China // Current TV

Maldives issues arrest warrant for ex president Mohamed Nasheed

It is unclear what charges the former Maldives president faces. The upheaval in the... more

JanforGore
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10 hours ago
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4 comments

Getting even with China (Chinese commit to major increase in MBAs)

So why does this matter? Hah, look around. The US economy continues to suffer, and... more

hoosierdaddy
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3 days ago
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Russia and China Block U.N. Action on Crisis in Syria

UNITED NATIONS — A United Nations Security Council effort to end the violence in... more

Radical_Centrist
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4 days ago
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1 comment

Three More Tibetans Self-Immolate, West Silent, Keeps Doing Business w/ Sinister Chinese Communists

The fiery protests come as Chinese authorities widen crackdown. Three Tibetans have... more

Anonmaly
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4 days ago
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1 comment

47 Signs That China Is Absolutely Destroying America On The Global Economic Stage

Have you ever watched a football game or a basketball game where one team dominates... more

Revelation1217
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10 days ago
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1 comment

10 Common Misconceptions Debunked (VIDEO)

Can you really see the Great Wall of China from space? Is bottled water better for you... more

StewSteve
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11 days ago
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BUY FROM CHINA! WHO CARES ABOUT THE WORKERS?

I'm sorry to the heart of America, it's a cold thing. China is full of... more

Peloquin
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11 days ago
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Symantec: Chinese Connection to Attacks on Defense Contractors

The data Symantec published reinforces evidence from an earlier investigation... more

Paisano1
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14 days ago
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Deadly cost of iPads

Apple the leader in innovation, technology, and the creation of Chinese sweat shops..... more

BakedFresh
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14 days ago
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3 comments

New study reignites debate over GMO safety

Chinese researchers at Nanjing University have found small segments of rice ribonucleic acid (called microRNA or miRNA for its tiny size) in the blood and organs of people who eat conventional rice. The study does not address how the assimilation of plant RNA into human bodies could affect the debate over the next generation of genetically modified food crops, but the revelation that miRNA can likely survive digestion and take up residence in human cells certainly will provide ammunition for the anti-GMO camp, the most liberal of whom have been calling for toxicological and safety testing of patented plants since the inception of the biotech industry over a decade ago.

In the Chinese study, rice genetic material influenced the uptake of cholesterol from the blood by binding itself to receptor cells in the human liver. If confirmed, this would be the first time scientists have witnessed ingested plant miRNA that actually alters human physiology by regulating cell functions in this way, says AlterNet contributer Ari LeVaux in a recent piece. What’s more, it calls into question the doctrine of “substantial equivalence” – a dogma the biotech industry has clung to since 1991.

Under substantial equivalence, companies such as Monsanto Co. have built a body of case law that shields GMOs from the same rigorous safety testing that patented drugs must undergo. The reason: GMOs are assumed to be essentially the same as their whole-food counterparts. This reasoning works well enough where products such as Bt-corn are concerned. This is because GM corn and alfalfa are spliced with specific herbicide resistant genes from bacteria that are themselves assumed to be safe and natural in their isolated form.

“There is no need for, or value in testing the safety of GM foods in humans,” declares Monsanto’s website. “DNA (and resulting RNA) is present in almost all foods. DNA is non-toxic and the presence of DNA, in and of itself, presents no hazard.” Interestingly, this reasoning seems to undermine the legitimacy of plant patenting if nothing “novel” is being created, but that’s a whole other can of worms.

However, substantial equivalence might not sit so well with consumers faced with a new generation of GMOs that use miRNA sequences to shut down or turn down a targeted gene in an insect predator. The difference now, and this miRNA study supplies the evidence, is that our genetically-altered food could very well be genetically altering us.

The argument for the safety testing of GMOs can now go something like this: because humans and insects share some very similar proteins that process miRNAs (source), the small RNAs from GMO plants could adversely regulate genes in humans.

Proponents of little to no regulation of biotechnology agree that safety testing would only encumber the shared utopian dream of producing as much food as cheaply as possible for a booming world population. If that’s the case, anti-GMOers are going about this “crusade” all wrong. Maybe a more effective tactic would be to scrutinize more closely the real world performance of GM crops.

