If you want to know how morally, intellectually and spiritually bankrupt GMO promoters are take a look at this list of the nominated "personalities who have made the most significant contribution to biotech in the past 10 years". This is taken from CS Prakash's AgBioView. We have added our comments in
square brackets [ ] for the society and ethics nominees, and given urls to profiles for many of the rest. As you will see, some of these people's views are so extreme it would be easy to doubt their sanity and certainly their honesty and their ethics!
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Today in AgBioView from http://www.agbioworld.org - March 6, 2006
The Nature Biotechnology Who's Who - short list of nominees
We present below the 291 nominees, shortlisted by the editors of Nature Biotechnology, as personalities who have made the most significant contribution to biotech in the past 10 years. See full list at http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060306/full/nbt0306-291a.html
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Below are few names associated with Agbiotech and/or that I could recognize ..CSP
Society and ethics
* Ronald Bailey. Science correspondent for Reason magazine, and a keen proponent of the integration of new biotechnologies. [author of articles such as 'Organic farming could kill billions of people' and 'Send in the Clones'. In 'GM trade war', Bailey recommends *forcing* the EU to accept GM foods, '[The US] must persuade all the chief food exporting countries... to create a united front against the EU, leaving Europe with no sources for non-biotech feed grain imports.' In other words, starve 'em into submission! http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=16 ]
* Arthur Caplan. Perhaps one of the most visible and accessible bioethicists in debates about biotech applications. [An accessible quote from Caplan: "Absolutely, somewhere in the next millennium, making babies sexually will be rare. Many parents will leap at the chance to make their children smarter, fitter and prettier."]
* Greg Conko. A commentator on public health and consumer safety issues in biotech.
[Praskash sidekick who does his commenting out of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian lobby group funded by Monsanto, Dow, Exxon and Big Tobacco! Very ethical. http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=31 ]
* Gordon Conway. As president of the Rockefeller Foundation, Conway has been a proponent of public-private partnerships to resolve some of the barriers to developing world farmers gaining access to new technologies. [Out of date - Conway now pushes GMOs from inside the UK's Dept for International Development - DfID - where he's the chief scientist.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5823 ]
* Richard Jefferson. Leader of the open-source biology movement that attempts to circumvent problems with traditional patenting.
* Cardinal Renato Martino. A religious leader who has supported the use of agbiotech for hunger and health. [Widely regarded as pushing the US agenda on GM, Martino's ethical concerns are captured by his comments that he himself had lived in the US for donkey's years and it never did him any harm (!) and that during the war he ate bread that "was made of powdered marble". Subtext: if you're hungry you'll eat more or less anything so it's time for the hungry to shut up and eat GM. The fact that there are supplies of non-GM grain available is somehow overlooked in Martino's touching homily. http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1241 ]
* Henry Miller. Former founding director of the FDA's Office of Biotechnology who in his position at the Hoover Institute is a vocal proponent of the free market and opponent of biotech critics and regulatory proliferation. [For Miller bringing a product to market quickly is far more important than ensuring its safety. In fact, while most people see the voluntary US regulatory regime for GM foods as hopelessly imnadequate, Miller blames the biotech industry itself for what he says is US over-regulation! 'In this area, the U.S. government agencies have done exactly what big agribusiness has asked them to do and told them to do,' he told the New York Times. http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=84 ]
* Florence Wambugu. CEO of the A Harvest Biotech Foundation International (AHBFI), who campaigns for the use of biotech in developing countries. [Her promotion of GM has been so dishonest that she is among the most notable winners of the GM Watch PANTS ON FIRE award! http://www.gmwatch.org/p2temp2.asp?aid=59&page=1&op=2 ]
Policy and regulations
* George W. Bush. His Aug 2001 decision to deny federal funds to research on new embryonic stem cell lines put moral and ethical debates center stage and spurred international competition.
* Dan Glickman. Former US Department of Agriculture secretary who oversaw the implementation of a regulatory framework for genetically modified crops that includes voluntary labeling.
* Willy de Greef. Consultant, former Head of Regulatory and Governmental Affairs at Novartis Seeds, who has sought to fight the implementation of nonscientific regulation in Europe.
http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=319
* Marc Cantley. Adviser in the Directorate for Life Sciences in the EU's Directorate-General for Science, has long raged against proliferation of nonscientific biotech regulations.
http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=28
Agricultural, environmental and industrial biotechnology
* Charles Arntzen. Pioneer of transgenic plant vaccines.
http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=13
* Roger Beachy. Pioneer in creating new virus-resistant crop varieties; now as president of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, a vocal critic of patent/license stacking.
http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=200
* Nam-Hai Chua. Responsible for characterization of cauliflower mosaic virus 35S promoter, which has been used in the vast majority of transgenic plant lines; more recently the developer of alternative selection strategies to antibiotic resistance markers.
* Luis Herrera Estrella. Head of the National Laboratory of Genomics for Biodiversity of the Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute, Irapuato, Mexico, who has worked on plants better adapted to growth in acidic or suboptimal soils. [Mexico's GM godfather and a leading Chapela critic]
* Richard Flavell. Instrumental in creating agbiotech research center John Innes Institute in Norwich, UK; later to become CSO of Ceres, a California-based plant genomics company.
http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=67
* Jikun Huang. Director of the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, he is developing genetically modified rice in Chin.
* Pal Maliga and Henry Daniell. Developed the technology for plastid transformation in higher plants.
* Melvin Oliver. USDA scientist who was inventor of so-called 'Terminator' technology making crops sterile to ensure containment and the need to buy new transgenic seeds each season.
* C.S. Prakash. Director of Center for Plant Biotechnology Research at Tuskegee University; through (AgBioWorld) has unified international agbiotech community. [with a campaign of lies and misinformation: http://www.gmwatch.org/p2temp2.asp?aid=55&page=1&op=2 ]
* Roger Salquist. As CEO of Calgene of Davis, California, until 1996, oversaw the development of Flavr Savr, the first transgenic tomato product to reach the supermarket with longer shelf life.
* Krishna Ella. Chairman and managing director of Bharat Biotech International. A pioneer who, upon his return from the US in 1995, chose to build a vaccine plant in a barren area 40-km from Hyderabad in India, that eventually became the genome valley of today.
* Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw. CEO of biopharmaceutical company Biocon, one of India's most dynamic biotechs.
* K.K. Narayanan. Managing director of METAHELIX Life Science Private, Bangalore, homegrown company developing products in the agbiotech sector.