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ontt4s4 (EABC) at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, provides an enlightening example ofthe relationship between government, universities and corporations that is nurtured at these centers. Begun in 1983 as an effort "to spark Ohio's economy," the $250 million program has fostered cooperation between some 600 private companies and several public Ohio research centers; One research company called Embryogen, Inc., was formed at EABC in 1984 as a collaboration between Ohio University scientists and private investors. Typical of joint biotech enterprises, Em- bryogen makes profits from government contracts as well as from research agreements with such pharma- ceutical companies as the Upjohn Co. and Merck & Co. (Merck, interestingly enough, owns a poultry breeding company called Hubbard Farms.) Embryo, gen has invested more than $2 million in swine research, and anticipates commercial transgenic pig production by the end of the decade.8 Transgenic animals have become increasingly attractive for both medical and agricultural research. Mice whose chromosomes have been spliced with genes known to be associated with cancers are being' tested to see if they are more sensitive to carcinogens than normal mice and could therefore be used to speed up toxicity testing. " Other animals might have genes spliced in that could make them useful models for the study of diseases such as AIDS.'. The pharmaceutical industry has taken a keen interest in transgenic animals as "bioreactors" -living machines that can be genetically programmed to produce substances more cheaply than they can be , produced through chemical synthesis or tissue cul- ture. Theoretically, any human protein could be manufactured in large quantities if the gene that . codes for that protein could be inserted into a bacte- r~um and then "turned 'on" or triggered into actively' coding for the production of that protein. In practice," however, human proteins produced by bacteria or yeast cells are not rendered in a form directly usable by the human body and must be processed further. This fact has spurred current research efforts to insert human genes into mammals rather than into bacteria. In the case of transgenic mammals such as pigs, the human gene is usually injected into a fertil- ized egg at the one- or two,cell stage. A recent article in Science explains how the trend toward transgenic mammals evolved: The attraction of using another mam- mal to manufacture human proteins was that it would probably process the pro- teins properly after making them, some- thing other genetic engineers were having trouble persuading bacteria and yeast cells to do. And if they could attach the human gene to a gene for a protein produced in milk, they could reasonably hope that the product-whatever it was- would be secreted in the milk and have no effect at all on the host.l1 Now considerable amounts of private and government money are going into the development of farm animals as bioreactors. "Cows are nothing but 'cells on the hoof,' according to EABC director Thomas E. Wagner, and he sees them as future living factories of pharmaceuticals, industrial enzymes, and other substances. Wagner envisions the dawn of a 'high-tech agrarian age' where farmers grow soy- beans not for food but for industrial use and raise cows that yield plasma or pharmaceutical products instead of milk. " This vision of the farm as a high-tech produc- tion line is perhaps a logical extension ofthe farm-as' factory mentality that has accompanied the industri- alization of agriculture. The assembly-line model of farming, in turn, necessarily entails treating animals as machines. Agricultural researchers are splicing genes from other animals, including humans, into farm animals in efforts to increase milk production in cows, meat production in pigs, and wool production in sheep. Animal-welfare advocates raise questions about the ethics and inhumaneness of pushing animals beyond their natural limitations. Dr. Michael W. Fox, vice president of the Humane Society ofthe United States, says that the rising technocracy is "turning the natural world into an industrialized wasteland and the cow into a ,biomachine."" In some ways, the transgenic pig-unique as it is in being the f"Irst pig to contain human genes-is merely the culmination of longstanding trends in hogbreeding. ,Even prior to the genetic engineers and their creation of the arthritic, transgenic pig, "defor- mation" of pigs had been going on for decades. Pig morphology has been radically altered, from the short, round-backed little "piggies" pictured in chil- dren's storybooks to the hnge, elongated, flat-backed porkers that are now standard-the result of animal breeders' successful attempts to develop an animal with a longer side of bacon. This evolution has not come without cost. "The resulting products of con- temporary porkbreeding ,are so top-heavy that their bones and joints are literally crumbling beneath them," says author John Robbins. 14 In addition to genetic changes, pigs also suffer deformities inflicted after birth, such as foot injuries and skeletal malformations resulting from the slatted metal floors and concrete slabs on which they are often conf"Ined. Among meat producers, the pork industry is probably second only to the chicken industry in its use of inhumane and' unsanitary practices. I. ~ , !;: , , ~ ~ ~ ~ :~ ~ " :i ,~ 1; :.~ " ;..; < (.: ~ k~ !S > ~ ~ ~? ~~ ~~ ~ "'. ~~ f~ . :".~ ;-, " :i- .' -:., ~ 20 ::j, :::; ~