1.    

Why GM medicines and industrial products may be cheaper:

It is claimed that ‘growing’ medicines and industrial products is a cheaper method of production than manufacturing them under contained conditions in factories using bacterial fermentation, cell cultures or animal bioreactor systems. Several factors contribute to reduced costs.  Firstly, GM plants have the potential to produce higher yields of recombinant proteins than other methods of protein production. Secondly, using the environment as a manufacturing facility cuts capital investment costs (companies do not have to build factories), and production costs are reduced (companies do not have to fund staff salaries or maintain and improve factory infrastructure).  The biotech industry estimates savings to the cost of drugs at 10 to 100 times lower than current prices.

Why they may not be cheaper:

The most optimistic estimates for lower drug prices often do not include funding for research and development, sales associated costs, or the unpredictable amounts that may need to be spent on litigation and liability costs from contamination of the environment or food supply. Purification of proteins used for these products can escalate costs far beyond original estimates as standards of purity for vaccines and drugs are very high.  Effectively purifying foreign proteins away from plant-produced contaminants and agricultural pesticides can prove to be time consuming and costly.  Even if the costs of production are reduced, those savings may not be passed on to the farmers who grow these crops or the consumers who buy them. For example: the GM research chemical, avidin, actually costs the same as the conventional version extracted from eggs, $46-47 per 5mg, or over $9000/gram.

(See introduction and chapter 4 of the report Manufacturing Drugs and Chemicals in Crops: Biopharming Poses New Threats to Consumers, Farmers, Food Companies and the Environment, compiled by Bill Freese for Genetically Engineered Food Alert (2002), 97 pp.)

2.    

Why ‘growing’ GM medicines and industrial products provides flexibility:

Using the environment to grow GM crops allows industry to respond to market demands quickly.  If more products are required production can be scaled up without large capital investment, and if demand falls, production can be reduced quickly.  In theory this might mean new drugs could become available sooner - or that drugs which now cost too much to produce in high volumes could become economically viable through GM production.

Why they may not provide flexibility:

While the flexibility of being able to grow more or fewer crops at short notice may benefit the biotech companies, it may not prove to be such a benefit to farmers. Once a farmer’s land is contaminated by GM medicine crops, his ability to be flexible is reduced - he will not be able to convert the land back to conventional growing quickly or cheaply if demand for his GM production is reduced.

3.                

Why GM medicines and industrial products may be safe and humane: 

It is claimed that sourcing proteins from plants is safer than sourcing them from animal proteins because animal pathogens can cause disease in humans.  It is also noted that the ethical and welfare concerns attached to using animals as sources of proteins could be avoided if plants were used.

Why they may not be safer:

Plants are not a risk free method of producing medicines.  They can contaminate products with mycotoxins, pesticides, herbicides, or endogenous plant secondary metabolites like nicotine and glycoalkaloids. (See the website www.ucsusa.org.)

4.    

Why GM medical and industrial proteins are easy to store: 

It is claimed that storing proteins in the form of seeds may alleviate some of the problems of product storage, shipment and purification that often arise with bacterial and animal models which rely on refridgeration.

Why they may not be easier to store:

Seeds need to be protected from storage grain pests and molds which may involve engineering GM crop plants with genes that express fungicides or pesticides as the use of synthetic chemical agents will need to be avoided. Degradation of the drug in the seed over time can occur if storage conditions are unsuitable or unstable.

5.    

Why GM edible vaccines may be cheap and easy to use: 

Administering vaccines orally through food would be cost effective because it would avoid the expensive purification processes normally associated with vaccines and would eliminate the need to administer vaccines by injection. For these reasons it is claimed that edible vaccines could be particularly advantageous for use in the third world.

Why edible vaccines may not be cheap:

Only raw foods are suitable as edible vaccines because cooking destroys the vaccine in a food. Whole fruits or vegetables cannot be used as they continue to be metabolically active after being harvested and this would affect the levels of vaccine in the food. Therefore food used as vaccines needs to be at least partially processed, which means batches need to be monitored and storage systems implemented. The extra costs involved with solving these problems may well limit the use of edible vaccines in the third world.