Edible AIDS vaccine or dangerous biological agent?

25 April 2002

Veljko Veljkovic, Laboratory for Multidisciplinary Research, Institute of Nuclear Sciences, P.O. Box 522, 11001 Belgrade, Yugoslavia. E-mail: veljko01@hotmail.com

Mae-Wan Ho, Director, Institute of Science in Society, P.O. Box 32097, London NW1 0XR, United Kingdom. E-mail: m.w.ho@I-sis.org.uk

Results of laboratory and clinical research performed during last 15 years strongly suggest that AIDS vaccines based on gp120 cannot be effective and, more importantly, may not be safe (1, 2).

A biological warfare agent could be designed with the following characteristics: 1) possess a slow-acting pathogenic component to allow the spread of disease over a long period of time, as to escape detection; 2) possess an antigenic determinant enabling the biological agent to breach the host immune defence; 3) have the ability to transfer the gene encoding the pathogenic determinant to other microorganisms and plants, with the possibility of generating new deadly pathogens; and 4) ability to attack the immune system of the host, making it vulnerable to other infectious and chronic diseases including cancer. The evidence reviewed in a recent article (1) indicates that at least some of these characteristics are satisfied by HIV-1 gp120.

In addition, introducing HIV-1 gp120 into corn could lead to widespread contaminating of our food supply, as even land races of corn growing in remote regions of Mexico may have become contaminated (3), although this recent finding is now in dispute (4, 5). The major controversy surrounding the finding is whether the transgenic constructs were “fragmenting and promiscuously scattering throughout genomes” of the land races. That would be indicative of horizontal gene transfer and recombination, mostly likely mediated by the known recombination hotspot in the cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV) promoter use in many transgenic constructs (6-8). At stake is the health of human beings and all other organisms in the food chain. As the gp120 gene is also known to possess recombination hotspots, there may be opportunities for horizontal gene transfer and recombination to create new pathogens, considering that some 99% of the bacteria that exist cannot be cultured, and their potential for causing diseases are hence unknown.

References

1. V. Veljkovic, et al., Vaccine 19, 1855 (2001). PubMed.

2. H. Kohler, S. Muller, V. Veljkovic, AIDScience 2, 5 (2002). Available online.

3. D. Quist, I. H. Chapela, Nature 414, 541 (2001). PubMed.

4. M.  Metz, J. Futterer, Nature 416, 600 (2002). PubMed.

5. N.  Kaplinsky, Nature 416, 601 (2002). PubMed.

6. M. W. Ho, A. Ryan, J. Cummins, Microbial Ecology in Health and Disease 11, 194 (1999).

7. M. W. Ho, A. Ryan, J. Cummins, Microbial Ecology in Health and Disease 12, 6 (2000).

8. M. W. Ho, A. Ryan, J. Cummins, Microbial Ecology in Health and Disease 12, 189 (2000).