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The Bioscience Resource Project provides scientific and intellectual resources for a healthy future. It publishes Independent Science News, a media service devoted to food and agriculture, and their impacts on health and the environment. It also offers resources for scientists and educators and internships and training for students. Through its innovative scientific journalism and original biosafety review articles, the project provides unique and revealing perspectives on issues that are fundamental to the survival of people and the planet. The project does not accept advertising or corporate funding and is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization. It is completely dependent on individual donations.We invite you to join the Project as a contributor or a donor.

Bioscience Resource Project News and Views

In Testimony, Robert Garry Declines To Rule Out That Researchers Brought Ebola To West Africa In 2014

Jan 27, 2025 |

Published today (Monday 27th January, 2025) by Independent Science News: In Testimony, Robert Garry Declines To Rule Out That Researchers Brought Ebola To West Africa In 2014 by Jonathan Latham, PhD.
Synopsis: Back in June 2024 the Senate committee on the Origin of COVID-19 made its first and so far only investigative foray into the origin of the Ebola outbreak that ravaged West Africa in 2014. In its June hearing committee members questioned Prof. Bob Garry of Tulane University about his authorship of the infamous Proximal Origins paper on COVID-19; but afterwards they also submitted written questions. Most of these latter concern the Ebola 2014 outbreak which has attracted concern since it occurred far from the normal endemic range of Ebola virus, which is Central Africa. Bob Garry is intimately connected to that outbreak through his presidency of the Viral Hemorrhagic Fever Consortium (VHFC), a US non-profit with a research facility in Kenema, Sierra Leone. Research at Kenema is the primary suspect for being the ultimate source of the 2014 Ebola outbreak, and now Garry’s answers have been released as part of the conclusions of the committee. What those answers do is to suggest how the spillover might have happened. He points the finger at another organisation that worked at Kenema in 2013 and 2014. It is the company Metabiota, whose employees I can reveal were sampling for human pathogenic viruses in Central Africa shortly before the outbreak.
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The Future of the Lab Leak Theory

Jan 27, 2025 |

Published on Sunday, 17th March, 2024 by Independent Science News: The Future of the Lab Leak Theory
by Jonathan Latham, PhD and Allison Wilson, PhD.
Synposis: Recent developments in the lab leak theory of COVID19’s origins have been very significant. New documents revealed by the organisation US Right To Know under FOIA legislation have added specific evidential flesh to the suggestion that work was underway to assemble viruses similar to SARS-CoV-2. The new specifics include the purchase of particular DNA cutting enzymes whose use had previously only been inferred by sequence analysis of SARS-CoV-2 as likely signatures of viral genetic engineering. But the new FOIA evidence, though damning in suggesting basic manipulation and a lab escape, collectively explains only a fraction of the SARS-CoV-2 genome. Where did the rest come from? Why should we care? In this article, originally posted as a thread of tweets (on Twitter/X), we highlight new evidence showing that, before appearing in Wuhan, SARS-CoV-2 developed features that required substantial evolution after exiting its bat reservoir host. The evolutionary pathway needed for this can be inferred and it is incompatible with any standard or obvious zoonotic process involving an intermediate host. Key features of SARS-CoV-2, in short, are difficult to reconcile either with genetic engineering or a zoonosis. The simple explanation for them is selection and evolution in immunocompromised human lungs, presumably one of the Mojiang miners. Most likely therefore, SARS-CoV-2 was, simultaneously, a lab leak, a reverse engineered virus, and an evolutionary product of a miner lung, since these theories are compatible with each other and, in fact, complementary.
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The American Chestnut Foundation Bails as GE Chestnut Develops Growth and Fertility Problems and Fails to Resist the Blight

