CRISPR and Genedrive danger

SOURCE: Jerry DiPietro (ofstone@aol.com)
SUBHEAD: Letting genedrives loose outside labs is too risky, says scientist who promoted idea.

By Paul Koberstein on 22 Devember 2017 for Earth Island Journal -
(http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/elist/eListRead/letting_gene_drives_loose_outside_labs_is_too_risky_says_scientist_who_prom/)


Image above: Illusration of mosquito and genexrive. From (http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/eij/article/editing_evolution/).

[IB Publisher's note: As more people are avoiding GMO produced food you can bet that "players" in the GMO/Pesticide development in Hawaii are salivating to get out of that business and into open field testing of gene drive technology. And if GMO companies' indifference to the health and welfare of the people living on these islands is an indicator we are all endangered. See accompanying article "Editing Evolution" by Paul Koberstein further explaining genedrive technology.]

A large cache of emails released this month show that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is stepping up its efforts to promote the deployment of a controversial new genetic engineering tool known as “gene drive” to help eradicate malaria in Africa.

Malaria killed an estimated 438,000 worldwide in 2015. Sub-Saharan Africa continues to carry a disproportionately high share of the global malaria burden. 

However, some of the scientists who had initially proposed using the technology for public health and conservation purposes are having serious second thoughts about deploying it outside of labs.

In a effort to combat the disease, researchers funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are planning a field trial of gene drive equipped Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes – the main malaria vector in Africa – in Burkina Faso.

Gene drives can help circumvent traditional rules of genetic inheritance and force a desired, specifically selected, genetic trait through a population.

Given the almost magical possibilities it offers to enhance beneficial traits or remove undesired characteristics in living things – think eradicating pests without using toxins, or saving an endangered species by making them immune to certain diseases – the technology has captured the imagination of many in the fields of conservation and public health.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which considers gene drives “necessary” to end malaria, has invested some $70 million on Target Malaria, a research organization based at Imperial College in London that is working on preventing deaths from malaria, which numbered 438,000 worldwide in 2015.

Target Malaria is planning to release genetically modified Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes – the main malaria vector in Africa – in Burkina Faso.

These modified mosquitoes would be equipped with gene drives that would disrupt the reproductive systems of successive generations and eventually cause them to go extinct. The project would be the first field trial of gene drive technology.

The release of 1,200 emails by the Genetic Biocontrol of Invasive Rodents (GBiRD) program at North Carolina State University, provide fresh insights into the work of groups like the Gates Foundation and GBiRD that are promoting the use of gene drive biotechnology.

(GBiRD is a partnership of seven university, government and non-government organizations advancing gene drive research.)

The emails – which were released in response to freedom of information requests submitted by Edward Hammond, a biosafety activist from Austin, Texas –also show that the environmental advocacy group Island Conservation is developing plans to use gene drives as a mechanism for exterminating invasive species on the islands of Hawaii, New Zealand, and Australia.

Hammond made the emails public just two weeks after one of the key proponents of the gene drive technology, Kevin Esvelt, published a report saying the technology was too risky to be used in field trials to control invasive species.

Esvelt, a professor at MIT who first identified the potential for gene drives to alter wild populations of organisms in 2013, is now warning, once unleashed, gene drives will prove difficult if not impossible to control.

Esvelt said that projects that are planning to conduct gene drive experiments to control invasive species in the wild should first invent safer forms of the technology.

In theory, the release of these genetically altered mosquitoes or invasive pests like rats, would cause all the members of a targeted population of mosquitoes or rats to go sterile, eventually exterminating that and only that population.

But new research by Esvelt and his colleagues at MIT and Harvard University suggests that gene drive deployments are more than likely to go haywire, with potentially disastrous consequences for non-targeted animal populations and ecosystems. (*Check update/clarification on this below.)

In a paper published in the non-peer reviewed scientific journal BioRxiv, Esvelt and his colleagues wrote that, once unleashed, gene drives will prove difficult if not impossible to control.

The paper, “Current CRISPR gene drive systems are likely to be highly invasive in wild populations,” is currently in pre-publication review. CRISPR refers to Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, a new technology that allows scientists to alter genes by editing strands of DNA.

CRISPR’s invention in 2012 by scientists at the University of California-Berkeley and MIT led to the development of gene drives two years later in Esvelt’s research laboratory.

In the BioRxiv paper, the scientists said that mathematical models based on existing empirical data show that in their current form, gene drives cannot be deployed without harmful side effects. Their modeling showed that gene drives can be very aggressive and even a handful of gene drive modified organisms could carry the new gene, not only through much of the targeted population of a certain species, but also on to non-intended populations.

For example, under their models, a gene drive released in Hawai’i to kill a specific kind of mosquito on the island of Kauai would eventually start targeting a different kind of mosquito on the island.

“Releasing a small number of organisms often causes invasion of the local population, followed by invasion of additional populations connected by very low gene flow rates,” they wrote. “Highly effective drive systems are predicted to be even more invasive.”

On the same day his BioRxiv paper was released, Esvelt expressed regret for ever proposing gene drives be used in real word experiments.

In an interview with the New York Times, Esvelt called his championing the notion “an embarrassing mistake” given the predicted invasiveness of current CRISPER-based drive systems.

But he and his colleagues still thinks researchers should continue exploring ways in which gene drives could help save species that are in peril.

The new report confirms concerns that many within the scientific and environmental community have had about the unknown ecological and public health risks posed by a technology whose basic purpose is to spread genetic mutations.

Nevertheless, the GBiRD emails show that that the Gates Foundation is ploughing ahead with its research on gene drives as a mechanism for eradicating the mosquito that causes malaria (which, it should be noted again, is not an effort to control an invasive species, but rather an effort to eradicate a disease-carrying insect).

In 2016, it made a $1.6 million payment to Emerging Ag, a PR firm it retained for the purpose of influencing a United Nations expert group that has been addressing gene drive issues. The group, the Ad Hoc Technical Expert Group on Synthetic Biology (AHTEG), was convened by the UN’s Convention on Biological Diversity.

Hammond, who posted the emails to his website, is a former member of AHTEG.

In one of the emails, the Gates Foundation said it hired EmergingAg to “increase awareness, understanding, and acceptance of possible gene drive applications for public good purposes.”

One of EmergingAg’s initiatives has been to recruit scientists who will advocate for gene drives. For example, in an Aug. 1, 2017 email thread, Isabelle Coche, a vice president of EmergingAg, is trying to recruit Fred Gould, codirector of the Genetic Engineering and Society Center at North Carolina State, for advocacy work.

The email asks Gould to "support advocacy and engagement activities on gene drive.” Gould, however, demurs, saying, “it would be problematic for me to be involved,” adding that such advocacy would “compromise” his role on a gene drive ethics committee.

Coche’s role at EmergingAg, according to another email, is “to fight back against gene drive moratorium proponents before the next CBD meeting in 2018.”

This was in reference to calls from several anti-gene drive groups for an international moratorium on gene drive research in petitions last year before the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The CBD rejected those petitions, which are likely to be repeated at next year’s CBD meeting.

On its website, Emerging Ag calls itself “a boutique international consulting firm providing communications and public affairs services.”

Its president and founder is Robynne Anderson, a former international communications director of CropLife, the global lobby group for the biotechnology, seed, and pesticide industries based in Brussels, Belgium.

On her personal website, Anderson praises gene drives without actually mentioning the biotechnology by name.

“The Target Malaria team is researching approaches that can reduce the numbers of mosquitoes that spread malaria,” she writes. 

“By reducing the population of the malaria mosquito, (a very specific beast called Anopheles), they are able to combat transmission of the disease. Their strategy relies on reducing the number of female malaria mosquitoes.”

She said this approach “is expected to be complementary to other mosquito control methods, easy and inexpensive to implement, because the mosquitoes themselves do the work of stopping malaria. The control method would be a long-term, sustainable, and cost-effective solution to prevent malaria.”

Austin Burt, professor of evolutionary genetics at Imperial College London and principle investigator for the Target Malaria consortium, said in an email that “a blanket assertion that ‘gene drive field trials pose unacceptable risks for ecosystems’ is not consistent with how I understand [Esvelt’s] position – risks must always be assessed on a case-by-case basis, as they will depend on the exact features of the construct and the species / population into which it is to be released.

Rather, I believe he is calling for inclusive, informed discussion of the risks, which I certainly agree with.”

Burt said Esvelt’s paper “just shows that a particular type of gene drive construct may be expected to spread from one population to another when there is naturally-occurring gene flow, which indeed is correct.”

As for the Target Malaria initiative, he said that although “we are one of the leading groups working on developing this sort of technology, we are still many years (>5) from having something that we might propose to release in the field, and indeed we are still working on the path to get to that point.” Safety, he said, “is paramount, for humans and the environment.

Malaria imposes an appalling burden across too much of sub-Saharan Africa, and we want to be in a position to offer something that people and governments will want to use to help reduce this burden.”

He emphasized that when Target Malaria develops a gene drive it “will go through extensive safety testing before we would consider releases.”

Island Conservation, meanwhile, sees gene drives as a tool that can rid islands of invasive pests without the use of chemical pesticides.

The group says that 180,000 islands around the world are infested with alien rodents, but only 400 rodent eradication programs to date have been successful, and each relied on rodenticides to remove the non-native populations.

Heath Packard, a spokesman for the group, told Earth Island Journal that the group “is investigating the feasibility and suitability of a potential gene drive mouse construct that could safely and effectively remove invasive species from islands. The question is not only could we, but should we and under what conditions.

Local communities and their governments will need to decide on a case by case basis.”

But he said that Island Conservation “would never contemplate even asking a community to consider a highly-contained field trial unless work in the genetic laboratories demonstrated that the mouse construct could not, itself pose unmitigated harm to well-established parts of our ecosystem.”

“This work must be done, cautiously, thoroughly, and stepwise,” he said. “That’s exactly what our partnership is doing.”

*UPDATE, December 22: To be clear, this risk is not of gene drives spreading to other species. The risk is that they could spread to other populations, or rather, sub-species of the same species — for example to any of the other 205 mosquito species in the Anopheles subgenus — and as a result impact local ecosystems where they might serve key roles, such as, as a food source for other critters. This report isn't implying that gene drives can jump the species barrier spread to other species.

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USDA clears way for GE mushrooms

SUBHEAD: A new CRISPR gene-editing technology doesn't seem to bother our federal food regulator.

