Common Sense for the Biochemist

Its a special 2 for 1 post today: First up, (and again gleaned from Matt Mullen's blog here and here), residents of Sonoma county, California voted down Measure M, which would effectively ban the cultivation of any organism that was genetically altered using state-of-the-art techniques. I would call the margin of victory pretty sizeable, being 55-44%. I think this victory will give the plant biotechs some "political capital" for spending in the never ending process of gaining government and public acceptance. And this "political capital" could be really be used by some small biotechs right about now. Several companies (also accessed through Plantpharma.org) and industry organizations lined up yesterday to put pressure on Congress to reverse the Small Business Administration's changes in who may qualify for SBIR loans (more about this change here). These changes have affected PMP companies such as Chlorogen. David Duncan, president and CEO of Chlorogen had this to say in a statement to PR newswire yesterday:

"It's ironic that when the news is filled with stories of the flu and pandemics, our firm has had to shelve its bio-defense vaccine program which could potentially deliver massive quantities of vaccines against anthrax, cholera and other afflictions. Why? Because under the current rules of SBA, our firm of only 12 employees is no longer a 'small' business,"