SOURCE: oberlin.edu

Oberlin College senior Kristin Braziunas replaced 10,000 incandescent light bulbs with CFLs on her campus and in her community

Looking for a way to decrease your college’s or university’s carbon footprint? Rather than purchasing carbon offsets from businesses with unproven track records, schools can instead look to their own backyards. The students at Oberlin College have cut out the middle man and guaranteed their carbon offset efforts are effective by investing directly in their community.

While some schools purchase carbon offsets to reduce their carbon footprint, carbon offsets are unregulated by the Federal Trade Commission. This makes it nearly impossible for a school to verify their effectiveness, and some carbon offsets companies invest the money ineffectively. Instead, Oberlin College senior Kristin Braziunas and her fellow “Light Bulb Brigade” at the college handed out 10,000 compact florescent light bulbs, or CFLs, to churches, department stores, and residents in the surrounding community. She exchanged incandescent light bulbs for the CFLs, reaching about 800 residents. CFLs use about 75 percent less electricity than traditional incandescent bulbs, depending on the model. About 48 percent of the country’s electricity comes from coal-fired power plants, which are responsible for 40 percent of America’s carbon dioxide emissions, and CFLs can cut carbon emissions by reducing the amount of energy those plants must produce to meet demand. If every American home replaced just one CFL, the emissions reductions would equal to taking 800,000 cars off the road.

Braziunas, in addition to reaching about a quarter of the population of Oberlin, claims she cut about 6,500 tons of carbon from the atmosphere. The institution can measure its carbon reduction based on the how many bulbs are distributed, and unlike other carbon offset credits, Oberlin College can monitor and verify their investment. But the students don’t just hand out bulbs; they also educate their community about the importance of emissions reductions and energy efficiency. Many colleges and universities, from Notre Dame to Princeton, have established CFL exchange programs on their campus, reducing the institution’s overall carbon emissions, but few are expanding this program to the surrounding community. Until the Federal Trade Commission regulates carbon offsets, Oberlin students may be setting a trend for colleges and universities across the nation.

flickr.com/morganmorgan

In a surprising move last week, the Environmental Protection Agency sided with science, environmentalists, and America’s children. It has been 30 years since the United States saw a reduction in lead emissions standards, but on October 15, EPA reduced the limits from 1.5 micrograms per cubic meter to 0.15. The move will force smelters, metal mines, and waste incinerators to reduce their emissions of the toxic metal. Since 1990, over 6,000 studies have confirmed the dangerous effects of lead, especially on children, as it lowers their IQ and damages learning and memory abilities. In adults, lead can cause brain, kidney, and cardiovascular damage.

The move garnered praise from bloggers at The Pump Handle and Switchboard, usual critics of the Bush administration’s environmental policy. But even with the new limits, the number of emissions monitoring stations has dropped from 800 in 1980 to around 130 stations currently, according to both blogs. The EPA plans to add or relocate 236 monitoring sites to meet requirements, still less than half of the previous number. Additionally, polluters will not need to comply with the new .15 μg/cubic meter standards until 2017. Gina Solomon at Switchboard writes: “That’s too late! We’ve already waited 30 years for this new lead standard, and it’s crazy to wait almost 10 more years for it to come into effect.”

But the history of lead in human civilization goes back even further. There have been several phases in the regulation of lead-based paint and leaded gasoline, taking nearly a century for public policy to catch up with scientific warnings. David Michaels, in his book, Doubt is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health, describes the history of the battle between the paint and gas industry’s PR machines and public health advocates and environmentalists. Here’s a timeline of what’s happened in the United States over the past 100 years:

1900s: Lead was regarded as a highly toxic chemical, with lead-based paint regarded as the most identifiable hazard. If a child ate paint chips, people recognized it could cause seizure, coma, and death. If it didn’t traumatically harm the child, he or she may have learning and behavioral disabilities.

