thanks to Ron Baxter for forwarding this - apologies for any cross-posting
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Dear folks,
Enclosed is an excellent 'roundup' of some of the mistakes made by the biotech industry, so far!
Ron
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REFERENCES - BIOTECH MISTAKES (01/22/01)
Originally posted by: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (Cliff Kinzel) [Thanks Cliff!] Via:: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
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Low-Tech Woe Slows Calgene's Super Tomato.
1995, April 12
Wall Street Journal
SUMMARY: Having spent years overcoming complex technological, regulatory and environmental obstacles, Calgene has been tripped up by a mundane problem: Its super tomato, designed to last longer and taste better, hasn't been able to take the pounding dished out by Calgene's system for picking, packing and shipping it. Standard tomatoes are picked green and rock-hard, bumped down conveyor belts, blasted into bins and gassed with a hormone, ethylene, that triggers their reddening. Then they are boxed. What this efficiency sacrifices, of course, is taste. Calgene's tomato hasn't been tough enough for the real world.
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Monsanto's cotton gets the Mississippi blues.
1997, November 1 New Scientist
SUMMARY: Farmers in Mississippi could lose millions of dollars following the partial failure of a new genetically engineered cotton crop. The cotton, produced by Monsanto, contains a gene for resistance to the company's herbicide glyphosate, sold as Roundup. Some 320 000 hectares across the US were planted with the cotton this season, its first on the market. Most farmers are happy with the results. But in Mississippi, and to some extent in Arkansas, Tennessee and Louisiana, entire fields have shed their bolls--the fluffy part harvested for fibre--or have developed small, malformed bolls. Robert McCarty, director of Mississippi's Bureau of Plant Industry in Starkville, says that only Monsanto plants seem to have failed, over an area totalling 12 000 hectares. "Cotton right across the road of a different variety was not affected," he says. _____________________________________________
GE mistake -- GE sugar beet refined illegally.
1997, December 3 Reuters
SUMMARY: A test batch of Monsanto genetically-modified sugar beets was mistakenly sent to a Dutch refiner and mixed with normal sugar, company and government officials said on Wednesday. But some pulp from the beets was sold for use in animal feed before CSM learned about the error, Peter Dek, commercial director of CSM's sugar division, told Reuters. The Environment Ministry has launched an enquiry, which could result in a fine for Monsanto, a spokeswoman said.
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Monsanto to be prosecuted over crops.
1998, December 18 The Independent
SUMMARY: The Health and Safety Executive is prosecuting both Monsanto and an agricultural seed company, Perryfields Holdings, over their failure to comply with regulations designed to control the spread of pollen from modified crops. It was found that the pollen barrier surrounding the trial was only two metres wide on the site of the trial, rather than the required six metres. The trial had already flowered and pollination with the surrounding crop may have taken place.
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Cotton Growers Blame New Seed For Crop Losses.
1999, January 25 Augusta Chronicle
SUMMARY: Andrew Thompson said he felt like a failure when nearly a quarter of his cotton crop withered in the field last year, costing him about $250,000. He is among about 190 farmers in Georgia, Florida and North Carolina who have hired attorneys to represent them in a legal dispute with **Monsanto** Co. and Delta Pine and Land Co. Mr. Thompson's suit contends the companies rushed the seed to market without adequate testing and, when they began receiving complaints in 1997, misled growers and agriculture officials about the extent of the problem.
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The elusive truth about Benlate.
1999, Dec 30 Tampa Tribune
SUMMARY: In 1991, DuPont pulled the fungicide Benlate 50 DF, blamed for devastating Florida crops, off the market. R. Hilton Biggs, a biochemist from the University of Florida, handled the state's early investigation into Benlate plant damage. Hollingsworth reports Biggs "concluded that contaminants in Benlate, as well as compounds produced when the fungicide decomposes, combined with certain environmental factors to create both chemical buildup and an imbalance in microorganisms in the soil." This, he said, could result in toxins. He called Benlate "the second worst chemical disaster in the history of the world," with only DDT being more damaging. Growers around the country who did not receive settlements were forced to sue. In the first crop damage case to come to trial, DuPont scientists testified in court that it was safe. Later evidence surfaced in another trial that DuPont had withheld laboratory results indicating batches of Benlate may have been contaminated with a powerful weedkiller. _____________________________________________
French farmer blames Monsanto for GM woe.
