Thursday, 10 Feb 2005

Environmental groups are raising the battle cry and fighting against the Class Action Fairness Act, which is moving swiftly through Congress. The bill would be bad news for average citizens, says Joan Mulhern of Earthjustice: "If you're a community that's suffering from groundwater contamination or an oil spill or a tank explosion or air contamination from nearby factory farms, you may have to wait for years to even get your case heard, much less be given a fair chance from an unbiased judge to have your injuries redressed." So if you're being poisoned, sue the culprit quick! The gory details are in Muckraker -- today on the Grist Magazine website.

Why Do Fish & Wildlife Scientists Hate America?

Fish & Wildlife Service scientists report political pressure, distortion

When two public-interest groups sent a survey on scientific integrity to 1,400 scientists at the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, agency administrators warned the scientists not to respond -- not even in their personal time. Now that 414 of them have defied the warnings, it is clear why the bureaucrats were nervous. More than half of the respondents reported that agency officials had reversed or withdrawn scientific conclusions in response to industry pressure. One in five said that they had been directed to withhold or alter technical information from reports, and almost half claim they were pressured to avoid making findings that might lead to greater protections for endangered species. As to this political interference, an agency spokesflack responded, "There's nothing inappropriate about people higher up the chain of command supervising the work of people below them and reaching different scientific conclusions." Uh ... there isn't?

Gene Hackmen

Open-source biotechnology boasts first big success

Though some enviros are opposed to genetic engineering of any kind, other critics have a more specific complaint about biotechnology: that restrictive patents held by companies like Monsanto and Syngenta impede research and development into biotech applications that could help developing countries or smaller, more specialized crops in the U.S. -- i.e., applications that don't promise huge profits. In response to these concerns, a group of researchers is attempting to apply the open-source model for software development (which produced the Linux operating system) to biotech, releasing their results into the "intellectual commons" free of charge, the only stipulation on their use being that any improvements or developments also be released for free. A new initiative based on these principles, called the Biological Innovation for Open Society, led by Australian researcher Richard A. Jefferson, has just released a new method for transferring genes into plants, bypassing the patented methods. Watch for many more such developments to come.

DNA Check, Aisle Seven

Scientists begin project to catalog life with DNA barcodes

Of an estimated 10 million plant and animal species on Earth, less than a fifth have been identified and named. That might change, however, with a new bar-coding initiative launched today, which aims to use snippets of genetic material to characterize all living organisms in a standardized way, possibly allowing for faster discovery of new species. The information gathered during the cataloguing process will be collected in one large database, and some researchers hope the data will eventually be available via handheld devices, much like those used to scan barcodes at the supermarket, allowing for quick and easy identification of rare species. The bar-coding project may also aid in species conservation, says Paul Hebert of the University of Guelph in Ontario, especially in areas such as commercial fisheries: "DNA bar-coding could enable us to monitor quotas and bycatch and provide a more detailed understanding of fish and their ecological relationships."

A Granholm Don't Come for Free

Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm shows D.C. Dems how to do it

With Beltway Democrats in a tizzy trying to figure out how to appeal to the working class, and Beltway environmentalists in a tizzy trying to figure out how to appeal to Beltway Democrats, both groups might want to check out the State of the State speech delivered this week by Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D). In the face of Michigan's 7.3 percent unemployment rate, worst in the nation, Granholm focused almost exclusively on massive public investment in jobs and education. Such investment, said Granholm, would help "transform the state that put the nation on wheels into the state that makes those wheels run on pollution-free fuel cells or biodiesel technology; the state where the research into alternative energies is done; the state where the clean technology is developed, and where the clean cars, products, and businesses are built." Michigan, she said, "could be the state that finally makes these United States independent of foreign oil." Publicly funded research, good jobs, and environmental protection as part of the same package -- you listening, D.C.?