1922: Lead was first introduce into gasoline, immediately drawing headlines concerning public health. The form of lead in gasoline was known as tetraethyl lead and it raised the octane level of gasoline, resulting in “premium” gas for high-performance engines.

1924: Five workers at a New Jersey plant died, with four of them going “insane” before their death. The New York Times (subscription) covered the story, and New York City, Philadelphia, and other jurisdictions banned the sale of leaded gasoline.

1930s: The industries rejected scientific evidence, claiming there was no proof of causation and tried to blame the children and families as being irresponsible for allowing children to eat the paint chips, claiming that they were “sub-normal to start with.”

1965: A geochemist named Clair Patterson in Greenland brought the airborne lead issue into American consciousness. Until then, industry experts claimed only workers were at risk for lead poisoning, and that because lead has always been naturally in the air, it must be safe. Using ice core samples, Patterson found that higher levels of lead existed in recent samples than older ice. He further concluded that the amount of lead Americans had in their blood was 100 times greater than natural levels.

1970: Nixon signed the Clean Air Act of 1970 into law on December 31st, and the Environmental Protection Agency, formed on December 2, had a task worth attacking. “Year of the Environment came to an end on an extremely upbeat note with the signing of a major piece of environmental legislation. The Clean Air Act (CAA) of 1970 was the perfect bookend to balance the National Environmental Policy Act the President had signed with such a flourish on New Year’s Day,” states the EPA. Along with lead, the EPA was required to lower emissions of hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen oxides by 90 percent in only a few years.

1971: President Richard Nixon signed the Lead-Based Paint Poisoning Prevention Act, which restricted the lead content in paint used in housing built with federal dollars and provided funds for states to reduce the amount of lead in paint. Subsequent legislation created the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which effectively banned leaded paint in 1976.

1984: The U.S. Senate considered banning the use of lead in gasoline, with Vernon Houk, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Center for Environmental Heath, reporting that “if no lead had been allowed in gasoline since 1977, there would have been approximately 80 percent fewer children identified with lead toxicity.”

1985: The EPA discussed a total ban on leaded gasoline by 1988.

1990: In amendments to the Clean Air Act, lead was banned from gasoline. The measures would take effect in 1995, giving gasoline companies five more years to completely phase out lead.

2002: According to a study, levels of lead found in human blood were reduced more than 80 percent from 1976 to 1999 in American children one to five years old, and these children had IQs that were, on average, 2.2-4.7 points higher than comparable groups in the 1970s. In terms of economic impact, the authors estimate that each IQ point raises worker productivity 1.76-2.38 percent. The estimated economic benefit for each year’s newborns ranges from $110 billion to $319 billion.

2008: EPA tightens air emission rules for lead, requiring industries to reduce levels to .15 μg/cubic meter. The new standard is 10 times greater than previous requirements set 30 years ago.

2013: States are required to submit state implementation plans outlining how they will reduce pollution to meet the standards no later than June.

2017: States are required to meet the new standards no later than January.

It’s been about a year since MRSA, or drug-resistant staph, last made major headlines, scaring officials from Virginia to Connecticut to Maryland to disinfect schools. After the Centers for Disease Control released a report last fall indicating that MRSA was responsible for more than 94,000 life-threatening infections and 19,000 deaths in 2005, drug-resistant staph infections sparked a national discussion about the overuse of antibiotics. But the news this October is about a form of Streptococcus pneumoniae, or pneumococcus, that is causing meningitis, pneumonia, and bloodstream infections, according to a report in The New York Times. Rather than resisting antibiotics, the organisms in this case may have outmaneuvered a proven vaccine.

Known as Serotype 19A, this strep bacteria is infecting more children and elderly people despite the longtime use of a Prevnar, a vaccine which immunizes children against all kinds of pneumococcus. Prevnar, has been around since 2000, but since 2002, rates of infection from Serotype 19A have risen from about 2 per 100,000 children to more than 10 per 100,000. A fourfold increase in life-threatening infections has also occurred among the elderly. Prevnar has been mostly successful in preventing infection from many of the 91 forms of pneumococcus, but now that it has eliminated much of microbial competition, 19A can grow and become a greater threat to humans. Prevnar may have prevented many of the pneumococcus infections in American children in 2000, but the drug is out-dated and doesn’t protect against other forms of pneumococcus.

