Donald Kennedy, the editor of Science elaborates on the administration's hiring policies:

A nominee for the National Institutes of Health Muscular Dystrophy Research Coordinating Committee is vetted by a staffer from the Office of White House Liaison, Health and Human Services. After being asked about her views on various Bush administration policies, none of them related to the work of the committee, she is asked whether she supports the president's embryonic stem cell policy.

A distinguished professor of psychiatry and psychology receives a call from the White House about his nomination to serve on the National Council on Drug Abuse. His interviewer declares that he must vet him to "determine whether he held any views that might be embarrassing to the president." A series of questions follows, into which the interviewer interpolates a running score, viz.: "You're two for three; the president opposes needle exchange on moral grounds regardless of the outcome." He then asks whether the candidate had voted for Bush, and on being informed that he had not, asked: "Why didn't you support the president?"

This stuff would be prime material for a Robin Williams comedy shtick, but it really isn't funny. The purpose of advisory committees is to provide balanced, thoughtful advice to the policy process; it is better not to put the policy up front. As for study sections, deciding which research projects to support has always been a matter for objective peer review. Political preferences are for the pork barrel, and the Congress is already doing too much of that. Indeed, the applicable statute for all this--the Federal Advisory Committee Act--specifically requires that committees be balanced and "not inappropriately influenced by the appointing authority." It would be a good idea for HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson and the White House Personnel Office to read the law, and then follow it.

how could I have forgotten about Amber?

a_m_b_e_r_4_e_v_e_r: No, I am fastened to the hookah by a 14' length of macrame.

f*cc'd
The US is now 17th on the index of press freedom, just ahead of Hong Kong.* Some "moral compass" demands that we export "our way of life" to the rest of the world, but it is tough to say what this is, anymore, except a global smackdown by the invisible hand, in the form of Clear Channel as well as the better known Texan raiders. See Ivins and the SF Guardian for Powell jr. and the FCC's plans to twist the knife.

[In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that Iraq is #130, and North Korea #139, out of 139 countries.]

NPR's story [real audio] this morning on the looming GM trade war made it clear how counterproductive it will be to bully Europe with the WTO. Meanwhile, the FDA is about to require every food production facility that exports food to the US to register with a US agent, under the guise of bioterrorism safety:

The proposed regulation would require the owner, operator, or agent in charge of a domestic or foreign facility to submit a registration to FDA, including the name and address of each facility at which, and trade names under which, the registrant conducts business, and the categories of food the facility handles. For a foreign facility, the registration must include the name of the U.S. agent for the facility. The U.S. agent may register a foreign facility if it is authorized to do so by the facility.

If that's not restraint of trade, it will at least ensure the dimunition of our supply of food not controlled by massive conglomerates.

Captains of industry [Ag online]

These business people think of themselves as bringing progress and development and creating jobs. If small coffee farmers working on forested hillsides can't compete with new lowland plantations, and if these small farmers are driven into urban slums, such ecological and social dislocation is described as the inevitable price we must all pay for a robust economy. Charles Muscoplat, Dean of the College of Agriculture of the University of Minnesota, described the consolidation of power and wealth in agriculture as "inevitable." Bill Lapp, economist and VP of ConAgra Foods, said "Adam Smith's "invisible hand' is the Mother Nature of economics."

Richard Dawkins in the Times of London

A largely unrecognised danger of the obsessive hysteria surrounding genetically modified foods is crying wolf. I fear that, if the Green movement's high-amplitude warnings turn out to be empty, people will be dangerously disinclined to listen to other more serious warnings. The evolution of antibiotic resistance among bacteria is a vicious wolf of proven danger. Yet the menacing footfalls of this certain peril are all but drowned out in the caterwauling shrieks over genetically modified foods, whose dangers are speculative at most. To be more precise, genetic modification, like any other kind of modification, is good if you modify in a good direction, bad if you modify in a bad direction. Like domestic breeding, and like natural selection itself, the trick is to introduce the right new DNA software. The realisation that software is all it is, written in exactly the same language as the organism's "own" DNA, should go a long way towards correcting muddled thinking.

