ETC Blog

Silvia Ribeiro*   A los muchos impactos negativos que conllevan los transgénicos, se suma ahora el golpe contra la producción apícola nacional, porque la miel está contaminada –o podría estarlo en el futuro cercano– con polen transgénico. Es otra tragedia anunciada –como la contaminación transgénica del maíz y otros cultivos– que las autoridades mexicanas decidieron [...]

Read the rest of this entry

Jim Thomas Cuándo sus defensores hablan de la “economía verde”, gran parte de lo “verde” que tienen en mente es literalmente de color verde. Las hojas, brotes, ramas, algas, hierbas y otras materias vivientes que el planeta genera en aparente abundancia es ahora un blanco de primera línea para la explotación comercial, desde la visión [...]

Read the rest of this entry

Testimony of Pat Mooney Executive Director of ETC Group Before the Standing Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources-regarding Bill C-33 (the “Biofuels Bill”) Senate of Canada Wednesday, June 25, 2008 Thank you. I will begin by confessing that I am not an expert on biofuels. I feel as though my life has been [...]

Read the rest of this entry

The BP-Berkeley deal, the new joint Bio Energy institute, and also the recent job hop by John Menlo of BP fuels to Amyris Biotech – are all extra strings tying the interests of the Syn Bio community as a wholeever closer to the interests of big business. It should be noted that in each of thse cases CEO Keasling plays a central role. The same man who claims to be developing Synthetic Biology to serve the worlds poor (via synthetic artemisinin) seems to be rather busy these days serving the fabulously rich.

Read the rest of this entry

Is Craig Venter, the so called “bad boy of biology”, about to announce the world’s first synthetic lifeform? (or ‘Syn’ for short)… we don’t know. According to New Scientist “rumours are circulating that his institute will soon unveil the first synthetic bacterium”. What we do know is that he has applied for a patent with broad claims that include a synthetic organism itself…

Read the rest of this entry

Further reflections on EPO’s May 3 decision to revoke Monsanto’s species-wide soybean patent ETC Group has been receiving lots of emails and phone calls in the past few days about the defeat of Monsanto’s soybean patent one week ago. While most have been congratulatory a few have asked whether this wasn’t in fact a hollow [...]

Read the rest of this entry

In the midst of our new fight over geoengineering near the Galapagos, we’ve got good news over a very old fight with Monsanto… Hope Shand just phoned from Munich to say that the European Patent Office has agreed with ETC’s arguments and overturned Monsanto’s soybean “species” patent. There is no further appeal!!

Read the rest of this entry

In a couple of days Hope Shand from ETC Group will be in court in the European patent Office to challenge Monsanto’s Patent on Soy beans – a patent that we have been contesting for 13 years and that originally Monsanto themselves opposed!! You can read more about that here. In the meantime, ETC Group [...]

Read the rest of this entry

On October 10, ETC Group attended the US Food and Drug Administration�s first public meeting on nanotechnology. About 40 people had signed up to make presentations, and we were each given eight minutes to say our piece to the FDA�s newly-formed Nanotechnology Task Force. (You can read the text of ETC Group�s presentation here.) It [...]

Read the rest of this entry

Nano-Drug’s Dirty Little Secret ETC Group’s September 2006 report on nanomedicine, Nanotech Rx, requires some updating. After all, it’s nearly 30 days old. Our report mentions the nano-drug Abraxane, and it acknowledges that approval of the cancer drug was a watershed event for the nanotech industry. But important details are emerging. On October 1 the [...]

Read the rest of this entry