Monsanto is now the largest seed company in the world. Pointing out that their business model is antithetical to time-tested agricultural practices developed over thousands of years of human history, namely the ability of farmers to save seeds and breed new heirloom varieties to keep genetic diversity at optimal levels, might also bolster the naturalist case. Indeed, there is research to suggest that a path to bounty for the food-insecure populations of the world won’t come through new agricultural products or methods, but a revival of pre-industrial farming practices.

That’s not to say there isn’t a happy medium where scientists can be scientists without having to alienate large groups of agriculturalists and consumers. Critics argue this can’t occur until geneticists attach a higher ethical value to the business of natural plant breeding than setting the stage for a fully-patented biosphere.Chinese researchers at Nanjing University have found small segments of rice... more

Vierotchka
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15 days ago
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Netanyahu uses 'the Holocaust' to justify action against Iran

Posing a rhetorical question, Netanyahu asked "how does the world react to the... more

maasanova
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17 days ago
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3 comments

Shipping Jobs Overseas

Each log is worth someone's job. It's time to stop sending our forests... more

Progresshiv
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17 days ago
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The Chinese view of SOPA - "[Chinese] are ahead of the whole world, and the ‘American imperialists’ are racing to catch up.”

As members of Congress edge away from the Stop Online Piracy Act, leaders of the opposition can count among their most frequently used rhetorical tools a metaphor that has come to define this debate: SOPA = China.

The legislation would impose a “chilling internet censorship regime here in the U.S. comparable in some ways to China’s ‘Great Firewall,’” Wired wrote. Sergey Brin—who led G-Day, Google’s withdrawal from mainland China—said that the bills would “put us on a par with the most oppressive nations in the world.” Rebecca MacKinnon, an Internet-freedom expert who used to be journalist in Beijing, says they would impose a “censorship mechanism that is almost identical, technically, to the mechanism the Chinese use to censor their Internet.”

So, how does it all look to the people who actually live with it? In China, the reaction to American protests has ranged from sympathy to gentle Schadenfreude, as Chinese Web users try to sort out whether they are being held up as victims or patsies or pirates. After several years in which American diplomats have inveighed against Internet censorship in China, the proposals have inspired a bit of snickering. “The Great Firewall turns out to be a visionary product; the American government is trying to copy us,” one commentator wrote. A Chinese message making the rounds on Thursday said: “At last, the planet is becoming unified: We are ahead of the whole world, and the ‘American imperialists’ are racing to catch up.”

Fittingly, perhaps, the discussion has unfolded on Weibo, the Twitter-like micro-blogging site that has a team of censors on staff to trim posts with sensitive political content. That is the arrangement that opponents of the bill have suggested would be required of American sites if they are compelled to police their users’ content for copyright violations. On Weibo, joking about SOPA’s similarities to Chinese censorship was sensitive enough that some posts on the subject were almost certainly deleted (though it can be hard to know). But among those that survived, a commentator known as Dr. Zhang wrote: “I’ve come up with a perfect solution: You can come to China to download all your pirated media, and we’ll go to America to discuss politically sensitive subjects.”

There are, needless to say, differences of degree. While Chinese sites censor references to Tiananmen Square, Falun Gong, the Dalai Lama and other third-rail political issues, the force comes not in the act of censorship, but in the instances when prosecutions follow: the Chinese woman sentenced to a year of reform through labor for retweeting a joke, or the student detained for forwarding what authorities called a “rumor” about the murder of eight village officials. (h/t Isaac Stone Fish at Foreign Policy.)

After Chinese Web users got over the strangeness of hearing Americans debate the merits of screening the Web for objectionable content, they marvelled at the American response. Commentator Liu Qingyan wrote:
We should learn something from the way these American Internet companies protested against SOPA and PIPA. A free and democratic society depends on every one of us caring about politics and fighting for our rights. We will not achieve it by avoiding talk about politics.

There was little expectation that Chinese Web sites would ever band together to express their opposition to censorship: “Baidu, would you dare do something like this?” one asked.

The most eloquent response to the controversy, perhaps, was one that nobody saw at all. Commentator Shi Han wrote about trying to post a comment to Tencent, the giant Chinese portal. “I’ve written a short article about SOPA. But when I tried to put it up, Tencent replied with a message: ‘Your content has not passed review.’”
http://news.yahoo.com/the-chinese-view-of-sopa.htmlAs members of Congress edge away from the Stop Online Piracy Act, leaders of the... more