A judge recently ordered Fish and Wildlife Services to halt the planting of genetically engineered crops on the national wildlife land in the Southeast Region. Similar results eluded environmental groups in a related lawsuit over GMO use on refuge lands in the Midwest Region.
View the original article here: Court Battles Over GMOs in Southeast and Midwest Wildlife Refuges
Johns Hopkins researchers report concrete steps in the use of human stem cells to test how diseased cells respond to drugs. Their success highlights a pathway toward faster, cheaper drug development for some genetic illnesses, as well as the ability to pre-test a therapy’s safety and effectiveness on cultured clones of a patient’s own cells.
View the original article here: Use of Stem Cells in Personalized Medicine
At present, there are only a limited number of stem-cell therapies in existence, and they are mostly experimental and extremely expensive. Yet Dubai’s Eternel Medspa now offers a more affordable treatment that incorporates the science into a Dhs600 facial.
View the original article here: Stem cell facial in Dubai
More than 10 years after the Human Cloning Prohibition Act failed to pass at the federal level, state Rep. Richard Raymond, D-Laredo, has filed a bill proposing the prohibition of human cloning at institutions of higher education. Raymond’s bill would amend the Texas Education Code to prohibit cloning of humans and create a civil penalty of $10 million for each violation at an institution.
Institutions that violate the possible law would become ineligible to receive state funds, according to the text of the bill.
View the original article here: State representative files bill to prohibit human cloning in universities – UT The Daily Texan
While modern crop engineering faces endless red tape, more slipshod cross-breeding gets a free pass.
India has enjoyed signal successes with genetic engineering in agriculture. But today the nation’s relationship with this critical biotechnology is in total disarray, the victim of activists’ scaremongering and government pandering.
View the original article here: India’s GM Food Hypocrisy
California’s Proposition 37, which would have mandated the labeling of many grocery products containing genetically-engineered ingredients, was defeated by voters on Nov. 6. The setback for the organic industry has temporarily discouraged the spread of this measure to other states. But it isn’t over by a long shot.
View the original article here: Proposition 37 – gone, but probably not forgotten
An international team has produced a high-quality draft genome for watermelon, using the sequence as a jumping-off point for more extensive genomic and transcriptomic analyses of the plant. Whereas several commonly cultivated watermelon accessions seem to have fairly low genetic diversity, the diversity within wild watermelon plants remains quite high, they found, suggesting that these plants might serve as a source to augment the genetic wherewithal of watermelon crops.
View the original article here: Researchers Report on Findings from Watermelon Genome
Jayson Lusk is correct that radical activists will likely continue their efforts to lobby state governments to require labeling of certain “genetically engineered” foods (“The Food Police Are Routed at the Ballot Box,” op-ed, Nov. 20). However, whatever such requirements state legislatures or electorates attempt to impose, those efforts are destined to fail in the courts.
View the original article here: Food Radicals Will Fail in Court
The Personalized Medicine World Conference, PMWC 2013, to be held on January 28-29, 2013 in Silicon Valley, provides real-world insights into the progress of personalized medicine. Participants can join the discussion and interact with key opinion leaders who are framing and forming the future of this rapidly changing industry.
View the original article here: How the Era of Personalized Medicine is Bearing Fruit
James R. Flynn’s observation that IQ scores experienced dramatic gains from generation to generation throughout the 20th century has been cited so often, even in popular media, that it is becoming a cocktail party talking point. Next stop a New Yorker cartoon. (An article about Flynn and the Flynn effect has already been published in The New Yorker.)
A recent report in Trends in Genetics (part 1 and part 2) takes a bleaker view of our cognitive future—one that foresees the trend line proceeding inexorably downward. Gerald Crabtree, a biologist at Stanford University, has put forward a provocative hypothesis that our cushy modern existence—absent the ceaseless pressures of natural selection experienced during the Paleolithic—makes us susceptible to the slow creep of random genetic mutations in the the 2000 to 5000 genes needed to ensure that our intellectual and emotional makeup remains intact. The implications of this argument are that we as a species of the genus Homo are over many generations slowly losing our sapiens.
View the original article here: Homo (Sans) Sapiens: Is Dumb and Dumber Our Evolutionary Destiny?
