Genetically Engineered Organisms:
Assessing Environmental
and Human Health Effects

edited by
Deborah K. Letourneau
and Beth Elpern Burrows

Features:

• Presents groundbreaking discoveries on the ecological and human health effects of genetically engineered organisms
• Integrates scientifically detailed chapters with policy issues, but does not allow policy questions to interfere with the science
• Provides insight into objectively weighing the benefits of transgenic organisms versus the risks involved
• Gives examples of scientific research necessary to inform the ecological and human health debates surrounding genetic engineering
• Informs readers of state-of-the-art research on biosafety issues and how to improve the risk assessment process

Genetically Engineered Organisms: Assessing Environmental and Human Health Effects gives credence to good science and to the notion that we do not have to argue about the ecological and human health effects of genetic engineering. Instead, it supports the position that we can undertake the painstaking science necessary to identify and understand those effects.

Written by researchers who have done cutting edge research in disciplines such as botany, entomology, plant pathology, and other agricultural and environmental sciences, this book elaborates critical research on pollen movement, spread of transgenes in natural communities, fitness effects, resistance development, and unpredicted impacts on target and non-target organisms.

These topics are explored in contexts ranging from Bt corn events and viral resistant oats to transgenic salmon and altered malarial vectors. Many chapters address theoretical and informational gaps that research presents to questions of biosafety, and some offer historical insights into factors that may affect risk assessment and risk management decision-making at the community, national, and international levels.

Contents

1. Variability and Uncertainty in Crop-to-wild Hybridization
2. Factors Affecting the Spread of Resistant Arabidopsis thaliana Populations
3. Bt Crops: Benefits, Risks, and Non-target Effects on Wild Relatives
4. Resisting Resistance to Bt Corn
5. Ecological Risks of Transgenic Virus-resistant Crops
6. Impacts of Genetically-engineered Crops on Non-target Herbivores: Bt-corn and Monarch Butterflies as a Case Study
7. Transgenic Host Plant Resistance and Non-target Effects
8. Release, Persistence, and Biological Activity in Soil of Insecticidal Proteins from Bacillus thuringiensis
9. Survival, Persistence, Transfer: The Fate of Genetically Modified Microorganisms and Recombinant DNA in Different Environments
10. The Spread of Genetic Constructs in Natural Insect Populations
11. Ecological and Community Considerations in Engineering Arthropods to Suppress Vector-borne Disease
12. Environmental Risks of Genetically Engineered Vaccines
13. Methods to Assess Ecological Risks of Transgenic Fish Releases
14. Controversies in Designing Useful Ecological Assessments of Genetically Engineered Organisms

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