequently cause chaos,” Walker says. His idea is to simply shut off the master genes of development. This, he hopes, will put a stop to the aging process. If Walker is right, the consequences will be dramatic. A body manipulated in this fashion would no longer change, but would only perform repair work. Eternal life would be within reach.

    All this talk has exhausted the professor. He sits in his heavy armchair and gazes out at the glittering water. A dinghy and a motorboat are tied to his private jetty directly in front of the deck, and a surfboard is lying nearby. The doctor sails, surfs and skis. He is 71. He loves his life.

    Does he want to be immortal?

    “Of course I want to live forever,” he says. “I could study mathematics; I could learn so many more things. It would be the greatest gift in the world.” Many people, says Walker, imagine that eternal life would be nothing but hardship and senescence. “But that’s not how it would be,” says Walker. Ideally development would be arrested just after a person reaches sexual maturity.

    And the social consequences? Who would be allowed to live forever, and who wouldn’t? Who would be allowed to have children?

    Walker hesitates. “These are ethical questions, not scientific questions,” he says. “These would be arguments made by philosophers and priests.”

    ‘Highly Unlikely’

    Walker’s theories are controversial. The British biologist Aubrey de Grey, for example, holds his American colleague in high esteem, but believes that aging and development are not related. The Brooke Greenberg case, says de Grey, has “absolutely nothing to do with aging.” He points to the phase of life between the ages of 20 and 40, in which the body hardly changes at all. “Is it likely that the developmental gene expression suddenly stops during this time and then starts up again? No, this is highly unlikely,” he says.

    De Grey favors the standard theory that the body’s cells simply wear out over the years, and that they accumulate toxins and lose their ability to regenerate. He has identified seven causes of death, like cell loss or changes in genetic material, which he hopes to combat with stem-cell therapy or special injections.

    But Walker doesn’t challenge the criticism. “The deterioration of the body’s cells is precisely a consequence of the unregulated activity of development genes,” he argues. His theory is seductive in a sense. While biologists like de Grey tamper with the countless symptoms of growing old, Walker simply wants to do away with aging altogether.

    “Imagine we could stop the degenerative changes of the body,” he says enthusiastically. “The onset of age-related diseases like diabetes, Alzheimer’s, dementia and many forms of cancer could be prevented.”

    To prove his theory, Walker needs people like Brooke Greenberg, in whom the developmental master genes fail. He’s already discovered two similar cases. Six-year-old Gabrielle K., from Billings, Montana, born Oct. 15, 2004, also doesn’t seem to be aging much at all. At the same time her chromosomes, just like Brooke Greenberg’s, seem completely normal.

    Nicky Freeman, a 40-year-man who seems to be trapped in a boy’s body, lives in Esperance in Western Australia. His biological age is estimated at 10 years.

    All in the Genes

    Can Gabrielle or Nicky point the way to the fountain of youth? Walker doesn’t know yet. He is focusing his attention on Brooke at the moment. He wants to sequence the girl’s entire DNA, together with experts from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. If they find mutations in Brooke’s genetic makeup, Walker plans to identify the corresponding genes in laboratory rats and then block them. He reasons that if the genetically manipulated remain young, researchers will in fact have put a stop to their development.

    “Brooke holds the key to everything,” says Walker. He’s anxious to press on with his work, because he feels that his time is running out. But Howard Greenberg is stalling. He has long felt that he is protecting a valuable treasure in his red brick house. He’s even hired lawyers to examine the issue of the rights to Brooke’s genome. The father knows time is on his side. Doctors tell him that with good medical care his daughter can live a long time.

    In the Greenberg home, Melanie has now attached a bag containing a complete nutritional formula to her daughter’s feeding tube. The brownish flood runs through a tube into Brooke’s small body.

    Howard Greenberg looks down at his daughter. Wearing a red-and-white striped T-shirt and white pants, the girl rocks back and forth in his baby swing, as monotonously as a pendulum.

    “I always thought she would die way before me, but I don’t think that anymore,” says the 53-year-old after a pause. “Brooke can live forever. She’ll always be here.”

    Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

    (—> read original article at SPIEGEL ONLINE International)