GMWatch News Review archive

Dear all:

Anyone who doubts that GM research has become an unofficial asylum for the dangerously demented and deluded should read this week's TECHNO-UTOPIANISM section.

There's good news from India, where Aruna Rodrigues' public interest lawsuit has forced the government into more openness and accountability over its GM activities (ASIA).

In the UK, Unilever has gained approval to put a fish-derived GM protein into its low-fat ice-cream, though it wasn't planning to tell us. We trust that this attempted sleight-of-hand will not go unnoticed by the brilliant people who have campaigned relentlessly to force British food producers and retailers to adopt a GM-free policy (EUROPE).

Finally, there's been another casualty of gene therapy. A person has died after being given a gene therapy treatment developed to treat cystic fibrosis and muscular dystrophy. Now, researchers have found the treatment causes liver cancer. Ironically, the GM cystic fibrosis "solution" has been repeatedly hyped by those who want us to believe that GM will bring a brave new world for us all (GENE THERAPY).

Claire This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
www.gmwatch.org / www.lobbywatch.org

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CONTENTS
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GENE THERAPY
THE AMERICAS
LOBBYWATCH
TECHNO-UTOPIANISM
EUROPE
ASIA
BIOFUELS
COMPANY NEWS
REGULATION
GATES FOUNDATION

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GENE THERAPY
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+ GENE THERAPY SAFETY IN QUESTION AGAIN
A research group led by scientists from Washington University and St Louis University has released a study showing that a GM virus used in human gene therapy trials causes liver cancer in mice.

The findings follow an announcement that a patient in Seattle died after being treated with the same virus. The treatment, using a virus called adeno-associated virus, is considered one of the most promising avenues for battling genetic diseases such as cystic fibrosis and muscular dystrophy.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8152

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THE AMERICAS
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+ CONDI RICE'S NEW ADVISOR IS GM PROMOTER
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has named an avid GM promoter, Dr Nina V. Fedoroff, to be her new science and technology advisor. Nina Fedoroff stands accused of dissembling in her promotion of GM. She has, for instance, made claims about "ancient genetic engineering" in an attempt to make out it's no different from traditional breeding techniques and therefore nothing to worry about. She has also misrepresented the research of Dr Arpad Pusztai.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8145

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LOBBYWATCH
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+ PRAKASH APOLOGIZES FOR LACK OF PROFANITY
The Des Moines Register has published a fawning article about C S Prakash and his role in creating the "Norman Borlaug rap" in praise of the man who launched the agrochemical-based "Green Revolution" in the third world.

The rap song ("Norman Borlaug, you may be_/ the greatest man in history._/ Using science and your brain_/ To stamp out hunger, woe and pain") was previously attributed to Prakash's then 11-year-old son Rohan. But from what Prakash Senior confides to his Des Moines Reg reporter chum P. Senior was the guiding hand in the project throughout.

Referring to well-established rap lyric traditions, Prakash tongue-in-cheekily apologizes for "any lack of profanity or misogyny in the Borlaug song". But lack of profanity or misogyny is the last thing that we at GM Watch associate with the Prakash rap project. After we featured the rap song in a GM Watch bulletin, Mini-Prak sent us an email that began, "If you want to insult me, i'm going to insult you fucking dick ass bit[c]h whor[e]..." (continues ad nauseam).

Profile of Borlaug: http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8147

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TECHNO-UTOPIANISM
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+ WALL STREET JOURNAL ON IRRI AND RICE
An article in the Wall Street Journal admits that the first Green Revolution was "a boom that now is at risk of going bust: Rice yields are flat-lining. Overproduction has exhausted the soil that once supported the larger crops. Water shortages abound. And the price of the world's most eaten food [rice] is rising steeply, up about 70% since 2001 ..."

Nevertheless, some believe that the so-called second Green Revolution, led by GM firms and the IRRI, is going to save us from the effects of the first by means of techno-fixes like flood-tolerant rice. GM Watch comment: This is a vicious spiral involving the adoption of ever more costly, complex and risky quasi-solutions to the (increasingly challenging) problems generated by our earlier misplaced interventions.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8156

+ FREEMAN DYSON'S TECHNO-MEGALOMANIA
From an article in Biopolitical Times: Not to be missed - Physicist Freeman Dyson's musings, in the July 19 issue of New York Review of Books, about an orgy of genetic manipulation to remake the natural world. Plants with black silicon leaves that absorb extra sunlight will provide energy too cheap to meter. Genetically engineered earthworms will imbibe the silicon trash, and in their off hours extract gold from seawater and put an end to rural poverty.

