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Global News, Rachel Parent, and a Deliberate Hit Piece

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 I remember going back to Chicago to visit my father just before Christmas in 2015.  The previous months had been brutal, and I was finally healing after activists deliberately misinterpreted my emails and the New York Times made false accusations that I traded grants for lobbying time. The personal and professional fallout was awful, but subsiding. It was perfect timing for those seeking my demise to pile-on, to take another shot at a career academic researcher that has dedicated his time to research in indoor agriculture lighting and the genomics of small fruit flavor. His efforts to communicate the science behind biotechnology still were not appreciated by many.   US Right to Know, a now irrelevant fossil of the anti-science crusade against biotechnology commissioned Allison Vuchnich of Global News Canada to drop the hammer in a carefully coordinated next phase of career assassination.  After all, I survived a their claims of malfeasance, quid-pro-quo payoffs, and colluding with c

Colchicine and COVID19

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 The response from plant biologists was a unified "YIKES!" Colchicine?  Really?  That's the stuff we use to wreck biology, or at least give its decedents too many chromosomes.  A recent press release exclaimed the therapeutic effects of this regent in the treatment of COVID19.  A clinical trial of 6000 planned individuals was performed in a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, multi institutional study. The study was piloted by the Montreal Heart Institute. Other international institutions are also examining its effect in separate clinical trials.  Colchine is derived from the crocus flower, and is best known for its ability to arrest cell division by disrupting the molecular cables that attach to chromosomes. These tiny fibers pull normally pull half of the chromosomes into each new daughter cell. Colchicine disrupts their formation, meaning one cell gets a heavy load of genetic material.  In plant biology that can be a good thing.  Plants with extra sets of