16/July/20

 

As evidence builds for the lab-manipulated origin of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that caused the COVID-19 epidemic, scientific journals are running scared of publishing papers that broach this possibility. The latest scientific paper to support the lab-manipulated origin theory has been published not in a peer-reviewed journal, but on the website of a magazine. Some scientists have put forward possible reasons for journal editors' reluctance to publish papers on the lab escape and genetically engineered origin theories for SARS-CoV-2. GMWatch

 

 

Virologist Dr Jonathan Latham and geneticist Dr Allison Wilson have come up with a novel origin theory for SARS-CoV-2. The theory proposes that miners in China acquired a coronavirus from bats in a mine and that this bat virus evolved extensively inside their bodies to become a highly human-adapted virus. It's known that blood and other samples were extracted from the miners and some of these were sent to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). The virus may then have escaped from a lab at the WIV. Drs Latham and Willson evolved their theory based on evidence in a Chinese Master's thesis, which has been translated into English for the first time. Independent Science News

 

 

Combining multiple herbicides to kill weeds may promote the evolution of general resistance to weedkillers, a new study shows. The authors of the study are mostly based in the UK, with the exception of one author from Bayer CropScience. The authors conclude that their results call into question "the ubiquity of [weed] resistance management based on mixtures and combination therapies". [GMW: Bayer is currently seeking approval for a GMO variety of corn resistant to 5 herbicides.] Nature

 

 

Three dozen United Nations human rights experts have called on wealthy countries to end the “deplorable” practice of exporting banned toxic chemicals and pesticides to poorer nations that lack “the capacity to control the risks”. A statement issued by UN special rapporteur on toxics Baskut Tuncak revealed that at least 30 countries last year shipped substances to Latin America, Africa and Asia that were banned from use on their own soil in order to protect human health or the environment. Unearthed