Archive for the 'Biotechnology' Category
Registry System Being Set Up to Track Your Vaccination Status
April 28th, 2013Via: Vactruth: The Centers for Disease Control has been quietly rolling out a nationwide program called the Immunization Information Systems (IIS), registering your vaccine information into a database. This effort has been run in parallel with state vaccine registry implementations. What is the intention of such programs? My colleague Leslie Manookian, writer and director of […]
Chinese Colonel Says Latest Bird Flu Virus Is U.S. Biological Weapon
April 10th, 2013Via: Washington Post: Colonel Dai Xu of the People’s Liberation Army wrote online that the new strain of bird flu hitting China, known as H7N9, is an American “bio-psychological weapon” meant to destabilize China. The rant, posted to Dai’s account on the Twitter-like service Weibo, had already been shared by more than 30,000 fellow users […]
Stanford Bioengineers Make Transistor from Genetic Materials
April 3rd, 2013Via: Extreme Tech: Bioengineers at Stanford University have created the first biological transistor made from genetic materials: DNA and RNA. Dubbed the “transcriptor,” this biological transistor is the final component required to build biological computers that operate inside living cells. We are now tantalizingly close to biological computers that can detect changes in a cell’s […]
The Monsanto Protection Act
April 2nd, 2013Via: Democracy Now: President Obama outraged food activists last week when he signed into law a spending bill with a controversial rider that critics have dubbed the “Monsanto Protection Act.” The rider says the government must allow the planting of genetically modified crops even if courts rule they pose health risks.
Air Force Wants New Energy Weapons to Cause Non-Lethal ‘Bioeffects’
April 1st, 2013To be clear… Via: Danger Room: The Air Force is preparing to spend millions researching how unknown “bioeffects” happen when the human body is blasted by radiowaves and high-powered microwaves — which the Air Force hopes could lead to exotic new energy weapons. Recently, the Air Force Bioeffects Division announced it’s exploring how radiation from […]
H5N1 VIRAL-ENGINEERING DANGERS WILL NOT GO AWAY
March 27th, 2013Definitely check out Channel 4’s Utopia. It’s a pretty good documentary series. *grin* Via: Nature: Barely two months after a small group of influenza virologists lifted a moratorium on work to make the H5N1 avian flu virus as transmissible between humans as seasonal flu, researchers are at it again. Earlier this month, a Dutch scientist […]
New Zealand: Possible GM Outbreak at Lincoln University Investigated
March 19th, 2013Via: New Zealand Herald: The Government is investigating a potential outbreak of genetically modified fungus at Lincoln University. Two secured laboratories and a greenhouse have been locked down as the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) checks the biological scare. Lincoln University researchers informed MPI and the Environmental Protection Agency on March 7 that it had […]
Doubts About Johns Hopkins Research Have Gone Unanswered
March 13th, 2013This one would make a great addition to your Bullshit-As-Science and Academic Grant Swindling file folders. In this situation with Nature and Johns Hopkins, note what happened to the guy who tried to expose it. Via: Washington Post: The numbers didn’t add up. Over and over, Daniel Yuan, a medical doctor and statistician, couldn’t understand […]
Japan: 26 Generations of Clones from Single Mouse
March 8th, 2013Via: AFP: Japanese scientists have produced 26 generations of clones from a single mouse, the lead researcher said Friday, possibly paving the way for the mass replication of valuable livestock. The team have so far produced 598 mice that are genetic copies of one original creature in an experiment that has so far been going […]
Some Farmers Fed Up with Paying Premium Prices for GM Seeds that Result in Increased Pest Resistance and Crop Failures
March 8th, 2013It would be nice to know a bit more detail about what “some U.S. farmers” means. Via: Farmers Weekly: Some US farmers are considering returning to conventional seed after increased pest resistance and crop failures meant GM crops saw smaller yields globally than their non-GM counterparts. Farmers in the USA pay about an extra $100 […]