1999, Dec 15 Reuters
SUMMARY: A French farmer named in a class action lawsuit against Monsanto Co (NYSE:MTC - news) said he blames the life-sciences giant's involvement in genetically modified (GM) crops for miring him in a legal dispute dating back to 1997. Patrick de Kochko, an organic farmer in southwest France said the lawyers who filed the landmark antitrust suit against Monsanto on Tuesday asked him to join as a plaintiff because of legal problems over his 1996 soybean crop. De Kochko said he believes a unit of Monsanto sold him soybean seeds containing GM material, which then contaminated his crop and made it difficult for him to market his soybeans. _____________________________________________
GM foods - Revealed: false data misled farmers.
1999, Feb 21 Independent
SUMMARY: Monsanto, the genetic engineering company, included false information about a genetically engineered crop it wants to sell in a safety assessment submitted to government advisers. The gene giant was forced to carry out its research again after it emerged last month that crucial information about the gene it proposed to put in a new strain of maize was incorrect. "It's very worrying. This means that somebody somewhere in Monsanto is getting it wrong," said Janey White, a molecular biologist. _____________________________________________
Genetic guideline breaches revealed.
2000, Jan 5 Australasian Business Intelligence (Source: The Courier-Mail)
SUMMARY: According to the Genetic Manipulation Advisory Committee's 1998-99 annual report there have been two serious breaches of Australian guidelines. In the past financial year, Monsanto Australia Limited mistakenly breached guidelines regarding herbicide-resistant, or Roundup Ready, canola. And South Australia-based company GroPep accidentally released genetically manipulated micro-organisms containing the bacteria E.coli into the sewer _____________________________________________
Officials say unauthorised GM seed grown in UK.
2000, October 10 Reuters
SUMMARY: Britain said on Tuesday unauthorised GM sugar beet had been grown by accident on experimental sites by biotech company Aventis. The department of the environment said it had been notified that tiny amounts (0.5 percent) of the unauthorised sugar beet had been found on two sites. ``Aventis informed the government after discovering a background level of a second, unauthorised, herbicide tolerant GM beet line as part of the routine destruction of the crops,'' the department said in a statement. The sites had been cleared and the crop had not been allowed to flower, to stop pollen from contaminating nearby crops.
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Poor crop results were replaced by a forgery, Ministry's internal paper shows.
2000, April 16 The Observer
SUMMARY: Results from vital Government-backed crop trials to assess genetically-modified seeds have been falsified, The Observer can reveal. Internal minutes from the Ministry of Agriculture, obtained by this newspaper, show that an employee at a Suffolk-based firm, Grainseed, manipulated scientific data to make certain seeds in the trials appear to perform better than they really did. This will cast a shadow over the Government's programme of GM trials, and further undermine public confidence in the controversial crop technology. MPs and environmentalists want the trials suspended. _____________________________________________
Plant DNA viruses and gene silencing.
2000, S. N. Covey, Al-Kaff, N. S. Plant Molecular Biology, 43, 307-322
SUMMARY: Gene silencing is a multifaceted phenomenon leading to propagative down-regulation of gene expression. Gene silencing, first observed in plants containing transgenes, can operate both at the transcriptional and post-transcriptional levels. Silencing effects can be triggered by nuclear transgenes and by cytoplasmic RNA viruses, and it can be propagated between these elements and endogenous plant genes that share sequence homology. Although some aspects of gene silencing are becoming better understood, little is yet known about the relationship between nuclear and cytoplasmic events. Plant DNA viruses, both the ssDNA geminiviruses and the reverse-transcribing pararetroviruses, have properties with the potential to initiate gene silencing in the nucleus and in the cytoplasm. Characteristics include production of multiple copies of viral DNA genomes in the nucleus, illegitimate integration of viral DNA into host chromosomes mimicking transgene transformation, and generation of abundant viral RNAs in the cytoplasm. Evidence is emerging that geminiviruses and plant pararetroviruses can interact with the gene silencing system either from introduced DNA constructs or during viral pathogenesis. Some observations suggest there are complex relationships between DNA viral activity, transcriptional and post-transcriptional gene silencing mechanisms. DNA viruses also have properties consistent with an ability to counteract the plant silencing response. In this article, features of plant DNA viruses are discussed in relation to gene silencing phenomena, and the prospects for understanding the interaction between nuclear and cytoplasmic silencing processes. 71 ref.
