Gene-spliced food is the newest of the three topics on the Project Scope website, joining "Declining Amphibians" and malaria. SCOPE stands for Science Controversies Online: Partners in Education.

Co-sponsored by the University of Washington, the University of California, Berkeley and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the website reflects the new types of learning and sharing information and opinion enabled by the Web.

The site includes links to a range of other sites, resources available at the SCOPE site, and the opportunity to submit commentaries and to signup for email lists focusing on particular subtopics.

One drawback: the site's authors continue the now-ensconced but misleading term "genetically modified food" when they really mean "food from crops modified using recombinant DNA technology." Almost all food is 'genetically modified' by any meaning of the terms "genetically" and "modified", through selection, breeding, hybridization, cloning, somaclonal variation, or several other methods of genetic modification. If the writers had used "gene-spliced food" for "genetically modified food" then the reader would enjoy a shorter and more accurate phrase. As it is, the reader will have to supply the conversion mentally.

SCOPE Website http://scope.educ.washington.edu/