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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

Researchers Are Substantially Undercounting Gene-Editing Errors, Concludes a New Paper

Feb 25, 2020 |

Published today (Tues Feb 25th, 2020) in Independent Science News: Researchers Are Substantially Undercounting Gene-Editing Errors, Concludes a New Paper, written by Jonathan Latham, PhD.
Synopsis: New research on mice has found that complex and aberrant DNA insertions are common results of gene-editing. The findings applied across multiple experiments on independent edits from different genome locations. Even more notable, however, these complex genetic rearrangements at the edit site were only rarely detected by standard analytical methods. The authors called this finding “disturbing”. The research suggests, therefore, that not only is gene-editing more error-prone than thought, but that many researchers are falsely claiming to have obtained precise edits.
Read the full article at:

https://www.independentsciencenews.org/news/researchers-are-substantially-undercounting-editing-errors/

There is now a substantial collection of scientific papers describing various forms of commonplace gene-editing errors. GM Watch has compiled a reference list of these papers (each with a summary of their import) here:https://gmwatch.org/en/news/latest-news/19223

The imprecision of gene-editing has important implications for biosafety. These collected papers indicate that the media, biotechnologists, policy makers and regulators have underestimated the risks arising from gene-edited GMOs created for use in agriculture, as well as risks arising from gene-editing’s proposed environmental and clinical uses.

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We Need to Connect the 2019-nCoV Coronavirus to Agriculture, by Rob Wallace, PhD

Feb 19, 2020 |

Published Monday, February 17, 2020 by Independent Science News: We Need to Connect the 2019-nCoV Coronavirus to Agriculture, written by Rob Wallace, PhD.

Synopsis: As Wallace describes, “this century we’ve already trainspotted novel strains of African swine fever, Campylobacter, Cryptosporidium, Cyclospora, Ebola, E. coli O157:H7, foot-and-mouth disease, hepatitis E, Listeria, Nipah virus, Q fever, Salmonella, Vibrio, Yersinia, Zika, and a variety of novel influenza A variants, including H1N1 (2009), H1N2v, H3N2v, H5N1, H5N2, H5Nx, H6N1, H7N1, H7N3, H7N7, H7N9, and H9N2.”

Yet each time governments did nothing “real” to prevent the arrival of the next potential pandemic. Nothing, that is, to identify the roots of how and why these pathogens arise and spread, and uproot them. Instead, as this would mean tackling industrial agriculture and large corporations, “authorities spent a sigh of relief upon each ones reversal, and immediately took the next roll of the epidemiological dice, risking snake eyes of maximum virulence and transmissibility.”

Read the full article on Independent Science News: We Need to Connect the 2019-nCoV Coronavirus to Agriculture

Rob Wallace, PhD is the author of: Big Farms Make Big Flu “In Big Farms Make Big Flu, a collection of dispatches by turns harrowing and thought-provoking, Wallace tracks the ways influenza and other pathogens emerge from an agriculture controlled by multinational corporations…..Big Farms Make Big Flu integrates the political economies of disease and science to derive a new understanding of the evolution of infections. ” He also offers solutions.

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Extensive Chemical Safety Fraud Uncovered at German Testing Laboratory by Jonathan Latham

Feb 14, 2020 |

Published today (February 13th, 2020) by Independent Science News: Extensive Chemical Safety Fraud Uncovered at German Testing Laboratory, written by Jonathan Latham, PhD.
Synopsis: The German company LPT Hamburg is prominent in the business of animal testing for the pesticide and pharmaceutical industries. Following an initial investigation by the German magazine FAKT,
which featured filming by an undercover employee, five former employees of LPT Hamburg have come forward. The stories told by these employees are of routine fraud intended to show that harmful compounds were, in fact, safe. One of the compounds tested by LPT Hamburg was glyphosate. Read the full story at: https://www.independentsciencenews.org/news/extensive-chemical-safety-fraud-uncovered-at-german-testing-laboratory/
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Another Disease Outbreak Threatens U.S. Pigs, But Big Ag Would Rather Talk About Bacon Prices by Martha Rosenberg

Feb 13, 2020 |

Published Monday, January 20th, 2020, by Independent Science News: Another Disease Outbreak Threatens U.S. Pigs, But Big Ag Would Rather Talk About Bacon Prices. Article written by Martha Rosenberg
Synopsis: The latest food animal pandemic is African swine fever (ASF), caused by the African swine fever virus (ASFV). This disease in 2019 killed one-fourth of the world’s pigs, including half of all China’s factory farm pigs. So far, mainstream media’s coverage of ASF has skirted questions about the pandemic disease potential of intensive animal agriculture. Read the full story at: https://www.independentsciencenews.org/health/another-disease-outbreak-threatens-u-s-pigs-but-big-ag-would-rather-talk-about-bacon-prices/
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The Battle for the Future of Food in Africa By Million Belay and Timothy Wise

Dec 23, 2019 |

Published Thursday Nov 7th, 2019 by Independent Science News:

By Million Belay and Timothy Wise

Synopsis: Policies such as outlawing the saving and sharing of seeds, strongly promoted by the Gates Foundation, are intended to open Africa to multinational seed companies in the name of modernization. But they undermine climate resilience and food security for Africa’s small-scale farmers.

The authors:

Million Belay is the coordinator of the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa.

Timothy A. Wise directs the Land and Food Rights Program at the U.S.-based Small Planet Institute and is a Senior Researcher at Tufts University’s Global Development and Environment Institute. Wise is the author of Eating Tomorrow: Agribusiness, Family Farmers, and the Battle for the Future of Food (The New Press).

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Interview With Mackenzie Feldman of Herbicide-Free Campus

Nov 6, 2019 |

Published today (Mon. Nov 4th, 2019) by Independent Science News:
Synopsis: Mackenzie Feldman, youthful Executive Director of Herbicide-Free Campus, has successfully persuaded University of California campuses to end use of the herbicide glyphosate. Her campaign is now spreading to other campuses. Read the full interview to find out how she did it: https://www.independentsciencenews.org/health/interview-with-mackenzie-feldman-of-herbicide-free-campus/
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