This could be written off as sub-par science fiction, where megalomania and planetary catastrophes are routine tropes, were it not for several all-too-real-world developments. One is that the technologies Dyson celebrates are indeed being developed at an extraordinary pace and are steadily being loosed into the environment by agribusiness and biotech companies and proposed for clinical trials by gene therapy researchers.

Another is that Dyson's rhetorical strategy is of a piece with that of these companies, researchers, and their public relations consultants: Claim that the technology is green and will end poverty and all human suffering, assign any clean-up problems to future generations, and dispense with critics by telling them to relax and enjoy the ride.

Dyson's techno-genetic triumphalism echoes the grandiosity of an earlier pet project of his. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, he was a lead scientist and public advocate for Project Orion, a program at General Atomics to develop interplanetary (and then interstellar) spacecraft powered by exploding a string of nuclear bombs ejected from the rear of the craft. The shock waves would push against a huge steel plate and accelerate the spaceship to something like 10% the speed of light. One unresolved problem was that the nuclear fallout from each launch was projected to cause cancers ...

Read on, and see Dyson's techno-euphoric imaginings at http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8154

+ TECHNO-UPOOPIA!
From the UK Guardian: In the interests of nutritional science, Mr Jack Tolley, a chemist in the department of civil engineering at Liverpool University, yesterday began to eat his own excreta. ... "The direct use of human excreta in the human diet could play a major role in solving the world's food problems," he said. ...

GM Watch comment: Heady claims for novel unproven technologies are nothing new. In the 18th century, following a visit to the Royal Society in London, Jonathan Swift satirized the RS in the section of Gulliver's Travels where Gulliver reports on his visit to the grand academy of Lagado on the flying island of Laputa (a near-anagram of utopia, la puta means "the whore" in Spanish).

Gulliver describes, "The arts wherein the professors employ themselves" in the academy. The projects include one aimed at extracting sunbeams from cucumbers, and another for making spiders spin naturally coloured silk for stockings.

Other projects include attempts to convert human excrement into food, breed sheep whose entire bodies are bald, and to develop a novel form of ploughing, using pigs and acorns, of which Gulliver reports:

"...upon experiment, they found the charge and trouble very great, and they had little or no crop. However it is not doubted, that this invention may be capable of great improvement."

Swift was also unsparing about the academicians' funding drive:

"[he] intreated me to give him Something as an Encouragement to Ingenuity, especially since this had been a very dear Season for Cucumbers. I made him a small Present, for my Lord had furnished me with Money on Purpose, because he knew their Practice of begging from all who go to see them." (Gulliver's Travels, 1726)
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8149

+ GM ORGANOPHOSPHATE-RESISTANT GOATS
Scientists have genetically modified goats to make a drug in their milk that protects against deadly nerve agents such as sarin and VX. These poisons are known collectively as organophosphates - a group of chemicals that also includes pesticides used in farming. Dr Solomon Langermann of biotech firm PharmAthene, which makes the drug, Protexia, said that it was more effective than the drugs atropine and 2-PAM currently carried by soldiers for protection against nerve agents.

"Those (older) drugs get cleared from the blood very rapidly. Even if the soldier were to survive, they would have very severe neurological damage," he said. "With Protexia, you would survive and be able to go back on the battlefield." Great!
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8150

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EUROPE
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+ GM FISHY ICE-CREAM GETS GO-AHEAD IN UK
Wall's has been given the go-ahead to use GM technology to make low-fat ice cream. The company will use an artificial version of a protein found in a deep-sea fish. The company believes that the appeal of low-fat ice cream outweighs any doubts the public has about GM technology. But the Soil Association commented: "Protein by-products generated by the fermentation of GM micro-organisms represent a major health risk."

The company had planned not to declare its use of the GM protein on product labels, arguing it would be enough to mention the process on its websites and customer care lines. But in a rare moment of public-mindedness, the government's Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes is forcing it to label.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8160

For the scientific evidence about the low-fat scam perpetrated on consumers, go to http://www.wddty.com and type "low-fat" into the search function.

