23/August/22

 

US President Joe Biden has signed into law his tax, health and climate bill, called the Inflation Reduction Act. The new law includes a $369 billion investment in climate and energy policies, $64 billion to extend a policy under the Affordable Care Act to reduce health insurance costs, and a 15% corporate minimum tax aimed at companies that earn more than $1 billion a year. Some have hailed the bill as the greatest US investment to date addressing the climate crisis. But Center for Food Safety's executive director Andrew Kimbrell said that not only will it fail to mitigate the catastrophic effects of industrial agriculture on the climate, but it allocates potentially billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies to the cultivation of GM crops. GMWatch

 

 

Cancer has taken an unrelenting toll on 72-year-old Mike Langford. After being diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) in 2007 he suffered through five recurrences despite multiple rounds of chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant. New tests show the cancer is back. Langford’s is just one of a long list of upcoming trials complicating Bayer’s efforts to escape the costly, ongoing litigation over the health effects of Roundup herbicide. As part of the sweeping, nationwide legal battle that has so far run seven years, approximately 140,000 plaintiffs have alleged they developed NHL from exposure to Roundup, and should have been warned of the risk. One trial is underway now in Monsanto’s former hometown of St Louis, Missouri, while another in Missouri is scheduled to start in October and yet another trial is set in Hawaii for November. Several others are on court calendars in Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida and elsewhere well into 2023. UnSpun

 

 

A study by Florida Atlantic University and Nova Southeastern University is the first to link the use of the herbicide Roundup, a widely used weedkiller, to convulsions in animals. Results published in Scientific Reports showed that glyphosate and Roundup increased seizure-like behaviour in soil-dwelling roundworms and provides evidence that glyphosate targets GABA-A receptors. These communication points are essential for locomotion and are heavily involved in regulating sleep and mood in humans. What sets this research apart is that it was done at significantly lower levels than recommended by the EPA and those used in past studies. "The concentration listed for best results on the Roundup Super Concentrate label is 0.98 percent glyphosate, which is about 5 tablespoons of Roundup in 1 gallon of water," said project lead Akshay S. Naraine. "A significant finding from our study reveals that just 0.002 percent glyphosate, a difference of about 300 times less herbicide than the lowest concentration recommended for consumer use, had concerning effects on the nervous system." Phys.org

 

 

According to a survey by the UK Food Standards Agency (FSA), 59% of people would not be willing to try lab-grown meat. And respondents reported greater awareness and knowledge of genetically modified (GM) food than gene-edited or genome-edited food [GMW: Gene editing is a form of genetic modification]. Forty-two per cent have never heard of gene-edited food and 9% have never heard of GM food. UK FSA

 

 

Scientists in Australia and the US have launched a multimillion-dollar project to bring back the thylacine or Tasmanian tiger, a marsupial that died out in the 1930s, and reintroduce it to its native Tasmania. The announcement has received a mixed response from conservation biologists. Corey Bradshaw, a professor in global ecology at Flinders University, believed it was unlikely to be successful: "Even if you can do it [in the lab] - and I have my doubts about that - how do you create the thousands of individuals of sufficient genetic variation you need to create a healthy population?” The Guardian

 

 

In 2021, the Texas-based biotechnology company Colossal announced their plans to use genetic engineering to recreate the woolly mammoth and return it to the Arctic tundra, its original habitat. Mammoths aren’t the only de-extinction target of Colossal — they recently teamed up with scientists in Australia for the plan to bring back the Tasmanian tiger, also known as the thylacine. But conservationists point out that resources could be better spent conserving species currently alive at a time when more than 1 million species are at risk of going extinct, the majority due to human civilisation. “Any sober look at the situation, and you see that huge amounts of money are being diverted away from conservation programs,” said Faysal Bibi, a paleontologist at the Museum of Natural History in Berlin. DT Next

 

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