Word: rifkin
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Opponents, captained by Washington-based Activist Jeremy Rifkin, have raised legitimate questions about how well these experiments are regulated and monitored. But Rifkin and his supporters have also played on public fears by painting the specter of a biotech Chernobyl -- an experiment gone haywire, spreading man-made germs that could ruin crops, change rain patterns and render large swatches of California uninhabitable...
...Lindow and Panopoulos applied for permission to treat potatoes with ice-minus. They failed to anticipate Rifkin. A former antiwar activist with a fertile imagination and a knack for using the bureaucratic process, Rifkin organized what may be the longest-running regulatory battle ever. One of his victories: a 1984 temporary injunction against Lindow and Panopoulos issued by Federal District Judge John Sirica of Watergate fame...
There have been excesses and lapses on both sides. Rifkin, who makes his living speaking against genetic engineering, sowed fear and doubt among the public even after his supporters had concluded that the experiments were safe. But the scientists have not been blameless. Advanced Genetic Sciences Inc., the Oakland-based start-up firm that conducted the strawberry tests, managed to alienate most of California's Monterey County in 1986 when its closely held plans to test the microbes in that area were uncovered by a local newspaper. While that issue was being debated, Rifkin revealed that AGS scientists had already...
...Humane Society, eleven other animal-welfare groups and the Foundation on Economic Trends (which consists largely of Jeremy Rifkin, an implacable foe of genetic engineering) have petitioned the Patent Office to rescind its new policy. Such a reversal is unlikely. The agency's role is to encourage innovation, not to determine its ethical implications. That is the business of the Biomedical Ethics Board, which was established by Congress in 1985 but has not yet met. The board's deliberations are long overdue, says John Fletcher, chief of the bioethical program at the National Institutes of Health: "Our society is starved...
Criticism came quickly. Jeremy Rifkin, a well-known foe of the biotech industry, declared that his Foundation on Economic Trends will file suit against the White House this week over the new rules...