Genetic Literacy Project Mission Statement
What benefits do advances in genetics offer? What are the potential pitfalls? Research into genetics and related sciences is widely embraced. But in practice, words like “gene” and “genetic engineering” and “biotechnology” “GMO” and “synthetic biology” often stir concern and misunderstanding when applied to biomedicine, evolution, ancestral and race research, and food and farming. That often leads to confusion among the public and policy makers.
Agricultural and human genetics are reshaping farming, food and medicine, and our understanding of human history. Biotechnology research can improve food security, the environment and public health. Yet dramatic innovation can also lead to unintended health and environmental consequences and present ethical challenges.
The Genetic Literacy Project (GLP) explores the intersection of DNA research and real world applications of genetics with the media and policy worlds in order to disentangle science from ideology. The commitment of the GLP is to promote public awareness and constructive discussion of genetics, biotechnology, evolution and science literacy.
GLP Financial Transparency and Governance Statement
The GLP is part of the Science Literacy Project (SLP), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit funded by grants from independent foundations and charities. The GLP accepts tax-deductible donations from individuals, but not from corporations. To the GLP’s knowledge, none of the foundations which has donated money to the GLP has financial ties to companies linked to human or agricultural genetics.
The SLP also includes the Genetic Expert News Service (GENeS), which is run with no editorial oversight from the GLP, and the soon-to-be-launched Epigenetics Literacy Project, which draws on approximately 40% of SLP’s overall budget. GLP has no formal affiliation with and receives no funding from any other institution, including the University of California-Davis (where executive director Jon Entine is a senior fellow (unpaid) at the Institute for Food and Agricultural Literacy).
The GENeS project has an office at the University of California’s Washington, DC campus but receives no financial support from the university, including for the office itself.
The GLP has no affiliation with George Mason University (and never had an affiliation with GMU). Entine was a research fellow (unpaid) at the university’s Center for Health & Risk Communication from 2011-2014. From 2011-2014, GLP operated as an independent entity housed within the Statistical Assessment Service (STATS), which provided accounting services to GLP. (STATS, which has dissolved, operated independently of GMU but its founder was a professor at the university). The GLP secured independent 501(c)(3) status in 2015.
GLP has an editorial advisory board, which helped guide the conception and launch of the project, and is finalizing its permanent board.
2015-2016 Fiscal Year Donations to the Genetic Literacy Project
- John Templeton Foundation, Gene-ius Project (for GLP): $92,225
- John Templeton Foundation, Epigenetics Literacy Project, in development: $225,510
- Searle Freedom Trust, GLP: $150,000
- Winkler Family Foundation, GENeS Project, $100,000
- Academics Review Charitable Association, (pass through support for University of California-Davis Biotech Literacy Bootcamp): $27,500
- Individual donations: $7,078
To Contact Us:
Genetic Literacy Project
University of California Washington Center, Room 213e
1608 Rhode Island Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20036
info@geneticliteracyproject.org
(410) 941-9374