By Steve Hoffman on 10 May 2016 for Alternet -
(http://www.alternet.org/food/gmo-mushroom-waved-through-usda-potentially-opening-floodgates-wave-frankenfoods)


Image above: Diagram of Cas9 and CRISPR gene sequencing technology. From (http://mvresnovae.com/science/witnessing-gene-cutting-in-action/).

Repeat after me: Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats.

That’s CRISPR, a new GE technology that uses an enzyme, Cas9, to cut, edit or remove genes from targeted region of a plant’s DNA. Because it doesn’t involve transgenics, i.e. inserting genes from foreign species into an animal or plant, foods produced in this manner just received a free pass from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to be sold into the marketplace.

In an April 2016 letter to Penn State researcher Yinong Yang, USDA informed the associate professor of plant pathology that his new patent-pending, non-browning mushroom, created via CRISPR technology, would not require USDA approval.

“The notification apparently clears the way for the potential commercial development of the mushroom, which is the first CRISPR-Cas9 gene-edited crop deemed to require no regulatory review by USDA,” reported Chuck Gill in Penn State News.

Why does this anti-browning mushroom not require USDA regulation? ”Our genome-edited mushroom has small deletions in a specific gene but contains no foreign DNA integration in its genome," said Yang. "Therefore, we believed that there was no scientifically valid basis to conclude that the CRISPR-edited mushroom is a regulated article based on the definition described in the regulations."

The USDA ruling could open the door for many genetically engineered crops developed using CRISPR-Cas9 technology, said Penn State. In fact, just days after USDA's notification regarding Yang's anti-browning mushroom, the agency announced that a CRISPR-Cas9-edited corn variety developed by DuPont Pioneer also will not be subject to the same USDA regulations as traditional GMOs.

In response to Pioneer's "Regulated Article Letter of Inquiry," about the new GE corn product, the USDA said it does not consider the CRISPR corn "as regulated by USDA Biotechnology Regulatory Services," reported Business Insider.

Not so fast, cautions Michael Hansen, senior scientist for Consumers Union. Just because USDA says CRISPR needs no regulation, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which uses the international CODEX definition of “modern biotechnology,” would “clearly include” the new Penn State CRISPR mushroom, says Hansen.

“The biotechnology industry will be trying to argue to USDA that these newer techniques are more "precise and accurate" than older GE techniques and should require even less, or no scrutiny,” he says. “Thus, the issue of what definition to use for GE is a crucial one,” Hansen points out.

“The government does realize that there is a disconnect between USDA and EPA and FDA about what the definition of genetic engineering is, and that is part of the reason why it is in the process of reviewing the Coordinated Framework for the Regulation of Biotechnology,” Hansen says. “Thus, the last sentence in USDA’s letter to Dr. Yang at Penn State would say, ‘Please be advised that your white button mushroom variety described in your letter may still be subject to other regulatory authorities such as FDA or EPA.’”

Yang does plan to submit data about the CRISPR mushroom to the FDA as a precaution before introducing the crop to the market, he says. While FDA clearance is not technically required, Yang told Science News, “We’re not just going to start marketing these mushrooms without FDA approval.”

Gary Ruskin, co-director of the advocacy group U.S. Right to Know, told Fusion on April 25 that the organization’s concerns about genetically engineered food crops extend to Penn State’s new CRISPR mushroom.

“What are the unknowns about CRISPR generally, and in particular, in its application in this mushroom?” he asked. “Regulators should determine whether there are off-target effects. Consumers have the right to know what’s in our food.”

In Europe, however, where anti-GMO advocates have strongly opposed CRISPR, Urs Niggli, director of the Swiss Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL) was recently quoted in the German newspaper Taz that CRISPR may be different from traditional GMO technologies and could alleviate some concerns groups like FiBL have with older gene-editing techniques.

His comments have since been subject to much interpretation and criticism among both pro- and anti-GMO circles.

While biotech proponents claim that CRISPR has much to offer, Nature reported in June 2015 that scientists are worried that the field's fast pace leaves little time for addressing ethical and safety concerns. The issue was thrust into the spotlight in April 2015, when news media reported that scientists had used CRISPR technology to engineer human embryos.

 The embryos they used were unable to result in a live birth. Nature reported that the news generated heated debate over whether and how CRISPR should be used to make heritable changes to the human genome.

Some scientists want to see more studies that probe whether the technique generates stray and potentially risky genome edits; others worry that edited organisms could disrupt entire ecosystems, Nature reported.

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GE salmon - What could go wrong?

SUBHEAD: Genetically modified salmon will eventually escape and establish populations in the wild.

By Kurt Cobb on 22 November 2015 for Resource Insights -
(http://resourceinsights.blogspot.com/2015/11/genetically-engineered-salmon-what.html)


Image above: Salmon is native to the northern Atlantic Ocean, in rivers that flow into the north Atlantic and, due to human introduction, in the north Pacific Ocean. From (http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Atlantic_salmon).

[IB Publisher's note: Our best guess is that these GE salmon, like most fish farm operations, feed on GMO corn products - just like most dogs and cats are fed.]

As U.S. regulators cleared genetically engineered salmon for sale in the United States last week, they opened the door to what many scientists already feel is inevitable: The escape and reproduction of GE salmon in the wild and the possible destruction of competing wild species.

Under the U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved application, the company behind the so-called AquAdvantage Salmon, Aqua Bounty, can only raise such salmon in land-based tanks with "multiple and redundant levels of physical barriers to prevent eggs and fish from escaping." These barriers are described in detail and suggest that it will be very difficult for any eggs or fish to escape into waterways.
The FDA said it considered four interrelated questions about confinement of the fish:

1. What is the likelihood that AquAdvantage Salmon will escape the conditions of confinement?
2. What is the likelihood that AquAdvantage Salmon will survive and disperse if they escape the conditions of confinement?
3. What is the likelihood that AquAdvantage Salmon will reproduce and establish if they escape the conditions of confinement?
4. What are the likely consequences to, or effects on, the environment of the United States should AquAdvantage Salmon escape the conditions of confinement?

Right away we can see that the FDA is asking these questions in the wrong way because it misunderstands the risks involved. It should be asking if there is ANY LIKELIHOOD WHATSOEVER that the salmon will escape, survive, disperse, reproduce and establish populations in the wild.

Why is it important to ask the question in this way? Because although the salmon are sterilized, the "sterilization technique is not foolproof," according to The New York Times.

So, here is the relevant principle: Any invention with a nonzero risk of systemic ruin and which is produced and deployed long enough will with almost 100 percent certainty create that ruin. Put more informally, if you keep repeating something that each time you repeat it has a small chance of creating catastrophe, eventually you will produce catastrophic conditions, that is, systemic ruin.

Systemic ruin in this case would be the ruination of the wild salmon fisheries overrun by the GE type.
And, the damage might include other harmful effects to waterways and their associated wildlife that we cannot now anticipate. Remember, this is a fish that we've never seen operate in any existing ecosystem. We have no empirical data about its possible effects; and, releasing such fish into the wild to obtain that data risks the very ruin we wish to avoid.

Now, there is one final question which the FDA asks: "What are the likely consequences to, or effects on, the environment of the United States should AquAdvantage Salmon escape the conditions of confinement?"

Again, this is the wrong way to ask the question. The effects would not be confined to the United States since the escape of one unsuccessfully sterilized salmon into the wild could lead to a worldwide infestation. (In any case, the facilities approved for farming the salmon are in Prince Edward Island, Canada and in Panama. But apparently, only the possible environmental effects in the United States were considered.)

Anything that is novel cannot by definition have a history to draw on. A novel invention might not alter the environment very much or it might alter it radically. We cannot know. To say that we should subject the world's salmon fisheries to the possibility of ruin in order to find out reveals a failure to understand that self-propagating, worldwide dangers do not lend themselves to cost-benefit analysis.

When the cost is the complete ruination of a system, we must judge costs to be incalculable. The complete destruction of the global wild salmon population is not 10 times worse than the destruction of 10 percent of that population. It is infinitely worse. It is infinitely worse because you cannot repopulate the world with an extinct species (except perhaps in science fiction movies). There is no remedy.

And, we must keep in mind that we do not now know how many other facilities like those built by Aqua Bounty will be constructed. The danger of release grows with each added facility. And, of course, we must assume that Aqua Bounty wants to expand as a company which implies many more facilities should the company become successful.

Also, keep in mind that such facilities, although on land, must have extensive plumbing and drains which must ultimately connect with the external world. Is it rational to believe that GE salmon or salmon eggs will never, ever make it into a waterway and survive, an event which must happen only once for a possible cascade of destruction of wild species to take place?

So, we should say that the risk is real and the scope and severity, if realized, would be catastrophic.
Understanding this allows us to see why the precautionary principle applies in this situation and in the cases of all genetically engineered plants and animals. Anything that is novel, self-propagating and worldwide in reach has the possibility of creating systemic ruin. Which leads us to another key principle: It does not matter how many times something succeeds if failure is too great to bear.*

In other words, it does not matter if millions upon millions of GE salmon are produced without any release into the environment when the inevitable release of one (by mistake, carelessness, accident or poor design) could create ruinous global consequences. (And, if the GE salmon industry grows, it is difficult to believe that there will be only one inadvertent release over time. Accidents happen--even when we think we have designed foolproof systems.)

Whether such a fish is safe for human consumption is not the key question--though the FDA answers that it is safe. That's what makes the announcement of the approval so misleading. What difference does it make if this GE salmon is safe to eat if, in the event of escape and propagation, it ultimately destroys the entire wild salmon fishery and has other unforeseen and catastrophic effects on marine life.
______________________________________________________
*This formulation comes from author and risk expert Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan and many other works on risk.

See also:
Ea O Ka Aina: Unlabled GMO Frankenfish 11/20/15

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Can "Super Coral" save reefs

SOURCE: Sam Monet (monets001@hawaii.rr.com)
SUBHEAD: Researchers in Hawaii are using an "assisted evolution" to grow coral to withstand the hotter more acidic oceans.

By AP Staff on 5 November 2015 for the Guardian -
(http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/nov/05/scientists-attempt-to-breed-super-coral-to-save-threatened-reefs)


Image above: Juvenile coral is prepared to transplant on to reefs in hopes that the high-performing specimens will strengthen the overall health of the reef. Photograph by Caleb Jones/AP. From original story.

