ONE of the most convincing arguments levelled against genetically modified
crops is that the various genes in them that confer resistance to antibiotics
will spread into the environment, eventually making life-threatening bacteria
resistant to those drugs. But such doomsday scenarios look less convincing this
week, as British researchers report having tried and failed to get various
bacteria to take up such a gene from a commercial variety of GM maize.
John Heritage and his colleagues at the University of Leeds presented their
results in Scarborough at a meeting of the British Society of Animal Science.
The government-funded project is only…
