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Genetic engineering is an area still under severe controversy particularly in Brazil where early this March of 2015 more than a hundred women invaded FUTURAGENE and destroyed almost a decade of science accumulated by this company in GM Eucalyptus. Biotechnology has progressed in Brazil under strong reaction by activists that continuously destroy experimental work being developed by several companies and unfortunately do not pay the price to work illegally. It is unfortunate that even in other countries reactions of this sort happen like the destruction of the experiments with golden rice in the International Rice Institute in the Philippines. Never in history was a technology so pursued by activism and as we follow the history Biotechnology since the name of the technology was Recombinant DNA, scientifically we do not encounter reasons for these attitudes, because genetic engineering caused no harm neither to man nor to the environment since Asilomar that decided for a moratorium for the technology early in the seventies and prompted NIH to design rules for its safe use adopted all over the world.
About the author
Agronomist graduated from the Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ) with a master's degree in Agronomy (Mississippi State University), Ph.d. in Plant Physiology (University of California-Davis) and post-doc in Molecular Biology of plants, University of California-LOS ANGELES (UCLA). Member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences
