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Brazilian President Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva has provoked controversy by approving the temporary planting of genetically modified soya beans.
The measure was announced on Friday and is valid for a year.
Brazil is the world's second biggest producer of soya and the move has pleased farmers.
But environmentalists have called the measure absurd, saying more research is needed into the effects of genetically modified farming.
The Brazilian government hoped that by now the country's parliament would have legalised GM soya.
It hasn't and farmers are ready to begin planting. So for the second year running the president has dealt with the issue by executive order.
It is a messy compromise allowing farmers to grow and sell GM soya, but only until January 2006, and they are not allowed to sell on soya seeds for planting by other farmers.
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The Golden Rice Humanitarian Board will make the crop available to developing nations; biotech opponents have doubts.
By JERRY PERKINS
REGISTER FARM EDITOR
Syngenta, the giant agribusiness based in Switzerland, will donate the seed and genetic lines of its vitamin A-enhanced "Golden Rice" to a humanitarian agency that will make the genetically modified crop available to developing countries.
Syngenta made the announcement Friday during World Food Prize activities in Des Moines.
Syngenta's donation to the Golden Rice Humanitarian Board was hailed by Ingo Potrykus , one of the developers of Golden Rice and co-chairman of the humanitarian organization.
Potrykus and Peter Beyer developed a more nutritious variety of rice in the late 1990s using the gene-splicing techniques of biotechnology.
They inserted four genes from daffodils that contain iron and vitamin A into rice plants. The genes also give the rice a yellow or golden hue.
Golden rice's iron and vitamin A can prevent blindness and disease in children, especially in developing countries where rice is a dietary mainstay. Those benefits are not found in conventional rice.
Potrykus, who attended the two-day World Food Prize symposium that concluded Friday, said he is grateful to Syngenta for making the donation, which will allow him and Beyer to introduce the Golden Rice technology into 16 countries, including Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam.
Potrykus said he and Beyer will work with scientists in those countries to introduce the Golden Rice gene into varieties of rice that are native in those regions.
Syngenta's donation does not mean the technology will be readily accepted by the people of those countries, Potrykus said.
"We are talking about a genetically modified organism," he said.
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Prop. 71 would commit $3 billion to seeking cures for severe maladies using human embryos.
By Rosie Mestel, Times Staff Writer
STANFORD — The iridescent ball sits motionless under the microscope, a bundle of tight-packed cells lying on a bed of gray, spindly fibers.
The ball contracts tightly. It releases. Then it contracts and releases again, all in the span of several seconds.
The pulsating mass is filled with bone fide heart cells, created from cells of an embryo in a dish of orange-pink Kool-Aid-colored broth in an incubator at a Stanford University laboratory.They came from stem cells and, if chance had treated them differently, they could have become skin cells, lung cells, pieces of brain or spleen — any body tissue at all.
Embryonic stem cells — the promise they hold and the ethical dilemmas they raise — have become a high-profile topic in this campaign year, nowhere more than in California.
In a little more than two weeks, Californians will vote on Proposition 71, which would commit $3 billion in state money over the next 10 years to research using stem cells, most of them extracted from 5-day-old 150-celled human embryos.
[some text omitted]
Faced with the federal restrictions, California advocates for embryonic stem cell research began to contemplate whether the state could take over the federal government's traditional role as the funder of basic biological research.
Doing so, they argued, would hasten the possibility of cures and also potentially base a new advanced industry in California.
The idea found a financial backer in Bob Klein, a wealthy developer of affordable housing. Klein's 84-year-old mother has Alzheimer's disease, and his teenage son is diabetic. His son's diagnosis two years ago drove Klein to search for a cure, leading him to believe that embryonic stem cell research offered the most hope.
Klein spent $1.4 million of his own money to get Proposition 71 before the voters. He has given an additional $750,000 since it qualified for the Nov. 2 ballot. Other wealthy donors, including several friends of Klein's, have boosted the total to more than $20 million so far. Recent polls have shown the measure headed for approval.
Klein, who has a background in public financing, said he quickly realized that state bonds could provide the needed resources far more effectively than private money. After speaking to top scientists, Klein said, he determined that $3 billion would be needed to finance both new facilities and grants.
Weissman, among the scientists who consulted with Klein, said the figure "made my jaw drop."
The large sum also has become a central argument for opponents of the proposition, who argue that even if research using embryonic cells is ethically justified, the state should not lock itself into spending billions on a prospect that remains uncertain.
