Poland’s presidency of the Council of the EU is trying to make sense of Belgium’s ambiguous stance on the draft "new GMO" deregulation file, according to a report in Politico. Politico said that after backing Poland's tweaks to patent measures in a technical-level meeting on Friday, Belgium later withdrew its support, citing ongoing national-level talks. GMWatch comments that this means there is once again a blocking minority for the new GM deregulation file. GMWatch comment on article in Politico (paywalled, no link in title)

 

 

At the first Asilomar conference of 1975, researchers working on GM microbes and GM viruses faced pushback for the first time on the potential hazards involved and came to realise that their experiments might be dangerous and needed oversight. The critical question became: who would do the oversight? So they met at Asilomar, partly to assess the dangers and partly to create a solution to their political problem. Since the meeting was invitation-only and held behind closed doors, the solution was a self-serving one. They decided, in the absence of any meaningful critical presence, that only scientists needed to oversee their research. That solution became the model for all biotechnology oversight. It has led to uncontrolled and sometimes disastrous experiments, and to global genetic contamination by commercial products. Today, in 2025, the dangers we face from synthetic biology, mirror life, RNA technology, and gene editing are much greater. Another but much bigger conference began at Asilomar on 23 February. It also proposes to guide biotech regulation. It too is a closed-door invitation-only event and, judging by its funders and its lead scientific organiser, the primary goal is not enhancing public safety but hyping biotechnology. Independent Science News

 

 

The US company INARI filed an international patent application claiming the use of DNA variants that are present in all plant species and regulate gene activity. This patent is based on a combination of new genetic engineering techniques (NGTs) and artificial intelligence (AI). It highlights how combining NGTs with AI is poised to open up a new ‘Pandora’s box’ in regard to risks associated with NGT plants, which will require robust GMO regulation. INARI is known for its use of AI in combination with NGTs and its aggressive policy of filing patents on plants. Their recently filed international patent application claims the use of an unlimited number of DNA sequences decisive for gene regulation in all plant species. The company is thus attempting to control access to genetic information which is relevant for all breeders. In this context, AI is being used to screen plant genomes in databases for small regulatory units and their functions. This genetic information is then used to train the AI to identify the most interesting genetic variants for plant breeding. The INARI patent claims all plants obtained from this method, regardless of whether they are genetically engineered or not. Granting this patent would not mean that the company could control all plant breeding. Testbiotech

 

 

A US court upheld the conviction of the Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes for defrauding investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars while operating her failed blood-testing startup, once valued at $9bn, rejecting her multi-year appeal. The court also upheld the conviction of Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, once Holmes’s romantic partner and president of Theranos. Holmes claimed that Theranos’s error-prone Edison blood-testing machine could perform a wide swath of medical tests with a single drop of a patient’s blood, which would have represented a significant advance in biotechnology. But her invention never lived up to her promises. The Guardian

 

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