But the NYT reports that experts say it is hard to know what role the introduction of Prevnar may have played in the rise of the bacteria, which was gaining momentum in some countries before the vaccine’s adoption.

Drug-resistant bacteria arise from strains that have survived through natural selection with traits rendering them unaffected by antibiotics. Of the 91 strains of pneumococcus, most are not dangerous. But pneumococci live in the nose and throat, constantly exchanging genetic material and forming new strains of bacteria. Finding vaccines and antibiotics to eliminate them is very difficult for drug companies.

(NASA/GSFC)

Comparison of Minimum Sea Ice between 2005 and 2007. California outline shown for comparison. Modified from NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio. The Blue Marble data is courtesy of Reto Stockli.

In the 2004 disaster movie The Day After Tomorrow, tidal waves the size of skyscrapers hurtle toward New York City. This fantastic envisioning of abrupt climate change bears no resemblance to what could happen in reality, but abrupt climate change could potentially raise sea levels by meters in the span of a century. One of the most well-studied examples of extreme climate change occurred 12,800 years ago, at the end of the last Ice Age, in an event known as the Younger Dryas. During this time temperatures warmed and the glaciers receded, but scientists speculate that the thermohaline circulation, or THC, the ocean current which transports warm and cool water, shut down, causing a mini, 1,200-year-long ice age. The Younger Dryas ended just as abruptly as it began, with temperatures rising 10°C in just 10 years.

So abrupt climate changes happen. To better understand these potential threats to humanity, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Biological and Environmental Research, or OBER, launched the Investigation of the Magnitudes and Probabilities of Abrupt Climate Transitions program.

Science Daily reports on the laboratories across the nation (Argonne, Los Alamos, Lawrence Berkeley, Lawrence Livermore, Oak Ridge, and Pacific Northwest) which will work with IMPACT to develop the computer models necessary to understand this complex phenomenon. OBER launched the program through its Climate Change Prediction Program. IMPACTS will study four possible causes of abrupt climate change:

1. instability among marine ice sheets, particularly the West Antarctic ice sheet
2. positive feedback mechanisms in subarctic forests and arctic ecosystems, leading to rapid methane release or large-scale changes in the surface energy balance
3. destabilization of methane hydrates (vast deposits of methane gas caged in water ice), particularly in the Arctic Ocean
4. feedback between the biosphere and atmosphere that could lead to megadroughts in North America, perhaps even greater than the 1930s Dust Bowl.

Each of these “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” could dramatically change the globe, with one potential impact being ocean level rise 13 to 20 feet. The computer model will help predict environmental shifts and provide information to scientists, government, and business leaders on strategies to prepare for or prevent extreme changes.

One significant a fear is that slowly rising temperatures could warm the methane-rich permafrost, releasing the greenhouse gas, which is has heat-trapping properties 26 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in the short term. As the permafrost melts, the organic material trapped in its warming soil will begin to decompose and release its stored methane and carbon, rapidly increasing temperatures and melting more permafrost, creating a feedback loop.

But a two-week-old study in Science suggests that the ancient permafrost may be more resilient to rising temperatures than previously thought. The study reports that a 700,000 year-old chunk of ground ice, buried in the Yukon permafrost, has survived some of warmest periods of the earth’s history. Scientists believed everything would have melted 120,000 years ago, but this piece of ice questions that theory.

This study shows the complicated nature of global climate modeling. As Jeremy Jacquot wrote in Science Progress, scientists didn’t expect the Arctic ice cap to melt as quickly as it has, with some new estimates predicting it will be gone by 2013.

The point being that climate scientists need the resources to study these potentially disastrous consequences of global warming before the “day after tomorrow” becomes today.

