Tag: CRISPR
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SynBio, Gene Editing and Other New Stuff: Same Concerns, Supersized
by Mary Lou McDonald (Safe Food Matters) New words like “synthetic biology”, “GMOs 2.0”, “CRISPR”, and “new biology” are being heard. And new compounds are in our fragrances, flavourings, cosmetics and foods. The new words are for new techniques of genetic engineering. What are the techniques and their products, and should we be concerned? New […]
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Stop industry writing the rules on GM – Australia action
Documents revealed under Freedom of Information laws show that the Office of the Gene Technology Regulator (OGTR) has been colluding with industry for years to deregulate a range of new genetic modification (GM) techniques. And now the rest of us have just 6 weeks to make the case why they should be regulated! If the […]
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Gene Editing and Seed Stealing
by Chee Yoke Ling and Edward Hammond (Project Syndicate) AUSTIN, TEXAS – Four hundred years ago, John Rolfe used tobacco seeds pilfered from the West Indies to develop Virginia’s first profitable export, undermining the tobacco trade of Spain’s Caribbean colonies. More than 200 years later, another Briton, Henry Wickham, took seeds for a rubber-bearing tree […]
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A Collision Course with Unintended Consequences
by Melody Meyer (Organic Matters) In an early morning jaunt to Sacramento last week my car was rear ended. I serve on the California Organic Products Advisory Committee (who by the way are looking for new members), and was on my way to attend a subcommittee meeting when boom—a fine young man rammed me in […]
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Gene Drives: Solution or Problem? Sacred or Synthetic?
Events during IUCN World Conservation Congress September 1-10, 2016 in Oahu, Hawai’i Gene drives are a new biotechnology development that allows humans the unprecedented capability to profoundly alter or even drive to extinction entire populations or even whole species of organisms. Are they a valued tool for conservation or are they more likely to fail, […]
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Reckless Driving: Gene drives and the end of nature
This is a new briefing from the Civil Society Working Group on Gene Drives which includes Biofuelwatch, Econexus, ETC Group, Friends of the Earth US, Hawai’i SEED and Navdanya. It can be downloaded as a pdf here (en español). Imagine that by releasing a single fly into the wild you could genetically alter all the […]
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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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New biohacking factsheet from Friends of the Earth Australia
An increasing number of people – many with no formal biological training – are genetically engineering common microbes in community labs and kitchens, posing potentially serious risks to the environment and human health and raising serious ethical questions. These individuals regard the living world as suitable for hacking, like the entirely artificial digital world. They […]
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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 […]