Department of Chemistry, The College of New Jersey, PO Box 7718, Ewing, New Jersey, 08629, U.S.A.
Research & Development, Bristol-Myers Squibb (retired), Lawrenceville, NJ, 08648, U.S.A.
Conserv Biol. 2021 Feb;35(1):190-196. doi: 10.1111/cobi.13566. Epub 2020 Aug 22.
For over 40 years, biotechnology and genetic engineering (GE) have been used in the development of medicines and biologic agents important in protecting and augmenting human health and have been met with broad public acceptance in the health care arena. GE has also been used to improve and develop plants important to agriculture and forestry, but in these areas, it has often encountered intense opposition that has prevented or delayed the introduction of potentially useful plants. Much of the opposition to GE's application in agriculture and forestry may be driven by concerns that GE plants will serve primarily to encourage the domination of the food and wood products industries by monopolistic corporations or will be disruptive to the environment. But to conflate genetic modifications intended to promote healthy ecosystems or preserve threatened species with GE projects aimed at benefiting corporate agriculture and forestry is misleading and illogical. Further, the pervasive human disruption and damage to forest ecosystems makes it prudent to bring the best that science can offer to the protection and restoration of critical woodland denizens and broader ecosystem health. The notion that minimal human intervention in the forest environment may be the best approach ignores humanity's responsibility to help manage and protect some of the very places that have been most damaged by human intrusion. GE intended to improve forest health should be afforded the same consideration, acceptance, and support as GE intended to improve human health. These efforts should include the use of GE technology such as carefully developed transgenic trees to cure ongoing forest pathogenesis, such as the chestnut blight (Cryphonectria parasitica), which threatens to drive the American chestnut (Castanea dentata) to extinction.
四十多年来，生物技术和基因工程（GE）一直被用于开发对保护和增强人类健康至关重要的药物和生物制剂，并在医疗保健领域得到了广泛的公众认可。GE 还被用于改良和开发对农业和林业很重要的植物，但在这些领域，它经常遭到强烈反对，从而阻止或延迟了潜在有用植物的引入。对 GE 在农业和林业应用的反对大多是出于对以下担忧：GE 植物将主要用于鼓励垄断公司主导食品和木材产品行业，或者对环境造成破坏。但是，将旨在促进健康生态系统或保护濒危物种的基因修饰与旨在造福企业农业和林业的 GE 项目混为一谈是具有误导性和不合逻辑的。此外，森林生态系统普遍受到人类的干扰和破坏，因此明智的做法是利用科学所能提供的最佳技术来保护和恢复关键林地居民和更广泛的生态系统健康。认为人类对森林环境的最小干预可能是最好的方法，这忽视了人类有责任帮助管理和保护一些因人类入侵而受到严重破坏的地方。旨在改善森林健康的 GE 应该得到与旨在改善人类健康的 GE 相同的考虑、接受和支持。这些努力应包括使用 GE 技术，如精心开发的转基因树木，以治愈正在发生的森林病理学，如栗疫病（Cryphonectria parasitica），它有可能使美国栗（Castanea dentata）灭绝。
