The Toronto Star has reported that the StarLink genetically engineered corn could cost the food industry billions of dollars. The pollution of regular strains of corn by StarLink will lead to dozens of lawsuits. “This is going to come back to haunt the regulators and the food industry,” said Don Westfall, vice-president of Promar International, a Washington, DC consulting firm.
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Without meaning to, Australian scientists have created a virus that could lead to the most devastating bioweapon ever devised.
The scientists were trying to create a mouse contraceptive vaccine to use for pest control. They worked with mousepox, with doesn?t affect humans but is related to the smallpox virus. “It?s a good way to show how to alter smallpox to make it more virulent,” says Ken Alibek, of the Soviet germ warfare program.
D.A. Henderson, director of the Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies at Johns Hopkins University points out that information that can be used for making dangerous microorganisms is regularly published in scientific journals. “I can?t for the life of me figure out how we are going to deal with this,” he says.
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ABC News believes that it has discovered a picture of the new secret invention code-named Ginger, otherwise known as “IT,” in patent documents filed by DEKA Research, the company of inventor Dean Kamen, who’s record includes revolutionary wheelchairs, heart valves and many other valuable inventions.
It seems to be a kind of personal scooter, and a recent patent search would appear to support this. The patent states that the device is designed to move the individual over irregular surfaces and that it uses “a motorized drive mounted to the assembly and coupled to the ground-contacting module.”
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Genetic modification of seeds has put animal genes in vegetables and given us square tomatoes, but the newest breakthrough is the green, water-sensing, potato. Scientists at Edinburgh University injected potato plants with a fluorescence gene borrow from a luminous jellyfish, which cause the leaves of this potato plant to glow green when it needs water. “This is an agriculture of the future,” says Professor Anthony Trewavas.
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