Peter D. Hart Research Associates

One of the slides from the President of Peter D. Hart Research Associates Geoffrey Garin’s presentation.

Some new products built on advances in nanotechnology improving people’s quality of life. There are anti-bacterial wound dressings that use nanoscale silver; there’s a nanoscale dry powder that can neutralize gas and liquid toxins in chemical spills; and batteries manufactured with nanoscale materials can deliver more power more quickly with less heat. In 2007 the federal government provided $1.3 billion in funding for research on nanotechnology through the National Nanotechnology Initiative.

So how come nobody’s ever heard of these wonderful new advancements? A new report release yesterday by the Wilson Center’s Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies and Peter D. Hart Research reveals that almost half of U.S. adults have heard nothing about nanotechnology, and nearly 9 in 10 Americans say they have heard just a little or nothing at all about the emerging field of synthetic biology. The report, “The American Public’s Awareness Of And Perceptions About Potential Risks and Benefits of Nanotechnology & Synthetic Biology,” also reveals that no major change has occurred in the U.S. public’s awareness since 2004, when Hart Research conducted the first poll on the topic on behalf of the PEN. Geoffery Garin, president of Peter D. Hart Research Associates, gave a presentation yesterday showing that almost 50 percent of Americans aren’t even sure if nanotechnology is worth the risk.

In early September on Science Progress, Arthur Caplan made six recommendations for the new administration’s science policy, including developing nanotechnology to clean water and developing synthetic biology to “fight diseases, make synthetic fuels, eat pollutants, clean the oceans and our arteries.” With the potential for nanotech and synbio to make such a profound impact on society, the government and press should make a concerted effort to inform the public of these technologies. But as Rick Weiss has argued, there’s still a significant amount of investigation and regulation that needs to happen for certain nano applications, chief among them drug development.

“Early in the administration of the next president, scientists are expected to take the next major step toward the creation of synthetic forms of life. Yet the results from the first U.S. telephone poll about synthetic biology show that most adults have heard just a little or nothing at all about it,” said Director David Rejeski, in a PEN news release.

Tuesday

The Technology Imperative and The Role of Technology Policy In Driving Economic Growth
The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
1250 Eye Street, NW, Suite 200, Room 2
9 a.m.

Launch of World Watch Magazine’s Population Issue
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
5th Floor Conference Room, Ronald Reagan Building: 1300 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
3 p.m.

Wednesday

Hans Landsberg Memorial Lecture
Resources for the Future
First Floor Conference Center 1616 P Street NW
12:30pm

Thursday

Understanding Our Digital Quality of Life
Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
Thomas Jefferson Building, Room LJ 162
1 p.m.

flick.com/jpmatth

No one is expecting an executive order mandating federal regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act between now and January, but it is promising to have the Senate Committee on Environmental and Policy Works addressing the issue this morning. Speakers at the hearing include Jason Burnett, former associate deputy administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency, who resigned this summer after disputes over the EPA’s inaction following the Supreme Court’s decision that the agency must regulate CO2 as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. Also speaking will be Bill Kovacs, vice president of Environment, Technology and Regulatory Affairs under the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who said in a recent report that regulating CO2 under the Act would overburden the EPA.

Chris Mooney wrote previously here at Science Progress that the EPA has been under extreme pressure to address global warming, but under the influence of the Bush administration, it has side-stepped (and even back-tracked) on the issue. The EPA has refused to regulate greenhouse gasses under the Clean Air Act, a stance which has led to scandals and lawsuits.

With frustration growing among some states, attorneys general are directly suing companies that emit greenhouse gases, such as Exxon Mobil and electric power plants. Mooney, who covered this simmering issue in a column entitled “The Coming Global Warming ‘Scopes’ Trial,” said the attorneys are blaming climate change on these companies, using scientific evidence to show the relationship between emissions and a shifting environment. And with last year’s Massachusetts vs. EPA case giving climate change advocates legal standing, courts must now analyze these claims. The lawsuits against carbon emitters may portend an emerging trend in science-based litigation similar to the suits brought against big tobacco.

