View Full Version : First Long Term Study of Effects of GMO Foods
Probably not a bulletproof study, and far more work is needed, but worrisome nonetheless is this research on the effects of genetically modified and Roundup-Ready foods on lab animals:
http://foodpoisoningbulletin.com/2012/first-long-term-study-on-gmo-effects-find-tumor-growth/
I really wish I could know what foods I'm eating with this stuff in it. If any.
decemberlov
9-20-12, 9:33am
Here is another link with pics included (may be disturbing to some people):http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/alert-gmo-corn-and-roundup-caused-cancer-and-killed-rats
It's scary to think this stuff is in our tap water as well, I've never thought about that but it makes sense.
I've never been sure why there is resistance to the notion that if we modify the way anything naturally evolves the end result could be harmful. It only makes sense to me. Guess we'll just keep working on our own little version of permaculture paradise and showing it to as many people as we can...
There is well-funded and carefully orchestrated "resistance," to be sure.
I'm scared by this study but at least I have the power to change my dietary habits to try to steer clear of most of it. I'm grateful to have that ability, but can't help thinking of all of the people who barely get by with their grocery bill eating conventional foods. I know that ours is significantly higher than it could be, because we try hard to avoid a lot of the dangerous stuff. If I had to get by on a poverty line income, that wouldn't be possible. I'm not much of an activist or treehugger, really, but to put out a product that has research pointing to clear dangers, and to spend millions to hide that truth, is kind of a lot like mass murder. Tax-subsidized mass murder.
catherine
9-20-12, 10:56am
I've never been sure why there is resistance to the notion that if we modify the way anything naturally evolves the end result could be harmful. It only makes sense to me. Guess we'll just keep working on our own little version of permaculture paradise and showing it to as many people as we can...
+1
ApatheticNoMore
9-20-12, 11:33am
Heard of this study (more interesting for showing how the world works perhaps than as a study really):
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_4167.cfm
Organics are GMO free, buy organics. I also do hope for state GMO labeling to catch on :) (crossing fingers that passes) Not all foods are GMO yet, so buying organics only of things that are not GMO yet would also work, but new GMOs are always being introduced :(. Yea I don't think I could do it on a poverty level income either.
I've never been sure why there is resistance to the notion that if we modify the way anything naturally evolves the end result could be harmful. It only makes sense to me. Guess we'll just keep working on our own little version of permaculture paradise and showing it to as many people as we can...
A permaculture paradise is beyond my budget so I'll just keep buying organic, but I do hope more people are inspired toward better food in every possible way.
I think GMOs at the least introduce whole new variables into the equation that throw years of nutritional research out the window (on food safety), not to mention just throw many more years of ordinary human experience with foods out the window. How do people know a food is safe, well basically it's all that stuff. Out the window.
A permaculture paradise is beyond my budget so I'll just keep buying organic, but I do hope more people are inspired toward better food in every possible way.
Not sure what your living arrangement is ANM, it could be tough if you are renting and obviously not practical if you are in a home without a private yard (apartment, townhouse, etc.). If you do happen to have a yard of your own a little planning, shovel & rake work and a few packets of sees can go a whole long way toward a more organic personal environment.
Tussiemussies
9-20-12, 3:55pm
There is quite a lot of information about this on Facebook, go to the page "Occupy Monsanto" like it and you will get updates everyday day about the status of what is happening with GMOs.
I've never been sure why there is resistance to the notion that if we modify the way anything naturally evolves the end result could be harmful.
I don't think that is a valid distinction. Naturally evolved things can be harmful or not. Engineered could be harmful or not. The question is simply whether something is harmful. Besides, most of what we eat is engineered. Which as a farm boy I'm sure you know ;-)
http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1082
The problem with the unnatural/natural contrast is not that it’s a mischaracterization of GMOs – they are unnatural in the strict sense of not occurring in Nature – rather that it is a frighteningly naive view of traditional agriculture.
Far from being natural, the transformation of wild plants and animals into the foods we eat today is – by far – the single most dramatic experiment in genetic engineering the human species has undertaken. Few of the species we eat today look anything like their wild counterparts, the result of thousands of years of largely willful selective breeding to optimize these organisms for agriculture and human consumption. And, in the past few years, as we have begun to characterize the genetic makeup of crops and farm animals, we are getting a clear picture of the extent to which traditional agricultural practices have transformed their DNA.
I don't think that is a valid distinction. Naturally evolved things can be harmful or not. Engineered could be harmful or not.
Furthermore, man is part of nature - our engineering efforts are just as much a natural part of the evolution of other species as any other force.
We are not even the first species on the planet to swap DNA around between different species:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformation_(genetics)
Valid arguments.
The facts at hand now seem to show -- this study in addition to others that didn't have the benefit of being long-term -- that these particular engineered substances have a very good chance of being harmful.
