Biotech Firm Raises Furor With Rice Plan

A tiny biosciences company is developing a promising drug to fight diarrhea, a scourge among babies in the developing world, but it has made an astonishing number of powerful enemies because it grows the experimental drug in rice genetically engineered with a human gene.

5

5

The US government gave approval on Wednesday for a biotech company to plant rice genetically modified to produce human proteins in Kansas.

2

0

In a windowless room on the roof of a hospital in south London, the air is being slowly sucked away. It's not enough to notice, but it keeps the sealed laboratory at a slightly lower pressure than the air outside. It's a security measure.

2

1

The first GM food crop containing human genes is set to be approved for commercial production. The laboratory-created rice produces some of the human proteins found in breast milk and saliva.

11

27