An application for the experimental release of salmon obtained from new GM techniques was submitted in Norway in April 2023. CRISPR/Cas was used in the salmon to switch off the genes responsible for the development of the reproductive organs. The intention was to use the sterile salmon for fattening in aquaculture. A patent application has already been filed. The fish would be released into enclosures in the sea which are surrounded by nets. The genetically engineered fish would supposedly be advantageous to fish farming. One particular aim was to reduce the risk of the salmon spreading in the environment because of its sterility. However, the Norwegian Scientific Committee for Food and Environment (VKM) came to a negative conclusion, as it found there were too many uncertainties in the evaluation of environmental risks. The VKM said that it had not been demonstrated that all the GM fish were actually sterile. This is due to a lack of precision in new GM techniques, which resulted in a considerable number of genetic differences between the CRISPR salmon with regard to their altered genes. Testbiotech

 

 

Bill Gates isn’t interested in empowering the poor; he’s interested in imposing his solutions, writes Tim Schwab, author of a new book, The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire. Following the money from the Gates Foundation confirms this. Nearly 90 percent of the foundation’s charitable dollars go to organisations located in wealthy nations, not the poor countries he claims to serve. Never mind that the Gates Foundation’s website is inundated with the images of smiling poor people of colour; in practice, the Gates model is funding white-collared bodies in the Global North to fix those wearing dashikis, burqas, saris, and kangas in the Global South. A growing group of Gates’s intended beneficiaries today criticise him as doing more harm than good, and some have explicitly asked him to stop helping. “Bill Gates should stop telling Africans what kind of agriculture Africans need", noted the headline of an op-ed in Scientific American, authored by Million Belay and Bridget Mugambe from the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa. From farmer organisations in sub-Saharan Africa to public health experts around the globe to public school teachers in the United States, critics cite the high opportunity costs of Gates’s charitable crusades and the vast collateral damage they leave behind. The Nation

 

 

Javier Milei is the new elected president of Argentina – a result that brings much uncertainty for Argentina’s science community. Milei and other members of his party, La Libertad Avanza (Liberty Advances), have pledged to shut down or privatise the country’s main science agency, the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), as well as to eliminate the ministries of health, science and the environment. CONICET, which provides funding to about 12,000 researchers across 300 Argentinian institutions, is one of the most prominent science institutions in Latin America. Ahead of the election, the directors of CONICET’s 16 research centres said in a joint statement that “it is not by cancelling the State that a better country will be achieved”. Many scientists in the country supported rival candidate Sergio Massa, or called for others not to vote for Milei. They also organised demonstrations against Milei. “Based on the promises and declarations made during the presidential campaign, the situation now appears extremely worrying,” said Sandra Díaz, an environmental researcher at the National University of Córdoba’s Multidisciplinary Institute of Plant Biology, which receives funding from CONICET. [GMW: These are serious developments. Some CONICET scientists have done excellent work revealing the harms of the GM soy/pesticides model of agriculture in Argentina. For example, Prof Andres Carrasco, the late former president and head scientist of the embryology laboratory at CONICET, showed that the glyphosate herbicides sprayed on GM soy caused malformations in lab animals that were reflected in human populations exposed to the spraying.] Nature

 

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