So what happens now?
these particular engineered substances have a very good chance of being harmful.
I wouldn't put too much stock in this one study. As you I'm sure know there are literally hundreds of studies that show they are safe, and these guys have been busted before for bad studies.
Helscher also pointed out that Seralini and his colleagues have made similarly faulty conclusions in the past, notably in 2007 when they analyzed a previously published 90-day animal study about Monsanto maize. The European Food Safety Authority, which reviewed the paper (http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/press/news/gmo070628.htm) at the request of the European Union, found no merit in Seralini’s report, concluding:
“EFSA considers that the paper does not present a sound scientific justification in order to question the safety of [Monsanto] maize.”
....
“[I]I can’t figure it out yet,” said Marion Nestle, the Paulette Goddard professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health at New York University. “It’s weirdly complicated and unclear on key issues: what the controls were fed, relative rates of tumors, why no dose relationship, what the mechanism might be. I can’t think of a biological reason why GMO corn should do this.”
“So even though I strongly support labeling,” Nestle told All We Can Eat, “I’m skeptical of this study.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/all-we-can-eat/post/french-scientists-question-safety-of-gm-corn/2012/09/19/d2ed52e4-027c-11e2-8102-ebee9c66e190_blog.html
But more than just being skeptical I would encourage people to understand the issue. This is a good write up by a organic advocating UC Berkeley biologist and I'll quote it again:
http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1082
The second major class of GMOs (mostly soy) have been engineered to be tolerant of the herbicide glyphosate (Roundup). Glyphosate is a small molecule that inhibits an enzyme, 5-enolpyruvylshikimate-3-phosphate synthase (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPSP_synthase) (EPSPS), which catalyzes an essential step in the biosynthesis of the amino acids phenylalanine, tyrosine and tryptophan. By denying rapidly growing plants these amino acids, it is able to rapidly inhibit grown of plants onto which it has been sprayed. Glyphosate is generally considered to be inert in humans, who get these amino acids from their food, and do not have an EPSPS.
The obvious problem with using glyphosate to control weeds is that it will, under normal circumstances, also kill crop plants. However, plants that have been engineered to express an alternative form of EPSPS that functions normally even in the presence of glyphosate. These plants are thus “Roundup Ready (http://www.monsanto.com/weedmanagement/pages/roundup-ready-system.aspx)“, and will survive doses of glyphosate used to kill weeds in the field.
Although the EPSPS gene used in Roundup Ready plants comes from a bacterium, the necessary changes could now easily be made to the plant’s own copy of EPSPS. Thus Roundup Ready crops, which produce no new proteins not found prior to genetic manipulation, shouldn’t really be placed in the same class of GMOs as Bt expressing plants, which are expressing a new protein. And there is absolutely no reason to expect that there are any health risks associated with eating the altered form of EPSPS found in glyphosate resistant transgenic plants.
So if so legit scientists can reproduce their results in a good study and posit why there is a correlation I'll think about it again.
For now, I'll stick with what appears to be the better science.
Fair enough. Given that there is a body of research on either side of this issue, I'll stick with what appears to be the choice that isn't as likely to kill me and my family members.
Fair enough. Given that there is a body of research on either side of this issue, I'll stick with what appears to be the choice that isn't as likely to kill me and my family members.
If only it were that simple, something like 90% of crops grown in the US are GE. And there are some upsides that should be taken into account, even for the types of GE crops that do produce new proteins (which as noted previously the Roundup ready crops don't so the cost/benefit is even greater).
As far as I know, natural pesticides have been found in every plant in which they have been sought, including all conventionally grown crops. Wheat makes a family of proteins lethal to hessian flies (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22609418), peas contain the insecticidal protein PA1b (http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/bi034803l), tomatoes tomatine, and so on. And even if the corn in that picture was not genetically modified, that cute little girl is about to get a mouthful of the insecticide maysin (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17486311). Indeed almost any mouthful of unprocessed plants from any source will likely contain some kind of natural pesticide that is inert in humans. There is nothing at all unusual, or particularly worrisome, about eating plants that contain the Bt Cry protein as we’ve been eating insecticides for eons.
I’m sure some people will say that we may have been eating insecticides all along, but we haven’t been eating Bt Cry protein and, under the “you never know” principle, should just avoid it. This would all be fine and good if there weren’t strong evidence supporting the value of Bt corn and soy in reducing pesticide use on farms and limiting collateral damage to insects that are in the vicinity of, but not eating, the relevant crop. As a panel of the US National Academies of Science reported in a 2010 study of GMOs (http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12804):
The evidence shows that the planting of GE crops has largely resulted in less adverse or equivalent effects on the farm environment compared with the conventional non-GE systems that GE crops replaced. A key improvement has been the change to pesticide regimens that apply less pesticide or that use pesticides with lower toxicity to the environment but that have more consistent efficacy than conventional pesticide regimens used on non-GE versions of the crops.
http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1082
Then gosh Yossarian, it's a good thing that study is pure bunk, then. Whew!
Don't you just hate it when things aren't all black-and-white.
I long for the days of old, when you could just buy a Prius and call it a day :-)
The beauty of the scientific method- let's see if the results can be duplicated.
But even the HuffPo isn't rolling over on this one:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/19/monsanto-genetically-modified-corn-study_n_1897361.html?utm_hp_ref=green
Tom Sanders, head of the nutritional sciences research division at King's College London, noted that Seralini's team had not provided any data on how much the rats were given to eat, or what their growth rates were.
"This strain of rat is very prone to mammary tumours particularly when food intake is not restricted," he said. "The statistical methods are unconventional ... and it would appear the authors have gone on a statistical fishing trip."
Mark Tester, a research professor at the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics at the University of Adelaide, said the study's findings raised the question of why no previous studies have flagged up similar concerns.
"If the effects are as big as purported, and if the work really is relevant to humans, why aren't the North Americans dropping like flies? GM has been in the food chain for over a decade over there - and longevity continues to increase inexorably," he said in an emailed comment.
David Spiegelhalter of the University of Cambridge said the methods, statistics and reporting of results were all below standard. He added that the study's untreated control arm comprised only 10 rats of each sex, most of which also got tumours.
It is simple, actually. Practice the precautionary principle, and eat organic food. If you cannot find organics, limit your diet to those foods not GM'd. It may not be easy, but it is simple.
It is simple, actually. Practice the precautionary principle, and eat organic food. If you cannot find organics, limit your diet to those foods not GM'd. It may not be easy, but it is simple.
I think there's an even simpler approach, if your circumstances allow: buy food only from people you can look in the eye, who will let you look over their operations, and who offer a firm handshake on the way out. Limiting yourself to "organic" shuts out a lot of sustainable, ethical producers.
It's "simple" if one can afford it. My circumstances allow, and for that I feel rather blessed. But the majority of the other seven billion citizens of this earth are not so fortunate. To go COMPLETELY organic/sustainable (I agree bae) and local would double the average grocery bill. Local meat here is three to five times as expensive as conventional meat. Vegetables at the farmer's market are twice the price of chain store veggies, or more. And then there are staples like flour, oil, coffee, tea, sugar.
This is a country in which genetically modified foods aren't even required to be labeled as such. Even if people could afford to purchase the alternatives.
It seems ridiculous that the obvious solution for them and for me --- to require long-term, independent studies of the effects of these foods before they are allowed into the food chain --- isn't even remotely possible, given our current climate (where an ex Monsanto VP exerts tremendous control over the FDA). If they prove safe, then all is well, and there will be great rejoicing across the Land. If they don't, they are not allowed to be sold, and even my widowed neighbor with the two sons won't be forced to eat these risks because her total food budget is $300.00.
There is research that "proves" these foods are fine. There is research that "proves" they are not. Assuming that it is very difficult, if not impossible, for the average citizen of the world to apply the precautionary principle in their own lives, I think it's madness to allow one firm to use the entire world as its guinea pig. Again.
May the invisible hand of the market squash Monsanto like a bug, so it may be replaced one day by an ethical company with peoples' interests at heart.
Namaste.
ApatheticNoMore
9-20-12, 11:46pm
Yea you'll have science alright, all the science that's fit to leak out. My link was about deliberate supression of a scientific study, that was supressed for 8 years. I'm not even going to bat for that particular study as it was a small study, I'm just saying look what happened in response.
"However, Greenpeace and other consumer groups mounted a protracted and immensely frustrating campaign to obtain a sight of the feeding study Report. In May 2004 the Nikulinski District Court in Russia ruled that information relating to the safety of GM food should be open to the public. On the basis of this ruling Greenpeace tried to obtain the GM potato report; but the Institute and Monsanto refused to release it. So Greenpeace and local activist groups again took the Institute to court, and in October 2005 won a ruling that the Report must be released"
See also the Pusztai affair:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pusztai_affair
And that's outright attempts to surpress scientific work. Then there is the question of who funds the science. Monsanto is all up in the UC system and in many other colleges, take a look:
http://biosci.ucdavis.edu/students/graduate/monsanto_fellowship.html
http://www.naturalnews.com/037231_GMO_labeling_junk_science_financial_ties.ht ml
http://grist.org/article/monsanto-u/
But the science might be good anyway? Well when outright supression isnt' going on there is also the choice of what you choose to look at and what you don't. There's pleny of scientific statistical analysis showing that science supported by for profit companies tends to support the angle they want and science not supported by them doesn't.
