issues in science 3

GM foods are meeting the same sort of resistance here as in Europe, with the name Monsanto often treated as synonymous with the devil, so that company’s plans to release a new GM low-fat soybean is expected to meet with much resistance. Oil from these beans doesn’t form trans-fatty acids or saturated fats thought ti increase the risk of heart disease. Strangely the reduced linolenic acid, key to the low-fat effect, wasn’t achieved through genetic modification but through conventional breeding. The GM component is for pest resistance. So, critics are asking, why bring this product out in a GM form only?

With many beginning to believe that the days of broad-spectrum antibiotic solutions to diseases are numbered, serum therapy, much improved since its heyday early in the twentieth century, is making a comeback. Serum therapy, which often involved large dosages with serious side effects, was sidelined by the rapid advance of antibiotics in the forties and fifties, but with the breakthrough in producing monoclonal antibodies (the mass production of one particular antibody) in the seventies, and their use in cancer treatments, antibody treatment is on the increase, though it is still comparatively costly.

Recently in the US, the first full skeleton of a Neanderthal was reconstructed. Neanderthals died out nearly 30,000 years ago. The skeleton was reconstructed from casts taken from a number of sites around the world, most notably La Ferrassie in France. The skeleton reveals a larger-than human chest capacity and pelvis, and less of a waist. Meanwhile the oldest fossilised primate protein ever sequenced, taken from a Neanderthal, has been found to be identical to its human equivalent.

From New Scientist, March 19