Which paper also runs TV personality to beTina Brown's strikingly incoherent column:

Contrary to what Europeans imagine, especially if they saw the jingoistic mania at the Superbowl, the angst in New York and Washington is as strong as anything overseas. But unlike in Europe there is a huge desire here to want to go to war, which is weirdly different from a desire to go to war itself. We listen dutifully to the many excellent reasons to feel scared and vengeful towards Saddam, but the desire for a war is like a movie that fades even before you�ve reached the parking lot. It�s a syndrome best thought of as The Gung Ho Disconnect....

What?

THE reissued DVD of Lawrence of Arabia is moving faster than a camel on amphetamines at my local Blockbuster. New Yorkers are not just looking for epic entertainment. They�re looking for ways to blame the Brits and the French for creating the mess that became Iraq in the first place....

Duh. It is britain's fault, but 1. no one knows that here, and 2. no one gives a shit. Don't you have something relevant to talk about, old Europe?

Even after living here for 18 years I got into a real muddle with the builder this week in the reconstruction of our guest bathroom. When I was discussing the placement of the lavatory he thought I meant the handbasin. Apparently the unfamiliar term �lavatory� conjures up only washing facilities in the US (the word comes, of course, from laver � the French causing trouble as usual). When I pointed out that in the current design �the lavatory� was so boxed in that no one could ever sit astride it, he looked startled. �Is that,� he asked, �something your guests are likely to do?�

the future of proliferation

patent progress [Globe]

[Biotech companies used to] file massive patent applications comprising hundreds of thousands of pages of genetic code, claiming dominion over thousands of genes or gene fragments. The filings, usually packaged on compact disks to accommodate their extreme length, were euphemistically referred to by patent examiners as ''large sequence cases.''

In the past two years, the patent office has clamped down on gigantic filings by biotech firms. It's also raised the standards applicants must meet to win a patent on genes or gene-related discoveries. Just as important, companies have figured out ways to work around issued patents for specific genes and proteins.

''The land grab is over,'' said Kate Murashige, a partner at Morrison & Foerster LLP specializing in intellectual property for pharmaceuticals. ''It was a game that was bound to fail.''

Speaking of doublethink, which will be on your mind today, Louis Menand had an interesting article on Orwell in last week's New Yorker:

"Big Brother" and "doublethink" and "thought police" are frequently cited as contributions to the language. They are, but they belong to the same category as "liar" and "pervert" and "madman." They are conversation-stoppers. When a court allows videotape from a hidden camera to be used in a trial, people shout "Big Brother." When a politician refers to his proposal to permit logging on national land as "environmentally friendly," he is charged with "doublethink." When a critic finds sexism in a poem, she is accused of being a member of the "thought police." The terms can be used to discredit virtually any position, which is one of the reasons that Orwell became everyone's favorite political thinker. People learned to make any deviation from their own platform seem the first step on the slippery slope to "1984."

Menand attacks various orwellian straw men, who are unfortunately not really straw men, since they appear to abound in wondrous profusion, while missing what seems to be the more germane point, which is his brilliance as an essayist.

pasteurized [NYT]

The farm bill that was passed last May directs the Agriculture Department to buy irradiated beef for the federal school lunch program. It will be up to local school districts to decide if they want it...

Because the word irradiation conjures up radioactivity and, more recently, the method by which anthrax spores have been killed, the industry has tried to keep it off food packaging. It is lobbying to use a word with which people are more comfortable: pasteurized.

A farm bill provision, added by Senator Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat, directs the Food and Drug Administration to look for a less fear-inducing word. Senator Harkin, a longtime proponent of food safety, is also responsible for the language in the bill that directs the Agriculture Department to buy irradiated meat.

