September 23, 2009 Episode

Three Biotech Researchers (two geneticists and one agronomist) are today's featured guests. Topics: problems involved in engineering a virus to kill a specific race or sex of human beings; genetics involved in regrowing human limbs for amputees; how we've made corn fields increase their yield ten-fold since the 1940s; exactly why US Stimulus Package money is so slow at get into research; why the Malthusian theory, in which exponential population growth produces mass starvation, has lost its validity; why some of our crops have become clones without a natural genetic diversity; how some crops have become dependant on us for survival; and how the Monsanto corporation has grown to dominate American agriculture. Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the September 23, 2009 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 44 minutes] (This discussion panel was recorded in front of a live audience on July 11, 2009 at LiberyCon in Chattanooga Tennessee.) Dr. Diane Mucci, formerly with the National Institute of Health (NIH), is currently a full time professor of biotechnology, and has a Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics, Biochemistry, and Microbiology. Cathy Smith is an insect molecular geneticist with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). And Gary Shelton is an agronomist with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).