[Note from Source: In the 1970's, acid rain from Germany killed much of Sweden's native forests and lakes.  After the German's initiated green controls, the Swedes replaced their native forests with mono cultured trees that, unfortunately did not and cannot replicate or replace the bio diversity that existed in their native forests.  However, that is better than nothing.  President Ronnie Reagan denied the existence of Acid Rain or ozone depletion, both well documented by the Swedes.]

The super coral might help us, however, if it cannot support the entire ecosystem, the life forms that depend on the existing corals will not survive and will not support the rest of the food chain that is much more complex than a Swedish forest.  Mono cultured coral reefs will not be the same.

I have been writing about and warning the politicians and people of Hawaii about global warming since the very early 1990's.  The direct result of our global greed and ignorance, today it is upon us.

The Ala Wai yacht harbor is much hotter, more polluted, acid and silted than Kaneohe Bay.  What little corals we have, have been bleached in our harbor.  I suggest the real test of the super coral is in Ala Wai harbor.  If it can live and breed here, then it can do that anywhere in Hawaii and similar climate zones world wide.


Researchers in Hawaii are using an "assisted evolution experiment" to grow coral that can withstand the hotter and more acidic oceans caused by global warming

Scientists at a research centre on Hawaii’s Coconut Island have embarked on an experiment to grow “super coral” that they hope can withstand the hotter and more acidic oceans that are expected with global warming.

The quest to grow the hearty coral comes at a time when researchers are warning about the dire health of the world’s reefs, which create habitats for marine life, protect shorelines and drive tourist economies.

When coral is stressed by changing environmental conditions, it expels the symbiotic algae that live within it and the animal turns white or bright yellow, a process called bleaching, said Ruth Gates, director of the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology.

If the organisms are unable to recover from these bleaching events, especially when they recur over several consecutive years, the coral will die. Gates estimated that about 60 to 80% of the coral in Kaneohe Bay has bleached this year.

“The bleaching has intensified and got much more serious,” said Gates, of the coral around the bay. Where they once looked for the bleached coral among the h

Gates and her team are taking the coral to their centre on the 29-acre isle and slowly exposing them to slightly more stressful water.

They bathe chunks of coral that they’ve already identified as having strong genes in water that mimics the warmer and more acidic oceans. They are also taking resilient strains and breeding them with one another, helping perpetuate those stronger traits.

The theory they are testing is called assisted evolution, and while it has been used for thousands of years on other plants and animals, the concept has not been applied to coral living in the wild.

“We’ve given them experiences that we think are going to raise their ability to survive stress,” Gates said. She said they hope to see these corals, which will soon be transplanted into the bay, maintain their colour, grow normally and then reproduce next summer.

In early October, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) said that coral reefs worldwide are experiencing bleaching, calling the event extensive and severe.

“We may be looking at losing somewhere in the range of 10 to 20% of the coral reefs this year,” Noaa coral reef watch coordinator Mark Eakin said when the report was released. “Hawaii is getting hit with the worst coral bleaching they have ever seen.”

And this is the second consecutive year Hawaii has experienced widespread bleaching.

Scientists say some coral has already fallen victim to global warming. About 30% of the world’s coral population has already perished as a result of above average ocean temperatures, El Niño’s effects and acidification.


Image above: Researcher Jen Davidson places a tray of enhanced coral on to a reef during a practice run for future transplants off the island of Oahu. Photograph by Hugh Gentry/AP. From original story.

Gates and her team understand the challenges of scalability and time. Having success locally does not necessarily mean they will be able to scale their project to address a massive, global marine crisis before much of the world’s coral reefs are already gone.

Tom Oliver, a marine biologist and team leader at Noaa’s Coral Reef Ecosystem Division, said the project is scalable with the requisite amount of effort and funding. He said, “the question is not can they do it, it’s can they do it fast enough?”

Oliver said that many reef restoration projects struggle because of the cost and time involved with raising standard coral and planting it in the ocean. “Restoration needs to have brood stock that can handle the changing conditions on reefs,” he said.xxx

Gates said more research needs to be done before they can begin to address scalability.

In 2013, Gates and her Australian counterpart Dr Madeleine van Oppen, who does coral research at the Australia Institute of Marine Science, won the $10,000 (£6,500) Paul G Allen Ocean Challenge for their proposal to assist coral evolution.

Allen’s foundation then asked them for a proposal to fully fund the idea, which they eventually did with a $4m grant in June. Allen, who co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates, has various climate-related projects in his philanthropic portfolio.

Hawaii’s Gates said that while the goal of their project is to help coral survive global warming, there is still a need to end human’s reliance on fossil fuels and to mitigate the emission of greenhouse gasses that cause global warming.

“Even if we stopped all greenhouse gas emissions today, there is still this lag in the atmosphere where climate change will continue for probably hundreds of years,” Van Oppen said. “It’s hard to imagine it’s not going to get worse.”


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Monsanto and Syngenta stranglehold

SUBHEAD: The possible merger of these two GMO-Chemical giants would threaten world food security.

By Paul Barbot on 6 October 2015 for TruthOut -
(http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/33105-monsanto-and-syngenta-tighten-stranglehold-on-global-food-supply)


Image above: Mashup by Juan Wilson of corporate sign at Monsanto's Creve Couer based headquarters in greater St. Louis. 

There is a corporate monster in the making. If allowed to emerge, it will gain near complete control of one of the most vital elements to human survival: our global food supply. This monster - a conglomeration of two corporate entities, Monsanto and Syngenta - must be stopped for the sake of the planet and future generations.

The companies that would make up this monster conglomeration both want complete control of our food. They envision a world completely inundated with their "patented" genetically modified seeds and saturated in their environmentally destructive chemicals. They seek to put all of their critics and those deemed "in the way" in prison or leave them financially ruined.

They threaten to subvert the democratic process with their "bought" legislators, who are strategically placed inside virtually every facet of the governmental apparatus. And they do all of this while wrapped in the rhetoric of superheroes, sustainability and stewardship.

Fortunately, the behemoth merger is still in its gestational period: Its constituent entities, Monsanto and Syngenta, have yet to fully "consummate" the deal. But when the conglomeration does finally emerge, it will do so with a brand new identity.

And why wouldn't Monsanto and Syngenta want to shed those tired, old skins? Both of their "brands" are mired in criminality, environmental devastation and the exposures of their mafia-style tactics (see Syngenta's transgressions: here, here and here).

Now, before we can even begin to discuss what needs to be done to remedy this predicament that will soon be thrust upon us, we must first take a look at how we've been brought to this seeming impasse.

To do so, it's helpful to look closer at the history of Monsanto, not because Syngenta is innocent of afflicting catastrophe upon the world, but because Monsanto is the greater party in this transaction, and it is Monsanto's crimes and modus operandi that other biotech companies hope to emulate.

Monsanto Plays Dirty
On April 17, 2015, Monsanto's CEO Hugh Grant met with Syngenta's chairman of the board Michel Demaré and CEO Michael Mack to discuss Monsanto's bid to merge with Syngenta - a transaction that would create an unprecedented agro-giant and should have the antitrust alarm bells screaming; this deal would constitute the combination of the first- and third-largest biotech companies in the world.

Syngenta's response to Monsanto, in a letter dated April 30, laid out the company's concerns regarding the proposed deal, which - not surprisingly - never ventured outside of the monetary realm.

Demaré and Mack went on to state that the deal was "grossly inadequate" and that the regulatory process would lead to significant "value destruction" of their integrated crop strategy. They also fretted about the "reputational risk" that Monsanto poses to Syngenta's bottom line.

Syngenta's "concerns" appear to have only been a ploy to garner more for what they have to offer - as evidenced in the results of a survey conducted by Sanford C. Bernstein Ltd, which stated that Syngenta's investors are "overwhelmingly in favor" of talking to Monsanto for an added 5 percent increase.

Outside of the banal aspects of sales negotiations, Syngenta did manage to bring up two very important points of debate. The first is the glaring issue of antitrust laws and regulations that would threaten to shut the whole deal down. As mentioned above, this deal would constitute an unprecedented combination of the world's number one and number three biotech companies.

Secondly, was Syngenta's concern about merging with a company of Monsanto's reputation; given that both companies have practically identical legacies, it is slightly odd that this would concern Syngenta. I suspect that Syngenta's uneasiness stems from the extreme public backlash that Monsanto has deservedly earned as of late.

Looking from Syngenta's standpoint, one would conclude that the company brought up very valid reasons for its initial apprehensiveness about the proposed merger. But it is Monsanto's rebuttal - made in an attempt to allay Syngenta's fears - that should strike fear into people all across the world.

With a level of hubris that one typically reserves for times when a desired outcome has privately been declared a forgone conclusion, Monsanto's CEO, Hugh Grant, easily dismissed Syngenta's antitrust concerns and reiterated his "high degree of confidence" for gaining all the necessary regulatory approvals.

Grant also went on to offer the "highest reverse breakup fee that any company has agreed to." Reverse breakup fees are fines levied on the acquiring company and paid to the target company should a deal be blocked by such pesky things as "regulations."

The $2 billion reverse breakup fee that Monsanto has offered amounts to roughly 25 percent of the company's reported gross profits from 2014. On Monsanto's part, this fee constitutes an "all-in" maneuver.

In the game of poker, when players go "all-in," there are but two possibilities for that action: either they have a hand which they know will win, or they are bluffing and hope the other players don't want to risk calling them on it. This is in stark contrast to how things are played in the corporate world, where a company is legally mandated to consistently make a profit for its investors and shareholders.

The risk associated with an "all-in" approach would come with significant legal and financial ramifications for a company's executives and future in general. With that in mind, there can be only one explanation for Monsanto's "all-in" and that is - to steal a line from the credit card industry - because the company has been "pre-approved."

Given the existence of reports like the 2013 corporate profiling of Monsanto, which shows the extent to which Monsanto has infiltrated regulatory, legislative and educational bodies - not to mention the incalculable amounts of money that it has showered onto Congress - why would the company have any worries?

Everything is going precisely according to plan. And if sheer confidence in the ability to skirt regulations weren't enough to convince Syngenta, Monsanto also wanted to show that it isn't scared to flex its financial muscle and play dirty. Grant, in his rebuttal letter to Syngenta, also went on to imply just how much power and influence Monsanto has over the market by stating,

It is unfortunate that our initial approach to you was leaked to the press shortly before your rejection letter was received by us. The speculation and uncertainty have potentially negative effects on employees in both organizations, and on the value of the combination.