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Monsanto GM seeds contain 'rogue' DNA.
2000, May 28 The Sunday Herald
SUMMARY: Monsanto told the Sunday Herald it was about to submit the first full analysis of the genetic sequences in Roundup Ready soybean for publication in a scientific journal. "We've identified two inactive pieces of the Roundup Ready gene in addition to the complete Roundup Ready gene within Roundup Ready soybeans," said Dan Verakis, a spokesman for the company. Monsanto has been informing regulatory agencies around the world of the discovery. "Those two pieces were present within the soybeans used in all original safety tests and hence do not change the conclusion by global regulatory authorities that Roundup Ready soybeans are as safe and nutritious as conventional soybeans," claimed Verakis. But Charlie Kronick, head of Greenpeace's anti-GM campaign in the UK, argued that the company's findings heightened worries about safety. "Imports of contaminated seeds have left the UK and the rest of Europe reeling from further revelations of the biotechnology industry's failure to control their products," he said. "Now Monsanto announces a new discovery concerning the genetic make-up of their first GM product. After years on the market, Monsanto reveals that neither the industry or the regulators actually know what genes are in it. What else don't we know? _____________________________________________
ERRORS FOUND IN PATENT FOR AIDS GENE, SCIENTISTS SAY; BIOTECH: NEWS COMES AMID CONCERNS THAT GENOMICS RACE COULD LEAD TO SHODDY SCIENCE AND PROFITEERING.
2000, March 21 Los Angeles Times
SUMMARY: Scientists have found at least four significant errors in a newly issued patent of a human gene that plays a role in AIDS infection. The mistakes in the description of the chemical makeup of the gene raise questions about the rush to patent genes and could loosen Human Genome Sciences Inc.'s hold on the patent, genetics experts told the Times. ``This is a perfect example of the rush to sequence (human genes),'' said Christopher Broder, a former member of a National Institutes of Health team that pioneered work on the gene. ``They get it wrong. They don't know the function.'' Researchers say the gene is responsible for the production of a protein that sits on the surface of a cell and is used by the AIDS virus as a docking site. Scientists targeted the gene after learning that people who have defective copies of the gene are resistant to HIV infection. Broder said he did a quick comparison of the amino acid building blocks of the protein described in the company's patent and he said he found that four of the 352 amino acids in the protein were incorrectly identified. _____________________________________________
Modified beet seed dropped after trial mistake.
2000, October 9 Financial Times (London)
SUMMARY: A German biotech company has unwittingly produced a genetically modified beet that is resistant to two of the most used herbicides. But cross-pollination from another trial rendered the beet resistant to "Roundup", another leading herbicide. The mistake was discovered when the beet in question was tested in 39 German trials and a further nine across Europe including the UK, France and the Netherlands. All of the affected seed was withdrawn. _____________________________________________
Europe allows patent on human cloning - by mistake.
2000, February 22 Reuters
SUMMARY: The European Patent Office said on Monday it made a mistake in recently granting a patent to a process that could include the cloning of humans. The Munich-based office granted Edinburgh University a patent on altering cells and human embryos in December, but the decision only came to public attention after the environmental group Greenpeace issued a critical statement on Monday. ``It's a mistake, yes,'' said patent office spokesman Rainer Osterwadter. ``It could be seen to embrace the cloning of humans. ``What's missing is the disclaimer that it does not refer to humans.'' Osterwadter said his office could not immediately reverse the decision, but would have to wait for outside parties to file their opposition to the patent. _____________________________________________
Lab creates killer virus by accident - Special report: the ethics of genetics.
2001, January 11 Guardian
SUMMARY: Australian scientists who made a killer virus by accident have raised the spectre of biological weapons in the hands of terrorists or rogue states. The virus kills mice, not humans. The researchers were actually working on a mouse contraceptive vaccine for pest control, according to New Scientist today. But they started with a mousepox virus that normally made laboratory mice feel mildly ill. They inserted an extra gene, and ended up with a virus that wiped out all animals in nine days. The result astonished them: the Il-4 killed the mice by shutting down a vital part of their immune system. It also made the engineered virus unnaturally resistant to normal vaccines.