Now We Have a Potato Vaccine in The Wings

For several years, scientists have been trying to develop vaccines that are delivered through foods such as potatoes and tomatoes rather than needles.

The hope is that edible vaccines may be more practical for use in developing countries, since the foods do not need to be refrigerated as ordinary vaccines must, and the edible vaccines do not require syringes and other medical equipment.

So far, plant-based vaccines have met with limited success.

One problem has been figuring out a way to get edible vaccines into gut tissues without being destroyed by digestive juices.

Researchers got past this obstacle by designing a vaccine around the cholera toxin, which can latch onto the lining of the gut without being destroyed by digestive juices. Normally the ability of the toxin to survive in the gut has harmful consequences, leading to cholera, but the researchers were able to use the toxin without causing disease.

Investigators took bits of the cholera toxin and joined them with proteins, or antigens, from two other infectious pathogens that invade the gastrointestinal tract--rotavirus and a strain of E. coli bacteria. They then developed a genetically modified potato that contained the triple combination.

The approach seems to work as the investigators found that female mice that ate the genetically modified potatoes developed antibodies to all three microbes.

Nature Biotechnology June 2001;19:548-552

DR. MERCOLA'S COMMENT:

I am constantly amazed at the tremendous ability of researchers to modify biology. This is an amazing piece of work they have done. They were actually able to develop edible vaccines that survive the ride down our gut by linking the vaccines to cholera.

Well let's stop for a moment and analyze this potential nightmare.

Do you REALLY trust the drug industry to develop truly safe vaccines? If you do please review the last rotavirus vaccine. The vaccine was pulled from the market in 1999 due to its linkage to intussusception. Within the first 7 days after vaccination with this vaccine the risk of intussusception was 14 times higher than normal.

Last week I reviewed how the AIDS vaccines may be delivered in plants so it appears that the industry is moving full speed ahead with this project.

This is especially concerning when one considers the terrible track record of GMO plants and the absolute inability of farmers to prevent them from spreading to other non GMO crops.

Do we really want to have vaccine producing plants spread all over the world with almost no control? Folks once the genie gets out of the bottle on this one, it may be virtually impossible to put him back in, no matter how serious a problem future researchers determine this problem to be.

It sure seems to me huge measures of caution need to be applied here and I don't even see microgram quantities being currently used.

If you are concerned about this issue please consider the California conference that will be reviewing this issue in greater depth.

Related Articles:

Pulled Rotavirus Vaccine Proved Dangerous

Health Risks of Genetically Modified Foods

Genetically Modified Crops Worry Some Scientists

Genetically Altered Plants Might Alter You

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