Search results for: One Health

On June 30, 1906 President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Pure Food and Drugs Act 1906, known as the Wiley Act, "a pillar of the Progressive era."  This Act "brought about a radical shift in the way Americans regarded ...the foods we eat and the drugs we take to restore our health", and was the "cornerstone" for todays Food and Drug Administration (FDA) [1, 2] The Division of Chemistry began investigating the adulteration of agricultural commodities as early as 1867. When Harvey Washington Wiley arrived as chief chemist in 1883... [4]  After July 1901 the Division became the Bureau of Chemistry, which was the agency that Congress tasked to carry out the 1906 Pure Food and Drugs Act, the milestone that marks the beginning of the modern FDA. [5] The act came about because at the time in "the early 20th century, Americans were inundated with ineffective and dangerous drugs, and adulterated and deceptively packaged foods." The act "marked a monumental shift in the use of government powers to enhance consumer protection by requiring that foods and drugs bear truthful labeling statements and meet certain standards for purity and strength."  Though the "law offered no way to remove inherently dangerous drugs..> READ MORE

In November 1973 US scientists Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer et al published their findings on how they created the first GMO. [1]  Their technique formed the basis of recombinant DNA (rDNA) technology. [2, 3] Boyer's EcoRI restriction endonuclease "scissor" enzyme "would allow Cohen to introduce specific DNA segments to plasmids, and use those plasmids as a vehicle for cloning precise, previously targeted strands of DNA. [7]  They were able to cut open a plasmid loop from one species of bacteria, insert a gene from another, and close the plasmid loop.  Then insert that plasmid into bacteria and demonstrated that the recombined DNA could be used by the bacterial. They created the first genetically modified organism (GMO) and so the biotechnology industry was born. The research was considered risky and a moratorium was widely observed until the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) developed and issued formal guidelines for rDNA work. [4] On December 2, 1980, six years after their 1974 application their patent #4237224 was granted for the "Process for producing biologically functional molecular chimeras". [5] In October 1982 Eli Lilly received FDA apporval for the first GM drug product - 'human' insulin.  The same technique that allowed mRNA..> READ MORE