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Biotech / Medical : Monsanto Co. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Anthony Wong who wrote (2103)	6/1/1999 4:15:00 AM
From: Dan Spillane	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2539

Now Prince Charles is taking advantage of Africa...gross! A report just out from a UK "think tank" says the opposite of Charles, by the way. 1. Where is the Prince's PhD in agriculture and biotech? 2. How exactly did 20 African states arrive at the conclusion that improved crops won't help them, considering they couldn't afford the research to even figure this out? Could someone have told them this...someone from England perhaps? thisislondon.com Charles blasts Government over GM by Molly Watson Prince Charles has made an outspoken attack on the Government's claims that GM foods are safe and necessary. Writing in the Daily Mail, the Prince, who refuses to eat genetically modified food and has previously expressed concern about technology usurping "the role of God", warned that in accepting GM foods, Britain could be "embarking on an Orwellian future". In what was his most direct criticism yet of the Government's policy, the Prince added his support to the growing level of complaint about GM foods that only four days ago was dismissed as media "hysteria" by the Prime Minister. The Prince contended that: "We are constantly told that this technology may have huge benefits for the future. On the basis of what we have seen so far, we don't appear to need it at all." On the question of whether GM foods are safe to eat, the Prince answered that "only independent scientific research, over a long period, can provide the final answer". He added: "But what I believe the public's reaction shows is that we are nervous about tampering with nature." The Prince dismissed as "emotional blackmail" one of the main arguments used by the Government to encourage the growth of GM foods - that they can solve world hunger. He said there was no research to substantiate this view and pointed to to the representatives of 20 African states who have published a statement denying that gene technologies will "help farmers produce the food needed". The Prince criticised the Government for applying much less stringent rules to approving GM foods than for new medicines. He doubted whether consumers will be able to exercise a genuine choice about whether they eat GM foods or not, saying: "Labelling schemes clearly have a role to play. But if conventional and organic crops can become contaminated by GM crops grown nearby, those people who wish to be absolutely sure they are eating or growing natural, non-industrialised, real food, will be denied that choice." Monsanto, the biotechnology giant at the forefront of the development of GM crops, today rejected the Prince's claims. Corporate affairs director Tony Combes said: "Dozens of worldwide regulatory agencies have decided that biotechnology crops are safe."

To: Anthony Wong who wrote (2103)	6/1/1999 10:57:00 AM
From: Dan Spillane	Respond to of 2539

No, don't let the Bangledesh people plant awful HYBRID rice! Then they might not starve! Is it just me, or do the UK environmentalists seem more like Nazis? BBC/UK Tuesday, June 1, 1999 Published at 11:43 GMT 12:43 UK World: South Asia Row over hybrid crops Saving seeds from their crop is a practise as old as farming itself By David Chazan in Gazipor, Bangladesh Hybrid rice is being introduced in Bangladesh, forcing farmers to buy new seeds each time they plant. Environmentalists are up in arms, although the hybrid rice is not, strictly speaking, a genetically-modified terminator crop - a crop which is sterile and produces no seeds. Watch David Chazan's report Instead, the seeds produced by the hybrid crops are unusable because their quality is poor, so the effect on farmers is much the same. They become consumers, dependent on seeds supplied by a biotechnology company. Saving seeds from their crop after harvest, to re-plant in the next growing season, is a practice as old as farming itself. In Bangladesh, traditionally women have kept the seeds. They use knowledge passed down over generations to choose the best seeds, to ensure they have enough to eat next season. But seed-saving may soon be a thing of the past. Women traditionally kept the seeds Last year's floods devastated crops and wiped out half of Bangladesh's seedlings. The government decided to import hybrid seeds because they yield more rice. They are being distributed by Brac, a large charity with its headquarters in Dhaka. Gini Alam, one of thousands of Bangladeshi farmers who have just harvested their first hybrid crop says he is happy because he has grown 30% to 40% more rice, although he has used more fertiliser. If he saves and re-plants seeds from the crop, the results would be very poor. But he says the cost of buying new seeds and fertiliser will be more than covered by the higher yield. At first, he said, his neighbours were sceptical but now they all want to grow hybrid rice. Growing population needs more rice Gene bank of indigenous seeds kept The government and Brac argue that a country with so many mouths to feed cannot afford to do without new agricultural technology. Mr Abed, head of Brac says: "We need to increase our production of rice. Our population is growing, and we need to feed them. "Unless we increase our productivity, we'll not be able to do that. And we need it very urgently." Farhad Mazhar's Ubinig group has been leading the campaign against the hybrids. "If you really want to ensure the food security of the farming communities, and if you're really committed to the poverty alleviation, then the first thing you have to do is that farmers should have the control over the production, that means over the seeds," he says. "But here you are doing completely the opposite. You are taking away the control of the seed from the farmer and handing it over to the transnational companies. This is what you call the biopiracy." Farhad Mazhar says the hybrid rice is not as productive as claimed by its manufacturers, the Indo-American Hybrid Seeds company. He also accuses Brac of not telling farmers they would have to buy new seeds until just before they harvested the first crop this month - an accusation Brac denies. Concern about biodiversity Mr Mazhar and other environmentalists say many indigenous crop varieties may be lost if farmers use mass-produced hybrid seeds. To preserve biodiversity for future generations, government scientists are keeping a gene bank of indigenous seeds. Although they favour hybrid crops, they are worried that not enough tests have been done. Dr Hamid Mia of the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute says: "The varieties that we have so far in Bangladesh, all have not been thoroughly tested in the country, in connection with the reaction to pests and diseases, weather variability's, even nutrient status and also the management, etc." Because of the lack of tests, Dr Mia warned that the yields of the first hybrid rice crop could be disappointing. As population growth continues there will be increasing pressure to sell supercrops for the developing world. Environmentalists are not the only ones worried that control over the very seeds of life may be passing into the hands of big corporations.

