COVID theories - part 3

April 2022

COVID theories part III - The origin of Covid-19 better explained

A year on from the start of the pandemic there was still, by all accounts, a near-consensus view among scientists that the causative agent of Covid-19 lay in natural animals, but some free-thinkers were beginning to explore the unfashionable alternative: the laboratory-escape hypothesis.

Further analysis of the Covid-19 virus structure revealed "multiple peculiar characteristics" (Segret et al.). For example:

• The Covid-19 virus is poorly adapted for infecting bats or pangolins. Yet it emerged, apparently without any (natural) intermediate evolution, remarkably well adapted for infecting humans.

COVID theories - part 2

April 2022

Part II - Some key players in the Covid-19 drama

President of Ecohealth Alliance, Dr Peter Daszak, who worked closely with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) for 15 years, declared long ago that "Most pandemics ... originate in animals". Since the beginning of the Covid-19 outbreak he has claimed any suggestions that the virus might have come from a lab are "preposterous", "baseless", "crackpot", "conspiracy theories" and "pure baloney" because such "lab accidents are extremely rare", and "have never led to large scale outbreaks".

COVID theories - part 1

April 2022

Part I - The source of Covid-19: was it animals or scientists?

Ever since the first reports of a coronavirus outbreak in December 2019 in the Chinese megacity of Wuhan, the origins of Covid-19 have been steeped in controversy. Did the virus just pop out of nature by chance? Or, was it a human creation now running amok? The answer is vital to ensure controls are put in place to reduce the risk of this sad, global history repeating itself.

Nasty GM surprises

March 2020

Farmers' knowledge about the cycles of nature, their land, their crops and livestock, their soil, and all the life that shares their estates seem to have been swept aside by reductionist 'solutions' sold to them by corporations with $-lined technological tunnel vision.

Simple, GM 'solutions' have a habit of leading to complex outcomes and nasty surprises.

Dealing with a climate-changed, salty world

October 2019

Countries across the globe are facing a future of dwindling fresh water and cultivable land, plus the prospect of social unrest if food supplies collapse. 

   

America's monocultures of herbicide- and insect-resistant GM crops are all heavily dependent on agrichemical inputs and water.  This intensive agriculture is outstripping the water supply, and what water's left is increasingly saline.   

U.S. GM 'answers' are of course what get the press coverage. 

Pesticides in the population

October 2019

In 2017, a study was published indicating yet another possible chronic health effect from eating glyphosate, the herbicide sprayed on, and accumulated by, most GM crops.

The biotech industry has tried to claim that the presence of glyphosate excreted in urine proves the weedkiller is safe because the body is able to clear it out. However, tests on cows (not possible on humans) have shown glyphosate is distributed evenly in their organs and urine, suggesting the herbicide is retained in the body.

New gene editing - more of the same old thing

July 2019

Gene editing has been described as 'promising', 'powerful', 'precise', and of course 'safer'. What is it actually going to do to our food and farming?

Recently published work by Chinese scientists is probably a good indication of what to expect.

The CRISPR wrecking ball revealed

April 2019

US government information on genome (gene) editing describes it as a "group of technologies used by scientists to change an organism's DNA".

The most popular member of this group is 'Cas9', an enzyme which cuts DNA and can be designed to home in on a precise location in the genome [1,2]. Recently, a variant of this enzyme, 'Cas12a', has been developed: this seems to cut in a way that causes less disturbance at the cut ends of the DNA.

With regard to gene-edited crops, a team of Chinese scientists took a belated, close look at all the DNA changes arising in a novel rice model and what part of the technology caused them.

Take horizontal gene transfer seriously - now

February 2019

The risk to health from artificial antibiotic resistance genes being used as markers during the creation of most GMOs was recognised in Europe back in the 1990s. However, lulled by mathematical modelling suggesting horizontal gene transfer (HGT) would never be significant in a complex, natural environment, the problem wasn't taken too seriously [1].

GM papaya in China

November 2018

Papaya is a short-lived perennial crop. Under ideal conditions, the trees begin to bear fruit within months of planting and continue profitably for three years.  This provides a valuable non-stop harvest.

The greatest single threat to papaya production globally has long been considered papaya ringspot virus (PRSV).  This rapidly spreading disease devastates yield and fruit quality.  In the absence of any naturally-resistant strains for conventional breeders to tap into, genetic transformation is viewed as "the most effective approach to prevent and control PRSV".  The favoured GM trick is to insert a vital PRSV gene into the papaya which has the effect of silencing that vital gene in the virus.

Too much trade is bad for you

July 2018

Once upon a time, trade was a mutual give-and-take which promised lasting prosperity for both partners; and with prosperity would come well-being.

The modern way redefines 'prosperity' in terms of ever-expanding trade whose boundaries are global. Now, 'trade' has winners and losers, and the 'well-being' part is nowhere.

GM sugarcane

July 2017

Brazil has been a major supplier of non-GM soya to Europe. While huge tracts are planted with GM soya, the country has a very large land area and is confident it can keep GM and non-GM separate.

Last year, saw reductions in several GM-growing areas around the world: two countries (Romania and Burkino Faso) discontinued GM agriculture, India dropped GM cotton cultivation due to pest problems, one of China's biggest provinces implemented a 5-year ban on growing, processing and selling GM crops, Chinese GM cotton planting dropped 24%, while Argentina moved to crop diversification and away from GM. However, globally, the hectares planted to GM crops continue to edge upwards because the reductions have been offset by continuing increases in North and South America where 90% of GM plantings take place.

In Brazil there has been a rise in GM crop area, most of which will be soya, accompanied by reports of the deforestation of nearly 2 million acres of the Brazilian Amazon, the first in a decade.

