The "Who Twists the Helix" international conference taking place at the University of Cambridge this week is one of many meetings around the world marking the 50th Anniversary of the discovery of DNA. The conference bills itself as "a trans-disciplinary exploration of the powers that could decide our genetic futures" that includes a "Genetic Futures Jury," a panel of non-specialist citizens who will vote on the key issues discussed at the conference.

Ruth Ozeki's second novel, All Over Creation, is praised today in separate reviews in both the San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Times. Her first novel, My Year of Meats, skewered the beef industry's PR efforts to promote its product in Japan and examined the health hazards of growth hormones. This time Ozeki again looks at food and PR, specifically the the genetic engineering of potatoes.

As PR Watch reported last year, the Bush administration has always intended to attack Iraq no matter what the results of UN inspections. The US's expensive post-911 propaganda and PR campaign to win foreign friends and change minds about US policy has predictably failed given Bush's bullying insistence on going to war. The Washington Post notes that "Six months after President Bush first appeared before the United Nations
and urged a confrontation with Iraq, the United States appears to have lost