Latest headlines

ETC Group attended the 12th meeting of the scientific advisory body (SBSTTA) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which met in Paris 2-6 July 2006.

You'd think that after some of the world’s most eminent marine biologists attacked it; the IPCC report dumped on it; and the IMO’s scientific group to the London Convention last week passed the equivalent of an emergency motion advising it not to proceed - that Planktos Inc.

One surprising aspect of the just finished Synthetic Biology 3.0 conference in Zurich was how little the agenda was taken up by corporate players.

"I think this is going to become the foundational technology of the 21st century" - that was the triumphant message with which Tom Knight of MIT brought Synthetic Biology 3.0 to an end today.

'The cool' and 'the concerned' -- that was how Zurich-based ethicist Nicola Biller Andorno today aptly characterised the two tribes attending Synthetic Biology 3.0...The cool, in her lexicon, are the synthusiasts, those who regard making synthetic life forms as...like..

Sunday afternoon and Synthetic Biology 3.0 gets underway in high spirits amidst the glass and concrete of the ETH Campus.

Some of us from ETC are in Zurich for the next few days observing what happens when you cram several hundred synthetic biologists and industrialists into a conference room -- the evolution of a new industrial species?

When patents on Terminator seeds first came to light nine years ago, even the most jaded among us were stunned by the audacious corporate greed manifested by this novel (and complex) gene engineering technique.

Last week the US Justice Department (DOJ) gave the green light for Monsanto's $1.5 billion takeover of the world's largest cotton seed company, Delta & Pine Land (D&PL) -- the company that has long vowed to commercialize Terminator seeds (more on that below).

In the last few years it would have been fair to "blame Canada" for trying to overturn the international moratorium on terminator seeds.

Pages

Subscribe to Latest Headlines | ETC Group