• Baptist pro-biotech demonstrators at the US Food and Drug Administration in Washington in December carried placards reading “Biotech saves children's lives” and “Biotech equals jobs.” Their lunch and ride to the demonstration were paid for by Monsanto's public relations company, Burson-Marsteller. Burson-Marstellar says that the demonstrators believed in the cause and that the payments the company had made merely facilitated the expression of existing sentiments.

• The latest pronouncements of professional environmental grouch, Jeremy Rifkin of the Foundation on Economic Trends (Washington, DC), indicate that he is with the birds and the bees rather than humans when it comes to GM crops for the third world. Commenting on the announcement by Monsanto of a vitamin A-enriched oilseed rape that might prevent blindness in hundreds of thousands of children in developing countries, Rifkin wondered only, “What are the repercussion for foraging birds, insects, and other animals when they digest plants that are acting as pharmaceutical factories? We just don't know.”

• Simpleton eco-warriors revealed the depth of their knowledge of biology and plant breeding when they destroyed 90% of an experimental crop of raspberry bushes at a Washington State University. They had confused the raspberry bushes with hybrid poplar trees, which they wanted to destroy because they thought (if that is an appropriate word) “hybrid” implied “genetically engineered.”

• The pope's advisors on life science matters, the Vatican Pontifical Academy for Life, has decided that it is not against the will of the catholic God to alter the genetic make-up of plants and animals. However, VPAL reasserted the Vatican's opposition to human cloning and in vitro fertilization. The vice president of VPAL, Elio Sgreccia, said “We are increasingly encouraged that the advantages of genetic engineering of plants and animals are greater than the risks.” Perhaps straying somewhat from his theological brief, however, Sgreccia also urged continuing case-by-case risk assessment and called for proper labeling on GM products.