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Rethinking the Risks of Viral Transgenes in Plants

November 30, 2007 (Un)Sustainable Farming, Biotechnology, Commentaries, Environment Comments Off

Jonathan Latham and Allison Wilson

Part I: Transcomplementation and its implications

Today marks the publication, in the journal Molecular Plant Pathology, of the Bioscience Resource Project’s newest biosafety review: Transcomplementation and synergism: implications for virus-resistant transgenic plants?.

This review, which represents a conceptual reanalysis of the risks of viral proteins expressed in transgenic plants, is particularly timely because virus resistance and the biosafety of viral transgenes are currently under active discussion in more than one US regulatory agency.

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The River: A Journey to the Source of HIV and AIDS

January 1, 2007 Health, Reviews Comments Off
The River

Author: by Edward Hooper

ISBN: 0316371378 Publisher: Little, Brown and Company (2000)

If humans really did acquire HIV/AIDS from bushmeat, then how can one explain that the four known variants of HIV (three different types of HIV-1, plus HIV-2), each acquired independently, apparently originate from a very brief period in the history of human chimpanzee interaction? What happened in Africa in that period that might explain this remarkable coincidence?
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Commentaries

Designed to Fail: Why Regulatory Agencies Don’t Work

EPA Cleans up the San Juan River oil spill disaster 1972

William Sanjour* Albert Einstein said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. We have been “reforming” regulatory agencies over and over again, and over and over again they have failed. Yet, as a result of the recent catastrophic failures of regulatory …

Way Beyond Greenwashing: Have Corporations Captured Big Conservation?

Malaysia: Deforestation for Agriculture

Jonathan Latham (Photo Credit: auspices) Imagine an international mega-deal. The global organic food industry agrees to support international agribusiness in clearing as much tropical rainforest as they want for farming. In return, agribusiness agrees to farm the now-deforested land using organic methods, and the organic industry encourages its supporters to …

‘Phantom Heritability’ Indicates Poor Predictive Value of Gene Tests

DNA Sequencing Machines

Helen Wallace, GeneWatch UK (photo credit: jurvetson) Last week, a paper on “phantom heritability” was published by a research group led by Eric Lander, one of the leading contributors to understanding the implications of the Human Genome Project (HGP) for common, complex diseases such as heart disease and cancer (1). …

The Great DNA Data Deficit: Are Genes for Disease a Mirage?

Are Genes for Disease a Mirage?

Just before his appointment as head of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), Francis Collins, the most prominent medical geneticist of our time, had his own genome scanned for disease susceptibility genes. He had decided, so he said, that the technology of personalised genomics was finally mature enough to yield meaningful results.

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Reviews

The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-Term Health

The China Study

Author: T. Colin Campbell, PhD and Thomas M. Campbell II ISBN: 1932100660, 978-1932100662 Publisher: Benbella Books (2004) What will it take for veggie stir-fry on rice to replace a beef burger on a bun as the all-American meal? A switch to a more plant-based diet has been standard dietary advice …

The Unhealthy Truth: How our Food is Making us Sick and What We Can Do About It

The Unhealthy Truth

Author: Robyn O’Brien (with Rachel Kranz) ISBN: 978-0-7679-3071-0 Publisher: Broadway books (2009) Allergies and food intolerances are serious medical conditions. They are the cause of many deaths and hospitalizations annually and they predispose to other illnesses. They can also exact a high toll in other ways since worry, inconvenience and …

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