WEEKLY WATCH number 224
from Claire Robinson, WEEKLY WATCH editor
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Dear all:

Anyone who doubts that GM research has become an unofficial asylum for the dangerously demented and deluded should read this week's TECHNO-UTOPIANISM section.

There's good news from India, where Aruna Rodrigues' public interest lawsuit has forced the government into more openness and accountability over its GM activities (ASIA).

In the UK, Unilever has gained approval to put a fish-derived GM protein into its low-fat ice-cream, though it wasn't planning to tell us. We trust that this attempted sleight-of-hand will not go unnoticed by the brilliant people who have campaigned relentlessly to force British food producers and retailers to adopt a GM-free policy (EUROPE).

Finally, there's been another casualty of gene therapy. A person has died after being given a gene therapy treatment developed to treat cystic fibrosis and muscular dystrophy. Now, researchers have found the treatment causes liver cancer. Ironically, the GM cystic fibrosis "solution" has been repeatedly hyped by those who want us to believe that GM will bring a brave new world for us all (GENE THERAPY).

Claire [email protected]
www.gmwatch.org / www.lobbywatch.org

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CONTENTS
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GENE THERAPY
THE AMERICAS
LOBBYWATCH
TECHNO-UTOPIANISM
EUROPE
ASIA
BIOFUELS
COMPANY NEWS
REGULATION
GATES FOUNDATION

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GENE THERAPY
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+ GENE THERAPY SAFETY IN QUESTION AGAIN
A research group led by scientists from Washington University and St Louis University has released a study showing that a GM virus used in human gene therapy trials causes liver cancer in mice.

The findings follow an announcement that a patient in Seattle died after being treated with the same virus. The treatment, using a virus called adeno-associated virus, is considered one of the most promising avenues for battling genetic diseases such as cystic fibrosis and muscular dystrophy.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8152

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THE AMERICAS
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+ CONDI RICE'S NEW ADVISOR IS GM PROMOTER
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has named an avid GM promoter, Dr Nina V. Fedoroff, to be her new science and technology advisor. Nina Fedoroff stands accused of dissembling in her promotion of GM. She has, for instance, made claims about "ancient genetic engineering" in an attempt to make out it's no different from traditional breeding techniques and therefore nothing to worry about. She has also misrepresented the research of Dr Arpad Pusztai.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8145

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LOBBYWATCH
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+ PRAKASH APOLOGIZES FOR LACK OF PROFANITY
The Des Moines Register has published a fawning article about C S Prakash and his role in creating the "Norman Borlaug rap" in praise of the man who launched the agrochemical-based "Green Revolution" in the third world.

The rap song ("Norman Borlaug, you may be_/ the greatest man in history._/ Using science and your brain_/ To stamp out hunger, woe and pain") was previously attributed to Prakash's then 11-year-old son Rohan. But from what Prakash Senior confides to his Des Moines Reg reporter chum P. Senior was the guiding hand in the project throughout.

Referring to well-established rap lyric traditions, Prakash tongue-in-cheekily apologizes for "any lack of profanity or misogyny in the Borlaug song". But lack of profanity or misogyny is the last thing that we at GM Watch associate with the Prakash rap project. After we featured the rap song in a GM Watch bulletin, Mini-Prak sent us an email that began, "If you want to insult me, i'm going to insult you fucking dick ass bit[c]h whor[e]..." (continues ad nauseam).

Profile of Borlaug: http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8147

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TECHNO-UTOPIANISM
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+ WALL STREET JOURNAL ON IRRI AND RICE
An article in the Wall Street Journal admits that the first Green Revolution was "a boom that now is at risk of going bust: Rice yields are flat-lining. Overproduction has exhausted the soil that once supported the larger crops. Water shortages abound. And the price of the world's most eaten food [rice] is rising steeply, up about 70% since 2001 ..."

Nevertheless, some believe that the so-called second Green Revolution, led by GM firms and the IRRI, is going to save us from the effects of the first by means of techno-fixes like flood-tolerant rice. GM Watch comment: This is a vicious spiral involving the adoption of ever more costly, complex and risky quasi-solutions to the (increasingly challenging) problems generated by our earlier misplaced interventions.
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8156

+ FREEMAN DYSON'S TECHNO-MEGALOMANIA
From an article in Biopolitical Times: Not to be missed - Physicist Freeman Dyson's musings, in the July 19 issue of New York Review of Books, about an orgy of genetic manipulation to remake the natural world. Plants with black silicon leaves that absorb extra sunlight will provide energy too cheap to meter. Genetically engineered earthworms will imbibe the silicon trash, and in their off hours extract gold from seawater an