16/February/21

 

UK farm and environment ministry DEFRA published an “Explainer” document on gene editing as a guide for members of the public who want to respond to the UK government’s consultation on its plan to deregulate gene editing. The “Explainer” is packed full of false assertions and reads like a wish list for the GMO lobby, presenting hypothetical “benefits” of gene editing as fact. The document has since mysteriously disappeared from the DEFRA website, but not before GMWatch downloaded it and installed it on our website. We have compiled a mythbuster to counter the false claims in the document and help the public avoid having the wool pulled over their eyes. GMWatch

 

 

EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak’s quip in a newly surfaced email exchange with two leading virologists sheds more light on the motives behind an influential statement in The Lancet signed by 27 prominent scientists condemning “conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.” The emails show how Daszak and other experts tried to undermine the hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 may have leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), a biolab in Wuhan near the first reported outbreak of COVID-19. US Right to Know