Three Approved GMOs Linked to Organ Damage

[ensho]

http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/2010/01/01/three-approved-gmos-linked-to-organ-damage/




In what is being described as the first ever and most comprehensive study of the effects on mammalian health of three major genetically modified corn varieties, researchers have linked organ damage with consumption of Mon 810, Mon 863 and NK 603 varieties of Monsanto’s GM maize.

-snip-

The data “clearly underlines adverse impacts on kidneys and liver, the dietary detoxifying organs, as well as different levels of damages to heart, adrenal glands, spleen and haematopoietic system,” reported Gilles-Eric Séralini, a molecular biologist at the University of Caen.

-snip-

They have called for “an immediate ban on the import and cultivation of these GMOs and strongly recommend additional long-term (up to two years) and multi-generational animal feeding studies on at least three species to provide true scientifically valid data on the acute and chronic toxic effects of GM crops, feed and foods.”

Human health, of course, is of primary import to us, but ecological effects are also in play. Ninety-nine percent of GMO crops produce insecticide. This may be the reason we see bee colony collapse disorder and massive butterfly deaths. If GMOs are wiping out Earth’s pollinators, they are far more disastrous than the threat they pose to humans and other mammals.
----------------------


very BAD news

they better get that health bill passed

[CoffeeCat]

1. So, is it possible that this corn...

...is used to make High Fructose Corn Syrup?

Monsanto...those bastards.

It's straight out of that movie George Clooney movie, "Michael Clayton".

[ensho]

2. yep

nt

[CoffeeCat]

3. I wish the article would have been more specific...

...about what foods this GM corn is in?

I suppose it's in everything, but it would have been nice to know specifics.

[TheWraith]

4. Um, did you actually watch that movie?

That's not at all what it was about.

I'll be interested to see what happens when this research gets vetted by other scientific bodies. Somebody's blog is not what I'd call a reliable source.

[The Backlash Cometh]

7. I KNOW my health issues have been heightened because of high

fructose corn syrup.

Imagine all these years that hypoglycemics have been told to drink sugar drinks to balance their sugar. Well, what happens when you drink high fructose sugar? Your body gets an unnatural sugar spike which feels similar to a diabetic reaction for a hypoglycemic. No fucking wonder that most hypoglycemics become diabetic if they keep relying on the wrong sugar.

There are better ways to handle hypoglycemia. Can't wait for the doctors to figure it out so they can give us reliable information.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

10. Doesn't matter.

Even if the corn did cause liver damage, and there's good reason to believe it doesn't, the sugar refined from this corn is just like sugar refined from anywhere else.

[SoCalDem]

5. These are little timebombs.. This stuff does not kill you a few hours after you eat it

It piles up ..over time..until the maximum overload is reached..maybe decades later..and by then there is no arrow pointing to the one thing that cause it..

It;s the perfect mechanism for agro-business.. they make huge sums of money (or they would not be doing this) and even though they may be poisoning millions of animals & people, it's no biggie for them.. they'll all probably be gone by the time people figure it out..or they may NEVER figure it out,,:grr:

Old-timey agriculture was not this way.. their families ate the same products they grew, so they were careful with what they produced.

Somehow, I don't see the families of the upper-crusty agrobusiness execs consuming much of the cheap, adulterated, packaged crap they push on the masses..

[SpiralHawk]

8. Spot on. The mutant GMO crapola builds up over time

Nobody eats the occcult (unlabeled) GMO food-product facsimile and falls over sick right away. But as the years roll on by, we are going to have more and more people deeply sick from this unlabeled corporate crap.

The wisest thing anyone can do for their health is to avoid mutant crap 'food'.

[Kalyke]

9. If you've ever seen the Food Network, you'd know this statement:

Somehow, I don't see the families of the upper-crusty agrobusiness execs consuming much of the cheap, adulterated, packaged crap they push on the masses.. is absolutely true.

On the FN, they consistantly show people eating raw or rare meat. I would NEVER eat a meat bought from any grocery store that was not at least medium to medium well.

You can eat fresh, organic meat at raw or near-raw levels, but I don't trust the meat at the supermarket to be that healthy.

Of course, I don't eat an awful lot of meat, either.

[mike_c]

6. could you please explain which data you find disturbing (and why)...?

I've looked at the data the authors present in IJBS (link: http://www.biolsci.org/v05p0706.htm#headingA11 ) and it does not appear very convincing. The authors themselves note that it lacks statistical power. Their use of PCA is particularly problematical because unconstrained ordination is descriptive, not a valid hypothesis test. At the very least, one should follow up with something like MRPP. Further, they also admit that male/female differences in kidney and liver function might exceed the dose responses that appear in the data, which, as noted earlier, have high variation and low power. I've only read lightly through the paper once though, so I'm interested in why you think differently about it.

It seems to me that the only real take home message from this study is that testing standards need to be expanded to include AT LEAST greater numbers of trials.

I want to add that I'm especially disturbed by the implication that Bt incorporation into MON810 and MON863 causes mammalian toxicity-- in light of MANY prior studies that find little or no mammalian response to Bt toxin at insecticidal dosages, it seems irresponsible to conclude the opposite on the basis of what the authors freely admit are insufficient data. In other words, it sounds like BIASED research.

[truedelphi]

12. What is very irresponsible is that this pollen takes over

And there is no going back. Yet those of us who are concerned are told to wait and see - wait for the proofs. (I remember how long it took for the full proof on cigarette smoking. It was not until 1999 that we had the full blown genetic DNA related tests to confirm that cigarette smoking was respoinsible for lung cancer. Thank goodness though, that we had a Surgeon General who started attempting to get out the word way back in the mid sixties.))

