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Are nanoparticles polluting the environment? Researchers have just begun to ask the most basic questions about the impact of new nano-materials on human health and the environment. Evidence of nanoparticle contamination in living organisms and unanswered questions about potential dangers of new forms of carbon require urgent societal review.
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Un reciente artículo de la compañía de marketing Bivings Group, se titula: Cómo infectar al mundo. Presenta cómo el mercadeo viral a través de Internet -entendido como mercadeo por rumores-, puede ser altamente efectivo en promover diferentes tipos de productos (¿y también políticas?)
Entre los clientes de Bivings Group se encuentran, entre otras, grandes empresas transnacionales dedicadas a la biotecnología, a la producción de sustancias químicas y petroquímicas altamente contaminantes, corporaciones petroleras, grupos financieros, consultoras, tabacaleras, productoras de alimentos y productoras de transgénicos.
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Sugerir que Terminator se desarrolló como una herramienta para la bioseguridad es una estrategia cínica y revisionista de la historia. Es inaceptable y peligroso sugerir que la agricultura se haga dependiente de la esterilización genética de semillas como un método para minimizar la contaminación genética de las plantas genéticamente modificadas.
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It is revisionist history, and a cynical strategy, to suggest that Terminator was developed as a biosafety tool.
ETC Group is alarmed and insulted by the campaign to promote Terminator as a biosafety mechanism. It is unacceptable and dangerous to suggest that agriculture is dependent on genetic seed sterilization as a method for minimizing genetic pollution from genetically modified plants.
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An essay by ETC Group's Hope Shand entitled "Intellectual Property: Enhancing Corporate Monopoly and Bioserfdom", appears in Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture. Edited by Andrew Kimbrell and published by the Foundation for Deep Ecology in 2202. Fatal Harvest offers a visually stunning collection of photos and essays on the myths and tragedy of US-bred industrial agriculture. It also offers a vision for a food and farming system that is socially just, ecologically and culturally diverse and sustainable.
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Some biotech companies are claiming that GM (genetically-modified) seed can best be controlled if they also apply Terminator technology to the seed. The Terminator makes the seed sterile at harvest time so that farmers have to purchase new seed every growing season. When ETC group learned that suicide seeds were being hailed as a "green" technology, we decided to hold a contest. The winner is announced today at the Biodiversity Convention in The Netherlands.
ETC group's April Fool's Day Contest - to come up with the best conclusion to the sentence, "Using Terminator to halt GM seed contamination is like..." has a winner. The global contest, which began in early February and ended on April Fool's Day resulted in more than 110 entries from 21 countries. Many hundreds more visited the special website set-up for the contest to see the answers.
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Rather than enter into a marriage that even the U.S. Government would find unpalpable, the world's two most powerful Gene Giants have decided to live in sync by sharing their proprietary agricultural biotechnologies with one another. Unless the two titans are committing to long-term monogamy, such a tech-swap is the corporate equivalent of "unprotected sex". It seems the risks in this particular union will be offloaded on farmers with fewer choices and higher prices - the corporate notion of "Fee Love"?
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The Coalition Against BioPiracy (CAB)* will present its highly un-coveted Captain Hook Awards -for infamous and outstanding achievements in biopiracy - at the Biodiversity Convention in The Hague, April 8-19 2002. The previous Captain Hook Awards ceremony was held almost two years ago at the Fifth meeting of the Biodiversity Convention in Nairobi. The Coalition emphasizes that the Captain Hook awards are made possible by the work and activities of many civil society and peoples' organizations around the globe that actively monitor and resist biopiracy. The cases cited and the analysis used in selecting the award winners are by no means limited to the work of the Coalition Against Biopiracy.
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Food First Backgrounder, Vol. 8, No. 2, Spring, 2002
This 4-page backgrounder on GM maize contamination in Mexico can be downloaded free from the Food First website
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A UNITED NATIONS conference in the Hague next week (April 02) offers the UN a critical opportunity to ban 'Terminator' seeds before they are commercialised in farmers' fields, warns an alliance of campaign groups.
The ETC group, Berne Declaration and ActionAid are among many groups urging delegates at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) 'COP6' conference to heed global opinion and ban the commercialisation of crops modified to produce sterile seeds - known as 'suicide seeds' or 'Terminator technology'.
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Nature magazine’s flip-flop today (April 2002) over the testing protocols involved in determining GM maize contamination in Mexico - the Centre of Genetic Diversity for the vital food crop - is just the latest in a string of absurdities as the scientific community struggles over what to do as genetically-modified germplasm invades the genetic homelands of the world’s food supply.
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On the 10th anniversary of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), ETC group concludes that the CBD has failed to establish meaningful regulations to stop biopiracy. Biopiracy refers to the appropriation of the knowledge and genetic resources of farming and indigenous communities by individuals or institutions seeking exclusive monopoly control (usually patents or plant breeders' rights) over these resources and knowledge.
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En el décimo aniversario del Convenio sobre Diversidad Biológica (CDB), el Grupo ETC concluyó que el CDB fracasó en establecer regulaciones significativas para detener la biopiratería (la apropiación del conocimiento y los recursos genéticos de las comunidades campesinas e indígenas por individuos o instituciones que buscan el control del monopolio exclusivo sobre esos recursos y conocimiento).