The co-chairs of the World Stem Cell Summit recently spoke with Science Progress in a roundtable discussion on the state of research. Bernard Siegel, executive director of Genetics Policy Institute, joined Timothy Kamp and Clive Svendsen, co-directors of University of Wisconsin Stem Cell & Regenerative Medicine Center, and Science Progress Editor-in-Chief Jonathan Moreno. Here are some of the highlights of the discussion.

The summit runs September 22 -23 and is distinctive in that it brings together scientists, patients, advocacy groups, and philanthropists, said Siegel. It is public-facing, interactive, and scientists learn “where their work fits into the world,” said Svendsen.

“We live in our own little shoebox sometimes as scientists,” he said.

Clive Svendsen discusses interactions between scientists and the public:

Although Kamp says it’s unusual to have this kind of interaction, he said he’s excited about the upcoming conversations. Industry and advocacy groups will have their own sessions in addition to the discussions of diseases and treatments.

During the summit, attendees will have a chance to discuss the ethical issues surrounding embryonic stem cell research. Those in favor of President George W. Bush’s restrictions on federal funding for hES cell research hailed Thomson’s work to create induced pluripotent stem cells from adult cells. But scientists and policy experts alike have pointed out in order for research to progress, work with human embryonic stem cells is critical, as they remain the “gold standard” for understanding pluripotency. Also, Svendsen said, studying IPS and hES cells simultaneously will create collaboration between scientists working in both fields.

Moreover, putting all future research eggs in the IPS cell basket is not a sound approach. “Extremism in any area is dangerous,” Svendsen said. “Although [Thomson’s research] is an exciting new technique, relying on any one technique is not the way forward, particularly if you want to bring cells into the clinic as quickly as possible.”

Tim Kamp explains why embryonic stem cells are the “gold standard” for pluripotency:
[audio:http://www.scienceprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/kamp1.mp3]

“I think we’re still in the long process of really understanding just how much an induced pluripotent stem cell is like an embryonic stem cell and its ability to grow for prolonged periods of time, [and] its ability to deferentiate into all the different cell types we’re interested in,” Kamp said.

Researchers are discovering new, previously unimagined ways to reverse damage from injury and disease. Svendsen said he believes the first work using stem cells in clinical trials will employ them as helper cells, which modulate the tissue by increasing blood flow to the area, regrowing damaged cells.

Tim Kamp describes clinical work using autologous cells to repair damaged heart tissue:
[audio:http://www.scienceprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/kamp2.mp3]

“This is really alchemy; taking lead and turning it into gold,” Svendsen said. “We can take an adult cell and make it pluripotent and make it do what ever we want.”

Clive Svendsen on the exciting new potential of pluripotent cells:
[audio:http://www.scienceprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/clive2.mp3]

Addressing possibilities for significant expansion of federal support, Kamp said that the United States has “an incredible pool of researchers,” but to continue that research, the National Institutes of Health needs to increase funding. He even mused about the possibility of creating a stem cell and regenerative research center, much like the Center for Cancer Research.

Siegel pointed out that funding for the NIH has been flat overall and that funding for this field has been neglected. He hopes the next administration will increase federal funding for embryonic stem cell research and the Food and Drug Administration will move swiftly and safely on regulations.

Bernard Siegel stresses how important FDA regulations and federal funding are to stem cell research:
[audio:http://www.scienceprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/siegel1.mp3]

“We want to make sure we don’t have a gridlock,” Siegel said “and that we can move all systems forward responsibly but quickly.”

The grassroots advocacy groups are pushing hard for this research, politically and financially. Next Monday and Tuesday, more than 150 corporate sponsors and non-profit partners will show their support at the World Stem Cell Summit. The co-chairs expect the summit, now in its fourth year, to help shape the future of stem cell research in this election year.

“This is a field that’s on the move,” Siegel said. “The political climate is changing for the better. And in the next ten years we’re going to see major advancements.”

