28/June/21

 

Peter Daszak, who orchestrated the influential statement in the Lancet which effectively branded the lab leak hypothesis a conspiracy theory, has finally been forced to take a step back. Last September GMWatch reported the outrage of scientists over Daszak’s appointment as lead investigator into the origins of the pandemic for the Lancet COVID-19 Commission. Now Daszak has been “recused from Commission work on the origins of the pandemic”. A recusal describes the way that judges, for example, excuse themselves from presiding over cases due to potential conflicts of interest or lack of impartiality. It seems that Daszak’s leadership role in the Lancet Commission’s task force has finally been recognised as fatal to its credibility. GMWatch

 

 

Science funding body the BBSRC spent hundreds of thousands of pounds of British taxpayers' money on a failed project to genetically engineer wheat to enhance photosynthesis and thus increase yield. For the project, which ran from 2016 to 2019, the BBSRC gave £695,933 of public money to researchers at the University of Essex led by Professor Christine Raines. The field trial part of the project was carried out at Rothamsted Research. The GM crop appeared to work in the greenhouse, but in common with countless other experimental GM crops, it failed in the field. This fact is buried on a little known UK government website which includes a page about the project. GMWatch

 

 

Commenting on our story, "£695,933 of taxpayer money went to failed GM wheat project", E. Ann Clark, Associate Professor (retired), Plant Agriculture, University of Guelph, Canada, said: "Let's be honest. The one and only reason these people, corporations, and governments are funding this sorry use of [lab] bench space is because it may yield a proprietary product. GMWatch

 

 

Testbiotech has published a new report showing the increasing number of patent applications being filed and granted in Europe on so-called gene scissors (new genetic engineering, New GE). The patent landscape is dominated by the Corteva group, which resulted from a merger of Dow AgroSciences and DuPont/Pioneer. Apart from its own patents, Corteva controls access to many other patents needed by breeders who want to use CRISPR/Cas technology. This development strongly contradicts repeatedly arguments stating that CRISPR/Cas technology is cheap and therefore more accessible for smaller- and medium-sized breeding companies. GMWatch

 

 

Research in Spain and Switzerland has revealed that mixed cultures produce a much higher yield than monocultures in arable farming. Compared to monoculture farming, even a mixture of two species increased yield by 3 percent in Spain and 21 percent in Switzerland. Where the researchers had sown four species alongside each other, the yield increase was as high as 13 and 44 percent in Spain and Switzerland respectively. GMWatch