GloFish makes waves in gene pool, raising questions about ethics, safety

WASHINGTON — They're about an inch long. They feast on flakes. To anyone uninitiated in the hierarchy of fish, they are likely to be mistaken for lowly guppies.

But because they also emit a distinct red glow, the zebra danios sold under the name GloFish carry a lofty claim to fame: They are the nation's first officially sanctioned genetically modified pet.

Scientists say they won't be the last. In their native South Asia, zebra danios usually are black-and-white striped, not red. Nor do the fish ordinarily shine intensely under black light, as the GloFish does. It takes the insertion of a gene from sea coral to make the zebra fish a GloFish.

So if researchers can create fish that glow like coral, who's to say they can't one day engineer dogs that meow like cats?

"GloFish is minor compared to what we could see in the future," said Scott Angle, a natural-resources professor at the University of Maryland.

Topic of scientific debate

In the three months since the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) decided that the aquarium pet need not be regulated, the GloFish has gone from curiosity to a focal point in the debate over biotechnology.

Most scientists agree GloFish poses little danger to human health or the environment, but a public-interest group has sued the government to stop its sale until the fish can be reviewed more thoroughly.

Meanwhile, GloFish is piscis non grata at the nation's two largest pet-store chains, Petco Animal Supplies and PetsMart. A Pets-Mart spokeswoman said it wants more scientific data about the fish, while Petco spokesman Shawn Underwood said the company has an ethical problem with the idea of altering the genetic makeup of an animal "when there's no purpose besides our pleasure."

The pet industry in many ways is a peculiar venue for such a heated debate over the wisdom of genetic modification.

The whole notion of a pet, after all, is based on generations upon generations of selective breeding aimed at drawing out certain characteristics that make animals more suitable companions. Advocates of genetically engineered pets point to that history, and question whether changing an animal's genes with a syringe is all that different.

"It's the same result. Except one is 'natural' and one is 'not natural,' " said Perry Hackett, chief science officer of Discovery Genomics, who served as an adviser on the GloFish project and is a passionate supporter.

Other experts are more skeptical, reasoning that the science behind gene alteration is in its infancy, and the ramifications of such rapid changes in the genetic code are unknown. They question, too, whether such cutting-edge science should be used for such frivolous purposes.

Skeptics say those kinds of commercial applications are of limited social value, yet they pose the same risks as any other genetically modified organism.

"You're not producing any more food. You're not making the environment any cleaner. And you're not making anyone healthier," said Angle, who studies the environmental impact of gene-altered organisms. "So the question is: Is it worth the potentially very serious risks to have the benefit of having a novel pet in your aquarium?"

Developed to detect pollution

To Alan Blake, 26, Texas-based Yorktown Technologies' chief executive, the answer is an emphatic yes, not least because he doesn't see the GloFish as a threat to anything — except, perhaps, public ignorance about biotechnology.

Blake and high-school classmate Richard Crockett founded the company to capitalize on fish that originally were developed in a Singapore laboratory for use as a modern-day canary in a coal mine: The fish were supposed to indicate, by glowing, if a given body of water was polluted.

Once the fish started glowing, scientists couldn't figure out how to stop it. But Crockett and Blake saw commercial potential for a freshwater fish that could light up aquariums, and teach people — especially children — a thing or two about biology.

"We really wanted to be able to get them out of the lab and share them with the public," Blake said. The FDA apparently found Blake's arguments persuasive: It issued a three-sentence statement in December giving GloFish a clean bill of health, declining to regulate it. Blake says the review was thorough.

The Center for Food Safety, an organization that seeks limits on biotechnology applications it considers potentially harmful, has filed a lawsuit challenging the FDA decision. The group said the government's action sends a message to those producing genetically modified pets that they can sell unproven animals with impunity.

As evidence, the group points to a Chicago-area store called Living Sea Aquarium that carries a green-glowing genetically modified medaka, even though that fish hasn't been subjected to review by U.S. regulators.

Officials at both Living Sea Aquarium and the wholesaler that supplies the genetically modified medaka, New Jersey-based International Pet Resources, said they were unaware the fish, sold legally in several Asian countries, had not been reviewed by U.S. regulators. Both companies said last week, after inquiries from a reporter, that they no longer would sell it.

FDA spokeswoman Rae Jones said the agency would not comment on GloFish, the medakas or on its approach to regulating such organisms because of the pending lawsuit.

Barbara Glenn, director of animal biotechnology at the Biotechnology Industry Organization, a trade group to which Yorktown Technologies belongs, defended the FDA decision.

To Glenn, genetic modification can be advantageous to both people and pets. Researchers are trying to create a cat that won't aggravate its owner's allergies. Other possible creations include a dog that isn't as susceptible to hip dysplasia, an ailment common among German shepherds and Labrador retrievers that's associated with over-breeding.

Other applications could be more difficult to justify. "There's always going to be a market for the bizarre," said Andrew Kane, director of the University of Maryland's aquatic-pathobiology program, who opposes the idea of genetically modifying pets. "It's super cute or it's super soft or it has the shortest hair or it doesn't shed. There's always going to be a desire for that."