Tristan Fowler is an intern at Science Progress and a journalism major at Ithaca College.

Since the 2005 release of the National Academies’ “Rising Above the Gathering Storm” report, discussion in the research, innovation, and business communities has swirled around national indicators of science and engineering clout. International competition is always rising, and affects U.S. economic power and prosperity.

In June, RAND, with support from the Department of Defense, released its positive report on America’s science and technology competitiveness. The report cites high percentages of spending on R&D and employment of Noble Prize winners as indicators of R&D health. Additional support from foreign students and talent has helped the United States “build and maintain its worldwide lead, even as many other nations increase their spending on research and development,” write the authors.

But ITIF disagrees.

At yesterday’s event announcing the release of the think tank’s report, titled “RAND’s Rose-Colored Glasses: How RAND’s Report on U.S. Competitiveness in Science and Technology Gets it Wrong,” ITIF President Robert Atkinson, co-author, moderated a presentation with innovation policy gurus explaining how the June report is flawed both structurally and analytically. Atkinson said the RAND Corporation was invited to discuss the issue in conjunction with ITIF, but they declined. In a packed room, Stephen Ezell, a senior ITIF analyst and an author of the report, explained how the RAND study has an incomplete history of S&T policy and measurements of R&D health. The specific problems Ezell addressed include:

• Framing the wrong fundamental question regarding the S&T competitiveness debate.
• Providing an incomplete historiography of U.S. S&T policy development, particularly policies developed in response to previous challenges to U.S. S&T competitiveness.
• Using inappropriate or incomplete benchmark metrics to assess U.S. S&T and economic competitiveness. ITIF measures R&D expenditures of countries as a share of GDP, unlike RAND, which measures the raw financial expenditures.
• Under-emphasizing within the report a number of indicators, including R&D intensity, the trade deficit in advanced technology products, and a downward trend in world share of R&D investments after 1998, which clearly demonstrate trends of weakening U.S. S&T competitiveness.
• Failing to include certain key measures needed to deliver a true assessment of U.S. S&T competitiveness, such as the U.S. trade deficit of $700 billion in 2007, and a $53 billion annual trade deficit in advanced technology products.

Using available time-series data sets—ending by 2003 at the latest in most cases—that are not reflective of the competitive challenge that has emerged since 2000 and do not adequately reflect the competitive landscape of mid-2008.

According to the panel, globalization and outsourcing negatively affect R&D like they affect low-wage jobs. For example, Intel’s Israeli-based R&D program made improvements on their microprocessors, and rather than forcing the two groups to coordinate from different continents, Intel subsequently built a $4 billion manufacturing plant near the R&D facility.

“Intel’s experience in Israel—another country with a highly favorable R&D tax regime—is instructive,” the report states, “and confounds the received wisdom that U.S. companies may outsource their manufacturing but will keep higher-value added activities such as design or R&D in the home country.”

Both the RAND and ITIF reports claim that the United States currently leads the world in S&T, but ITIF believes the U.S. is losing that lead to stiff competition from Asia and Europe. These international governments are “attuned to the changing world order,” as Jim Turner and Maryann Feldman argued earlier this year in Science Progress. The U.S. government needs to catch up with history to stay ahead as innovators.

“We as a nation badly need to update our view to include the role of government in science and technology in the radically new environment of 21^st century communications technologies, and to debate new ways of working together on open innovation,” Turner and Feldman wrote.

(According to the AFP, famous British physicist Stephen Hawking, has a $100 bet that the Higgs boson, aka “The God Particle,” won’t turn up.)

CERN/Maximilien Brice

British Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills J. Denham visiting the LHC.

The event is so big, the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, or Fermilab, near Chicago held a “pajama party” to watch the start up this morning, reported The New York Times. Produced with the help from the scientists at CERN, enthusiastic YouTuber alpinekat produced a rap explaining the science of the Large Hadron Collider. On the other end of the spectrum are the doomsday criers. A small cadre of critics believe that future LHC experiments that collide particles after a trip around the 17-mile wide underground ring will create mini-black holes which can swallow the planet. These scientists tried to obtain an injunction from the European Court of Human Rights to prevent the start up, but the court rejected their application, reported the Telegraph.