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La nota que la revista Nature escribe hoy (2002) retractándose de anteriores publicaciones sobre las metodologías usadas para determinar la contaminación del maíz transgénico en México —centro de diversidad genética de este vital cultivo— es el último eslabón de una cadena de absurdos, en la que mientras la comunidad científica está enfrascada en luchas internas, el germoplasma genéticamente modificado invade los centros de origen de los cultivos alimentarios del mundo.
A US patent on a yellow bean variety ("Enola" bean patent # 5,894,079) has disrupted export markets for Mexican bean growers and is now wreaking havoc on small farmers and seed companies in the United States. Larry Proctor, the president of Pod-Ners seed company, and owner of the controversial US patent on a yellow-colored bean variety, filed a lawsuit on 30 November 2001 against 16 small bean seed companies and farmers in Colorado (USA). The patent makes it illegal for unlicensed users in the United States to grow, sell, import, or use the proprietary yellow bean seeds. Farmer and civil society organizations have condemned the Enola bean patent as a textbook case of biopiracy because Proctor readily admits that his proprietary bean seed originates from a bag of edible dry beans he purchased in Sonora, Mexico in 1994. In his 1997 application for plant variety protection, Proctor wrote, "The yellow bean, 'Enola' variety is most likely a landrace from the azufrado-type varieties" (which originate in Mexico). The Enola bean patent is being legally challenged by an international plant breeding institute in Cali, Colombia, the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT).
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MIT says an army of NanoWalkers (microbots) will be performing sub-atomic operations within three months. The development signals a new era in technology as industry prepares to move "down" from genomes to atoms.
Thumbelina with an attitude: Hundreds of three-legged robots the size of a thumb, complete with onboard computers, powerful microscopes, and biosensors will be ready to manufacture nano-scale materials by mid-2002, according to researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Bioinstrumentation Laboratory. A 'nano' is a measurement of one-billionth of a meter. Only 32 millimeters in diameter, the microbots are designed to manipulate atoms. Responding to infrared signals allowing each microbot to act independently or collectively on myriad tasks, the little machines (dubbed "NanoWalkers") are capable of executing 48 million instructions and making 4,000 nano-maneuvers per second. MIT expects to have at least 300 microbots hard at work in an enclosed card-table sized chromium chamber by June. The chromium surface provides an energy source for the robots which will receive their marching orders from a master computer in the box's ceiling.
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El MIT afirma que dentro de tres meses un ejército de Nano Caminantes (microrobots) manipulará partículas subatómicas. Este avance anuncia una nueva era tecnológica, mientras la industria se prepara para dar el “pequeño gran paso” de los genomas a los átomos.
Pulgarcito con actitud: De acuerdo con los investigadores del Laboratorio de Bioinstrumentación del Instituto Tecnológico de Massachusetts (MIT, por sus siglas en inglés), cientos de robots de tres patas del tamaño de un dedo, equipados con tablero de controles, poderosos microscopios y biosensores, estarán listos para manufacturar materiales a nano-escala a mediados del año 2002, Un ‘nano’ mide un milésimo de un millonésimo de metro. Con sólo 32 milímetros de diámetro, los microrobots están diseñados para ensamblar partículas atómicas y subatómicas. Respondiendo a señales infrarrojas que permiten a cada robot actuar independiente o colectivamente en millares de tareas, las pequeñas máquinas (apodadas “Nano Caminantes”) son capaces de ejecutar 48 millones de instrucciones y hacer 4,000 nano maniobras por segundo. El MIT espera tener al menos 300 microrobots trabajando arduamente en una cámara cerrada de cromo del tamaño de una mesa de juegos para junio de este año. La superficie de cromo provee de una fuente de energía para los robots, los cuales recibirán órdenes de trabajo de una computadora maestra en la parte superior de la cámara.
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Si no tiene nada bonito que decir, ¿mejor quedarse callado?
El comité de políticas del CGIAR, la red de científicos agrícolas más grande del mundo, reunido la semana pasada, evadió todas las preguntas difíciles relacionadas con el maíz transgénico en México, centro de diversidad genética de ese cultivo, pese a que el año pasado(2001) y reiteradamente el mes pasado (01/2002), la Secretaría de Medio Ambiente de México confirmó que las variedades nativas de maíz en por lo menos dos estados están contaminadas con ADN de maíz genéticamente modificado.
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If you don't have anything nice to say don't say anything at all? When the policy committee of the world's most important agricultural science network met last week, they evaded all the tough questions related to transgenic maize in Mexico - the crop's center of genetic diversity. Last year, and again last month, the Mexican Environment Ministry confirmed that farmers' maize varieties in at least two states had been contaminated with DNA from genetically modified maize.
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Los Gigantes Genéticos perdieron la batalla sobre la tecnología Terminator. Pero ahora están diciendo que la contaminación de cultivos proveniente de semillas genéticamente modificadas se ha convertido en una epidemia en algunas partes del mundo, y que la única solución para aquellos que se oponen a las semillas transgénicas es utilizar Terminator para detener el flujo genético. Incluso cuentan con algunos gobiernos y algunos ambientalistas que denominan a Terminator “la solución verde.” Eso es mentira.
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