Tuesday, June 28, 2005
GE Corn in Kenya
The NYT recently ran an article on the benefits of a GE corn variety (engineered to resist stem borer insects), like BT corn for Kenya. Here's another article looking at the possible problems with the plan, including the likelihood of the insects building a resistance for the genetically produced toxin that is supposed to protect the plants.The semantics of embryo research and human cloning
Embryonic stem cell research is a multi-million dollar business. The Federal Government alone has committed over $100 million dollars to the Australian Stem Cell Centre. If scientists can convince the public they’re going to do research that doesn’t really involve human embryos, they can avoid ethical controversy and potentially access even more money.Republicans for Stem Cell Research
The Republican Governor of Connecticut, M. Jodi Rell, signs bill financially supporting researchthe great rice escape in China
Greenpeace China is apparently alleging that a GE variety of rice that is intended to be contained has already spread to non-experimental areas.Perhaps it got out a little earlier than planned?
Germany to fund research into the safety of green gene technology
Some 24 projects will receive the funding, all of which will investigate the effects that GM plants works have on the effectiveness of antibiotics and herbicides.Stem-Cell Finesse Too Grotesque
A bioethics professor prepares a new bid to defuse ethical objections to embryo research after his controversial proposal fails to mollify critics. A genetic blob is not a baby, most agree. It's just gross. By Kristen PhilipkosWednesday, June 15, 2005
Nanotech's "Second Nature" Patents
On the 25th anniversary of Diamond vs. Chakrabarty, the US Supreme Court's landmark decision (June 16, 1980) that opened the floodgates to the patenting of living organisms, ETC Group releases a new report, "Nanotech's 'Second Nature' Patents."from the Erosion, Technology & Concentration Group
"ETC Group's new report examines current trends in intellectual property and nanotechnology and the implications for the developing world. Nanotechnology refers to the manipulation of matter at the scale of atoms and molecules, where size is measured in billionths of meters."
Biotechnology Loses Billions A Year
The biotechnology industry lost a combined $6.4 billion last year, according to a new report from Ernst & Young. The industry's total accrued loss since its birth in Silicon Valley in the mid-1970s is more than $45 billion.Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Remember theFlavr-Savr© Tomato?
Apparently, researchers at Thomas Jefferson University have produced a SARS vaccine in a GE tomato.Saturday, June 04, 2005
Study finds research participants concerned about genetic discrimination
A new study - the largest to date of public attitudes about genetic discrimination - finds that 40 percent of people already undergoing genetic testing are worried that participation might affect their future insurance coverage.Stem cell bill sponsors prepare for Bush veto
The Republican-controlled House bucked the president Tuesday by passing the bill 238-192, far short of the two-thirds vote needed to override a veto. The Senate has yet to take up the bill, but 58 of the 100 senators already have indicated support for the research, which Bush severely limited under a 2001 directive.Study Points to Role of Toxins in Inherited Disease
A disease you are suffering today could be a result of your great-grandmother being exposed to an environmental toxin during pregnancy.Researchers at Washington State University reached that remarkable conclusion after finding that environmental toxins can alter the activity of an animal’s genes in a way that is transmitted through at least four generations after the exposure. Their discovery suggests that toxins may play a role in heritable diseases that were previously thought to be caused solely by genetic mutations.
this hardly seems like it should be a break through...
From Stem Cell Opponents, an Embryo Crusade
NYT article on a group of anti-stemcell activists who become pregnant with left over embryos from fertility clinics as a way to "save" them. References to abolition and civil-rights movements made by the Right are hard to take seriously when its members have historically opposed those very movements. Meanwhile, we continue to allow the already born to die unnecessary deaths.GM Crops in the Developing World: Who Decides?
Report by the Panos Institute on GMOs in the Global South.Site contains an interactive map with links to specific case studies in Brazil, India, Kenya, Thailand and Zambia.
W.H.O. Moves Toward Allowing Smallpox Gene Experiment
The World Health Organization moved closer to approving an experiment to manipulate the genes of the smallpox virus for the first time since the disease was eradicated 25 years ago.Archives
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