29/June/21

 

In a letter to the editor of the Financial Times, Dr Michael Antoniou critiques an article by Camilla Cavendish titled, “We must overcome the fear of genetic engineering in our food”. He rejects Cavendish's attempt to justify deregulation of GM foods on the basis of widespread public acceptance of GM medicines, including some COVID vaccines. He writes that such deregulation would endanger public health. Financial Times

 

 

On July 1, the New South Wales government will lift a ban on GM crops after an 18-year moratorium. It will mean GM crops can now be grown in every Australian state except Tasmania. Opponents of the move say GM crops are a potential threat to the environment and human health. Phys.org

 

 

The US Department of Agriculture, responding to a complaint by the Environmental Working Group, is confirming that a popular brand of organic chickpeas was contaminated with the cancer-causing weedkiller glyphosate. EWG

 

 

China emulated US techniques to construct novel coronaviruses in unsafe conditions. The US National Institutes of Heath (NIH), in a potentially fateful decision, funded gain-of-function work on viruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), which soon used its own technology to make coronavirus chimeras. The research was similar to work done in the US by WIV collaborator, the virologist Ralph Baric. But there was a key difference that significantly shifted the risk calculation. The Chinese work, led by Shi Zhengli, was carried out at biosafety level 2 (BSL-2), a much lower tier than Baric’s BSL-3+. Now Baric has joined 17 other scientists in a letter in the journal Science calling for a thorough investigation of his onetime collaborator’s lab and its practices. He wants to know what barriers were in place to keep a pathogen from escaping. MIT Technology Review

 

 

Alina Chan, the whistleblowing scientist who advanced the lab leak theory of SARS-CoV-2, is profiled in an article by Antonio Regalado. [GMW: We disagree with the way Regalado dismisses the other internet sleuths who have worked to support the credibility of the lab leak theory – see this – but the article nevertheless makes valuable points.] MIT Technology Review