Biotech Communications

‘Wait and see?’ 41% of Black women have reservations about COVID shots, 50% of African Americans don’t trust US healthcare system
The latest from the KFF COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor finds that Black men (45%) and women (41%) are more likely than ...

‘False paradigm’: Pitting organic and conventional farming against each other won’t promote sustainability, says GLP’s Jon Entine at USDA Ag Outlook Forum
Interest groups have become so hardened in their views about which types of agriculture benefit the environment that the fact ...

Can anything be done to counter anti-vaccination activists?
Recently, anti-vaxxers protests shut down the mass vaccination program underway at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. In Israel, the global poster child ...

Bill Gates under fire for urging wealthy countries to give up beef and switch to synthetic meat
The Microsoft founder-turned-global health philanthropist [Bill Gates] discusses ways to tackle climate change in his new book, “How to Avoid ...

Politics and COVID: Why are Republicans more hesitant to get the vaccine?
Unfortunately, a partisan split on receiving a Covid-19 vaccine has reemerged and widened over the last few months. This partisan ...

Viewpoint: Tanzania’s anti-vaxxer president is slowing COVID response and endangering lives
In politics, there are generally two ways of making decisions. The first is evidence-based, weighing the pros and cons and ...

COVID vaccine hesitancy vs vaccine refusal? Many nursing home staff take a wait-and-see position
In North Carolina, the health secretary has said more than half of nursing home workers are declining the vaccine. A ...
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‘They will turn into alligators’: Evangelical Christian missionaries turning Amazon villages against COVID vaccines
On the São Francisco reservation in the state of Amazonas, Jamamadi villagers sent health workers [arriving with COVID vaccines] packing ...

Top 10 biotech propagandizers: Who are the science deniers and snake oil peddlers undermining science in agriculture and medicine?
Anti-science beliefs are proliferating, particularly on the biotechnology and genetics front, covering a range of issues from vaccine denialism to ...

Viewpoint: Promoting science with ideology — Pro-GMO vegans use animal rights advocacy to boost vaccine, biotech acceptance
The COVID-19 pandemic has reminded us that we are part of a living, evolving ecosystem and often at its mercy ...

Protection, Kansas was the first town in the nation to be fully vaccinated against polio. Now it’s an epicenter of vaccine skepticism.
Sixty-four years ago, residents of this tiny town in southwestern Kansas set a public health example by making it the ...

Viewpoint: ‘Terminator seeds’—the anti-GMO bogeyman that never existed
Although GMO sterile 'terminator' seeds never existed, the idea has distorted the discussion for decades ...

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. banned from Instagram for spreading vaccine misinformation and COVID conspiracy theories
Instagram on [February 10] took down the account of controversial anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. "We removed this account ...

COVID vaccine misinformation threatens coronavirus response in Africa
Immunization experts in Africa have decried the lack of a deliberate effort to counter misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines. ‘‘As far ...

Podcast: COVID vaccine fears mirror GMO skepticism; coronavirus and pregnancy; GM crops in organic farming
The growing opposition to coronavirus vaccines bears striking resemblance to anti-GMO fears that have circulated online for more than 20 ...

US consumers still prefer beef to plant-based meat on nutrition and taste, survey shows
[A] 79-page report - commissioned by the Cattlemen’s Beef Promotion and Research Board and written by Glynn Tonsor and Ted ...

Deadly coalition: Anti-vaxxers merging with anti-mask advocates
Opponents of vaccine requirements have found common ground during the pandemic with people suspicious of drug companies, business shutdowns and ...

Misleading glyphosate-cancer study Part 2: ‘Symptom of a widespread problem’—Concerns about ideological activism in science research and communications
For the better part of five years, a coalition of environmental groups and tort lawyers (aided by the mainstream press) ...

Can we have an open debate about IQ, genes, and group differences? Reassessing the legacy of James Flynn
I once spoke to a human geneticist who declared that the notion of intelligence was quite meaningless, so I tried ...

‘Vocal anti-GM campaigner’: Organic farmers should abandon opposition to gene editing
The organic sector has been vehemently opposed to genetic technologies in the past, but Alex Smith, vocal anti-GM campaigner and ...

The glyphosate debacle: How a misleading study about the alleged risks of the weedkiller Roundup and gullible reporters helped fuel a cancer scare
As biotech giant Bayer prepares to spend $10 billion settling thousands of lawsuits alleging its weedkiller Roundup (and its active ...

Anti-vaccine fake news quiz: Can you spot the conspiracy misinformation spreading across social media?
1. An Alabama nurse died after taking the coronavirus vaccine. Hover your mouse here for the answer. Learn more about ...

GMO ‘scarecrow’: What’s keeping Africa from embracing genetically engineered crops?
The advent of climate change, coupled with new plant pests and diseases, has worsened the plight of Ghanaian farmers, relegating ...

Rural America is a hotbed of anti-COVID vaccine sentiment
There are many factors that are associated with an individual’s willingness to get the coronavirus vaccine including their age, level ...

Many Black NBA players wary about getting COVID vaccine. Here’s why
With so many players in need of information and insight [on COVID shots], sources say teams asked league officials for ...

Industrial farming: Blessing or curse? Two books offer dueling visions of America’s food system
“Simply put,” [Mark Bittman, in his book “Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, From Sustainable to Suicidal,”] writes, “agriculture ...