Against
the Corporate Takeover of Science
Announcing Science in Society magazine issue 17
From the Editor
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"Africa is waking up"
Zambia reaffirmed her rejection of GM maize-aid as
famine looms and despite strong pressures from the US and certain UN agencies.
But the rest of the world strongly supports her stance. African consumer
leaders produced a 'Lusaka Declaration' after a stormy 3-day conference,
rejecting both GM technology and patents on genetic resources for food
and agriculture, affirming that African countries can address food security
themselves.
An exclusive interview with Zambia's agriculture minister,
Mundia Sikatana, gave grounds for believing "Zambia will feed herself
from now on". Zambia has enough surplus food within the country to
alleviate the famine, but lacks money to purchase and good roads to distribute
the food. The government has started to purchase and distribute food within
the country and to address longer-term solutions to food security.
Zambia's problems and solutions may be quite general
to African countries, including Ethiopia, now sadly, hit once again by
severe droughts and famine. But Ethiopian farmers are also busy recovering
their traditional crops and farming practices that have effectively shielded
them from famine before these crops were displaced by inappropriate varieties.
There are grounds for optimism as African countries
are finding their own feet again, and the whole world is standing with
Africa.
Mobile phones and cancer
The current debate over the health hazards of mobile
phones is a continuation of the one over electromagnetic fields from power
lines and other electrical installations in the environment that goes
back to the 1970s and before.
The epidemiological data are now clearly indicating
risks of cancer, and laboratory experiments are giving corroborating molecular
evidence. The current exposure standards are set far too high to protect
workers and the public. Yet, successive official reports still fail to
give firm recommendations because there is said to be "no known biological
mechanisms". How can fields that don't cause burns, or are so weak
that they are below the threshold of random molecular fluctuations, have
any effects?
We bring you the inside story of how bad mechanistic
biology lies at the centre of the controversy, and how a new biology that
can account for those effects has been systematically ignored and excluded
from mainstream discourse.
Science engineering life and
mind
The power lines and mobile phones debate bears too
much resemblance to the debate over genetic engineering. The "academic-industrial-military
complex" has matured with gene biotechnology. It is shaping every
aspect of our lives, beginning with the kind of science and scientific
research that gets done and gets reported.
Among the latest outrage is the attempt to make vitamins
and affordable traditional herbal medicines illegal in Europe. This has
provoked unprecedented protest. Join in.
Pharmaceutical companies have long been accused of
manipulating results of clinical trials and controlling the experimental
design. Now, advertising agencies are commissioning their own trials,
and possibly hyping the drugs long before they are proven safe or effective.
So watch out.
The great "National GM
Debate"
Britain's 'National GM debate' has turned into a farce.
The 'Economic Review' was an excuse to hype the (still) 'potential benefits'
of GM when its failures had become blindingly obvious.
The 'Science Review' Panel is stacked with pro-GM molecular
geneticists leaving little hope that critical evidence such as genetic
instability of GMOs and horizontal gene transfer will get debated.
The head of the Food Standards Agency (FSA), John Krebs,
is in dispute with environment minister Michael Meacher over the benefits
of organic agriculture. Krebs is insisting on his 'independence', and
has persisted in attacking organic agriculture, completely ignoring the
copious evidence of its successes in stark contrast to the failures of
GM crops, which Krebs and others in the scientific establishment are also
ignoring.
The government's Advisory Committee on Releases to
the Environment has just issued its report on the public hearing over
the GM maize Chardon LL, insisting again, that there is no evidence of
harm; despite the stacks of evidence submitted by independent scientists
and members of the
public.
Risks of GM now undeniable
The British Medical Association (BMA), with a membership
of over 120,000 and representing more than 80% of British doctors, called
for the GM crop trials in Scotland to be stopped immediately on grounds
of safety.
The FSA has underestimated and misrepresented the risks
of horizontal transfer of transgenic DNA, even in its own commissioned
research. We have sent them detailed scientific criticisms, which remain
unanswered to this day.
Among the hazards of transgenic DNA is cancer resulting
from the random insertion of transgenic DNA into the cell's genome. This
prediction has unfortunately become reality. Gene therapy has claimed
its first cancer victim. But the scientific establishment has yet to acknowledge
that other exposures to transgenic DNA, as in GM food, GM dust and pollen,
all carry the same risks.
We have also warned repeatedly against engineering
food crops to produce vaccines, drugs and industrial chemicals. The United
States has approved more than 300 field trials, and the inevitable contamination
of neighbouring crops has now been uncovered. The extent of contamination
of our soil, air and water remains unknown.
The risks of GM are now undeniable. It is simply wrong
to say, "there is no evidence of harm". On the contrary, there
is already reasonable suspicion of harm, at the very least. This requires
all GMOs to be withdrawn in accordance with the precautionary principle,
which is what the BMA is demanding.
And that's not all. North American farmers who have
grown GM crops came to Britain to plead with British farmers, "Do
not let our nightmare become yours."
