Giving Tuesday is almost here and it’s time to make 'em pay! GMWatch is under attack again – please support our work You have to hand it to the biotech brigade. They’re always looking for new weapons with which to silence dissent and rebrand their activities as untouchable. That’s why when Golden Rice was their PR weapon of choice, we were branded “baby killers” and “murdering bastards” for raising questions about its effectiveness! And it’s why when Russophobia was riding high, an industry goon denounced us as Putin’s puppets – “part of Russian propaganda active measures”. Naturally, now that the internet giants are busy suppressing “conspiracy theories” about COVID-19, GMWatch is being listed among “anti-science groups” promoting “conspiracy theories about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic”. We’re even being trolled as “virus-truthers” who “claim bioweapons” (not so*)! So please make our attackers pay for their bad faith accusations by supporting our work which, as well as countering the propaganda of the biotech industry, involves flagging up concerns about biosafety, exposing the misleading claims made by lab leak denialists, and reporting the views of experts who think the genetic engineering of pandemic pathogens to make them more lethal is not such a smart idea! Help us fight back against the smears and propaganda. We depend on contributions from people like you who recognize that our work is grounded in science and truth and shouldn’t be suppressed. So please show our detractors just how much their attacks are worth – to us! – by supporting GMWatch’s research and reporting. Wishing you all the best in troubled times Claire Robinson and Jonathan Matthews GMWatch editors * We have never suggested the virus was deliberately released as a bioweapon but have said from the start that the possibility it emerged from a research laboratory should not be ruled out without a thorough investigation. That position was regarded by some as radical when we first proposed it but eight months later it’s becoming increasingly mainstream, with the highly respected Stanford University microbiologist David A. Relman recently arguing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that SARS-CoV-2 could have been accidentally released while being studied or deliberately engineered in a lab and that there is a need for a transparent investigation that fully addresses conflicts of interest. |