Dec 19, 2023 |

was written by Anne Petermann of the Global Justice Ecology Project.
Synopsis: On December 8th, 2023, The American Chestnut Foundation (TACF) revealed it was withdrawing its support for the Darling 58 GE blight-resistant chestnut (D58). The Darling 58 Chestnut is a genetically engineered tree variety being developed by the State University of New York Forestry School (SUNY-ESF). It is intended to resist the chestnut blight fungus that almost eradicated the American Chestnut. Currently, the D58 chestnut is the subject of a petition for deregulation by USDA. TACF is withdrawing its support because the GE trees given to them by SUNY-ESF were not Darling 58 but Darling 54, a different GE event, but primarily because the trees they were given failed to thrive even in the absence of the blight. According to documentation on the TACF website the GE trees were stunted, often chlorotic (yellow), and often developed brown leaves. Moreover, the GE chestnuts did not effectively resist the blight fungus. The onus is now on SUNY-ESF to withdraw the GE Chestnut petition or for USDA to reject it, as the introduction of genetically inferior GE trees represents a danger to surviving non-GE Chestnuts.
Learn more by reading the complete article at:
 
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Transgenic Rice Once Again Proposed as Solution to Bacterial Blight Outbreaks, This Time in Africa

Dec 15, 2023 |

Published on Thursday Sept 14th, 2023 in Independent Science News: Transgenic Rice Once Again Proposed as Solution to Bacterial Blight Outbreaks, This Time in Africa by GRAIN
SYNOPSIS: Gates Foundation-funded researchers are touting a new variety of transgenic rice as the solution to a bacterial blight threatening rice growers in Tanzania. The disease is new to Africa, at least in this form, and it threatens rice across the continent. The ironies of this situation are many. The blight probably came from China via a Chinese agribusiness that was offering ‘improved’ rice seeds. Meanwhile, solutions to bacterial blights already exist in the form of sustainable agroecology practices but these are being ignored.

(GRAIN is a small international non-profit organisation that works to support small farmers and social movements in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems).

READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT:

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The Great Raccoon Dog Mystery by Jonathan Latham

Dec 15, 2023 |

Published on Thursday, 29th June, 2023, by Independent Science News: The Great Raccoon Dog Mystery by Jonathan Latham, PhD

Synopsis by Jonathan Latham: This April and May I set off on a European tour of virology conferences that are, once more being held in person. I had important questions about the origin of SARS-CoV-2 and the COVID19 pandemic that could only be asked live and in person. I also planned to find out more about the latest research, assess the future of the origin controversy, and test the opinions of ordinary virologists about the origin itself. Is there, indeed, a scientific consensus? It would be a tour of the COVID origin front line. I returned with a rich haul of insights and answers. But what I didn’t expect was that merely my questions would set off a chain of events and revelations that saw me spied on, stolen from, and censored, by the scientific organisers of the third and final conference. This reaction helped validate the case that there is a fatal flaw in the Huanan Market Theory and a campaign to cover it up by scientists previously not known to be involved.

Read the entire article at:

https://www.independentsciencenews.org/commentaries/the-great-raccoon-dog-mystery/

 

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Children from Gamete-like Cells: Dishing up a Eugenic Future

Dec 15, 2023 |

Published in Independent Science News on Tuesday June 20th, 2023: Children from Gamete-like Cells: Dishing up a Eugenic Future by Stuart Newman and Tina Stevens.

Synopsis: In April, 2023, the National Academy of Sciences held a three day workshop titled “In Vitro Derived Human Gametes as Reproductive Technology: Scientific, Ethical, and Regulatory Implications”. Stuart Newman is a Professor of Cell Biology & Anatomy at New York Medical College, Valhalla, New York, and Tina Stevens Tina Stevens is Lecturer Emerita, Department of History, San Francisco State University and Director, Alliance for Humane Biotechnology. In this article the authors provide a critique of the workshop and the technology itself. They also identify the sometimes surprising individuals and institutions who are smoothing the path towards industrialised gamete production and fertilisation. These developments are happening regardless of safety and other concerns, say the authors, in particular the eugenic aspects of overtly controlled fertilisation.
Read the entire article at:

https://www.independentsciencenews.org/commentaries/children-from-gamete-like-cells-dishing-up-a-eugenic-future/

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(H)arnessing the positive transformative potential for innovation in any area is not about optimizing some single self-evidently progressive trajectory in a 'race to the future.' Instead it is about collaboratively exploring diverse and uncertain pathways -- in ways that deliberately balance the spurious effects of incumbant power. In other words, what are needed are more realistic, rational and vibrant 'innovation democracies.'

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How the Evolution of Novel COVID-19 Variants Validates the Mojiang Miners Passage theory.

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