Economic issues to consider for gene drives

ABSTRACT

We examine four economic issues regarding gene drive applications made possible by gene editing technologies. First, whether gene drives are self-sustaining or self-limiting will largely determine which types of organizations have incentives to develop and deploy gene drives and greatly influence their governance and regulation. Social factors will also play key roles, particularly public perceptions, with these perceptions co-determined with regulation and governance. Second, gene drive applications will generate unintended negative social impacts that will partially offset benefits. Third, economic surplus, the traditional measure of economic benefits, incompletely captures the welfare impacts of gene drive applications. Fourth, gene drives imply dynamic nonlinearities that make identifying economic equilibria and general policy recommendations challenging. The potentially substantial benefits, coupled with the technical, social, and economic uncertainties surrounding gene drives, suggest that a responsible course of action is to move forward while maintaining regulatory flexibility and conducting research to resolve key uncertainties.

KEYWORDS:

• Gene editing
• CRISPR-Cas9
• malaria
• mosquito-vectored diseases
• invasive species
• agriculture

Disclosure statement

No potential conflicts of interest were reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Dr Paul D. Mitchell is Professor, Agricultural and Applied Economics, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Extension State Specialist, Cropping Systems and Environmental Management, Director, Renk Agribusiness Institute, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, Co-Director, Nutrient and Pest Management Program, University of Wisconsin Extension, Madison, WI 53706, USA. [email protected]. Paul Mitchell's research broadly focuses on the economics of crop production, emphasizing pest management, transgenic crops and resistance management, risk management and sustainability. His work has focused on corn, soybean, potatoes, sweet corn, green bean, cranberry, and organic vegetable production; European corn borer and corn rootworm; the herbicides glyphosate and atrazine; neonicotinoid and pyrethroid insecticides; and crop insurance and federal commodity programs. His outreach program focuses on crop economics from commercial scale commodity and specialty crop farmers to small diversified organic vegetable growers.

Dr Zachary Brown is Assistant Professor, Agricultural and Resource Economics, North Carolina State University, and serves on the Executive Committee of the Genetic Engineering and Society Center at North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA. [email protected]. Zack Brown's research in environmental and resource economics broadly focuses on ‘bioeconomics,’ analyzing the dynamic interactions between human behavior and complex environmental and ecological systems, using experimental methods, observational data, mathematical models and theory. His work examines the effects of alternative economic incentives and policies for managing pesticide resistance in agricultural systems, public perceptions and consumers' willingness to pay for food products using new genetic engineering technologies, and the economic evaluations of more efficient household cookstoves in northern Ghana for reducing air pollution and deforestation.

Dr Neil McRoberts is Associate Professor, Plant Pathology, University of California, Davis and Center for Environmental Policy and Behavior, University of California, Davis, Director of Western Plant Diagnostic Network. UC Davis, Davis CA 95616, USA. [email protected]. Neil McRoberts is a plant disease epidemiologist and interdisciplinary scientist. His research and extension program focus on the role of plant diseases as determinants of production system sustainability and human decision-making at multiple scales that occurs in response to plant diseases in agriculture. He is particularly interested in technology adoption, information, and cooperation problems in human efforts to mitigate the impacts of plant diseases on food production.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Institute of Food and Agriculture [grant number NC02520]; National Institute of Food and Agriculture [grant number CA-D-PPA-2131-H]; National Science Foundation [grant number 1533990].