Covert PR operations involving the secret profiling of over 3,000 people and organisations considered “critics” of the pesticide industry recently made headlines around the world. The secret profiles, including ones on GMWatch and its co-directors, are said to include private and personal, even intimate, information that lawyers say violate privacy laws in several countries and regions, such as the UK, the European Union, Kenya and India. They also include false, misleading and malicious claims, designed to damage the reputations of those targeted. This was uncovered during an investigation led by Lighthouse Reports in collaboration with the world’s leading media. The main breakthrough came when the investigators managed to penetrate the private social network, known as Bonus Eventus, where the profiles were being shared. This enabled them to not only access these secret dossiers, but to identify the Bonus Eventus network’s members and work out exactly who had done the profiling. In response to the news, Reporters Without Borders (RSF), which defends independent journalism and fights propaganda and disinformation, has called for those involved in the profiling to be brought to justice. GMWatch

 

 

A little-noticed change to South Africa’s national health research guidelines, published in May this year, has put the country on an ethical precipice. The newly added language appears to position the country as the first to explicitly permit the use of genome editing to create genetically modified children. Heritable human genome editing has long been hotly contested, in large part because of its societal and eugenic implications. In November 2018, the media reported on a Chinese scientist who had created the world’s first gene-edited babies using CRISPR technology. In the immediate aftermath, the organising committee of the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing joined the global uproar with a statement condemning this research. At the same time, however, the committee called for a “responsible translational pathway” toward clinical research. Safety thresholds and “additional criteria” would have to be met, including “independent oversight, a compelling medical need, an absence of reasonable alternatives, a plan for long-term follow-up, and attention to societal effects”. Notably, the additional criteria no longer included the earlier standard of “broad societal consensus”. The Conversation

 

 

As pesticide companies struggle to cap legal payouts to plaintiffs who claim they were injured by Roundup and other products, money from two political action committees (PACs) affiliated with major pesticide manufacturers has surged into state-level politics. In recent years, total contributions to state legislators have reached hundreds of thousands of dollars. By contrast, in 2016, the two leading agrochemical companies gave less than 5 percent of contributions to candidates at the state level. This year, however, state candidates received about 30 percent of contributions to candidates from PACs for employees of Bayer, which is headquartered in Leverkusen, Germany, and Corteva, which is based in Indianapolis. US Right to Know

 

 

In experiments on African clawed frogs with pure glyphosate and glyphosate-based herbicide formulations, researchers based in Germany found that at sublethal concentrations, the formulations altered embryos’ external appearance, leading to malformations such as reduced eye and head size. In addition, exposure to formulations impaired heart morphology and function, and the expression of heart-specific genes was altered at a molecular level. The results confirmed that glyphosate formulations had a stronger effect on embryo development than pure glyphosate. The researchers concluded that regulatory herbicide approvals should consider studies on both pure glyphosate and glyphosate formulations. Chemosphere

 

 

In a study conducted at the University of Toledo, rats exposed to glyphosate showed an increase in blood pressure and alterations in the gut microbiome. The researchers concluded, "Our study supports the reasoning that the unabated use of glyphosate could be a contributor to the rising incidence of hypertension in the western society." In an article about the study, the lead researcher wrote, "This alteration in gut microbiota can lead to changes in metabolites, which are released by bacteria into our bodies.... These altered metabolites could play an important role in the increased blood pressure observed in our rat model." Physiology

 

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