Close to one hundred people gathered in front of the Ministerio de Agricultura y Ganaderia (MAG) in San Jose on Tuesday, November 6, to protest the introduction of Genetically Modified (GM) corn seeds into Costa Rican agriculture. Speakers argued that the cultivation of corn is indigenous to Costa Rica and Central America, and is based on open pollination of native plants.
View the original article here: Plans for Genetically Modified Seeds Spur Protest
San Diego research centers have banded together to bring in stem cell grants, getting more than $261 million. Local leaders calculated there would be commercial benefits as well, reinforcing San Diego’s stature as one of the world’s top biotech centers. Now, commercialization is starting to take place. Local biotechs are testing stem cell therapies in patients, in the United States, in Europe and in China.
Cures for diabetes, heart failure, and even baldness are being developed by San Diego companies; the last two already being tested in patients. While these treatments are still experimental — success is far from certain — they provide a preliminary indication that regenerative medicine is on the road to becoming a new growth area for the region’s large biotechnology industry.
View the original article here: SHOWTIME FOR STEM CELLS
The Y chromosome may have gotten a bad rap. Despite the claim that this male sex chromosome is mostly junk, new research suggests it’s actually a lean, mean, highly evolved machine for producing the fittest males possible. The findings, presented Friday (Nov. 9) here at the American Society of Human Genetics’ annual meeting, dispute the notion that historically most men in a generation have not passed on their genes while a few lucky guys fathered hordes of children.
View the original article here: Guys, Your Y Chromosome Is an Evolutionary Marvel
Genetic blending between Europeans and Asians occurred over 2,000 years ago in the Altai region of Mongolia, according to a new analysis. The remains of ancient Scythian warriors indicate that this blending was not due to an eastward migration of Europeans, but to a demographic expansion of local Central Asian populations and that was due to the technological improvements the Scythian culture brought with them.
View the original article here: Not Just Genghis Khan – Scythians Show Genetic Blending With Europe 2,000 Years Ago
An outbreak of the hospital superbug MRSA has been brought to an end by UK doctors cracking the bacterium’s genetic code. It led to them finding one member of staff at Rosie Hospital, in Cambridge, who may have unwittingly carried and spread the infection. They say it is the first time rapid genetic testing has been used to track and then stop an outbreak. One expert said this would soon become “standard practice” in hospitals.
View the original article here: DNA sequencing of MRSA used to stop outbreak
What is a posthuman being? For years, I have been hearing that we are gradually moving towards a new state. Transhumanism is, by definition, a step between our current human form and what we will become. I see a lot of ideas on how we will merge with our technology, how things will be radically different after the Singularity, how we will be immortal and how human and machine will become one new being in a glorious new world. But one thing I hear very little about is the end product.
View the original article here: Posthuman: The Endgame?
Wild species of Arabica could be extinct in the wild by 2080 thanks to climate change, a new study says. Wild losses could leave cultivated crops genetically vulnerable to a host of enemies, which could ultimately lead to lower quality and higher prices for coffee consumers. “Regardless of what measures are taken in nature, we can confidently, and sadly, expect the genetic diversity of those populations to go downhill steadily year after year,” said botanist Peter Raven. “Seeds from the most genetically valuable species should be stored now, before it is too late.”
View the original article here: The Last Drop? Climate Change May Raise Coffee Prices, Lower Quality
The international collection of the South Pacific’s coconut palm species, held at a field gene bank in Papua New Guinea, is under threat from a disease outbreak close to the gene bank. The gene bank holds 3,200 coconut palms, representing 57 different varieties of Cocos nucifera, a number of which are endemic.
View the original article here: South Pacific coconut gene bank under threat
The Japanese are great guzzlers of fish, but fish are in finite supply. And farming them to increase that supply can be tricky, because many species are susceptible to disease when crowded together. That fact is the impetus behind a study led by Takashi Sakamoto of the Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology. Dr Sakamoto is using a combination of modern genetic techniques and classical breeding to produce fish that can survive crowding without falling ill.
View the original article here: Fish Farming: High-Tech Breeders
The next stop for the GMO labeling movement is Washington State, where I-522 (also known as “The People’s Right To Know Genetically Engineered Food Act”) is heading to the November 2013 ballot if it garners enough signatures. “It’s a new law in Washington that wants to do the same thing [as Prop 37] but with simpler language,” explains Stephens. There’s no question, however, that the big pesticide companies will fight just as hard to make sure it doesn’t pass.