In addition to financial bullying, Monsanto has also openly talked to media sources about a possible hostile takeover, though the company claims this action to be "a ways out." Monsanto's actions reveal just how perverse the quest for absolute power and control can be.

The hijacking of the world's food chain is on full display in Monsanto's dogged determination to acquire Syngenta. Along the way, the agricultural giant is running roughshod over any pretensions to democratic processes and quickly ushering us into the age of the "food führer."

In the hopes of obscuring past infractions and inciting a full-blown case of social amnesia, Monsanto has also proposed to rename the combined company - in addressing Syngenta's final concern - with Grant expressing his desire to "reinvent Monsanto one more time."

Now, I must admit that this proffered rebrand was the issue that originally piqued my interest and drew my ire. How dare this rightly sullied organization attempt to deceive future generations of consumers and farmers by simply changing its mask and hoping that everyone will just forget who it was?

But I have since come to share the same view as Joel Salatin, a well-known organic farmer and author, when he expressed via email, "I guess I'm of the opinion that the folks who hate Monsanto will all know about the change and hate the new entity. When something is this big and in the public eye, the name doesn't mean that much."

He's absolutely right. The great affront at play is clearly the control over government that Monsanto has and the global food monopoly it wishes to create.

So, here we are standing at the precipice of the ultimate battle for our food sovereignty and one naturally has to ask: "What can we do to stop this?" First, we must look at what has already been done.

The Struggle for Food Sovereignty
The groups comprising the anti-Monsanto movement have primarily employed three different tactics in their struggles against the food giant.

The first has been the impassioned call for their members, along with the general public, to "vote with your purchases"; the second has been to move into the political arena in the hopes of stopping Monsanto electorally and legislatively; and lastly, there has been the staging of protests, which have commonly come in the form of marches.

These are three rather distinct tactics, yet common to all is the ideological pathology of deluded deferential dissent - the unflinching deference to and courteous, peaceable appeals for the very system and institutions to solve those problems, which are knowingly outgrowths thereof.

The anti-Monsanto movement's adherence to these three tactics, in conjunction with the full expression of the pathology contained within them, has subsequently led to another commonality: utter ineffectiveness in halting the spread of Monsanto's products and power.

Since 2007, the year the first opposition group arose, Monsanto's net sales and gross profit have both more than doubled, and the company's march toward complete domination of the world's food supply - by controlling its seeds - has not been impeded in any semantical sense of the word.

My intention in pointing out this glaring failure of the anti-Monsanto movement to effect any change is meant to encourage an honest, objective review of the interplay between these movements' tactics and results.

The organizations that stand in defiance to Monsanto have - to their credit - reached millions with their message and sparked people to start engaging the structures of corporate power within our society, but they are simply not taking their actions far enough, not if they want to see their ultimate goals come to fruition.

To stay planted within the political realm, where Monsanto holds all the levers, is to remain impotent. What is needed is the immediate revival of those directly confrontational tactics that were to become the hallmark of the labor movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

These activist groups should be using their vast influence to encourage and stand in solidarity with actions such as those taken by activists in Oregon when they surreptitiously burned 40 tons of Syngenta's genetically modified sugar beets to the ground, or in France where fields were yanked from the earth under the cover of night.
The time for civility is over!

While people are marching around chanting their cleverly worded slogans or pussyfooting in the legislative halls, Monsanto is blatantly consolidating its grasp on the world's food supply. World-renowned environmental activist and anti-globalization author Dr. Vandana Shiva once forebodingly declared:

If they control seed, they control food. They know it and it's strategic. It's more powerful than bombs; it's more powerful than guns. This is the best way to control the populations of the world.

Monsanto's actions clearly indicate that they've taken Shiva's prescient words to heart and twisted them into a new mission statement of insidious design.

The conglomerate that Monsanto wishes to create wants to snatch the building blocks of our food supply away from us. To return the favor in kind, we should start dismantling the building blocks of the very infrastructure that has allowed the company to do so.

If we cannot muster the courage to fight the monstrosity that will soon descend upon us by utilizing the full spectrum of actions that are desperately needed to eradicate it, we will leave a legacy of shame for future generations.

Besides, food fights can be fun! Right?

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Monsanto might change name to get Syngenta

By Tim Barker on 8 June 2015 for St. Louis Post-Dispatch - 
(http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/to-land-syngenta-monsanto-offers-to-change-name-incorporate-in/article_da79bf37-0ccd-5dcd-aeb7-074e1e71fef1.html)

As Monsanto intensifies its courtship of Syngenta, emerging details show the Creve Coeur-based agriculture giant is willing to change its name and move its legal headquarters overseas.

The company’s $45 billion offer for its Swiss rival has twice been rejected by the seed and chemical company’s leadership. So Monsanto is changing strategies this week, with plans to take its message directly to Syngenta shareholders in Europe.

Monsanto’s initial approach was rebuffed by Syngenta in May partly on grounds that it failed to address regulatory concerns. On Monday, after its second offer was turned down, a pair of letters offering insight into the negotiations were released by Syngenta. The letters are from Monsanto Chairman Hugh Grant to Syngenta’s leadership.

In a June 6 letter, Grant expressed confidence that its proposed merger would meet regulatory approval. And if that proved not to be true, Monsanto offered Syngenta a $2 billion breakup fee.

“Such a fee would be among the highest reverse breakup fees that any company has agreed to,” Grant said in the letter.

He also expressed “personal disappointment” with the pace of the negotiations.

And according to an earlier letter, dated April 18, Monsanto’s proposal calls for the two companies to merge under a new parent company, with its legal headquarters in the United Kingdom.

“We would also propose a new name for the combined company to reflect its unique global nature,” Grant, a native of Scotland, wrote.

The name Monsanto has been part of the St. Louis business community since 1901.

No suggestions were offered on what the new name would be. And it’s unclear whether any of Monsanto’s key executives would actually move to the U.K. headquarters.

Such moves, known as tax inversion, have been popular recently for large companies looking to reduce their U.S. tax burden. And given the size of the deal, the firm is likely to be looking for ways to make it work financially.

The U.S. government has been pressuring the nation’s firms to abandon the strategy. Indeed, Monsanto was singled out by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who recently sent a letter to the company, urging it not to pursue tax inversion.

“As we’ve previously stated, this is not a tax-driven deal,” Sara Miller, a Monsanto spokeswoman, said in a statement late Monday. “If people view our Syngenta proposal as tax-driven, it misses the vision of what we intend to unlock. This is about creating a new company focused on increased innovation and expanded global reach to support farmers around the world.”

Miller said Syngenta had requested a “neutral site as a corporate base” for the combined company in early negotiations. That offer, she added, was not included in the second, more recent letter, and would be subject to “further negotiations.”

“In any scenario, we remain committed to the U.S. and our hometown of St. Louis,” Miller said. “In fact, part of the strategic rationale we see is that a combined company has the potential to significantly add jobs and economic value to key regions in the U.S., including in St. Louis. We see St. Louis continuing to serve as our global ag innovation hub as it does today, helping deliver on the vision and benefits we expect from the combination.”

Some observers have suggested that Monsanto will have to increase its offer by $5 billion or more if it wants to complete the takeover.

But for now, some of its executives are turning to smaller meetings with Syngenta shareholders this week in London, Zurich and other European cities, according to Reuters.

The U.S. company’s Chief Operating Officer Brett Begemann, for instance, is scheduled to meet investors at a Zurich luxury hotel on Tuesday, according to the news service’s sources.

“The objective is to convince shareholders of Syngenta to pressure the company to negotiate with Monsanto,” one source told Reuters.

The person said Monsanto is hesitant go around management with an official offer to shareholders, because it would have to organize the sale of businesses for antitrust reasons without having control of the company.

Syngenta on Monday was dismissive of Monsanto’s second offer, despite the addition of the $2 billion guarantee.

“Monsanto’s second letter represents the same inadequate price, same inadequate regulatory undertakings to close, same regulatory risks and same issues associated with dual headquarters’ moves,” Syngenta said in a statement. “The only change by Monsanto is to add a wholly inadequate reverse regulatory break fee.”

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Quest to Create ‘Super Corals’

SUBHEAD: Coral reefs are increasingly threatened by warmer more acidic seas. Is selectively breeding corals the answer?

By Nicola Jones on 4 August 2015 for Environment 360  -
(http://e360.yale.edu/mobile/feature.msp?id=2900)


Image above: Reefs thrive in the hot waters of American Samoa that would kill other corals. Photo by Floris van Breugel/Naturepl.com. From (http://www.nature.com/news/climate-change-adaptation-designer-reefs-1.15073).

In Hawaii this summer, as corals engage in their once-a-year courtship ritual of releasing sperm and eggs into the water by moonlight, Ruth Gates will oversee a unique mating: the coming together of “super-corals” in her lab.

Gates and her team at the Institute of Marine Biology in Kaneohe tagged corals in their local waters that thrived through a heinous hot spell last September.

A few of those rugged specimens will be picked for arranged marriages this month, hopefully yielding some offspring even better suited to thriving in the warmer waters of the future. It will be, she thinks, the first selective mating of corals to try to help them thrive in the face of climate change.

Gates and her colleague, Madeleine van Oppen at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, have been awarded $3.9 million from Paul G. Allen's philanthropic organization Vulcan Inc. for this and other work into the “assisted evolution” of corals — an attempt to intentionally beef up the genetic stock of reefs to survive the onslaught of climate change. “This idea of homing in on super-performers is a no-brainer,” says Gates. “We have been doing it in the food supply for millennia.”

The work can be tricky — corals don’t like to be touched when breeding. And it’s controversial — some find the idea of active intervention in coral ecosystems disconcerting, since it turns a natural environment into a planned one that might be less biodiverse and less resilient to unexpected challenges like disease.

The idea of tinkering with coral genetics is even touchier, even if current work focuses on simple selective breeding for the hardiest corals, rather than on the more controversial prospect of producing corals that have been genetically modified.

But Gates thinks it’s necessary. Studies on the Great Barrier Reef and in the Red Sea have shown that the rate at which corals calcify their hard shells has declined by 15 to 30 percent since 1990 thanks to thermal stress; an influential 2008 report on global coral status showed that about 20 percent of global coral coverage has been lost since 1950.