+ NATIONAL CONSULTATION ON GM-FREE AGRICULTURE IN ITALY
In a democratic experiment organized by ITALIAEUROPA - LIBERI DA OGM (GM-free) Coalition, thousands of events and initiatives will take place across Italy from 15 September-15 November with the aim of allowing citizens to learn more about food and health. Citizens will have the chance to vote for authentic, good quality food that excludes GMOs. The initiative aims to collect 3 million votes in a referendum-like ballot.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8159

+ DECLARING IRELAND A GM-FREE ZONE
The Irish government's policy to declare Ireland a GM-free zone aims to prohibit the release of live GM seeds, crops, livestock, trees, insects, crustaceans and fish on the island. There is no plan to prohibit GM animal feed. The government is, however, encouraging farmers to phase out its use on a voluntary basis, in response to rapidly growing EU market demand for meat, poultry and dairy produce from livestock fed on certified non-GM feed.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8141

+ NO MARKET FOR GM FOOD IN EUROPE
In 2005, Greenpeace published the report, "No market for GM labelled food in Europe", which details a virtual shut-down of the EU market for GM-labelled food. Europe's top 30 retailers and top 30 food and drink producers had by then declared policies and non-GM commitments which revealed a massive international food and beverage industry rejection of GM produce. The combined total food and drink sales of the 49 companies with a stated non-GM policy in their main market or throughout the EU (27 retailers and 22 food and drink producers) amounted to 646 billion, more than 60% of the total 1,069 billion EU food and drink sales in 2005.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8141

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ASIA
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+ SUPREME COURT SUCCESS OVER GM TRIALS IN INDIA
There's been a further victory for Aruna Rodrigues and her co-petitioners in their legal challenge (Public Interest Litigation - PIL) to the astonishingly lax (some would say corrupt) regulation of GM field trials in India. No field trials should now be conducted until these and other issues are addressed:
* environmental, toxicity and allergenicity data relating to all crops being field tested must be made public
* contamination testing must be done for each trial
* there must be zero contamination from the tests, with testing protocols to be made public.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8162

+ INDIAN GOVT TO REVEAL DATA ON BT COTTON
As a result of Aruna Rodrigues' public interest lawsuit, the Indian government will have to place the toxicity and allergenicity data relating to Bt cotton in the public domain. The data will be placed on the website hosted by the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC).
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8163

+ ILLEGAL FIELD TRIALS IN INDIA - SCIENTIST
Prof T K Bose, a member of West Bengal's state agriculture commission, has alleged that Mayco (Monsanto's subsidiary) has conducted illegal field trials on Bt brinjal and Bt tomato without following biosafety measures. They were given permission only for trials on Bt rice and Bt okra (ladies finger). He demanded legal action against the company. West Bengal has yet to put in place any biosafety regulatory system. Field trials for GM rice, potato, mustard and tomato are in the pipeline.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8161
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8163

+ SPIN DOCTORS BENT ON DISTORTING BT COTTON FACTS
The GM industry has started a huge campaign on the so-called success of Bt cotton to bamboozle public opinion in the country, reports AP Coalition in Defence of Diversity. This PR campaign comes shortly after the success of the film 'A Disaster in Search of Success: Bt Cotton in Global South', created by peasant women from the Community Media Trust of Medak District, Andhra Pradesh, in exposing the realities of Bt cotton cultivation from South Africa, Indonesia, Thailand, Mali, and India.

The AP Coalition in Defence of Diversity says that Monsanto has been stung into producing 29 short films which it has hosted on its website -testimonies from manipulated farmers and industry friendly scientists. However, the AP Coalition in Defence of Diversity and the Deccan Development Society will soon come out with its own web videos exploring further the real experiences of farmer-victims of GM and the views of independent scientists who caution against the negative impacts of GMOs.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8153

+ BASELESS CLAIMS ON BT COTTON FROM INDUSTRY: ASSOCHAM REPORT
India's Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry (ASSOCHAM) has brought out a study which appears to claim that because the researchers found Bt cotton being cultivated more in villages with more developed services, that development could be attributed to Bt cotton cultivation!!! Centre for Sustainable Agriculture's response to the study is at
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8151

P.V. Satheesh, convenor of AP Coalition in Defence of Diversity commented, "For Monsanto and the ASSOCHAM, foreign direct investment is far more important than the lives of the farmers lost in the pursuit of Bt cotton that left a trail of Bt-infected toxicity in the soils and plants leading to livestock morbidity."