Rethinking health and science
A lot of our present woes stem from the mechanistic
bias of mainstream science and our inability to see nature whole. Read
on to find what's on offer: homeopathy as nanopharmacology, the overriding
passion of D.H. Lawrence to be "within himself the whole of the human
species", and how to "science with love".
From: The Institute of Science in Society, PO Box
32097, London NW1 OXR (excerpt)
Overriding Passion
Rethinking Science
Sciencing with Love*
Another Knowledge, Another World
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/
Hi
Klaus: Hope the images below of the Limassol
tornaod/storm sent to me yesterday (Tuesday, 28 January), arrived in your
inbox c. 3 hours ago. Lost my lengthy accompanying text but unsure just
how illuminating it would have been anyway. Will re-enter the gist of
what I lost below.
Concurrently with receiving news of this weird tornado
occurrence in Cyprus (a first in the area, I've been told) I had been
reading about Nikola Tesla's (1856-1943) successful Colorado experiments
c. 1900 in creating tornados/energy vortices/ball lightning--plus, c.
1940, lots of other futuristic mind-boggling emf-powered energy weapons/tools
such as prototypes of our contemporary plasma/laser guns, the Death Ray,
again a prototype of the decades later anti-missile shield --and couldn't
help wondering if somehow this abberant tornado phenomena witnessed in
Limassol was a natural or manmade event. (Tesla also held patents on methods
for altering a region in the earth's atmosphere, ionosphere and/or magnetosphere.
And this was way back in the early twentieth century!)
Also, Tesla's early and successful creation of ball
lightning by increasing the power of his lightning machine is of course
very topical with the recent media disclosures (which are posted prominently
on your C.I.Omega site) that weaponry similar to this are planned for
use against Iraq. I have just received from an overseas ES activist a
print copy of the DAILY MAIL article of Monday, January 20, 2003 (page
6) entitled "The Lightning Bomb: U.S. Targets 'microwave' bolt on
Iraq."
What I have found most troubling in the article are
these observations: "Sources involved with the microwave programme
say it is still not certain what effect the waves will have on people.
At the very least, they will heat the water in living cells and create
am 'uncomfortable sensation' although only for a very brief period. But
HPMs could also knock out heart pacemakers and critical electrical systems
in hospitals or aboard aircraft."
An interesting aside: Nikola Tesla arrived on our planet
earth in the midst of a severe lightning storm on the stroke of midnight
separting July 10th from 11th, in 1856. He was also very electrohypersensitive.
(And loved showing off, for instance, would demo how he could light bulbs
with the e-sparks leaping from his fingertips). Interestingly too, he
was a visionary, a prophet who made accurate e-predictions about the future,
an idealist who wanted to create free electricity for all citizens of
our world, a mystic-cum-scientist (oil + water?) who was aware of the
significance for world communication of the earth's natural frequency
of 7.83 (the Schumann resonance), a healer who created prototypes of electrotherapy/electrovibrational
machines.
A concluding word here about the Schumann frequency
and how that oil+water (= mystical+cum+scientific awareness/insights)
are churned pretty vigorously today. If you write in "Oam and Schumann
Frequency" in Google search engine you'll get c. 16 results. Open
up "Research Activities and Pulbications" there and just look
through the scientific biography and you'll get an idea just how scientifically
exploited/investigated that earth frequency has become. A google search
using "Schumann frequency and yoga" has also c. 137 interesting
postings. Click on #6 ("Sat Nam Gurusingh.com") to access "Well
being Sound Effects." In the first paragraph it states: "Vibrational
medicine can be traced to W.O. Schumann, an early twentieth-century German
scientist, who identified a key resonance in the earth's atmosphere that
hums at 7.83 cycles pers second. This frequency has been found dominant
in energy vortexes, such as Stonehenge and the Great Pyramids, as well
as in the brain waves of healers, clairvoyants, and meditators. Scientists
later discovered that when the Schumann energy waves were introduced into
the body fractures and injuries often healed more rapidly."
(A great little recent bio of Tesla is THE MAN WHO
INVENTED THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: NIKOLA TESLA, THE FORGOTTEN CENIUS OF
ELECTRICITY by Dr. Robert Lomas of Bradford U, 1999)
One last thing: Woke up with this idea this morning.
What about getting a petition going among antiwar supporters to persuade
two of the world's most respected Peace and Human Rights activists--Jimmy
Carter and Nelson Mandela-- to go to Iraq and act as human shields there?
Then they wouldn't dare bomb.
Best,
Imelda, Cork, Ireland.
From Todays Daily Mirror
John Pilger: His most
damning verdict on Tony Blair Friends
and
Gulf War hero calls for UN
weapons inspectors to get more time
I am sending this to all of you, because it is the
most sobering document we have likely read in a long time.
Please distribute widely, and try and get people to
stop this war before it starts, for the children's sake.
Thank you,
George
Omega: You can find this articles forwarded by George
Paxinos under
http://www.idealist.org/en/ip/idealist/OrgViewer/default?SID=
c93d708d672c85410ea5bad5373193f0&1.9=1&ORG_ID=91768&#CAMPAIGN_2
Theme:
First they came for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up,
because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up,
because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me.
-- Rev. Martin Niemoller, 1945
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