In August 2014, an unprecedented 20 species of coral were listed as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, bringing the total on the list to 22.

The global culprit is climate change — which brings heat waves that devastate the symbiotic algae living within coral and bleaches the animals deathly white — along with rising acidity that literally dissolves coral bodies.

Locally, reefs also face disease, fishing nets that scrape the ocean floor, water pollution, and hurricanes. “Coral reefs are astonishingly resilient and have survived devastating blows from natural disasters in the past,” writes evolutionary ecologist Les Kaufman of Boston University. But he adds that they have never faced all these challenges together.

The usual plan for coral conservation is to create a marine protected area to limit the extra harms of fishing and pollution. But many think more proactive intervention is needed.

“Corals grow so slowly they only need to reproduce once every 100 years,” says David Vaughan, executive director of the Mote Tropical Research Laboratory in the Florida Keys. “But now we’ve killed so many we don’t want to wait that long for them to do it themselves.”

There is a shortcut available. In 1995, Baruch Rinkevich of Israel’s National Institute of Oceanography in Tel Aviv proposed that researchers start “gardening” coral reefs on a grand scale, actively restoring corals in the same way that silviculture manages forests.

The idea is simple: take broken pieces of coral, grow them in a nursery under controlled conditions (as hobbyists have been doing for decades), and then replant them where needed.

But this approach faces challenges: Replanted corals are often gobbled up by hungry parrotfish or wiped out by disease. And the scale is daunting. Some reef-building corals grow just a millimeter a year, and there are more than 110,000 square-miles of coral reef on the planet.

Nursery projects have proven they can boost coral growth. Once planted in the ocean, some nursery corals are an order of magnitude more reproductive than their natural brethren, says Rinkevich. “They’ve had the best start in life,” he explains.

In Florida, Vaughan has learned how to boost some particularly sluggish coral growth rates dramatically: His team surgically slices donor coral fragments into tiny pieces to promote faster regeneration. Doubling the size of a quarter-sized fragment used to take several years; now it takes months. Around the world to date, more than 100 species of coral have been successfully raised in nurseries.

But such projects are still just a drop in the bucket. The largest efforts, from the Philippines to Florida, have replanted tens of thousands of corals and the total globally stands at about 100,000, altogether covering perhaps less than a square mile. Some are hoping to scale that up. “I have a personal challenge to not retire until I plant a million corals,” says the 61-year-old Vaughan.

Rinkevich has also applied for funding for a one-million-coral project in Tanzania. At that scale they hope their ‘drop’ will start to have an ecological impact. “If we could plant 10 million staghorn corals we could de-list them,” estimates Vaughan. “So I need nine other crazy people like me,” he laughs — and, at a cost of about $1 to $10 per coral, a lot of funding, too.

Regardless of scale, these efforts are useless if the corals die — which sometimes happens. In one project in Bolinao, the Philippines, replants were walloped by bad weather, including two super-typhoons and three regular typhoons. “We were unlucky. Many died,” says Rinkevich. To face those odds, conservationists need to be sure they’re planting not just a lot of corals, but the right corals. “We want to be sure we’re picking winners,” says Vaughan.

This July, Vaughan switched on some adjustable tanks in his Florida lab that will let his group control the temperature and pH in which their baby corals are raised. In this way they can select the hardiest for future planting in the ocean.

Likewise, van Oppen will be studying coral responses to stressful conditions in Australia’s massive National Sea Simulator, a facility with more than 900,000 gallons of seawater tanks. And Stephen Palumbi, a marine biologist at Stanford University in California, last year started to build his own ‘smart reef’ off Ofu Island in American Samoa, with the hardiest corals he could find.

Palumbi’s experimental reefs were hit by warm waters and started bleaching in January; he and his team are just now looking to see if the transplanted corals from a warm-water-adapted pool fared better than other corals in the region.

Researchers don’t need to know the specific genes involved to do selective breeding, but they do need to know that the traits are inheritable. Recent work suggests they are.


Image above: This juvenile coral was raised from sperm and eggs in the lab, and then infected with symbiotic algae that are used to coping with elevated temperatures. Photo by Emily Howells/AIMS. From (http://www.nature.com/news/climate-change-adaptation-designer-reefs-1.15073).


Mikhail Matz at the University of Texas in Austin and colleagues crossed four coral colonies from two locations in the Great Barrier Reef off Australia to make 10 different offspring families, and tested their survival in hot waters of 35.5 degrees C, or 96 degrees F. They found that having a coral parent from the warmer location boosted survival odds up to five-fold.

Matz argues that the best way to use these genes is to simply take some warm-water corals and move them, so they can spread their adaptive genes through natural breeding. This “assisted migration” might be cheaper and less risky than nursery-based projects.

“Coral selection in captivity might be severely limiting genetic variation in what comes out of it,” he says. “I don’t think we understand enough about the genetic underpinnings of coral tolerance to actually be able to guide their evolution in any meaningful way.”

Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, director of the Global Change Institute and professor of marine science at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, co-wrote a provocative policy piece in Science in 2008 supporting investigation into assisted migration for corals and other animals. But he describes himself as a pragmatist.

“I believe some of these things might be useful on a local scale, perhaps to rebuild a reef for tourists to come and see — that makes economic sense,” he says. “But it’s a long way from starry-eyed ambitions to replant the world’s reefs.”

The most important thing, he emphasizes, is to ensure the world community works together to stabilize carbon dioxide emissions and ocean temperatures: “Without that,” Hoegh-Guldberg says, “any attempt at restoration will be washed away by our rapidly changing climate.”

Meanwhile, van Oppen, Gates, and others are trying to work out how best to get coral gardens to grow. Alongside selective breeding programs, they are also going to see how corals can best acclimatize to new conditions — there are hints that simply raising corals in challenging conditions can activate their latent ability to cope with those environments in a way that can be passed on to the next generation.

They will also be working with zooxanthellae — the algae that live in symbiosis with corals and that sometimes flee when waters get too hot. They are trying to increase the rate at which the algae’s genes mutate — using chemical cocktails or radiation for example — hoping to stumble upon a new variant that helps with heat resistance.

Van Oppen says they’re even “playing around a bit” with trying to intentionally splice in specific gene variants to make genetically modified (GM) corals designed to cope with heat or acid. “But,” she quickly adds, “that’s when you start to hear a lot of resistance. That’s not part of the Paul Allen grant for that reason.”

Genetic modification for ecological preservation is very rare, but not unprecedented: Researchers have made GM American chestnut trees to resist fungal blight, although they don’t yet have permission to plant them.

Van Oppen predicts that resistance to these projects will fade as time passes and the plight of corals gets worse. “I presented these ideas to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority late last year,” says van Oppen. “They were quite excited about developing these technologies ‘just in case’.”

See also:
Nature: Climate-change adaptation - Designer Reefs 4/23/14

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Growing wheat intolerance

SUBHEAD: Bread has been at the heart of human history for 10,000 years. Only recently are people intolerant to it.

By Vaness Kimball on 30 january 2015 for Sustainable Food Trust -
(http://sustainablefoodtrust.org/articles/growing-intolerance-happened-wheat/)


Image above: Detail of photo of John Letts displaying a variety of wheat he has grown. From original artilce.

Bread has always been at the heart of human history – we’ve been baking it for the best part of 10,000 years. But over the past decade there has been an explosion of people reporting problems with eating it.

How could wheat, a staple food that has sustained humanity for so long, have suddenly become a threat to our health? What’s happened to wheat that is causing the increase in digestive disorders? And can we get back to the bread we ate for millennia without becoming wheat intolerant?*

The story that lies behind our problem with bread is a sad one. In the space of one century we abandoned both the flavour and nutrition of our most basic food in favour of producing vast amounts of cheap industrial loaves.

The impact of the Industrial Revolution

Bread remained almost unchanged for thousands of years. Then, from the late 1850s to the 1960s, every aspect of it changed. We didn’t just change the way we made it – we altered it to the point that our bodies no longer recognised the ingredients. A combination of the Industrial Revolution and the hybridisation of wheat fundamentally changed the nature of the flour we use for baking.

The problems we now face can be traced back to the middle of the 19th century, when Gregor Mendel developed what are now known as the laws of biological inheritance, or hybridisation.

This revolutionary technique was quickly applied to wheat, but the grain was hybridised and developed not for its flavour, but for increased yields and levels of gluten. In doing so, we lost both taste and nutrition in our flour at an incredible speed. In just a few decades the gene pool was narrowed from thousands of varieties of to less than a hundred. It was the start of a monoculture.

Wheat didn’t just change in its genetic make-up. Towards the end of the 19th century there was also a major change in the way grain was processed and turned into flour. Up until this point all flour had been stone ground, a process that retained the wheat germ and its oils. This flour was fresh and had to be consumed quickly before the oils became rancid.

With the invention of the roller mill, wheat was ground with steel cylinders instead of stone. This very efficiently eliminated the germ – the richest part of the grain, containing proteins, vitamins, lipids and minerals. While the roller mill removed the most nutritious part of the grain, it produced white flour at high speed that could be stored for months on end without spoiling.

Additionally, as harvesting became increasingly mechanised, scientists developed wheat with shorter stems to accommodate the machines. Its root systems were also shorter and the gluten structure increasingly strong, giving modern bread its characteristic fluffy texture.

As wheat changed during the Industrial Revolution, the yeasts we use also underwent rapid scientific advancements. In 1876, two brothers, Charles and Max Fleischmann, launched their new, manufactured yeast at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. By the 1930s, commercial yeast was firmly established as a household essential.

In the 1940s, as the United States entered the war, Fleischmann Laboratories were still leading the way in yeast development. They discovered and then manufactured Active Dry Yeast®, specifically so that the troops could enjoy home-baked bread. Scientists went on to develop highly active dry yeasts that were capable of raising dough up to 50% faster than regular yeasts.

In 1961, this leap lead to what many consider to be the low point of bread making: the arrival of the high volume Chorleywood baking process. This industrial method of factory-produced bread prioritised the speed and cost of production at the expense of flavour and texture.

The industrial process has been blamed for much of today’s wheat intolerance, as it produces bread that is full of enzymes and preservatives. But laying all the blame on the manufacturing oversimplifies the problem, given that the grains themselves have changed. The problem is not just how we make the bread, but also the kind of wheat we use to make it.