The same month the farm bill passed, according to the Federal Election Commission in 2002, Senator Harkin received a $5,000 campaign contribution from the Titan Corporation, which until last August owned the SureBeam Corporation of Sioux City, Iowa, the country's largest food irradiator. Tricia Enright, Mr. Harkin's spokeswoman, said: "Tom Harkin's record as a leader of food safety is unparalleled. His commitment to this technology goes back decades."

Now, I know the bullshit is flying from loftier, and seemingly more dangerous emplacements, but take a moment to consider what is being said here. The so-called liberal death star casually acquiesces in the arrogation of title "food safety proponent" by a man who 1. is forcing the USDA to buy irradiated beef for school lunches (not that they aren't, in all probability, eager to comply); and 2. directing them to find a name for it that will fool the unwashed. Don't forget that the entire -- stated -- rationale for irradiation is that it's cheaper than testing for contamination; the unstated corollary, of course, is that it doesn't really matter if the meat is contaminated, because you just nuke it. No more messy recalls. No more complicated procedures to avoid spraying carcasses with their own shit. No more wasting the wage labor of illiterate immigrants in hosing off those carcasses. I guess some democrats really aren't that different from the monster they pretend to abhor: "In this century, the greatest environmental progress will come about, not through endless lawsuits or command and control regulations, but through technology and innovation."

[Canada has the same problem].

McDonald's to sell organic milk in UK. Well, that changes everything.

The march of progress
Scientists have genetically modified cloned cows to answer the pressing need of... making cheese faster. Good thing we got that under control before something disastrous happened. [NYT | Nature Biotechnology].

XXXVII
Well, that sucked. 1. The immovable object trumps the unstoppable force (9 of 10 times); 2. Gruden was not worth it, except insofar as anyone whose former team you have to beat in the Super Bowl would have been worth it; 3. whoever that douchebag is who owns the Bucs makes Al Davis look normal; 4. it makes more sense to "riot" when you lose. And that's it for football. Pitchers and catchers in 2 weeks, baby.

A 1975 Iowa law prohibiting meat packers from owning livestock was ruled unconstitutional Wed., allowing the world's largest meatpacker to buy the nation's largest hog farmer [Des Moines Register | FoodRoutes]

In its complaint against the Iowa law, Smithfield said its vertical ownership of hog production and processing allows it to maintain "a high degree of quality control... to produce a consistently excellent line of value-added pork products and processed meats for national and international consumption."

Thank God that's working.

[Note that the law targeted Smithfield not only obviously, but explicitly, that is by name [Agriculture Online] -- which might well lead one to have to rule that it violated the Commerce Clause, if one were a Federal Judge].

The USDA could conceivably win a stupidity contest with Monsanto's PR people. Now, they've gone and sold 950 bushels of GE corn that the Iowa Farmer's Union and Friends of the Earth claim makes sows infertile. [NYT] Hey, let's make $2200 (guessing based on futures prices) at the expense of another negative publicity shitstorm.

Luckily, they have a handle on the US Wheat crop (this is a detailed analysis of how fucked wheat farmers will be if they plant RoundupReady wheat).

Anne Veneman, the current Ag secretary, got a D on her report card from something called The National Journal. That is pretty impressive, considering they gave Ashcroft an A-. To be fair, they had some problems before she got there.

Problems not limited incompetence, but including the current state of the law, in which it somehow has no legal authority to enforce food safety violations, a situation that more funding will hardly ameliorate (though it can't hurt). Maybe it will prevent things like the latest "voluntary" listeria recall.

Condi tries to explain what non sequitur means [NYT]

Last week's finding by inspectors of 12 chemical warheads not included in Iraq's declaration was particularly troubling. In the past, Iraq has filled this type of warhead with sarin -- a deadly nerve agent used by Japanese terrorists in 1995 to kill 12 Tokyo subway passengers and sicken thousands of others. Richard Butler, the former chief United Nations arms inspector, estimates that if a larger type of warhead that Iraq has made and used in the past were filled with VX (an even deadlier nerve agent) and launched at a major city, it could kill up to one million people.

