The safety concerns sound circular in an almost Kafkaesque manner. From what I can tell, a strain of the bacteria was found in the wild that created less acid and seemed to lead to less carries. So people thought it needed to be safer, so they instead created a genetically modified version of the bacteria. But now it couldn’t even be tested in the wild because the “safer” version had so many unknowns that even letting people experiment with it would be dangerous, since it could potentially escape into the general population and hurt people (possibly escape through activities like kissing, the article states). But the earlier strain has been out there spreading in the population for decades/centuries already.
Why not just let people experiment on their own with the original low acid bacteria if they want? It’s already there in the wild. You’re already “painting your teeth” with different bacteria when you kiss people, so why not at least let some people pick which naturally occurring bacteria they can expose themselves to instead of letting it happen by random chance?
A lot of the hype about Lumina seemed to be goofy, but the hand wringing over “painting your mouth with bacteria!” is just as bad if not worse.
> From what I can tell, a strain of the bacteria was found in the wild that created less acid and seemed to lead to less carries
I think you're confused about which changes to the bacteria were natural and which were engineered. A strain in the wild was discovered that produced a weak antibiotic that it had also developed a resistance to, but it still had the original metabolic pathway that produced lactic acid. Researches took that strain and genetically modified it to produce ethanol instead of lactic acid, and then relied on the natural antibiotic-related mutations to get this strain to replace common S. Mutans in the oral microbiomes of test subjects.
The useful non-acidic property of the strain is entirely artificially introduced. The natural mutation in the wild just allowed for outcompeting and replacing bacteria that lack it. There would be no benefit from personally experimenting with the natural non-engineered strains.
If that strain produces ethanol and can colonize the guts, then it has the potential to cause the auto-brewery syndrome. That a good reason to be careful!
But why did they decide that? It seems to be a pretty clear example of the perfect being the enemy of the good.
1. Better bacteria is found in the wild, it might be able to significantly reduce cavities. People could be randomly passing it to others through kissing, and no one is concerned about it since it doesn't seem to be harmful.
2. It’s not given to people for replacement therapy because (as the article states) people decided that a replacement therapy “needs to meet a number of criteria."
3. Except meeting that criteria makes people think the replacement isn’t safe and shouldn’t be tried.
The article is saying “of course we needed to add X characteristics to the bacteria, they were necessary in order for it to be a good replacement” and then goes on to say “of course people shouldn’t be using the bacteria with X characteristics, X characteristics might be dangerous.”
Why not just let people experiment on their own with the original low acid bacteria if they want? It’s already there in the wild. You’re already “painting your teeth” with different bacteria when you kiss people, so why not at least let some people pick which naturally occurring bacteria they can expose themselves to instead of letting it happen by random chance?
A lot of the hype about Lumina seemed to be goofy, but the hand wringing over “painting your mouth with bacteria!” is just as bad if not worse.