As a specialist sourdough breadmaker, I have researched into old varieties of grains, to better understand their nutritional value and impact on digestion. My work introduced me to miller John Letts, who grows heritage grains in Oxfordshire, and as I began baking with his flour I realised the true social, environmental and health cost of industrial bread production.

I began to bake sourdough bread using Einkorn and Emmer flours, and soon discovered that in contrast to modern wheat bread, the ancient grains have a deep nutty, sweet flavour and make robust loaves with great crust and light chewy interiors.

John Letts is a Canadian born archaeo-botanist who, for the past 25 years, has been growing and milling many of the heritage variety grains that have long since disappeared from industrial agricultural systems.

John’s dedication and passion is evident from the moment you meet him. In the garden behind his workshop are dozens of trial beds. The one that was looking the most lush was a gluten-free perpetual rye. John explained that heritage seeds are not like today’s varieties, which create a monoculture.

John blends literally hundreds of different genetically diverse varieties, so if one particular kind doesn’t fare well in a particular spot, then another will. It’s a robust system, and one that, given the climate challenges we face, could well provide the answer to growing environmental problems, helping to build resilience in agriculture. Sowing a genetically diverse mix of seed also ensures that there is always a crop, because when one variety fails due to a virus or lack of rain, another will survive.

Old varieties have genetically evolved to grow on marginal land and are more likely to survive drought as they have longer roots so can seek moisture from deeper soil. These extensive root systems, which go down over a metre, also give them better access to micro-nutrients in the soil and the flour is more nutritious a result. This is aided by the mycorrhiza, microscopic fungi in the soil, which facilitate access to these trace minerals.
 
The absence of chemical fertilizers in much heritage grain production could well be the missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle. Most heritage grain is grown organically. Further, there is scientific evidence suggesting that varying levels of sulphur and nitrogen fertiliser can change the proteins in wheat, and proteins are at the heart of many allergies. One study found that increasing the level of nitrogen fertiliser directly resulted in increased levels of gliadin, a type of gluten protein that appears to cause the most allergic sensitivities. Chemical fertilisers also destroy the mycorrhiza fungi, which support the nutritional value of ancient grains.

Different types of wheat also have different numbers of chromosomes and there is evidence that these minute differences in chromosomes may be at the root of many digestive problems. There is wide anecdotal evidence that heritage flour is more easily tolerated than modern varieties, and there is compelling evidence from several studies to back up these claims, showing that older varieties of wheat, which have fewer chromosomes, also tend to have lower levels of gliadins.

The hybridisation of wheat and increased gluten percentages have undoubtedly contributed to the ever-increasing number of intolerances. But looking at the full picture, can we ignore the possibility that there is a connection between the massive increase in use of chemical fertilizers in the past 70 years and the significant increase in both gluten sensitivity and gluten allergies in the same period? Might it have contributed to the difficulty of digesting bread? Looking more closely at digestibility in bread, and why sourdough is important in this, could provide some insight – so keep an eye out for the next article exploring what makes sourdough bread more nutritious than yeasted bread and why it is easier to digest.

• Vanessa Kimbell teaches at The Sourdough School in Northamptonshire
• John Letts Lammas Fayre Flour is available from www.bakerybits.co.uk 

*For the purpose of this article it is important to differentiate between intolerance, allergy and coeliac disease. An intolerance is generally a digestive malaise, with symptoms that can include headaches, nausea, irritability, bloating or IBS symptoms, whereas in cases of coeliac disease, the immune system mistakes substances found inside gluten as a threat to the body and attacks them, causing damage to the surface of the small bowel (intestines) and disrupting the body’s ability to absorb nutrients from food. Any form of wheat still contains gluten so it is strongly advised that coeliacs do not consume gluten.

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Conceptual Diet

SUBHEAD: A mother's diet at time of conception can permanently influence baby's DNA.

By Katherine Martinko on 9 May 2014 for TreeHugger -
(http://www.treehugger.com/health/mothers-diet-time-conception-can-permanently-influence-babys-dna.html)


Image above: Painting of "Pregnancy" by Alex Grey, 1988. Click to embiggen. From (http://alexgrey.com/art/paintings/soul/).

We’ve all heard how important it is to eat well during pregnancy. Growing a baby is hard and risky work, and the better a mother eats, the healthier her child will be. But have you ever thought about the importance of maternal diet right at the time of conception? A study published last week in Nature Communications shows that the state of maternal nutrition during the periconceptual period (the period of time from before conception to early pregnancy) can alter fetal DNA.

The researchers analyzed the diets of 167 women in rural Gambia, a West African nation where nutritional intake varies greatly according to the season. Half of the women conceived during the dry season, which is known as “the harvest season,” and the other half conceived during the rainy season, or “the hungry season.”

According to study author Robert Waterland, “During the rainy season, villagers have a lot more farming labour to do, and they gradually run out of food collected from the previous harvest.” The researchers also analyzed the DNA of six specific genes in the infants once they were between 2 and 8 months old.

Babies conceived during the rainy season, a time of year when women in Gambia eat more leafy greens that are high in folate, showed consistently higher rates of DNA methylation, which was contrary to the researchers’ initial hypothesis.

When DNA methylation occurs, gene regions are tagged by chemical compounds called methyl groups which results in the gene not being expressed, but rather ‘silenced.’ Methylation requires the presence of key nutrients such as folate, vitamins B2, B6, and B12, choline, and methionine.

DNA methylation is an example of an ‘epigenetic’ modification, which is an external modification to DNA that turns genes on and off. These modifications don’t change the DNA sequence, but determine how cells read genes. For example, the colour of a mouse’s coat is determined by its mother’s diet, which is an external environmental, and therefore epigenetic, change that affects offspring.

The study’s senior author Dr. Branwen Heddig said, “Our results represent the first demonstration in humans that a mother’s nutritional well-being at the time of conception can change how her child’s genes will be interpreted, with a lifelong impact.”

What does this mean for pregnant women? It’s more important than ever to eat well and be healthy if you’re considering getting pregnant.

The researchers hope this will lead to further study and the development of an optimal diet for mothers-to-be that would prevent defects in the methylation process and the eventual possibility of disease.


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SCOTUS denies human gene patent

SUBHEAD: United States Supreme Court says human genes cannot be patented -  they are natural.

By Staff of Associated Press on 13 June 2013 o CBS News -
(http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57589140/supreme-court-says-human-genes-cannot-be-patented/)


Image above: A woman holds a banner demanding a ban over human genes patents during a protest outside the Supreme Court in Washington on 15 April 2013, From (http://www.nbcnews.com/health/patent-your-dna-what-supreme-court-ruling-means-you-6C10261058).

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that companies cannot patent parts of naturally-occurring human genes, a decision with the potential to profoundly affect the emerging and lucrative medical and biotechnology industries.

The high court's unanimous judgment reverses three decades of patent awards by government officials. It throws out patents held by Salt Lake City-based Myriad Genetics Inc. on an increasingly popular breast cancer test brought into the public eye recently by actress Angelina Jolie's revelation that she had a double mastectomy because of one of the genes involved in this case.

Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote the court's decision, said that Myriad's assertion - that the DNA it isolated from the body for its proprietary breast and ovarian cancer tests were patentable - had to be dismissed because it violates patent rules. The court has said that laws of nature, natural phenomena and abstract ideas are not patentable.

"We hold that a naturally occurring DNA segment is a product of nature and not patent eligible merely because it has been isolated," Thomas said.

Patents are the legal protection that gives inventors the right to prevent others from making, using or selling a novel device, process or application. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has been awarding patents on human genes for almost 30 years, but opponents of Myriad Genetics Inc.'s patents on the two genes linked to increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer say such protection should not be given to something that can be found inside the human body.

The company has used its patent to come up with its BRACAnalysis test, which looks for mutations on the breast cancer predisposition gene, or BRCA. Those mutations are associated with much greater risks of breast and ovarian cancer. Women with a faulty gene have a three to seven times greater risk of developing breast cancer and also have a higher risk of ovarian cancer.

Myriad sells the only BRCA gene test. Opponents of its patents say the company can use the patents to keep other researchers from working with the BRCA gene to develop other tests.

"Today, the court struck down a major barrier to patient care and medical innovation," said Sandra Park, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union Women's Rights Project. "Myriad did not invent the BRCA genes and should not control them. Because of this ruling, patients will have greater access to genetic testing and scientists can engage in research on these genes without fear of being sued."

Jolie revealed last month that her mother died of ovarian cancer and that her maternal grandmother also had the disease. She said she carries a defective BRCA1 gene that puts her at high risk of developing breast and ovarian cancers, and her doctor said that the test that turned up the faulty gene link led Jolie to have both of her healthy breasts removed to try to avoid the same fate.

Companies have billions of dollars of investment and years of research on the line in this case. Their advocates argue that without the ability to recoup their investment through the profits that patents bring, breakthrough scientific discoveries to combat all kinds of medical maladies wouldn't happen.

But "genes and the information they encode area not patent eligible ... simply because they have been isolated from the surrounding genetic material," Thomas said.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia said "the portion of the DNA isolated from its natural state sought to be patented is identical to that portion of the DNA in its natural state."

A Myriad spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The court did rule that synthetically created DNA, known as cDNA, can be patented "because it is not naturally occurring," Thomas said.

And Thomas noted there are still ways for Myriad to make money off its discovery. "Had Myriad created an innovative method of manipulating genes while searching for the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, it could possibly have sought a method patent," he said. And he noted that the case before the court did not include patents on the application of knowledge about the two genes.

The case is 12-398, Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc.

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The Perfect Genetic Storm

SUBHEAD: BP's catastrophic Gulf Oil Spill was followed with a chemical and biological assault the was even worse. By Michael Edward on 21 January 2011 for World Vision Portal - (http://worldvisionportal.org/wordpress/index.php/2011/01/the-perfect-genetic-storm)

Image above: A BP cleanup crew on gulf shore. From (http://www.seismologik.com/journal/2011/1/21/the-perfect-genetic-storm-synthetic-dna-and-the-gulf-blue-pl.html).

There’s a new proprietary recipe being force-fed to all of us here on the Gulf of Mexico that is now becoming available worldwide. Although this recipe has been closely guarded for 8 months, we were able to break it down after examining the plentiful supply us “Gulf Coasters” have available here. The ingredients are abundantly available while both the recipe and the brewing process are not as secret as everyone had thought.

