A New Low In Corporate Capture Of Conservation & Media
Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology Marketed As Conservation
Let me begin with a few principles and perspectives.
First, the Pharmaceutical industry’s pursuit of profits has driven them to slaughter horseshoe crab populations upon which survival of the endangered red knot depends.
Second, any industry that slaughters wildlife and jeopardizes the extinction of a species for corporate profits should be condemned.
Third, genetic engineering and biotechnology are highly problematic, very likely ethically and morally repugnant, and corporate profit driven programs.
Fourth, any conservation group or journalist or media outlet that fails to acknowledge and report these facts and perspectives and instead praises Big Pharma, are captured by corporate money, and they too should be condemned.
So, with those perspectives and principles in mind, consider NJ Spotlight (and Inside Climate News) reporter Jon Hurdle’s most recent story today. Horseshoe crab and red knot are seemingly an obsession of his.
The story praises Big Pharma for “progress” on developing a synthetic alternative to the slaughter of horseshoe crabs, see:
The group spouting this corporate praise, “Revive and Restore” are described as “naturalists”.
They’re out of Sausalito, California, have a slick website, and are obviously well endowed financially. I’m certain that the money comes from biotechnology and Big Pharma and probably genetic engineering venture capital.
Look at who they list in the press release as a contact:
Subject Matter Experts
Jay Bolden | jbolden@lilly.com
Senior Director, Analytical Services and Quality Control Organization, Eli Lilly & Company
Scanning their genetic engineering “rescue” work, they’re probably the group behind a BBC story I heard recently that made me absolutely sick. It was about using genetic engineering to bring back extinct species. It’s already been done on dire wolf.
Fucking Frankenstein propaganda.
So this well funded corporate “conservation” group has a global public relations reach, and Jon Hurdle and NJ Spotlight are their useful idiots.
After learning who they are, I hit the link and checked out their “embargoed press release” (“embargoed”, meaning that Jon Hurdle got an advance heads up and was used by the group to promote their project).
As I feared, this is about far more than the horseshoe crab.
The opening sentence highlights the stakes:
SAUSALITO, CA | In a landmark collaboration bridging biotechnology and conservation, the Sustainability Scorecard for Endotoxin Testing will help accelerate the transition to scalable and resilient supply chains that protect both patients and marine life.
Did you catch that?
This is about “a landmark collaboration bridging biotechnology and conservation”. And it is greenwashed as “Sustainability”.
Yes, that certainly is a landmark.
Jon Hurdle and NJ Spotlight should be ashamed for being used this way.
If they were duped and unaware of who this group was and what their corporate biotechnology and genetic engineering agenda was, they should take this story down and publish an accurate story.