Category: Issues
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Biohacking ban needed
by Louise Sales Last week US biohacker Ellen Jorgensen toured Australia encouraging members of the public to genetically modify microbes prompting the GM Free Australia Alliance to call for a ban on the genetic engineering of microbes outside contained and certified laboratory facilities. Biohacking generally means genetically modifying a bacteria, yeast, plant or animal to […]
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In the fight for our genes, could we lose what makes us human?
by Ziyaad Bhorat (Open Democracy) There’s more to human beings than biology and physiology—and it shouldn’t be for sale. In the last 70 years we’ve come a long way towards unraveling the building blocks of human life. The human genome has been identified, sequenced, mapped, decoded, and interfered with. We’ve used this knowledge to clone […]
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When it Comes to GMOs, the Devil is in the Details
by Paul Koberstein (Earth Island Journal) Unresolved safety questions about gene-editing technologies underscore need for caution While expressing support for the watered-down GMO labeling bill, which was passed by Congress last week and is now awaiting President Obama’s signature, White House spokeswoman Katie Hill told Bloomberg News: “While there is broad consensus that foods from […]
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Do CRISPR enthusiasts have their head in the sand about the safety of gene editing?
By Sharon Begley (STAT) WASHINGTON — At scientific meetings on genome-editing, you’d expect researchers to show pretty slides of the ribbony 3-D structure of the CRISPR-Cas9 molecules neatly snipping out disease-causing genes in order to, everyone hopes, cure illnesses from cancer to muscular dystrophy. Less expected: slides of someone kneeling on a beach with his head in […]
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Why Kickstarter’s Glowing Plant Left Backers in the Dark
by Antonio Regalado (MIT Technology Review) In any discussion of biohacking, Exhibit A is likely to be the “glowing plant,” the wildly successful 2013 Kickstarter campaign that raised $484,013 to create bioluminescent plants visible at night. Just one problem, though. There is still no glowing plant. The Glowing Plant project, since renamed Taxa Biotechnologies, has […]
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Don’t Eat the Yellow Rice: The Danger of Deploying Vitamin A Golden Rice
by Ted Greiner, PhD (Independent Science News) What better way to discredit your critics than to rope in 107 naive Nobel Prize winners (all without relevant expertise) to criticize your opposition? But such tactics are not new. Long ago, the GMO industry spent well over $50 million to promote “Golden Rice” as the solution to […]
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107 Nobel Laureate Attack on Greenpeace Traced Back to Biotech PR Operators
by Jonathan Latham, PhD (Independent Science News) Greenpeace was denied entrance yesterday (June 30) to a National Press Club Event in Washington, DC of 107 Nobel Laureates. The event was ostensibly organised by a scientific group calling itself Support Precision Agriculture to publicise a letter signed by 107 Nobel Laureates demanding that Greenpeace cease its […]
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Webinar: Outsmarting Nature?
Movements & Emerging Technologies Webinars present: Outsmarting Nature? A webinar on Synthetic Biology for Crops and Agriculture What’s the role of synthetic biology in our food system and how does it relate to “climate-smart” agriculture? What are the costs and risks? Host: Tom Philpott Food & Agriculture Journalist with Mother Jones Expert: Pat Mooney Executive […]
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This scientist is trying to stop a lab-created global disaster
Disclaimer: This article is interesting as it expresses the concerns of a scientist deeply involved in the synbio and in particular gene-drive fields (his team figured out how to make dene-drives work!), and highlights just how under-regulated current experiments are. We don’t condone the research described in the article, or necessarily agree with the alternative […]
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Meet the New Stevia! GMOs 2.0 Get Dressed for Success
by Stacy Malkan (The Huffington Post) Our culture is smitten with the notion that technology can save us – or at least create great business opportunities! Cargill, for example, is working on a new food technology that mimics stevia, a sugar substitute derived from plant leaves, for the “exploding sports nutrition market.” Cargill’s new product, […]