THE GULF BLUE PLATE (BP) SPECIAL

Fill a large bowl with saline ocean water, add a generous proportion of thick crude oil, then pour in a cup of liquid Correct-it (available from Nalco under the brand name Corexit) making sure you don’t spill any on yourself, stir gently, and then let it sit for a day or two. As the newly thinned oil mixture begins to sink to the bottom of the bowl, make sure the resulting gasses are allowed to ever-so-slightly bubble in orange foam on the surface. This will let you know you’re ready for the next and most important step.

Quickly add Syn-Bio (available from JCVI, SGI, and other private companies) along with a colloidal mixture containing iron, copper, and other natural elements to begin the interactive brewing process. Let it sit for no less than 6-9 months making sure nothing is allowed to disturb it. When there is no more gas coming to the surface and the mixture on the bottom turns into a gelatinous black goo, the first stage of the recipe is finished.

The amazing thing about this new state-of-the-art recipe is what it becomes after the initial first stage brewing process is finished. No-one knows! It’s no wonder some have begun to refer to it as The Blue Plate (BP) Special. You can be assured that once the second stage of this concoction begins to release its mutated biological ingredients, as it appears to have done so already, the rest of the world will abruptly notice.

OIL SPILL OR OIL FLOW?

There was never a BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010. When you fill a glass with water, bump into something while holding it in your hand, and then some of the water splashes out, that’s a spill. When you turn on a water faucet and allow a continual flow to fill the glass so that it’s constantly overflowing, that’s not a spill. Because the multiple BP drilling operations that began at Mississippi Canyon 252 in 2009 fractured the floor of the Gulf of Mexico sometime before April 22, 2010, there is a continuous flow of crude oil and, especially, oil derived gasses such as methane. That’s called an oil and gas flow.

Since the Gulf has a steady flow of toxic crude oil and gasses, then how do you stop it? You can’t. The only solution to the problem is to find a way to eliminate it before it has a chance to surface en mass. This is exactly what has, is, and will continue to occur in the Gulf of Mexico.

SYNTHETIC GENOME BIOREMEDIATION

Toxic crude oil and gas can be changed, altered, or eliminated by microbes. Natural microorganisms in all the oceans, such as bacteria, have been known to do this over time, usually lasting decades and beyond. It’s a slow natural process. Yes, natural biology can do the job, but under continual flow conditions there is no possible way all the hydrocarbon-hungry microbes in the entire world can eliminate that much oil and gas fast enough. Time is the critical factor.

For the past decade, synthetic biology has been the new science realm. We now have engineered genetic biology that synthetically creates RNA and DNA sequences for both viruses and bacteria.

In the 1980’s, the fad was designer jeans. Now, we have designer genes.

Soon after the Deepwater Horizon inferno, U.S. government scientists – with grant funds supplied by British Petroleum – started giving us solid clues as to what they were doing with all that crude oil and gas. In May 2010, National Geographic quoted Dr. Terry Hazen from the U.S. government’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who said,

“…we could introduce a genetic material into indigenous bugs via a bacteriophage – a virus that infects bacteria – to give local microbes DNA that would allow them to break down oil. Either that, he said, or a lab could create a completely new organism that thrives in the ocean, eats oil, and needs a certain stimulant to live…”

There were two possible solutions according to Dr. Hazen, who is considered to be the foremost crude oil bioremediation expert in the world. Either use synthetically engineered viruses called bacteriophages, or ‘phages’, to infect and alter the genetics of indigenous Gulf bacteria; or, synthetically create an entirely new organism, i.e. a new species of bacteria, to eat up the oil and/or gas and introduce it into the Gulf of Mexico.

In September 2010, Duke University gave us another confirmation as to what was going on in the Gulf:

“In a paper published in the journal Science, Terry Hazen and his colleagues at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory discovered in late May through early June 2010 that a previously unknown species of cold-water hydrocarbon-eating bacteria have been feasting on the underwater oil plumes degrading them at accelerated rates.”

Natural microorganisms are well known to biologists and their genetic sequences are catalogued in a worldwide library. The public can even access the entire genetic library on the internet. But here we have a new and never before identified species of bacteria that suddenly “appears” in the Gulf of Mexico, and it’s eating up the oil at a much faster speed than any natural bacteria possibly could or ever has.

In August 2010, Science Magazine reported about bacteria that were gobbling up the Gulf oil and how it was being done by microorganisms that were not typical:

Hazen’s team found that microbes inside the plume samples were packed more than twice as densely as microbes outside it. Even more encouraging, the genes specifically geared to degrade hydrocarbons were more common in the plume as well, implying that it’s not just general bacteria that are taking on the plume.

Terry Hazen had described how the genes of a certain microbe that were “geared” (created) to eat-up crude oil were not just thriving within the oil plume, but were rapidly duplicating more than twice as fast as those same microbes outside the oil plume. He reveals that indigenous “general” or natural bacteria in the Gulf are not responsible for this amazing outcome. Obviously, he knows exactly what’s doing the job at such an accelerated rate: Synthetic genome bacteria created specifically to consume hydrocarbons, crude oil.

Dr. Terry Hazen is just one source, so I don’t expect you to believe synthetically engineered organisms are being used in the Gulf based solely on what he has said, even though he’s an absolute expert scientist in his field. What if I were to tell you that British Petroleum has admitted to using synthetic designer gene organisms in the Gulf? Would that help convince you?

In September 2010, reporter Stephen Fry of the UK’s BBC was granted a video interview with Mike Utsler, the Chief Operating Officer of BP’s Gulf Coast Restoration. Here’s what Mr. Utsler publicly admitted on camera:

“There is a new form of microbiology that is attacking this (oil) plume and using it as a food source”.

You can view him saying this on our YouTube Channel or on our Gulf Blue Plague internet blog at BP Admits Using Synthetic Microbes in Gulf of Mexico. This 17 second video snippet is taken from a November 7, 2010 broadcast entitled Has the Oil Really Gone? which is available for viewing at BBC TWO.* Note how Utsler is cut off by his own people at BP immediately after stating this and the interview was abruptly ended.

* It appears that the BBC has now restricted this video so that it can no longer be viewed from within the US.

A NEW FORM OF MICROBIOLOGY

A “new form of microbiology” is not a natural biological organism. Genome scientist J. Craig Venter, PhD, the founder of Synthetic Genomics Inc. and JCVI, clearly defined this new biological structure on May 27, 2010 in his prepared testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce:

“One of the major advantages of synthetic genomics is that there is no need to have access to a physical supply of a particular DNA sequence. Sequence fragments are simply created de novo by chemical synthesis and assembled into entire chromosomes and organisms. This ability to synthesize (write) DNA and use it in the construction of new cells can catalyze a major change in what organisms can be engineered to do.

…these [synthetic genome] technologies could be used to produce bioremediation techniques.

In 2003, JCVI successfully synthesized a small virus, approximately six thousand base pairs long, that infects bacteria. By 2008, the JCVI team was able to synthesize a small bacterial genome.”

Now it’s easy to understand exactly what Terry Hazen, PhD, and BP’s Mike Utsler were revealing with regards to the creation of new genetically engineered microorganisms – either viruses that attack bacteria or bacteria themselves – within the Gulf of Mexico.

AN OBSCURE FAMILY OF SUPERHUMAN MICROBES

The latest development in the Gulf is how an incomprehensible bacterium is remarkably eating up the methane gas. It appears that engineered designer genes have also been used to remove the gas just as they have been used to consume the oil. The common denominator is that neither of these microbes are natural microorganisms. This should come as no surprise.

Microbiologist David Valentine at the University of California at Santa Barbara stated,

“Within a matter of months, the bacteria completely removed that methane. The bacteria kicked on more effectively than we expected.”

It sounds to me that this created synthetic genome microbe far exceeded the engineering and programming expectations.

According to a Fox Business report,

“This discovery offered a rare glimpse into the remarkable abilities of an obscure family of microbes in the depths of the Gulf”.

I agree. It is scientifically incomprehensible that any natural microorganism could do this and synthetically engineered microbes are definitely obscure by comparison.

University of Georgia microbiologist Samantha Joye, who has been independently analyzing methane from the Gulf of Mexico, also agrees with me. She said,

“It would take a superhuman microbe to do what they are claiming.”

So it has, Samantha. It was specifically engineered and its “superhuman” genetics were created synthetically.

In a January 7, 2011 article, the UK Register wrote how the scientists were particularly

“surprised at the speed with which the bacteria consumed their enormous meal”.

They also brought up the fact that earlier studies elsewhere in the world suggested methane levels around Deepwater Horizon would be well above normal for years ahead. It’s remarkable what highly engineered designer genes can do.

On January 6, 2011, the Christian Science Monitor reported how the study’s leaders boldly stated that rates of methane decomposition after the Gulf oil spill

“were faster than had ever been recorded in any other place on the planet.”

That’s because these are not natural microbes. You can’t compare apples to grapefruit.

TRACE ELEMENTS ADDED TO THE GULF

In the same CS Monitor report, University of Georgia microbiologist Samantha Joye stated how

“[The Gulf] is not well stocked with trace elements the bacteria need to survive – among them, copper, which bacteria specifically use to deal with the methane. Shortages of copper, as well as other trace elements, likely would have slammed the brakes on the exponential growth in bacterial populations needed to get rid of the methane in fewer than four months.”

The same applies to hydrocarbon-eating bacteria that consume oil, except that iron is needed more than the other trace elements. Since copper and iron are not prevalent mineral elements normally found in the Gulf of Mexico, the synthetic bacterium eating both the oil and the methane would not be able to do so at the remarkable speed they have without such essential earth elements. The only possible way these synthetic bacterium could have done this is by adding the required elements to the Gulf. Spraying a highly dissolved or colloidal mixture of trace elements onto and into the Gulf of Mexico would be absolutely required to accomplish this.

In our October 21, 2010 research article The Gulf BLUE PLAGUE (BP): It’s Not Wise To Fool Mother Nature, we had revealed the abnormally high amounts of elements found in the Gulf and that it was being sprayed along with or separately from the oil dispersants. In August 2010, rain water samples were tested by the Coastal Heritage Society of Louisiana where rain coming directly from the Gulf had unusually high concentrations of iron, copper, nickel, aluminum, manganese, and arsenic.

Without a doubt, the synthetically created bacterium introduced into the Gulf of Mexico to consume the oil and gasses were – and continue to be – fed these essential trace elements. Otherwise, they could not have thrived or reproduced at the accelerated rate they have. The continued spraying in the Gulf by aircraft and by boat is not Corexit or other oil dispersal chemicals. Consider the current spraying to have the same effect of adding liquid fertilizer to your crops.

