Genetic Engineering: Evaluating the Situation

May 05, 2007
Genetic Engineering: Evaluating the Situation

The Geeks welcome Michelle Marvier, published and noted research scientist and Associate Professor of the Environmental Studies Institute and Department of Biology at Santa Clara University. Should vaccines be delivered to children in bananas? Join us to learn more!

  [ Audio 24.6 MB mp3 ]

GeekNews

NETGEAR purchase of Infrant

The Geeks all use Infrant boxes, storage devices that connect to our home networks. These things are sweet little products.

So sweet, in fact, that this week NETGEAR, a major networking hardware company, bought them for $60 million in cash.

Digg got Dinged

On Tuesday the owners of the social news site Digg decided to take down stories that gave details about a newly cracked HD-DVD encryption key.

Digg's founder, Kevin Rose, says they were trying to protect Digg from lawsuits and that is why they where taking down links to this crack.

Digg has now changed their stance as Kevin clarifies in a recent post :

"But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be."

Michelle Marvier

 Michelle Marvier

Michelle Marvier is an Associate Professor and Executive Director of Environmental Studies at Santa Clara University's College of Arts & Sciences.

Her recommendation on today's show for further reading was Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma"

The City of Santa Cruz has passed an ordinance banning genetically engineered crops. The county is studying it with a Genetic Engineering subcommittee

For more information about Michelle and to read some of her work, see her site