You know if we lived in a world, where anti-GMO folks could fund the same amount of science as Monsanto can ... Or if we lived in a world where GMO was entirely not for profit (and the profit wasn't baked in the cake by allowing patents on lifeforms - I mean how screwed up can you get!) and was only done out of great concern for feeding the world or something and was after development entirely OPEN SOURCE and unpatented. Well, I'd still be suspicious of it. :) But it would be a very different world. And one where it might be reasonable to be less cautious about GMO.
ApatheticNoMore
9-21-12, 12:37am
It's "simple" if one can afford it. My circumstances allow, and for that I feel rather blessed. But the majority of the other seven billion citizens of this earth are not so fortunate.
Money doesn't really buy that. Money buys organic food for now but it's really just buying time, as GMOs seem to have major problems with contaminating non-GMO crops. So allowing GMO food (at least that which contaminates other crops) kind of ruins the ability of people to even have the CHOICE of non-GMO foods! GMO is GMO all the way. Money might buy you a gated community with private security guards while the peasants riot outside, but money doesn't buy immunity from being a human being traveling through the cosmos on a life filled planet called earth. And that's why being rich (unless you can use it to influence legistlation) doesn't buy immunity from something like the destruction that could come if GMO salmon are released. These could breed with wild salmon, a wild species (which makes it more horrifying than say cows or chickens). And if that happens even the fish a rich person catches will be GMO contaminated, and who even knows the effect on ecosystems etc.. There is no where to run from that type of destruction. There is no money buys immunity from it. Pretty soon your raising crops in 100% sterile contamination free environments just to try to run from it.
"If the effects are as big as purported, and if the work really is relevant to humans, why aren't the North Americans dropping like flies? GM has been in the food chain for over a decade over there - and longevity continues to increase inexorably," he said in an emailed comment.
.
That's what they said about tobacco.
That's what they said about thalidomide
That's what they said about many, many pharmaceutical drugs that are now off the market
That's what they said about asbestos
That's what they said about Agent Orange
You certainly need more than one decade of proof to convince me.
That's what they said about tobacco.
That's what they said about thalidomide
That's what they said about many, many pharmaceutical drugs that are now off the market
That's what they said about asbestos
That's what they said about Agent Orange
You certainly need more than one decade of proof to convince me.
Fair enough, everyone makes their own choices. But there is a difference between choosing for yourself and imposing your choices on others.
PS- I am awed by the irony of your list since the main benefit of biotech crops is the reduced use of pesticides that we know are dangerous to people and the environment.
PS- I am awed by the irony of your list since the main benefit of biotech crops is the reduced use of pesticides that we know are dangerous to people and the environment.
From what I understand, this is very debatable. There is evidence that shows that actually GM plants have increased use of herbicide use, despite what Monsanto will tell you
Science is a tool. It's one of the best we have. but it's as subject to misuse and perversion as any other. People who revere it as a kind of secular deity seem to ignore that. Which is pretty much a non-sequitur as far as this discussion is concerned, but worth noting anyway.
Yossarian
9-21-12, 10:30am
From what I understand, this is very debatable. There is evidence that shows that actually GM plants have increased use of herbicide use, despite what Monsanto will tell you
I'm sure there are maybe some exceptions somewhere, but as a general principle I think the international long term research supports what I said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jun/13/gm-crops-environment-study
"Insecticide use usually kills the natural enemies of pests and weakens the biocontrol services that they provide," said Professor Kongming Wu at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Beijing, who led the research team. "Transgenic crops reduce insecticide use and promote the population increase of natural enemies. Therefore, we think that this is a general principle."
Professor Guy Poppy, an ecologist at the University of Southampton (http://www.southampton.ac.uk/biosci/about/staff/gmp.page#research), said the scale of the work gave "robust" results that ended a long-running debate pitting plant scientists against ecologists. "The argument was that, with Bt crops needing no pesticide spraying, other pests would go crazy so you would subsequently have to spray lots more pesticide," he said. But the study shows this did not happen for aphids, a major pest. "This is also the first time it has been shown comprehensively that the surrounding fields benefited from being next to GM crops."
ApatheticNoMore
9-21-12, 10:31am
Fair enough, everyone makes their own choices. But there is a difference between choosing for yourself and imposing your choices on others.
If GMO foods interbreed with non-GMO crops (and they have), interbred with weeds and wild species, then the release of that type of GMO IMPOSES a CERTAIN CHOICE on everyone just as much as any ban on all GMO would.
decemberlov
9-21-12, 10:34am
If GMO foods interbreed with non-GMO crops (and they have), interbred with weeds and wild species, then the release of that type of GMO IMPOSES a CERTAIN CHOICE on everyone just as much as any ban on all GMO would.
I would love a ban on all GMO, but that's just me.
However, most people at this point would be extremely happy with just proper and truthful labeling, i think.
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