|
The Brazilian parliament has passed legislation allowing stem cell research and the planting and sale of genetically modified (GM) crops. Approved on 2 March by 352 votes to 60, the biosafety law states that all products containing GM crops will need to be clearly labelled.
The law also allows research using stem cells from human embryos produced by in vitro fertilization, provided the embryos have been frozen for more than three years or if they would be unlikely to survive if they were transferred to a woman's uterus.
In either case, the donors' permission will be required before embryos can be used for research.
Brazilian religious groups opposed this aspect of the legislation, calling instead for a total ban on stem cell research.
Another controversial aspect of the law is the power it gives to the National Technical Commission of Biosafety, which is part of the Ministry of Science and Technology. According to the bill, the commission will be responsible for deciding which GM crops can be sold.
However, not all areas of the government agree with the legislation. The Ministry of Environment has said that the new legislation would relegate those public bodies that are responsible for the environment, agriculture, fishing, and health to a secondary role in policymaking relating to GM crops.
This, says the ministry, will create an imbalance in the decision-making process and weaken the safety measures taken to manage the introduction of GM crops.
Silvio Valle, an expert on biosafety at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Rio de Janeiro, says the scientific community felt that stem cells and GM crops should not have been put together in the same bill.
The legislation will be finalized when Brazil's president, Luiz Inácio da Silva, signs it.
Science and Development Network
www.scidev.net
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.