To: Anthony Wong who wrote (2103)	6/1/1999 9:35:00 PM
From: Dan Spillane	Respond to of 2539

Now, how meaningful is this? If COX-2 inhibitors (or NSAIDs, as also suggested) really caused big jumps in inflammation, people would know about it (ouch!) Also, everyone knows NSAIDs and Cox-2s don't cure problems with joints. Are they reporting this clearly, or is it just me? Headline: Study questions how well new "super-aspirins" work ====================================================================== WASHINGTON, June 1 (Reuters) - British researchers on Tuesday questioned how well new "super-aspirins" called COX-2 inhibitors work, saying they may, in some cases, worsen conditions that cause pain and inflammation. Experiments on rats may explain why drugs, including the new COX-2 inhibitors, may help relieve the initial symptomatic pain of diseases such as arthritis but do not ever help the underlying damage, Paul Colville-Nash and colleagues at the William Harvey Research Institute in London said. Two COX-2 inhibitors have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) -- Monsanto (NYSE:MTC) unit GD Searle & Co's Celecoxib (Celebrex) and Merck's (NYSE:MRK) Vioxx, known generically as rofecoxib. Many others are in the works. The drugs are designed to be an improvement on old-fashioned aspirin and related drugs, known as non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). Such drugs, which include ibuprofen and other popular analgesics, act on a compound known as cyclooxygenase, or COX. But there are two forms of COX, COX-1 and COX-2. Studies indicate that it is COX-2 that causes pain and inflammation, while COX-1 has a broader role. The studies suggest that suppressing COX-1 causes the stomach damage that aspirin and other NSAIDS are blamed for and which kills 16,000 people in the United States every year. But writing in the journal Nature Medicine, Colville-Nash and colleagues said COX-2 may not be all bad. They tested rats with pleurisy, an inflammation of the membranes that cover the lungs. Writing in the journal Nature Medicine, they said when they caused pleurisy by injecting a substance into the rats' chests, there was immediate inflammation marked by a spike in levels of COX-2. "However, at 48 hours there was a second increase in COX-2 expression, 350 percent greater than that at two hours," they wrote. At this point, the inflammation started to die down, they added. Then they did the same experiment and also gave the rats indomethacin, an NSAID available generically, or NS-398, a COX-2 inhibitor. At the early stages the drugs reduced inflammation, as they are supposed to. But at the later stages NS-398 prompted a huge increase in inflammation. Indomethacin increased inflammation, also, but not by nearly as much. They said if the results bear out in humans, there could be implications for how COX-2 inhibitors should be used. "In the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, NSAIDs are administered for several months or even years and yet they show little evidence of decreasing disease progression or joint destruction," they wrote. Karen Seibert and colleagues from GD Searle & Co said results in rats are often different from what happens in humans. "The final analysis, as always, will come from clinical data," they wrote in a commentary. Copyright 1999, Reuters News Service