You tell me what's farcical.

things you know... [BBC]

Venezuela will close its currency markets for five days in an attempt to stem capital flight....

And as the political and financial turmoil increases, more multinational firms are fleeing Venezuela. Microsoft is the latest firm to close its two Venezuelan offices, while Ford Motors has told its employees to leave next week.

... things you don't know [Hustler]

PALAST: What's not discussed in the American press is that the president of Venezuela, who they say is a Communist and a dictator, was, in fact, elected in a democratic election. In that regard, it's worth noting that our President's spokesman said, "Winning a majority of the vote does not make your government legitimate."

HUSTLER: Who should know better?

PALAST: [The U.S. government has] been working on getting rid of Chavez, because he's not only president of Venezuela, he also got to choose the president of OPEC, and I haven't read that anywhere in the U.S. press. He controls the biggest pool of available oil. Saddam Hussein's oil fields, if we do invade, will be in flames. Where do we get the oil to make up for the losses in a war? One place, Venezuela, which pulled our bacon out of the fire during the Arab oil embargo of the '70s.

HUSTLER: Didn't Chavez piss off U.S. oil companies by restructuring his deal with them?

PALAST: Here is a guy who said, "Look, I've got a nation where millions of people are living in cardboard houses. We're raising the price of oil, I'm taking over OPEC, I'm putting it back together, and I'm gonna take that money and rebuild the ghettos of Caracas," which he did. And that cost a lot of money, which he got by doubling the royalties on foreign corporations taking out the oil. They were getting 16% royalties -- this is the Venezuelans' own oil, after all -- and Chavez said, "We'll take 30%. You get 70%. Is that a deal?" The response from the Bush Administration was to get the guy kidnapped. And our ambassador, a political toady named Charles Shapiro, ran down from the U.S. Embassy to put his arm around the guys who are literally holding the president of the country hostage. You have to imagine what this looks like to the rest of the people in the world. Of course, we didn't see that. We're not permitted to find out what's happening in our news media.

God bless you, Larry Flynt. Guess I have to read this guy's book now. [via skimble, via sideshow].

Pew and the Post are hosting a live forum on GE fish tomorrow featuring the president of AQUA Bounty, among others. You can submit questions like:

Please explain how increasing salmon growth hormone production will have any effect except to exacerbate the problems inherent in aquaculture. As Pauly et al. wrote in Nature 418: 689-75:

Modern aquaculture practices are largely unsustainable: they consume natural resources at a high rate and, because of their intensity, they are extremely vulnerable to the pollution and disease outbreaks they induce. Thus, shrimp aquaculture ventures are in many cases operated as slash-and-burn operations, leaving devastated coastal habitats and human communities in their wake.

[M]uch of what is described as aquaculture, at least in Europe, North America and other parts of the developed world, consists of feedlot operations in which carnivorous fish (mainly salmon, but also various sea bass and other species) are fattened on a diet rich in fish meal and oil. The idea makes commercial sense, as the farmed fish fetch a much higher market price than the fish ground up for fish meal (even though they may consist of species that are consumed by people, such as herring, sardine or mackerels, forming the bulk of the pelagic fishes in Fig. 1). The point is that operations of this type, which are directed to wealthy consumers, use up much more fish flesh than they produce, and hence cannot replace capture fisheries, especially in developing countries, where very few can afford imported smoked salmon. Indeed, this form of aquaculture represents another source of pressure on wild fish populations.

Considering the additional evolutionary risks posed by transgenic fish (as discussed by Muir and Howard, PNAS 96: 13853-6), what rationale could there possibly be to commercialize this product?

[Don't send this question; I already sent it. That would constitute astroturf].

Citrus
R. W. Apple, who has the best job in the world, inquires into the deliciousness of the Texas Rio Star grapefruit, while the fruit detective crops up in the Times to praise the navel:

"The navel [grafted] on sour orange [rootstock from Brazil] has the best sugar/acid ratio and solids, but it fell out of favor after 1955 because it's susceptible to tristeza," he said, referring to a viral disease.

