Bee death- in search of the cause

Posted on July 31st, 2008 in Science News by Rodica

“If the bee disappears off the surface of the globe, then man would have four years left to live.”- Quote attributed to Albert Einstein

If the above quote is really coming from Einstein or not, it does not matter. What matters is that the silent cataclysm is happening.
According to reports and studies, in the U.S and Canada the losses of domesticated bees are up to 90% and in U.K and the Netherlands wild bee population have declined 80%. Losses were reported as well in Germany, Switzerland, Poland, Austria and Spain.
In many cases no bees were found dead, just gone from the hive. It’s called: Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).

Searching for nectar, bees travel from blossom to blossom transferring pollen from plant to plant, thus fertilizing and enabling them to bear fruit.
Hence: no bee, no pollination of crops, orchards or home gardens. Affected will be: apples, blueberries, cantaloupes, cranberries, cucumbers, sunflowers, beans, peas, strawberries and many other crops.

According to a study from Cornell University, the direct value of honey bee pollination to U.S. agriculture is more than $14.6 billion.

What is the cause of the death of bees?

- Some people came up with the theory that bees were being affected by the increased electromagnetic activity from mobile phones and wireless internet access, interfering with the bees ability to navigate.
- Others say it’s because of various pathogens, old and new
- The most popular hypothesis seem to blame it on Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) in combination with various insecticides
- Or all of the above

Genetically modified seeds seem to be the root of all evils. Watch the movie ‘We feed the world’ and you are going to discover lots of frightening aspects, not so well known, related to our food. The way I see it, our future is doomed.
It makes lots of sense.
Genetically modified seeds are produced and distributed by powerful biotech conglomerates (Monsanto being one of them), capable to manipulate government agricultural policy to support their agenda.
They came up with the modified seeds that must be used with their brand of fertilizers and pesticides in order to gain the maximum yield.
But the genetic modification of the plant leads to genetic modification of the flower pollen and the bees would potentially die of illness due to the lack of nutrients.
Another disturbing aspect related to modified seeds is that they are infertile meaning that the farmers can not replant.
Infertile seeds can not be good news for bees, don’t you think?

Of course you are going to find lots of studies (founded by whom I wonder) showing that there is no link between GMO and the death of the bees.
Personally, I trust these studies as much as I trust the TV commercials.


The First Documented Cloned Human Embryo

Posted on January 20th, 2008 in Science News by Rodica


Motto: Every person begins as a single cell.

It looks like we have already the biggest scientific breakthrough of 2008: Stemagen Lab, a privately held embryonic stem cell research company, created the first cloned human embryo using somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) or therapeutic cloning.

The embryo clones were created from mature eggs (oocytes) donated by egg donors and intended parents undergoing egg donation cycles for reproductive purposes at the Reproductive Sciences Center in La Jolla.
The genetic material was removed from the original donated eggs and replaced by a new genetic material coming from the skin cells of a different donor.
Of the original 29 oocytes resulted 5 blastocyts ( a blastocyst is an embryo between 5 and 10 days old), with three confirmed to be clones based on DNA fingerprinting demonstrating the presence of the skin cell donor DNA in the blastocys.
DNA fingerprinting is the scientifically accepted method for determining if an embryo is a true clone.
From the blastocyst are harvested stem cells, capable of forming any of the body’s 200 cell types. During the harvesting the embryo is destroyed.
Apparently the company did not create any stem cells and all blastocysts were destroyed after a few days.

The next important step will be to generate human stem cells from cloned embryos, step that seems to be the most complicated one.

According to stem cells specialists, human embryonic stem cells have been extracted before, from unused fertility clinic embryos, but stem cells from cloned embryos are likely to be more useful because they would be genetically matched to a patient whose DNA is used in the cloning process.

The procedure could open the door to the development of patient-specific embryonic stem cells for human therapeutic use, potentially including developing treatments for Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and other degenerative diseases.