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. . . .[S]cientists at UC Davis have genetically altered [dairy goat DNA] to code for human lysozyme, an antimicrobial enzyme commonly found in people’s tears, saliva, and breast milk. Lysozymes work on the front lines of the immune system, destroying bacterial cells that cause diarrhea and other infections.
. . . . According to the World Health Organization, 525,000 children under five died last year from diarrheal diseases, mostly in poor communities in developing nations . . . .
[Elizabeth Maga’s] team . . .worked tirelessly to demonstrate that the milk from their goats was both safe and effective. . . .They now have the data to prove it many times over. . . But the world, it would seem, isn’t ready for it.
Instead, the researchers have run headlong into the pitched, prolonged. . . misguided first-world debate over . . . GMOs. It’s a conflict animated in large part by . . . the inability of both policymakers and the public to . . . make sense of it all . . . This has left the UC Davis goats, along with a host of other transgenic animals with the potential to curb disease and save lives, in a regulatory limbo — even as other genetically engineered organisms, from corn to fish, earn regulatory approval.
Read full, original post: Spilled Milk