SYNTHETIC MICROBES MUTATING NATURAL MICROORGANISMS

In early December, 2010 the research vessel WeatherBird II, owned by the University of Southern Florida (USF), went back to the Gulf of Mexico for follow-up water and core samples. As reported by Naomi Klein on January 13, 2011 in Hunting the Ocean for BP’s Missing Millions of Barrels of Oil,

“…these veteran scientists have seen things that they describe as unprecedented …evidence of bizarre sickness in the phytoplankton and bacterial communities…”

This “bizarre sickness” in the indigenous Gulf microorganisms is the direct result of the synthetic microbes that are still creating genetic sicknesses by mutating the DNA of the natural microbes. We had alerted our readers to this in DNA Mutations Confirmed in Gulf of Mexico on September 28, 2010 when we stated,

“DNA mutations are occurring within the Gulf of Mexico at a microscopic cellular level. The obvious effect this has on marine life as well as humans is a Pandora Box of unknowns.”

Tampa Bay Online gave further insight to this in an interview with Dr. John Paul, an oceanography biology professor at USF, regarding the oil plume they had discovered 40 miles off the Florida Panhandle:

It was found to be toxic to microscopic sea organisms, causing mutations to their DNA. If this plankton at the base of the marine food chain is contaminated, it could affect the whole ecosystem of the Gulf.

“The problem with mutant DNA is that it can be passed on and we don’t how this will affect fish or other marine life,” he says, adding that the effects could last for decades.

In Naomi Klein’s article, she describes how Paul introduced healthy bacteria and phytoplankton to Gulf water samples and what happened shocked him. The responses of the organisms “were genotoxic or mutagenic”. According to Paul, what was so “scary” about these results is that such genetic damage was “heritable,” meaning the mutations can be passed on.

Genotoxins pass on genetic changes to successors who have never been exposed to the original gene. Healthy microorganisms are then genetically changed and will pass on their DNA mutations to their descendants. This is a genetic chain-reaction as each mutated microbe interacts with and affects other microorganisms, especially with regards to the food chain:

“…the phytoplankton, the bacteria, and the [microorganisms] that graze on them – the zooplankton – seem to be the most potentially impacted.” – Dr. David Hollander, USF Marine Geochemist: December 6, 2010: Video interview on WeatherBird II.

THE PERFECT GENETIC STORM

In a Bridging The Gap radio interview with Dr. John Waterman on September 9, 2010, he stated,

“Microbes can morph, they can change. Viruses can turn into bacteria and bacteria can turn into fungi. In the Gulf we have bacteria that can morph. It can morph [mutate] because it’s attacked by a virus. The virus can change the genetics of the bacteria so that it morphs [mutates] into something very deadly.

Some of these changed bacteria can become deadly, Ebola deadly. When you have a morphed bacterium that gets airborne, now you’re going to see it go from person to person.

We’re on the verge of something that can become a deadly pandemic. They had to know that was the case. All it has to do is enter the human host… and once it gets started, it’s going to be impossible to stop.”

In October, 2010, I was contacted by Riki Ott, PhD who had written a book on the effects of the Exxon Valdez tanker spill in Alaska. Her Master’s Science degree is in marine biology with emphasis on the effects oil has on zooplankton. She had just read my It’s Not Wise To Fool Mother Nature article and wanted to talk. So far, she is the only U.S. based scientist who has agreed with me that there were genetically bio-engineered bacteria eating the oil in the Gulf.

In an article she published while in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, entitled Bio-Remediation or Bio-Hazard? Dispersants, Bacteria & Illness in the Gulf, she recounts how comments made by a local grandmother made her re-evaluate her thoughts on crude oil bio-remediation. That grandmother said she felt the oil-eating bacteria were “running amok and causing skin rashes”. Here’s part of what Dr. Ott wrote:

“To make things a little scarier, some of the oil-eating bacteria have been genetically modified, or otherwise bio-engineered, to better eat the oil – including Alcanivorax borkumensis and some of the Pseudomonas.”

Pseudomonas alcaligenes is a Gram-negative aerobic bacterium used for bio-remediation purposes because it can degrade aromatic hydrocarbons such as benzene or methane. Alcanivorax borkumensis is also a Gram-negative bacterium used for bio-remediation purposes because it can degrade oil hydrocarbons. There we have it. Confirmation once again that synthetic designer genes are the reason the oil and gas are being eaten up at alarming rates within the Gulf.

But why are these Gram-negative bacteria so important? Because, as Riki Ott said,

“Oil-eating bacteria produce bio-films. Studies have found that bio-films are rapidly colonized by other Gram-negative bacteria – including those known to infect humans.”

A nurse Riki Ott was working with in the Gulf, Nurse Schmidt, put it this way:

“This is like a major bacterial storm. It could be the reason we are seeing a variance of symptoms in different individuals. In some people, we see respiratory complications, while in others we see skin or GI symptoms. I think it is due to a multitude of colonized bacteria.”

But this is not just a typical bacterial storm. In this instance, there are synthetically created bio-remediation bacteria that have mutated untold species of natural organisms in the Gulf water and in the air. As different colonies begin to grow and colonize, you are witnessing the perfect genetic storm.

SYNTHETIC DNA CREATED THE GULF BLUE PLAGUE

I’ve written numerous articles in various forums since July, 2010 trying my best to warn not only my own family and friends, but the entire world with what has been evolving in the Gulf of Mexico. I’ve described in detail precisely how it was and is still evolving. For the record, I’ve researched and published these findings in the World Vision Portal forum, WVP’s YouTube channel, in the Blue Plague blog, and in weekly radio broadcasts on the Living Light Network. In August, I appropriately named the ensuing pandemic The Gulf Blue Plague.

To my frustration, few have cared to listen. I’ve been ignored and shunned on most internet sites owned and controlled by those who purportedly claim to be representing those of us living along the Gulf coast. Many of them simply don’t represent us at all. They exist for their own agendas, such as to find clients for their attorney practices. Some have exploited Gulf victims to only make a name for themselves. Some simply disappeared when BP and government agencies said the Gulf oil disaster was finished. The truth of the matter is that it’s not finished in the least. The worst part is yet to come this spring and summer as the warmer water and air accelerates the growth of the synthetically mutated viruses and bacteria.

What’s taking place in the Gulf of Mexico is not a regional problem just for those of us who live here. It’s a worldwide problem. Subtle viral and bacterial signs are beginning to show up everywhere. Mysterious unexplained diseases affecting fish, sea mammals, animals, fowl, trees, plants and mankind are occurring because of the synthetic genomes that are changing and mutating the natural organisms in the oceans and in the air.

I’ve been constantly interviewing both family members and friends who are physicians, scientists, Registered Nurses, ship captains, shrimpers, and fishermen. All of them agree that the scientifically confirmed mutated organisms – directly caused by synthetically engineered genomes interjected into the Gulf – can and most assuredly will become a pandemic or even multiple pandemics. As my RN friend with over 30 years of trauma and clinical experience in Louisiana put it,

“This is like an opera where the main characters are Frankenstein and King Neptune. When the fat lady of the Gulf finally sings in the last act, there may not be much of an audience left to hear her.”

In summary, all I can say is what I’ve been saying for months now….

“Wherever the Gulf wind blows and the Gulf water flows”

http://worldvisionportal.org/wordpress/index.php/2011/01/the-perfect-genetic-storm/

NOTES & ADDENDUM

From The Gulf Blue Plague is Evolving – Part II

VIRUSES

Bacteriophages are viruses that change the DNA of bacteria. Many types of bacteriophages exist. Some simply infect the host bacteria while others insert into and alter the bacterial chromosome.

Some of the viruses donate their DNA materials to the host cell and cause alteration in the genetic code. Some bacteriophages can enter the host cell, but instead of immediately making new viral material the bacteriophages DNA will integrate into the chromosome of the bacteria.

BACTERIA

Bacteria are a large group of single cell microorganisms that grow to a fixed size and then reproduce through a form of asexual reproduction. Under optimal conditions, bacteria can grow and divide rapidly and some bacterial populations can double as quickly as every 9.8 minutes. Most bacteria have a single circular chromosome and inherit identical copies of their parent’s genes (they clone themselves).

However, all bacteria can evolve through changes made to their genetic material DNA caused by mutations. Mutations come from errors made during the replication of DNA or from exposure to mutagens (mutating agents), such as certain chemicals or bacteriophages (viruses). Mutations are changes in the DNA or RNA sequence of a virus. It can occur at both a Gene level – called a Gene Mutation – and at a Chromosome level – called a Chromosome Mutation. This process of change is called Mutagenesis. The result is a mutated virus that quickly duplicates itself, develops into maturity, and then discharges itself into the environment. A water environment discharge will become airborne due to high temperatures or as a result of storms.

Despite their apparent simplicity, bacteria can also form complex associations with other organisms. If bacteria form a parasitic association, they are classed as pathogens. Pathogenic bacteria are a major cause of human death and disease. MRSA and other flesh eating bacterium are pathogenic.

REFERENCES

• http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/05/100511-science-environment-gulf-oil-spill-cleanup-future/
• Lawrence Berkeley National Lab http://www.lbl.gov
• http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/thegreengrok/microbes-0910
• http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/08/bacteria-are-gobbling-gulf-oil.html?ref=hp
• The Gulf Blue Plague http://blueplague.org http://blueplague.net
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuDO0l8K90I
• http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00vy7f9#broadcasts
• http://worldvisionportal.org/wvpforum/viewtopic.php?f=55&t=1115
• http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2011/01/06/wsj-microbes-devoured-methane-bp-spill-study-says/
• http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/07/deepwater_horizon_metane_bacteria/
• http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2011/0106/Gulf-oil-spill-study-s-surprising-find-Bacteria-ate-methane-in-three-months
• http://chsl.webs.com/testresults.htm
• http://www.alternet.org/environment/149524/naomi_klein%3A_hunting_the_ocean_for_bp%27s_missing_millions_of_barrels_of_oil/?page=entire
• http://www2.tbo.com/content/2010/sep/27/271417/usf-research-included-in-gulf-oil-spill-tv-special/news-metro/
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tReP9bppy4Q
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/riki-ott/bio-remediation-or-bio-ha_b_720461.html

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