University of Chicago

A poster promotes the Nov. 1 meeting of RACK, the BDSM club at the University of Chicago. Click the image for the full-size version.

It's a club where you might, in fact, use a club: Harvard University has joined the small but growing roster of U.S. colleges that have approved official student organizations devoted to kinky sex.

Harvard administrators were to formally approve the group, Harvard College Munch, on Friday, The Harvard Crimson reported. The recognition means the group, which has grown to 30 members since its informal founding earlier this year, can officially meet on campus to discuss issues related to the bondage-discipline, dominant-submission, and sadism-masochism communities, known collectively as BDSM.

More important, its founder told the newspaper, speaking under the pseudonym "Michael," is that the move bestows "the fact of legitimacy."

While Harvard's club drew widespread attention this week, it's far from the only BDSM club officially recognized by, or at least tolerated at, U.S. colleges.

At the University of Minnesota, Kinky U is Student Organization No. 2370. It meets weekly — after office hours "for maximum safety and confidentiality" — to discuss "topics related to kink and the kinky community."

At Tufts University in Medford, Mass., Tufts Kink started meeting this semester.

"I think there’s a number of students who feel sort of isolated and alienated, and I think it's very powerful for them to have just a place where they can express themselves and a place where they can make friends," co-founder Anschel Schaffer-Cohen told The Tufts Daily.

There's no national registry of campus BDSM groups, but consensus is that the oldest is at Columbia University, in New York, where Conversio Virium meets on campus every Monday night at 9.

"Conversio virium" is Latin for "conversion of forces," and the group says it dedicates itself to 'the full exploration of BDSM, both in its sexual and spiritual aspects."

"We encourage acceptance and communication between members," its charter says. "We urge them to learn from each other's play styles and experiences and to set aside any assumptions they may have about who people are and what they do." 

Actual sex isn't allowed at such on-campus gatherings, which usually host discussions or the occasional live demonstration of safe and consensual kinky sex.

The point is to "raise general awareness of kink and to promote acceptance and understanding of BDSM," according to the bylaws of Risk-Aware Consensual Kink, or RACK, at the University of Chicago.

RACK is an intellectual group, it says, not a play group. It provides "resources to students who are interested in or curious about BDSM" and demonstrations that "give students an opportunity to learn from experienced members of the BDSM community about safely practicing kink."

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BEIJING -- China's health authorities will investigate allegations that genetically modified rice was tested on Chinese children as part of a Sino-U.S. research project, state media said Tuesday.

One Chinese researcher has been suspended by authorities while investigations are carried out.

China is already the world's largest grower of genetically modified (GMO) cotton and the top importer of GMO soybeans but, while Beijing has already approved home-grown strains of GMO rice, it remains cautious about introducing the technology on a commercial basis amid widespread public concern about food safety.

The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention investigation came after a report last month by environmental group Greenpeace claimed that a U.S. Department of Agriculture-backed study used 24 Chinese children aged between six and eight to test genetically modified "golden rice."

Golden rice, a new type of rice that contains beta carotene, is intended to alleviate vitamin A deficiency.

The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention said no domestic institutions had been approved to participate in the research and that it had also asked Tufts University outside Boston to help investigate the issue.

The International Rice Research Institute is working with leading nutrition and agricultural research organizations to develop and evaluate golden rice as a potential method to reduce vitamin A deficiency in the Philippines and Bangladesh.

The research by Tufts University and other Chinese scientists was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in August. It aimed to demonstrate that the rice could provide a good source of vitamin A for children in countries where deficiency in the vitamin is common.

Complete China coverage on NBCNews.com's Behind The Wall

Tufts reviews protocols
Andrea Grossman, assistant director of public relations at Tufts University, told state news agency Xinhua in a recent interview the university was deeply concerned about the allegations and is reviewing protocols used in the 2008 research "to ensure the strictest standards were adhered to."

"We have always placed the highest importance on human health, and we take all necessary steps to ensure the safety of human research subjects," Grossman said.

More coverage about food safety on NBCNews.com

"We have always been and remain committed to the highest ethical standards in research," she said.

The Greenpeace report sparked a wave of criticism on Weibo, China's version of Twitter, with the researchers accused of a breach of ethics for testing poor, rural children whose families may not have been informed properly.

Complete World coverage on NBCNews.com

Scientist suspended
One of the Chinese authors, Shi-an Yin, has been suspended from work pending further investigation after his responses proved to be inconsistent, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention said.

Yin was cited by the official People's Daily newspaper as saying he helped collect data for the study but was unaware that it involved GM rice.

The second of the two Chinese researchers, Hu Yuming, denied his involvement in the research, the People's Daily said.

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China, the world's top rice producer and consumer, approved the safety of one locally developed strain of genetically modified rice, known as the Bt rice, in 2009, but commercial production has been delayed.

Apart from genetically modified products, China's vast and unruly food sector is still struggling to come to grips with food safety four years after a major scandal where tainted milk powder was blamed for the deaths of at least six children.

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