View the original article here: California Failed To Pass Its Genetically Modified Food Labeling Law. Now What?
The prospects of a fast-approaching Age of Enhancement evokes caution in almost everyone, scientist or otherwise. It has been the subject of countless dystopian sci-fi novels.
According to David Ewing Duncan, a journalist specializing in the implications of biotechnology, in a recent article in The New York Times, the future may be now—and maybe we should welcome it.
What is gene enhancement and how does it differ from gene therapy? The distinctions are fuzzy, but for the most part, gene therapy involves using genetic engineering to alter defective genes or insert corrected genes into the body in order to treat a disease. It is considered more a medical procedure. Enhancement focuses more on what might be called “nature tinkering,” although that too could involve medical measures such as developing vaccines that could strengthen one’s immune system to a point beyond that which would be achieved “naturally.”
The breadth of the subject and the potential for controversy is enormous, which is why Duncan’s piece provoked a torrent of debate. He argued that the technologies that we currently use to treat the sick or to enhance crops and livestock – including the full suite of genetics-based medicine and engineering – are destined to become “irresistible” tools for human augmentation.
“Synthetic biologists,” he wrote, “contend that re-engineering cells and DNA may one day allow us to eliminate diseases; a few believe we will be able to build tailor-made people.” Genetics, especially as applied to humans, is a sensitive topic, he acknowledged. “Tailor-made people” are both the ultimate in the direct genetic manipulation of mankind and a possibility that makes many people uncomfortable, across the ideological spectrum.
Duncan only touched briefly upon the moral concerns of an Age of Enhancement, which is usually focus of this debate, particularly on the ideological fringes. He is more pragmatic in his analysis. We are destined to embrace it, he wrote – the lure of being better, faster, stronger is too great; the only moral questions worth considering are those that assume an enhanced future.
BBC journalist Michelle Roberts solicited comments on the controversy from a range of bioethics experts who predictably focused on the social dangers of human enhancement. In a world with ever-increasing social divides, it seems entirely plausible that human enhancement (presumably expensive, at least at first), could create a divide between those who enhance themselves and those who, for reasons financial or philosophical, are unable to do so. Roberts contended that the scientific community, at least in the UK, is ready to take these concerns seriously. The Academy of Medical Sciences, the British Academy, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society all urge caution although they all believe that various forms of it are inevitable.
Ideologues both left and right were not so measured in their responses, taking particular aim at Duncan’s contention that human enhancement is “irresistible.”
Charles Rubin, an associate professor of political science at Duquesne University and editor of the Futurisms blog at the liberal New Atlantis rebuked Ewing’s vision of an Age of Enhancement as “rather breathless and uncritical.” He acknowledged that it may be hard to resist the lure of manipulating the genome for personal or the greater good, but tried to draw a hard line between “hard to resist” and “irresistible,” saying not resisting—which he claims is a moral imperative—would be succumbing to laziness and self-indulgence. But Rubin offers no argument as to why, exactly, resistance is medically or morally the most appropriate choice.
Rubin’s protest, which is familiar in very liberal circles, finds an echo among conservatives in a post by Wesley Smith, a senior fellow at the creationist Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism and blogger at National Review. He characterizes Duncan as an uncritical spokesperson for “the Utopian transhumanist would-be human enhancers,” who he believes are mostly left-leaning narcissists. “I have noticed that these transhumanist types also are generally very liberal politically,” he sneered. “Well, how’s this for liberal? As NYT pundits dream dreams of becoming the Ubermenchen, people in Africa are going hungry…”
Yet Smith’s argument is really very similar to Rubin’s.
“[W]e are not flotsam and jetsam floating on currents that we can’t control,” he wrote. “We can say no to the seduction of eugenic human enhancement. We can, as rational human beings, say, ‘Let’s just not go there.’ And we should.”
“It’s decadence,” he concluded—ironically, a characterization with which both social critics would likely agree.
Related Articles:
The Geneticist Who Played Hoops with My DNA: . . . And Other Masterminds from the Frontiers of Biotech by David Ewing Duncan
Psychology Today on Duncan
Do Genes Really Augur Your Future? Duncan in The Atlantic