This renewed environmental destruction may portend something more ominous than just more GM soya.

Regulators in Brazil have approved the commercial use of GM sugarcane.

Bt insecticide risks in the agricultural landscape

April 2017

As the biotech industry and regulators cling to the notion that 'Bt' insecticide is toxic only to the target pests and is easily digested by mammals just like any other protein, science is throwing a few flies in their ointment.

GM crop plants have been created which generate one or several artificial versions of 'Bt' insecticides. These proteins, in their natural forms, are produced by soil bacteria, Bacillus thuringiensis.

It's disturbing to read in a recent scientific paper that:

"Bt toxins can be transferred via the food web and accumulate in organisms to different degrees".

Enlist duo

June 2016

The biotech industry's answer to the huge weed-problem it has inflicted on farms after years of spraying glyphosate weedkiller on biotech seeds, is (predictably) more of the same.  Indeed, packages of dual herbicide formulations plus dual herbicide-tolerant GM seeds are the business now.

Glyphosate weed-killer is still in there, but Dow Chemical has added in '2,4-D' to create ‘Enlist Duo' formulation for spraying its latest generation of GM corn and soya.  '2,4-D' is another decades-old herbicide, and was one of the two major components of the infamous Agent Orange defoliant used to clear the jungle and destroy crops in Vietnam.

Hostage to gene pollution

March 2015

Back in the 1990s, an early fear of anti-GM campaigners was that the biotech industry would purposely create so much gene pollution in the fields and food chain that no matter how unwilling the public and regulators were to accept the novel technology, they would be forced to do so or starve.

Nearly 20 years on, the same concerns seem to be back in the limelight. But this time round, they're being raised by lawyers, with documentary proof to back them up.

Glyphosate and Parkinson's disease

March 2015

Monsanto's safety testing of GM maize does not include neurobehavioural assessments. Apparently, these are "not considered appropriate for test articles like corn grain that has no history of producing neurotoxicological effects".. Presumably this reasoning would apply to most food crops.

However, the vast majority of GM crops are designed to accumulate glyphosate herbicide, and questions are emerging on the neurotoxicity of this chemical.

GM carotene-enhanced bananas

March 2015

In August 2014, a touch of déjà vu led GM-free Scotland to comment that "the safety and efficacy questions (of golden GM bananas) are going to be by-passed in favour of ignoring scientific ethics and hyping the product, as it seems to be the case with golden rice" [1].

The excuse for copying a gene from one banana into another is that, apparently, "Residents of Uganda and nearby countries don't favour the type of sweet banana that naturally carries the extra beta-carotene. So researchers put the gene into a less-sweet type of banana that East Africans often use in cooking".

Like golden rice, golden bananas are designed to provide beta-carotene which the body converts to vitamin A. Like golden rice, the GM bananas are planned to target poor, malnourished populations. Like golden rice, the GM bananas have not been safety tested on animals, will not go through clinical trials, and are going to be fed to a small number of well-nourished healthy individuals (this time female American university students) to measure how much vitamin A is produced.

Unlike golden rice, the US researchers are trying to avoid the ethics scandal which broke over the surreptitious feeding of experimental GM rice to Chinese children.

Fit as a weed

September 2014

 

Wild rice. CC photo by Denrdoica cerulea on Flickr

The vast majority of GM crops now being grown commercially have had a gene inserted to make them resistant to glyphosate herbicide.

 

After spraying with glyphosate, the yield of the GM crop is protected because the weeds competing for nutrients are killed.

 

Gene escape from glyphosate-tolerant crops into wild relatives has never been considered an important problem because unless the wild GM derivatives are sprayed with the herbicide, they will have no special fitness advantage and no reason to run riot. But, this 'wisdom' has been challenged by a team of Chinese scientists.

 

Glyphosate kills plants by inactivating an enzyme, 'EPSPS'*. EPSPS is vital to a number of key metabolic processes because it's responsible for generating a class of essential amino acids (the building block of proteins). These amino acids are vital to the formation of, for example, the plant's supportive material (lignin), plant growth hormone, and a huge range of immune-system substances, which together can account for as much as 35% of a plant's biomass. 

A preposterous approval

September 2014


Crop spraying. CC photo by CropShot on Flickr

Glyphosate herbicide (see below) has just been re-approved for use in the EU along with a 67% increase in its 'acceptable daily intake' (ADI).   

The report submitted to the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) recommending re-approval and upping the ADI was prepared by Germany, the rapporteur Member State for this herbicide.
 

Germany's overall findings were that the herbicide poses no unacceptable risks.  Specifically, glyphosate is not metabolised (chemically changed by the body) nor accumulated in the body.  It's not toxic to genes, nor carcinogenic, nor endocrine disrupting, and has no reproductive toxicity.  The only human health risks noted were that glyphosate is a severe eye irritant. 
 

Issues that could not be finalised included the relevance of impurities and microbial effects. 
 

The Institute of Science in Society described these conclusions as 'preposterous'. 

Golden rice going bananas

August 2014

Golden Rice. CC photo by IRRI photos on Flickr

Academics seem to be going bananas over the crimes against humanity perpetrated by all those green NGOs and individuals who keep voicing their concerns about GM food.

Last year, some eminent international scientists got together to write a letter to a top science magazine. Their aim was to broadcast the role of the green movement in delaying the development of 'golden rice'. They claim this wondrous, philanthropic rice has been genetically transformed to produce vitamin-A to save the poor in countries where many suffer from malnourishment.

This year, a group of academics at the University of California prepared a report for their university's bi-monthly publication. Their aim was to expose the presence of 'powerful forces that hide behind environmentalism' and which are blocking the development of golden rice.

The refrain has, of course, been eagerly picked up by others in the pro-GM lobby [1].