If my bossa nova Portuguese is correct, that's a viral disease called "sadness." Sweet.

The UK public debate on GM food has generated a lot of information.

Colorado farmer can't wait for Yieldgard Rootworm corn [Rocky Mountain News], which Monsanto strangely implies is approved in the US, even though it is not.

wow
The Bush administration's economic plan would increase by 50 percent or more the deductions that small-business owners can take right away on the biggest sport utility vehicles and pickups.

Interesting article in the Times on new discoveries about RNA and its functions

What all of this RNA is doing is not clear, and much of it may have no function. Dr. Sean Eddy, a researcher at Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Washington University, said cells might just be sloppy, turning far more DNA into RNA than they needed. But mounting evidence suggests that at least some RNA is involved in regulating the way genes are turned on or off....

As research continues, scientists wonder how the small RNA's eluded them for so long. One explanation is that genes that code for RNA are easy to overlook in computer scans of genomes. But another reason, scientists say, is simply that no one thought to look.

"This work could have been done 20 years ago," Dr. Sharp said. "There's nothing new in it in terms of technology. We just missed it."

Also see this Science News article on non-viral delivery systems for gene therapy.

The safest food supply in the world [AgWeb]
In a move that could have a major impact on the US poultry industry, Mexico's Secretariat of Agriculture has informed USDA that it will ban all imports of raw poultry from the United States.

In case you haven't seen Warren Sapp's website yet. Uh, shouldn't Michael Strahan get that domain? If not a certain fellow buccanneer.

I'm calling it: all-pirate superbowl. Chuckie's going down.

What's worse: extinction or in-vitro fertilization of wild antelopes? [National Geographic]

A group of French actors, scientists and politicians destroyed a field of genetically modified rapeseed Thursday in support of anti-globalization guru Jose Bove who was sentenced to a prison term in November for a similar action. [Yahoo]

acrobatic bureaucrats
IFPRI "research at a glance" on Biotechnology and Genetic Resource Policies -- really about IP regimes for biotech in the developing world. OECD report on first-world IP problems. The Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity is preparing to deliberate on on GURTs -- the licensing agreements that farmers have to sign when they buy biotech crops.* and a non-pdf interview with the head of the FAO's agriculture dept.

*Here's the latest twist to Monsanto's license:

"You receive a limited use license to prepare and apply on glyphosate tolerant soybean, cotton, or canola crops (or have others prepare and apply) tank mixes of, or sequentially apply (or have others sequentially apply) Roundup or other glyphosate herbicides labeled for use on those crops with quizalofop, clethodim, sethoxydim, fluazifop and/or fenoxiprop to control volunteer Roundup Ready corn in grower's crops for the 2003 growing season. However, neither grower nor a third party may utilize any type of co-pack or premix of glyphosate plus one or more of the above-identified active ingredients in the preparation of a tank mix."

It�s sure strange that, all of a sudden, farmers and custom applicators now have to get a license from Monsanto to take care of a problem it caused in the first place: volunteer RR corn in field of RR soybeans or other RR crops! They�ve been doing so ever since RR corn was first commercialized, before Monsanto applied for the patent in March of 1999. Furthermore, it�s strange that the US Patent Office would even consider granting Monsanto the tank mix patent, as patents are supposed to be for novel inventions. There is nothing novel or inventive about mixing herbicides.

"We feel the situation is being taken care of":
Monsanto responds to the Times story on Roundup resistance.
Also see the Weed Science Society of America's time-lapse movies of herbicides in action (?)

And new Bt refuge strategies from the USDA.

Bananas could be extinct in ten years! [hyperbole from the BBC] So they are going to sequence it [New Scientist].