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MARTIN ENSERINK
AMSTERDAM--Antibody tests now show that at least 1000 people contracted an avian influenza virus during a massive poultry outbreak in the Netherlands last year--many more than assumed. In another surprise, those who developed symptoms after being infected passed the virus on to a whopping 59% of their household contacts, according to the study, whose results were published last week by the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) in Bilthoven, the Netherlands.
Almost 31 million poultry were culled in the Netherlands last year before the virus, a strain called H7N7, was contained. One veterinarian died from an infection with the virus, and some 450 people reported health complaints, most of them an eye infection called conjunctivitis. In a paper published in The Lancet in February, RIVM virologist Marion Koopmans and her colleagues reported that they could detect the H7N7 virus--using the polymerase chain reaction or by culturing the virus--in eye swabs from 89 patients.
To gauge the true reach of H7N7, however, Koopmans and her colleagues also tested those at risk for antibodies against the virus. They found antibodies in about half of 500 people who had handled infected poultry; based on the total number of poultry workers at risk, the team concludes that at least 1000 people must have become infected, most of them without any symptoms. Wearing a mask and goggles did not seem to prevent infection; taking an antiviral drug called oseltamivir did, but a quarter of the cullers and half of the farmers did not take the drugs. Among 62 household contacts of conjunctivitis patients, 33 became infected themselves. Having a pet bird at home increased household members' risk of becoming infected, perhaps because the birds replicated the virus, too.
Flu experts are cautious about interpreting the findings, revealed in a report in Dutch but not yet published in a peer-reviewed journal. But if true, they are "another warning signal" about avian influenza's risks, says Klaus Stöhr, head of the World Health Organization's global influenza program. The more humans that an avian virus infects, Stöhr says, the greater the risk that it will morph into a flu pandemic. That's why looking for the avian virus in humans should become standard practice during outbreaks, he says--whether the virus is dangerous to humans or not.
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As evidenced by the successful experiences of growing genetically modified (GM) and non-GM crops side by side in Spain and North America, a new report by a British agricultural economist concludes that the tools already exist to ensure effective co-existence in commercial agriculture.
Graham Brookes' report draws its conclusions from four of his own previous studies on co-existence, and claims to be based on 'real world experiences' of co-existence management practices in North America and Europe. He presented his paper to journalists during a visit to the GM growing region of Aragon in Spain, organised by the biotech industry group Agricultural Biotechnology in Europe (ABE).
'The report is bringing together and summarising material from four other papers - identifying the key principles of good co-existence practices, which, if well applied, can deliver workable co-existence,' Mr Brookes told CORDIS News. He acknowledges that funding for all these studies was provided in part by the biotechnology industry, but says that the reports are independently and objectively compiled without influence from sponsors.
The first point made clear in the report is that co-existence relates to 'the economic consequences of adventitious [or accidental] presence of material from one crop in another,' be it GM, conventional or organic crops. 'The issue is, therefore, not about product/crop safety, but relates solely to the production and marketing of crops approved for use,' it states.
Mr Brookes also stresses that co-existence only becomes an issue when there is a definite demand for non-GM crops. For example, while much of the corn used in the animal feed industry is non-GM, the amount of GM corn used in its production ensures that all corn-based animal feed in Europe must be labelled as GM, so therefore there is no need for co-existence measures during cultivation.
According to the report, the adventitious presence of unwanted material in crops can happen for a variety of reasons, including seed impurities, cross pollination, volunteers or self-sown plants, or from the planting, harvesting, storage and transport of crops. While GM technology may be relatively new, Mr Brookes explains that effective farm level co-existence practices such as the separation of crops by space and planting time, communication with neighbours, and the use of good husbandry, planting, harvest and storage practices have been in use for many years.
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Lightning is nature’s own genetic engineer. By opening up pores in soil bacteria it allows them to pick up any stray DNA present, report Timothy Vogel, Pascal Simonet and their colleagues at the University of Lyon in France.
This hitherto unknown phenomenon might help explain why gene swapping is so common among bacteria.
Mild electric shocks are routinely used to genetically engineer bacteria in the lab, so Vogel and Simonet wondered whether lightning could have the same effect. Although it would kill bacteria near the point of contact, those further away would get a milder shock.
The researchers persuaded physicist colleagues to blast bacteria with artificial lightning. So far they have shown that two strains of the soil bacterium Pseudomonas - as well as a lab strain of E. coli - take up “bait” DNA when zapped by lightning.
The researchers suspect the phenomenon is widespread, speeding up the rate at which bacteria evolve. Genetic studies show bacteria frequently pick up foreign genes, usually from other bacteria, but natural DNA uptake rates are too sluggish to explain the observed diversity.
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