Goats: Not Just for Making Feta Cheese and For Petting Zoos Anymore
Researchers have finally done it. Engineered a goat to save lives. On Friday, the FDA approved a genetically engineered goat that is able to produce in its milk (not for feta cheese making, mind you) a drug that will save the lives of patients born with a rare hereditary deficiency of antithrombin in their blood. A reported in the New York Times, these transgenic animals were approved to be bred with a human gene that allows them to create the human anticlotting protein, antithrombin.
The advantage: according to the company, GTC Biotherapeutics, a single doe can produce as much antithrombin in a single year as 90,000 blood donations. That's a lot of goats milk.
I wonder though: is that true because these goats are milked continuously all day long? Will these goats get to walk around in grassy fields or be treated like so many other commercial livestock and be locked down only to see sunlight an hour a day? What kinds of conditions are these animals kept in?
One might assume they would be treated like royalty, but also given that they are drug pumps for a pharma company, it's just as likely that once old "Betsy" stops being a steady of milk producer, she's just as likely to be treated similar to how female dogs are treated in puppy mills. Sorry "Betsy", time to go to the big green pasture in the sky.
I say this only because the NYT quote from GTC's spokesman speaks for itself: "If you need more, you breed more."
Concerns about whether goats in particular will enter the food supply are pretty far-fetched at this early stage, but there are legitimate concerns about the abuse of these animals. But with the success of using goats for antithrombin, the use of other animals for "pharming" other pharmaceuticals, other companies are certain to follow suit with other milk and meat-producing animals.
Eventually, though, as the practice becomes more widespread, "pharms" should be kept completely distinct from conventional farms to ensure that milk and meat meant for standard consumption are not mixed with those meant for medical consumption. Labeling and signage will have to be devised by the USDA and FDA in conjunction to indicate that this is a "pharm" meaning that transgenic goats or cows or sheep are being raised here.
That time has come and we need to be ready.
Summer Johnson, PhD
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The science is indeed promising. But I fear this blog is perhaps a bit too sanguine about how this approval came to be, and whether FDA is really prepared to deal with the other applications on deck. See for example: http://www.scienceprogress.org/2009/01/speedy-fda-process-gets-observers-goats/
- by rick weiss on Feb 9, 2009 at 10:50 AM | link
Rick, thanks for your comment and for your blog post. You are right to be skeptical about the approval process and about those who will jump on the bandwagon because of how easy GTC gained their approval. But will we really have "pharms" all over CA and MA, or even scarier the developing world where there will be even less regulation? Goats in particular are an easy target for this kind of technology: cheap to raise, easy to reproduce, short gestation time. Let's just hope that FDA cracks down before the wagon gets loaded up with farm animals and it's too late to close the barn door.
- by Summer Johnson, PhD on Feb 9, 2009 at 2:36 PM | link