biotech

While average Ukrainians suffer amid NATO’s proxy war against Russia, business is booming for the surrogate baby industry, which requires a steady supply of healthy and financially desperate women willing to lease their wombs to affluent foreigners. Surrogates “have to be from poorer places than our clients,” explained the medical director of Kiev’s largest “baby factory.” Ihor Pechonoha of the Swiss-based BioTexCom says the business model that enabled him to build one of the most profitable surrogacy companies in the […]

As crisis after crisis disrupts the food supply, the "solution" to these problems has already been prepared. New technologies are coming online that threaten to upend our understanding of food altogether. Technologies that could, ultimately, begin altering the human species itself. This is an exploration of The Future of Food.

Alternate Current Radio | Mark Anderson and Hesher, on Boiler Room discussing how and why the vast majority of consumer products are recalled if show to be even slightly unsafe. Why is this not the case with pharmaceuticals?

A San Francisco judge ruled July 10, 2018 that hundreds of lawsuits alleging that Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller caused cancer may proceed. [1]

The doctor behind the technology that helped birth one of the world’s first 3-parent babies has been told by the FDA that he must stop marketing the experimental procedure.
According to the agency, John Zhang, a New York fertility doctor who helped a Jordanian couple give birth to a baby boy in 2016, had promised the FDA his companies wouldn’t use the technology in the U.S. without the agency’s permission, but they continued to promote it.

On August 2, 2017, documents released as part of a lawsuit against Monsanto raised more questions over whether or not the mammoth biotech company suppressed information about the potentially carcinogenic nature of its Roundup weedkiller and its primary ingredient, glyphosate. [1]
Glyphosate is one of the most widely-used weedkillers in the world and is available for both agricultural and home use.

A group of scientists in Oregon have edited the genes of human embryos for the first time in the United States, using CRISPR-Cas9, a cut-and-paste gene-editing tool. [1]
The experiments were conducted by Shoukhrat Mitalipov and colleagues at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland. The single-celled embryos Mitalipov edited were discarded after the experiments to ensure they could not become too developed.

One of the largest chicken producers in the United States, Perdue Farms recently released its first-ever chicken welfare report in July 2017. The company says it has taken important steps to follow through on plans it announced a little over a year ago to change the way it raises and slaughters chickens. [1]

The EPA’s inspector general has launched an investigation into possible collusion between a former high-ranking EPA official and Monsanto, the maker of RoundUp. [1]
The probe was initiated in response to a request from Rep. Ted Lieu, a Democrat from California, for an investigation into whether the EPA official colluded with the biotech giant to tilt research on glyphosate in favor of Monsanto’s claim that the chemical does not cause cancer in humans.
This, despite Monsanto having never conducted carcinogenicity studies on RoundUp.

The FDA has resumed testing food for glyphosate residues, as questions about the safety of the RoundUp chemical continue to grow.
In 2016, the FDA launched what it refers to as a “special assignment” to analyze certain foods for glyphosate residues. The move was sparked by the U.S. Government Accountability Office’s criticism of the agency for failing to include glyphosate in annual testing programs which analyzes foods ‘less-used’ chemicals in food.