New Pew report on transgenic fish very carefully says:

Although the new animal drug application (NADA) process appears to give FDA adequate legal authority and risk management tools to evaluate potential food safety concerns associated with transgenic fish, the report finds that FDA may not be equally empowered to address the environmental and ecological concerns some associate with genetically modified (GM) fish. Specifically, the report questions whether the Agency�s review process provides the necessary levels of transparency and public participation needed to ensure public confidence, and asks whether the Agency has the expertise, authority and resources necessary to conduct a comprehensive review of transgenic fish.

Duh. [cf. the Post]

A site called plantstress.com has some interesting info, such as this mind-bogglingly obvious critique of apparently widespread flaws in evaluating transgenic plant stress resistance.

Gene therapy is eating it [NYT | google | FDA], but you knew that.

Monsanto-funded research in the UK claims that GM beets will help skylarks, or something [BBC].

So I'm a dork. fuck off.

Liberal elite strike again [NYT]

In an unusual showdown over freedom of expression, university officials have refused to allow a fund-raising appeal for the Emma Goldman Papers Project to be mailed because it quoted Goldman on the subjects of suppression of free speech and her opposition to war. The university deemed the topics too political as the country prepares for possible military action against Iraq.

In one of the quotations, from 1915, Goldman called on people "not yet overcome by war madness to raise their voice of protest, to call the attention of the people to the crime and outrage which are about to be perpetrated on them." In the other, from 1902, she warned that free-speech advocates "shall soon be obliged to meet in cellars, or in darkened rooms with closed doors, and speak in whispers lest our next-door neighbors should hear that free-born citizens dare not speak in the open."

I'm sure UC isn't worried about its relationship with the government or anything.

1/21:The Chancellor sent this out on Sat.:

In light of all the recent publicity surrounding the Emma Goldman Papers, I wish to make clear, as reported today in The New York Times and the San Franciso Chronicle, that I have informed Candace Falk, director of the project, that she is free to use the Emma Goldman quotations in any fundraising solicitation she wishes to circulate. I believe that the original deletion of the Goldman quotations represented an error in judgment, for the quotations offered Goldman's own views on issues that remain all too current.

Much of the media attention has focused on the issue of free speech, especially because of Berkeley's long-standing reputation as a center for free speech, and because one of the quotations spoke of the suppression of free expression. While in this case, altering a fundraising letter by striking these particular quotations constituted unwise intervention, it is not the case, nor, I believe, can it be seen to be the case, that any alteration or editing of an official fundraising appeal by the unit supervisor constitutes an abridgement of free speech. Such messages are revised and edited regularly in consultation with supervisors.

Despite the embarrassment we have all felt at the national spotlight this has attracted, I think we can be heartened by the many voices that have been raised in defense of freedom of expression and know that because of those voices, it will remain a sacred principle at Berkeley.

Uh, ok. Sacred. Whatever you say.

More things you don't want to know about poultry processing. [warning: may include projectile defecation].

GM News
A paper in the new Environmental Biosafety Research downplays the risk of "superweeds":

The movement of transgenes from crops to weeds and the resulting consequences are concerns of modern agriculture. The possible generation of "superweeds" from the escape of fitness-enhancing transgenes into wild populations is a risk that is often discussed, but rarely studied. Oilseed rape, Brassica napus (L.), is a crop with sexually compatible weedy relatives, such as birdseed rape (Brassica rapa (L.)). Hybridization of this crop with weedy relatives is an extant risk and an excellent interspecific gene flow model system. In laboratory crosses, T 3 lines of seven independent transformation events of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) oilseed rape were hybridized with two weedy accessions of B. rapa. Transgenic hybrids were generated from six of these oilseed rape lines, and the hybrids exhibited an intermediate morphology between the parental species. The Bt transgene was present in the hybrids, and the protein was synthesized at similar levels to the corresponding independent oilseed rape lines. Insect bioassays were performed and confirmed that the hybrid material was insecticidal. The hybrids were backcrossed with the weedy parent, and only half the oilseed rape lines were able to produce transgenic backcrosses. After two backcrosses, the ploidy level and morphology of the resultant plants were indistinguishable from B. rapa. Hybridization was monitored under field conditions (Tifton, GA, USA) with four independent lines of Bt oilseed rape with a crop to wild relative ratio of 1200:1. When B. rapa was used as the female parent, hybridization frequency varied among oilseed rape lines and ranged from 16.9% to 0.7%.