Releasing the findings of the APCDD's own survey, he said the Bt cotton farmers earned just nine per cent more, a paltry difference of Rs. 380 per acre between Bt and non-Bt and not "additional income of Rs. 7039 crore as claimed by ASSOCHAM." Similarly cultivating Bt cotton was more expensive as farmers have to spend more on pest control, and new diseases have arisen in the crop.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8163

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BIOFUELS
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+ AGROFUEL MORATORIUM CALL - URGENT
Helena Paul of Econexus reports:
Organisations and individuals around the world are extremely concerned about the way the European Union (EU) is rushing into agrofuels and the signals this sends to the rest of the world to race into agrofuel production.

The impacts are already serious worldwide. Millions of hectares are being designated for agrofuel production and export in Africa, Asia and South America. Indigenous peoples and local communities are being expelled from their land or forced into agrofuel production, forests and biodiversity are being destroyed.

In many places no impact assessment or consultations have been carried out; land is simply being handed over to European companies to exploit for export to Europe. In Africa, for example, land on which pastoralists depend and which only they can manage is being treated as unused or degraded land suitable for agrofuel production. In other countries, companies are taking over the most fertile, well watered land for agrofuels and driving food production to dry, marginal lands.

Please sign up to the call for an immediate moratorium on EU incentives for agrofuels, EU imports of agrofuels and EU agroenergy monocultures:
http://www.econexus.info/agrofuel_moratorium_call.html
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8158

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COMPANY NEWS
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+ BIOTECH FOOD LACKS INVESTORS
Firms that genetically engineer animals to produce (supposedly) non-polluting manure and essential fatty acid-filled bacon can't get investment, says an article in the New York Times. This is partly because the US FDA hasn't spelt out the rules for approving the products of such animals, says the article. But there's another problem that the FDA can't solve: "some experts caution that ... consumers would shun foods from transgenic animals ..."
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8155

+ MONSANTO'S LATEST ACQUISITION SETTLES BRIBERY CHARGES
In 2005 Monsanto was forced to pay $1.5 million in fines after owning up to spending more than $700,000 on bribes in Indonesia to get its Bt cotton accepted. Now Monsanto's recent acquisition, Delta & Pine, and a subsidiary have agreed to pay $300,000 to settle charges of bribing Turkish officials, the US Securities and Exchange Commission said.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8143

+ MORE ABOUT MONSANTO'S DEFEATED PATENTS
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8146

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REGULATION
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+ FIRMS TAKE ON DO-IT-YOURSELF REGULATING
Biotech crop makers said they are increasing self-regulation to avoid the accidental spread of genetic material. These incidents can cost companies access to foreign markets, consumer confidence and big legal bills. The Biotechnology Industry Organization, a Washington-based trade group, will design and administer the program, dubbed "Excellence Through Stewardship." The acid test for this programme, comments the St Louis Post-Dispatch, will be acceptance by stakeholders, such as venture funds that can't afford to risk investments in firms that might implode by having a technology "leak".
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8148

+ WHEN REGULATORS BECOME ENABLERS: INSIDE BUSH'S FDA
From an article for CounterPunch:
Americans need to stop and consider how many consumers will be killed and injured by dangerous drugs by the time George Bush heads back to Texas at the end of his Presidency, as a direct result of his allowing the interests of the pharmaceutical industry to take control of the FDA.

For nearly 70 years, the common-law tort systems in the individual states have provided a remedy for citizens injured by prescription drugs. However, in one of the most blatant paybacks for political contributions in US history, in January 2006, Bush-appointed officials at the FDA announced that the agency's approval of a drug and its labeling acts to preempt product liability lawsuits filed by patients against the pharmaceutical giants.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8148

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GATES FOUNDATION
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+ PHILANTHROPY GATES-STYLE
The world's biggest philanthropic foundation is reaping huge profits investing in companies responsible for causing the problems it tries to solve; its grant-giving is also doing more harm than good in undermining health and agricultural systems, distorting national and global priorities, and preventing the necessary paradigm change that could help secure the future of the planet, says an article for ISIS at http://www.i-sis.org.uk/PhilanthropyGatesStyle.php

An article for the Los Angeles Times reports: "... The Times found that the Gates Foundation has holdings in many companies that have failed tests of social responsibility because of environmental lapses, employment discrimination, disregard for worker rights, or unethical practices."

The Gates Foundation has spent at least US$75 million on biotech projects so far, many of which appear to involve genetic engineering. These include not only GM crops but GM mosquitoes, supposedly designed to fight malaria and dengue fever but an unproven approach.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8157