Showing posts with label chemical_industry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chemical_industry. Show all posts

27 May 2016

Intellectual property, secrecy, and death

The Blog


Known for likening the use of patents to exploitation, murder and terrorism, C4SS writer Kevin Carson points out that Monsanto is hiding behind intellectual property to conceal its responsibility for deaths. Desperate to prevent consumers knowing about deadly ingredients in its herbicides, the company needs secrecy.


Most opponents of Monsanto's Roundup chemical product believe glyphosate is carcinogenic - a claim refuted in various scientific studies. The scientific community believes glyphosate is safe, although this says nothing for the safety of Roundup itself, which still accompanies a high rate of cancer among workers.

As reasoned by Kevin Carson at the Center for a Stateless Society website:
legally, Monsanto is required to make public only the active ingredient — glyphosate — itself. In fact the “inert ingredients” are all trade secrets, legally protected by so-called “intellectual property.”
Carson also writes, "the existence of legally protected trade secrets is a weapon against the health and welfare of the public, depriving them of any knowledge of the nature of toxic chemicals they may be exposed to". He compares this with the behavior of companies and governments surrounding shale gas production, writing that in this industry various proprietary ingredients are "also kept secret from the potentially affected public by “intellectual property.”"

In this analysis, libertarian "free market" advocates such as Ronald Bailey at Reason who defend Monsanto's freedom from the apparent cruelties of consumer rights, labeling and transparency are acting hypocritically. While supposedly triumphing individual rights, such libertarians are effectively cheer-leading the state while it crucifies individuals, blindfolding them and refusing them any right to know what is harming their health.

Carson writes such immoral rules do not constitute a "libertarian legal order", where, "given the prevalence of cancer like non-Hodgkin lymphoma among agricultural workers exposed to Roundup, there would long ago have been lawsuits in which Monsanto was compelled to disclose the full list of ingredients in Roundup".

Whether or not glyphosate is the danger, Roundup and the quantities it is used in should be suspected for as long as the apparent connection to cancer still exists.


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26 February 2016

Mosquito repellent to deter Zika virus?

The Blog


Students from a university in Mexico have taken it upon themselves to research and create a whole new type of mosquito repellent, in hopes of reversing the terrible toll of the Zika virus carried by mosquitos.


The Zika virus has been causing birth defects, with the virus' recent explosion in lethality and hospitalization spreading throughout Brazil and other parts of South America and arriving in Central America, including Mexico. As a result, officials have sought to improve access to birth control to suppress the scale of birth defects.

Citing information from the National Science and Technology Council in Mexico, human rights and environmental expert Deborah Dupre says the mosquito repellent stands out from traditional repellents because due to being 60% less expensive. Made from on plant-derived chemicals creating three different types of oil to repel insects, the new type of mosquito repellent is to be marketed under the brand name CitroRepel.

"Phenomenal" student-made mosquito repellent


Dupre referred to the mosquito repellent as "phenomenal" due to its low cost and  lack of harmful ingredients associated with older chemical products.

Article: Students Conquering Zika Emergency with Phenomenal Repellent


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25 December 2015

Fusion power vs future synbio-power?

The Blog


Fusion power plants would likely mean sole power plants feeding entire continents or countries with electricity, giving incredible political leverage to the government or company with the off-switch.


Critics of thermonuclear fusion power have therefore said alternative energy must not just be renewable. It must also be decentralized and easily shared.

At Beliefnet, a post of the L'Ordre blog argues that synthetic biology is the key to developing easily shared and decentralized power sources. They will be circulated to even the poorest communities.

Some attention has been given to developing sustainable fuels using new biologically-engineered bacteria that excrete types of petroleum or diesel (see the BBC report here). Although it has not been covered much in the media, such developments have been frequently successful. However, the microbes currently need such specific feedstocks (namely sugar, which has its own problems of labor, land and cost that make it hard to sustain forever) to create difficulties in supplying the microbes. They may also not be used on an industrial scale due to fears of them escaping and contaminating the environment or being stolen for commercial gain, which probably limits their use to highly secure scientific premises.

In the past, the Beliefnet blog expressed a disbelief in the explanations above, pointing instead to the preeminence of corporate greed over global human welfare as the only reason for the failure to make the microbes available more quickly. This theory was in turn challenged by a post at Afflictor.com, which pointed instead to the idea that synthetic biologists are a marginal minority of scientists, which means a lack of human resources to develop that industry.

J. Craig Venter, the scientist-entrepreneur father of synthetic biology, has since become less interested in developing synthetic biology-based fuel and chemical industries than in medicine and longevity, although the idea of inexhaustible fuels is occasionally used in his writing and lectures.

The new Beliefnet post declared using synthetic biology to make a new fuel industry as highly promising but also potentially dangerous, stating, "It could also literally set the world on fire, if handled incorrectly, so the question of how to handle it and at the same time ensure fairness and equal development in the use of synthetic creatures as fuel sources needs to be addressed more deeply."


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15 September 2015

Science and technology can end poverty

The Blog


The following quotes and major points on the constraints preventing scientists and engineers from making poverty history come from the L'Ordre blog, and were published on 12th September 2015. Of particular interest are technologies that could ease industrialization in poorer countries if directly donated to them, such as artificial intelligence, additive manufacturing and synthetic biology.

rather than use humanity’s one redeeming feature – ingenuity – as our deliverance, we have wasted the world’s resources trying to stunt the growth of technology in countries such as Iran, allowing ourselves to be driven by a will to self-destruction and fear. This usurps the natural human yearning to create and evolve, in the spirit of our earliest ancestors
  • Billionaire entrepreneurs profess to help humanity but have done nothing remarkable to actually enrich, strengthen and boost the survival of poor peoples and states in the Southern Hemisphere. These people are more often placed under economic sanctions for their progress, rather than helped by richer countries
  • Most people who claim to favor the world's poor seem more interested in creating more refugee camps and inviting billions of people to live in Europe and North America. This more closely resembles the way Native Americans were treated during genocide rather than the heroic desire to arm the world's oppressed people against the world's rich and heavily armed powers
  • "Where science and technology cross with anti-colonialism, liberation movements and the desire for a mass uprising against injustice and inequality, there is the greatest source of hope for humanity."
  • Synthetic biology can create self-replicating chemical products including fuels and fertilizers to any extent, and such products don't need to be sold or owned by anyone but could just be given away to radically improve life and development in poorer countries
  • "Self-gratifying charity" of NGOs and philanthropists claiming to help the world's poor is hollow. They should be arming the world's poor to resist oppression and fraud with the latest technologies through direct action
  • Everyone takes risks with technology, so we have no right to resist the risk involved in giving out all the world's most potent technology to the world's poorest people
  • Science and technology need to be depoliticized and national security doctrines should not be used to stop the spread of new technologies, which should be applied to help the poor immediately upon being created
  • The full extent of this argument can be found in the Catalyst techno-liberation thesis
The post concluded that synthetic biology (the artificial genetic sequencing and creation of new living things) is the most important stride that could help the world's poor at minimum cost to the donor, due to its self-replicating nature and simplicity. The blog proposed that it will become "the key to ending all the world’s resource shortages, environmental problems and wars".


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