And all of this excitement could have been in Texas. In October of 1993, the House of Representatives voted against continued spending on America’s own Superconducting Supercollider in Waxahachie, TX . The 54-mile oval would have become the world’s largest collider and help lead the world in high energy physics. But, as congress explained, the costs were getting out of hand, rising from estimates of $4.5 billion in 1982 to $11 billion in 1993. The project was scraped, leaving one-fifth of the collider complete and ending at least 7,000 jobs in technical and scientific areas. Marty Kaplan, writing for the Huffington Post, wrote about his love for the Large Hadron Collier, but his dismay with America’s “political timidity and poverty of imagination” to end construction of the Superconducting Supercollider. “[H]aving wasted 10 years of planning, two years of digging and $2 billion on a 54-mile proton racetrack beneath Waxahachie, Texas, that is now worthless for probing the secrets of the universe but a real contender for the title of world’s most expensive mushroom farm,” Kaplan wrote.

A project like the LHC can inspire the next generation of physical scientists and push our understanding of the universe forward. As CAP outlined in its “National Innovation Agenda” report: “Advancing the frontiers of human knowledge and increasing our understanding of ourselves and the world around us are worthy goals themselves. We want to understand the ultimate fate of the universe, the nature of matter, the origin of life, and how human consciousness emerges from 100 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses.”

Christopher Doering of Reuters reported Tuesday that the “FDA and USDA have said it is impossible to differentiate between cloned animals, their offspring and conventionally bred animals, making it difficult to know if offspring are in the food supply.”

AP/Jason Turner

Offspring of cloned dairy cows.

In January, the FDA released a report giving two thumbs up on products from cloned cows, pigs and goats (the FDA didn’t make a recommendation on sheep because there wasn’t enough information), stating in a 968-page “final risk assessment” that food from cloned versions of these animals doesn’t pose any harmful health risks. The milk and meat from cattle was deemed safe, as well as meat from pigs and goats. The day after the FDA report was released, the USDA requested that U.S. farmers not sell food products from cloned animals, citing a need to first harmonize rules with trading partners and to build acceptance.

Consumers in many countries, including in the United States, have said they oppose food from clones or their offspring because of health and safety issues and because of concerns for the health of the clones themselves. Ethical issues are also being considered by the European Food Safety Authority, which is funded by the European Union to provide risk assessments on food. It’s their opinion that “considering the current level of suffering and health problems of surrogate dams and animal clones, the EGE has doubts as to whether cloning animals for food supply is ethically justified.”

Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Rick Weiss, who was then a staff writer at the The Washington Post, reported in January the FDA doesn’t require food companies to label products containing cloned livestock. But the agency may allow other companies to label products that do not contain cloned meat or milk.

In May, Nancy Scola reported in Science Progress on the disarray of the federal food safety system. With several recent food recalls and government agencies constantly placing blame on one another, Scola wrote that the food safety system is so complicated it “verges on the absurd.”

“When we had the spinach episode, everyone acted like it was a great surprise,” former FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford, a Bush-appointee and long-time federal food safety official, told Scola, “But the likelihood of something bad happening [with the food supply] is always quite high.”

The number of cloned animals in the country is low—only around 600, with cattle being the majority—but offspring are unaccounted for, and the size of the second generation is unknowable, especially since a single male clone can sire countless offspring through mail-order semen sales. Indeed, clones are too expensive to slaughter for the meat market, so for most farmers the business plan is to use them to breed high-quality offspring. Alex Seitz-Wald of NewsHour Extra says one breeder in Kansas has been selling his cloned cattle’s sperm for years. According to Seitz-Ward, cattle experts believe that food products from the offspring of clones already exist in the American food supply.