http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,33814,00.html?tw=wn20000121

Hello everyone. Still here but recovering from some misfortune. I guess I need to check in...Jan 99-Jan00 and still going. I'm very tired or I would summarize...would love to hear your comments as usual. M

-- Meandi (Meandi@stillhere.com), January 23, 2000

Answers

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,33814,00.html?tw=wn20000121

updated 3:00 a.m. 22.Jan.2000 PST SECTIONS Top StoriesBusinessCultureTechnologyPoliticsWIRE SERVICE NEWS [Fair Use and Educational Purposes Only or whatever]

Biotech Gets a Boost Environment News Service 8:00 a.m. 21.Jan.2000 PST On Thursday President Bill Clinton, in a display of his favorable attitude toward biotechnology, proclaimed January National Biotechnology Month.

"Today, a third of all new medicines in development are based on biotechnology," Clinton said. "Designed to attack the underlying cause of an illness, not just its symptoms, these medicines have tremendous potential to provide not only more effective treatments, but also cures. With improved understanding of cellular and genetic processes, scientists have opened exciting new avenues of research into treatments for devastating diseases -- like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, diabetes, heart disease, AIDS, and cancer -- that affect millions of Americans."

Clinton did not mention the problems with biotechnology that are currently being discussed in informal talks on food safety and trade in Montreal, Canada. The talks, which wind up Saturday, will be followed by the resumed session of the First Extraordinary Meeting of the Parties to the Convention on Biodiversity to finalize and adopt the Biosafety Protocol 24 to 28 January.

President Clinton also failed to mention the reluctance of consumers to accept genetically modified food crops. From Europe to Japan, and from Korea to Australia, consumers have been turning their backs on products made from genetically modified soy and corn, tomatoes and cotton that originated primarily in American fields. They have been demanding the labeling of biotech foods. Some American environmental, consumer, and organic food organizations, too, are now critical of genetically engineered crops.

Instead, President Clinton focused on the positive environmental impact of biotechnology on the environment. "Bioremediation technologies are cleaning our environment by removing toxic substances from contaminated soils and ground water. Agricultural biotechnology reduces our dependence on pesticides. Manufacturing processes based on biotechnology make it possible to produce paper and chemicals with less energy, less pollution, and less waste," Clinton said.

There is evidence that foreign enemies are able to use germs to attack the American food supply, according to some experts. Responding to this perceived threat to humans from bioterrorism and animal disease, President Clinton plans to seek $340 million for fiscal 2001 to boost research on the diseases, administration officials said Tuesday.

About $40 million would pay for building a more sophisticated research facility on Plum Island, New York, to study diseases in large animals that can easily infect humans and for which there are no vaccines.

The rest would be spent to upgrade the US Agriculture Department's (USDA) 30-year-old research facility in Ames, Iowa. Currently, some research in Ames, including studies of anthrax and mad cow disease, is done in rented places in strip malls, officials said.

"We're working against time," Craig Reed, administrator of the USDA's Animal Plant Health Inspection Service, warned a gathering of congressional staffers.

To study the Nipah virus, a disease in pigs that killed more than 100 people in Malaysia last year and other diseases that can spread to humans, the USDA needs a level-four lab, where scientists wear full body suits that connect to overhead tubes with oxygen like those seen in the 1995 movie "Outbreak." There are no level-four labs in the US that can do research with large animals.

Deadly animal diseases, including foot-and-mouth disease and African swine fever, are studied on Plum Island, run by the USDA at a cost of $14.5 million a year. Thirty scientists and about 150 other workers take government ferries to work on the island.

But research on the 840-acre island, a mile east of Long Island, has been controversial for the entire 45 years it has been the site of animal testing.

Nearby residents on Long Island and in Connecticut worried even more after the West Nile Virus, a disease usually found in Africa, killed seven people in the New York City area and sickened 50 others last summer. The virus spread from birds to mosquitoes to humans. Despite suspicions, no link to Plum Island was proved.

The $340 million biotech research proposal will appear in Clinton's budget request for fiscal 2001 that begins on 1 October 2000. The extra funds for animal disease research would be spent over a seven-year period, officials said. Clinton is expected to unveil the 2001 budget formally on 7 February.

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 1999

-- M (Meandi@here.com), January 23, 2000.

Thanks Robert. Wish I were "user friendly"...M

-- M (Meandi@sortohere.com), January 23, 2000.