Monsanto's Bollgard II Cotton is approved -- it has 2 Bt genes.

The Post reports that the US is edging closer to a GM food WTO suit against Europe:

Yet there is concern in some quarters that a suit could stir up European public opinion against the United States -- and possibly even set off a wider trade war, prompting the European Union to impose sanctions in unrelated trade battles. And it is far from clear that even a successful legal case would open European markets to foods made with gene-altered crops, because resistance among European consumers is perceived to be overwhelming....

"I don't see things getting improved," [US Trade Representative and rocket scientist Robert] Zoellick said. "Instead I see something extremely disturbing: the European anti-scientific view spreading to other parts of the world -- not letting Africans eat food you and I eat, and instead letting people starve." He called this "immoral" and described the European view of biotechnology as "Luddite," a reference to the English workers who smashed machines to save their jobs at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

The BBC has a 2-part radio "programme" on GM food that you can listen to online.

Victoria Gewin on agricultural bioterrorism in Nature:

If such an attack seems unlikely, it is worth noting that agricultural bioweapons have been used before. During the First World War, German agents infected Allied horses with the bacterium Burkholderia mallei, which causes glanders � a disease that can kill horses and can also infect humans. And Simon Whitby, a peace-studies researcher at the University of Bradford, UK, says that any country that has studied biological weapons, including the United States and Russia, will have looked at plant and animal diseases. Iraq, for example, is known to have weaponized wheat pathogens....

Agriculture is also now more open to attack, as a result of large-scale methods such as the use of factory farms and monoculture cropping systems. "There is a vulnerability. It isn't anyone's fault, it's just how agriculture has evolved," says Jim Cook, a plant pathologist at Washington State University in Pullman. And although the ease with which a pathogen could be introduced is the root of the problem, weaknesses in the systems used to detect an outbreak could exacerbate any damage....

[This morning NPR was talking about that NAS report that the USDA tried to suppress this summer.]

1/14:The FDA has some work to do too... 1/15: cf. this New Scientist article:

So who should make such decisions? The most popular suggestion is that the editors of journals act as censors. Already, the American Society for Microbiology is asking its 11 journals to "discourage any use of microbiology contrary to the welfare of humankind, including the use of microbes as biological weapons". All the society's reviewers will be asked to comment confidentially on the potential for misuse in submitted manuscripts. Editors will then heed that advice when deciding whether to publish.

1/17: Science says:

Gerald Epstein, a security expert with the Institute for Defense Analysis in Alexandria, Virginia, proposes a simple question scientists can ask themselves before submitting a paper: "Would you like [it] to be found in a cave in Afghanistan with sections highlighted in yellow?"

The scary thing about this is that if the PR douchebags ever get slightly less retarded, no one will give a shit about bad things.

By the way, there is too a public sphere in america, but it's in the Raiders' parking lot. Cf. the Times.

back
Joan Didion must-read in NYRB

This was a year in which it would come to seem as if we had been plunged at one fell stroke into a pre-modern world. The possibilities of the Enlightenment vanished. We had suddenly been asked to accept -- and were in fact accepting -- a kind of reasoning so extremely fragile that it might have been based on the promised return of the cargo gods.

[from altercation (who, a bit further down, has more info on our old friend Otto Reich)].

Also depressing is the Times's story [in conjunction with CBC and Frontline] on working conditions at a Texas pipe factory.

And proceedings of a CIMMYT conference on gene flow in maize, from 1997.

CPSI hammers the FDA for faulty GE food reviews.

Starlink is back too.