“Our mission is to provide the highest quality scientific information and analysis to enable a healthy food system and a healthy world”
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
The War Over Mangoes
Published on Monday, March 13 by Independent Science News: “The War Over Mangoes,” written by Meredith Rector
Synopsis: Narco-agriculture is the taking over of farming for the purpose of smuggling and money laundering. A recent victim is the mango farming sector in Oaxaco, Mexico, where drug cartels have taken advantage of the leading position of Oaxaca in the world mango trade. Farmers and the workers are now suffering as a consequence.
To read the complete story go to: https://www.independentsciencenews.org/environment/the-war-over-mangoes/
Gene Drives: A Scientific Case for a Complete and Perpetual Ban
Published onMon Feb 13, 2017 on Independent Science News: “Gene Drives: A Scientific Case for a Complete and Perpetual Ban” was written by Jonathan Latham, PhD.
Synopsis: At what point do the products of a technology become sufficiently complex, uncertain, or unmanageable as to be unregulatable? This question is surprisingly rarely discussed given that it is key to successful and safe technological development. This article examines and compares the properties of indisputably successfully regulated systems, such as airplanes, with less successful examples of government regulation and applies these lessons to gene drives.
Read the full article at: Gene Drives: A Scientific Case for a Complete and Perpetual Ban
The article is also printed in GeneWatch Magazine at https://issuu.com/genewatchmagazine/docs/genewatch_30-1
Genetics Is Giving Way to a New Science of Life
Published on Monday Feb 6, 2017 by Independent Science News: “Genetics Is Giving Way to a New Science of Life” was written by Jonathan Latham, PhD.
https://www.independentsciencenews.org/health/genetics-is-giving-way-to-a-new-science-of-life/
Synopsis: “Genes…run everything in our bodies” states the website of the US National Institutes of Health. This view is genetic determinism. It is the idea that DNA is a master molecule that controls living organisms and it has been the conceptual foundation of biology for over 100 years. However, exactly twenty years ago, Prof Richard Strohman, of UC Berkeley, predicted of genetic determinism that “this paradigm has little power and must eventually fail” (in Nature Biotechnology 15: 194-200, 1997).
That day of failure has now arrived. read more…
Industrial Production of Poultry Gives Rise to Deadly Strains of Bird Flu H5Nx
Published on Monday Jan 30, 2017, by Independent Science News: “Industrial Production of Poultry Gives Rise to Deadly Strains of Bird Flu H5Nx” was written by Rob Wallace, PhD. The article can be read at: https://www.independentsciencenews.org/health/industrial-production-of-poultry-gives-rise-to-deadly-strains-of-bird-flu-h5nx/
Synopsis: Multiple deadly new strains of H5N bird flu are successively infecting poultry farms across the globe. These pathogens are killing millions of farmed birds and threaten human outbreaks. Thanks to industry-funded research, blame is usually placed on wild bird populations and climate change. According to new research, however, the real culprit is escaping that judgment. It is factory farm conditions such as cramped housing, genetic uniformity, and the rapid cycling of birds.
Rob Wallace is an epidemiologist and animal health expert.
Read the full article at: Industrial Production of Poultry Gives Rise to Deadly Strains of Bird Flu H5Nx
There’s Nothing Parochial About the Issue of GMO Food Labeling
Published on Jan 24, 2017 on Independent Science News: “There’s Nothing Parochial About the Issue of GMO Food Labeling,” a new article by Jonathan Latham, PhD.
Synopsis: Last week, Michael Pollan, Olivier de Schutter, Mark Bittman and Ricardo Salvador called GMO labeling “parochial”. They are mistaken. GMOs are the leading edge of agribusiness strategy in intellectual, financial, and legal senses. They have enabled huge profits and leveraged the concentration of the global seed supply, while at the same time boosting sales of herbicides and pesticides. Labeling, on the other hand, is a mechanism for introducing democracy and the protection of consumer rights, possibilities that are everywhere in short supply. It should not be dismissed or diminished.
Go to There’s Nothing Parochial About the Issue of GMO Food Labeling to read the full article.
Latest Fracking Threats to Agriculture and Soil Quality
Unconventional gas and oil extraction (fracking) expose farmers, livestock and consumers to multiple hazards. Two new publications collect scientific research and other documented reports on the harmful impacts of fracking on rural communities, agriculture and food systems.
On November 17, The Concerned Health Professionals of New York published the 4th edition of the Compendium of scientific, medical and media findings demonstrating risks and harms of fracking (unconventional gas and oil extraction). Like the first edition in 2014, the updated compendium is organized by key topics and written to be intelligible to “public officials, researchers, journalists and the public at large”. It is fully referenced and includes summaries of scientific and medical literature, government and industry reports, and journalistic investigations that document fracking’s harmful impacts. read more…
Exposing the Toxic Secrets of Corporations and Regulators
Independent Science News
- Global Civil Society: The Dire Consequences of Secretive Biotech Regulation February 25, 2025
- In Testimony, Robert Garry Declines To Rule Out That Researchers Brought Ebola To West Africa In 2014 January 25, 2025
- The Future of the Lab Leak Theory March 17, 2024
- The American Chestnut Foundation Bails as GE Chestnut Develops Growth and Fertility Problems and Fails to Resist the Blight December 15, 2023
- Transgenic Rice Once Again Proposed as Solution to Bacterial Blight Outbreaks, This Time in Africa September 14, 2023
- The Great Raccoon Dog Mystery June 29, 2023
- Children from Gamete-like Cells: Dishing up a Eugenic Future June 19, 2023
- Did West Africa’s Ebola Outbreak of 2014 Have a Lab Origin? October 25, 2022
- Fauci’s COVID Origin SWAT Team Versus the Mojiang Miner Passage Theory May 23, 2022
- Delete, Deny, and Destroy: Chinese and Western Strategies To Erase COVID’s Origin Are Being Exposed By Independent Research April 21, 2022