Genetic engineering in laundry detergents, plants, animals and human beings

 

Admitted, looking at the arguments supplied by the large companies’ ads one might assume that laundry detergents have long become obsolete in health food shops.

 

As:

  • Phosphate-free has become standard in the market.
  • Surfactants all seem to be readily biodegradable, in part even be produced from renewable resources.
  • The unnecessary 30-40 % of additives are reduced to a compact size.
  • Even the term “modular system” has become supermarket compatible over the years.

 

But:

  • not all of the common surfactants are really effortlessly degradable. The anionic surfactant LAS (linear alkyl benzenesulfonate) being the most widespread one, due to its low price, is difficult to degrade completely and accumulates in sewage sludge.
  • no petrochemical dyestuffs and fragrances that affect the human sensory nervous system and overstrain it, should be present in so-called organic laundry detergents.
  • And what is behind the harmless description ENZYME to be found on almost every packaging of laundry detergents?

 

Enzymes are naturally occurring proteins performing some very special metabolic digestive tasks such as e. g. degrading fat or protein. They have long been present in laundry detergents as active agents.

 

Did you know that nowadays almost 100 % of the enzymes employed in laundry detergents originate from microorganisms that have been GENETICALLY modified?

 

 

What are the consequences of using genetically engineered enzymes?

 

This genetic engineering has become possible only after researchers discovered that the starting point of all the processes in human life as well as that of animals, plants and microorganisms, are merely four substances, namely the four bases adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine. These are linked with each other in millions of varying possible combinations forming in its entirety what is called genetic information nowadays: approx. 1 000 bases form one specific “information”, a specific gene. The human being possesses 50 000 – 100 000 of such genes as “genetic information”, a bacterium approx.1 000 genes. 

 

 

Now, the sophisticated engineering tampers with this nucleus and incorporates a certain part of “genetic information” of another living being into the genetic information of a fast-growing fungus, e.g. the predisposition for a technically usable fat or a protein-splitting enzyme. Using the new CRISPR/Cas 9 method by now genetic information of all live organisms may be modified at random in defined places of the DNA or new ones “smuggled in”.

 

In giant tanks with a diameter of 5 - 10 m the genetically modified fungus is now cultivated on cheap nutrient broth obtained from waste of the paper and pulp industry. After that, the desired enzyme is isolated from the fast-growing fungus biomass and processed. An enzyme, 100 % clean, for laundry detergents is economically not feasible. Therefore, these enzymes continue being contaminated with many substances which might react in a way unforeseen, cause side effects and allergies.  

 

Once the biomass is no longer useful - umpteen tons every year – it is heated up in order to kill off the microorganisms. Following this it is used as fertilizer on the fields. It is impossible to guarantee that the microorganisms have been completely destroyed. The surviving microorganisms may transmit their modified genes onto natural occurring microorganisms in the soil, in plants, animals and human beings, or they may even return to man via food chains having unforeseeable consequences.


This is but the tip of the iceberg. Genetic engineering will conquer the realms of nature, step by step, and will not stop either at interfering with the processes of human life. More than 40 years ago, almost unnoticed by the public, genetic engineering entered its first testing ground by manufacturing laundry detergent enzymes using GMOs. The next domain addressed by genetic research was the mutation of plants and animals.


At present, research shifts strongly to human beings. The structural sequence of the human genome has been decoded in the meantime. Patents on cultivated human embryos have already been applied for. By having a human embryonal cell fused with a pig’s ovum, and by cultivating this hybrid being (human/pig) in a laboratory – e.g. in order to obtain transplantable tissue - genetic research has overstepped the limits towards the exploitation of human life as an industrial product.

 

Now, in spring 2020, one is working fervently on finding a new vaccine against the Corona virus, Covid 19. This vaccine, a so-called mRNA (messenger ribonucleic acid), is to transfer genome into our cells per vaccination. The cells will then build in this information, thus being forced to produce alien protein predefined by the mRNA. Instead of strengthening the individual immune system, one tries to prevent the reaction to a viral infection which differs from individual to individual and to rather bring about worldwide streamlining of the reaction. But even Robert Koch was aware of the fact that the individual human being cannot be left out. As he put it in his Nobel-Prize speech given in1905: “The virus is nothing, the host everything.”

 

No one can tell exactly what consequences this intervention will have for the highly complex nexus of the human cell. But as long as the human being is considered a complex computer system and one wants to reproduce and change life’s processes using mechanistic science and computer technology, life will tell a different story. Unforeseen side effects will occur and the standardized protection for all cannot possibly materialize as humans are unique and not merely generic beings.