The researchers come up with what they are noting and in a fair and just world, the big firms like Monsanto would be forced to spend a great deal more time and money on testing. But basically the FDA in this nation (Note this report is from France!) gave the GMO firms a major go ahead by automatically ascertaining that the GMO foods always resulted in food that was similar to other food, even though that may not be the case. And that due to this "similarity" principle -- We the people have to prove the GMO stuff is not safe - rather than the Big Firms having to prove that it is.

What do we do when all our food is GMO? Since so little testing has been done up to now, and what is done is done under the auspices of the same universities that have received the monies from the GMO crowd, should these things be finally fully PROVEN that they are dangerous, it may be well too late to make many needed changes. You cannot regulate pollen - once it is out there - it is out there!

At the rate Monsanto is going, there will be no crop that is not tainted. Monsanto is going after everything, beets, cauliflower, all the grains, radishes, carrots, tomatoes. Already the rice in this nation is (long grain varieties anyway) about 66% GMO. Even the rice that is sold as organic isn't organic.

With so many people having the attitude that you have Mike, we are screwn. There will be no going back.

And then there are the economic concerns. So many of the smaller farmers have to worry about the GMO situation - many of them are all too familiar with what happened to Percy Schmeiser and others.

[mike_c]

14. I'm a scientist-- I don't have an "attitude" so much as I want to see the data...

...before arriving at conclusions. And of course I've done molecular biology so I don't fear the methods or the outcomes per se.

I'm NOT a fan of industrial agriculture, primarily for economic reasons, however. In terms of genetic engineering, what we're seeing now is just the tip of the iceberg, I think-- and I'm looking forward to dramatically expanding the molecular disciplines that are only now beginning to tap the potential for using living machines to produce food, cure diseases, and ultimately, I think, a huge variety of other tasks.

Living organisms are machines, just like non-organic constructs-- just complicated, and shaped by natural selection over time rather than by human artifice. But like any machines, living organisms act according to definite and knowable rules-- the more we learn and understand, the greater the extent we can use those rules to our, and hopefully the biosphere's, advantage.

The real problem, I think, is economic. It's human greed. Monsanto's biologists aren't that much different from my colleagues and I, but Monsanto's corporate ethos derives from greed, more than anything else. THAT is what makes Monsanto's products potentially dangerous, not genetic engineering. Genetic engineering is just a technique for achieving things that we used to do more slowly, through breeding programs, and for extending our capabilities further than breeding will take them. From a biologist's perspective there isn't much difference, frankly. Circumventing reproductive barriers simply lets us combine genes from different branches of the same tree of life, but there is no fundamental difference in those genes or their functions. In nature they're separated only by accidents of phylogeny-- and genetic engineering proves the veracity of that statement. Prokayotes exchange genes all the time, as well-- and they do it without molecular biology intervention. Genetic engineering simply extends that functionality to eukaryotes.

In that sense genetic engineering is no worse or more fearful than taking a train or flying across the country in hours rather than the weeks or months it would take to walk. It's no worse than using medical advances to extend human lifetimes to their current 70 plus years rather than accepting our historically "natural" lifespan of forty or so years.

[truedelphi]

15. I am sure that you know and understand a great deal more than I do about the "science" behind the

Altering of the food crops.

However I spent the time period from 1991 to 2005 investigating the "science" of pesticides.

And of course much of research involved Monsanto. (And I am glad to herar that you're aaware of the fact that the economic hardships that Monsanto creates are worthy of consideration.)

Fact: Monsanto lied through their teeth to get the EPA licensing of the number one over the shelf herbicide RoundUp - back in the late sixties or early seventies, they did not admit to the EPA that formaldehyde was part of the mix. Had they admitted that, since formaldehyde is not considered a product that should be used casually, it is very unlikely that RoundUp would be approved for the general public's use. (It would not have passed the California test of over the counter use products - a product with formaldehyde in it and deemed to be a herbicide and over the counter cannot have formaldehyde in it in my state.)

Sometime in the late or mid 1990's, formaldehyde was replaced by a different aldehyde - but without that augmentation, RoundUp's main ingredient "glyphosate" would be in cake form, and not able to be aerially dispersed. (This information came from DR Bob Simon, who has been a top forensic witness regarding pesticides, and has been of great use by families in the court room when they need expert testimony as to why their kids got sick.)

I have heard so many lies regarding the Pesticide Industries' products and what not from people who were top investigators and researchers out in the field. Look at Marc Lappe -- he was considered a top researcher until he refused to alter his data for SRI on malathion or RoundUp (I forget which product that they needed his lies regarding.) So Lappe was forced to open his own diagnostic laboratory, as the industry black balled him.

I don't have another fifteen years to waste investigating Monsanto on this new stuff, the GMO food crops. I have no complaints about safety of bio engineering re: the human body - since it takes twenty years before humans go about reproducing themselves. However seed is pollen which is dispersed through the air, and we cannot afford to wait around for even a few years to pass, as pollen cannot be forced back into the bottle once the "proof" comes in.

I do not consider Monsanto trust worthy enough to place any faith whatsoever in regarding what they say their tests have proven. Their lies on pesticides would fill an entire library - so they can tell me as often as they want to that the GMO is safe - and I will not believe them. I do know that I find the concerns of all those involved in the documentary "The World According to Monsanto" to be believable.

[mike_c]

16. I hear you....

I don't have any more respect for Monsanto's corporate ethos than you do, and for many of the same reasons, it appears. There was a marvelous opinion piece in the American Journal of Botany (I think) back in the early nineties describing the economic pitfalls of the first "green revolution," and I think those counter arguments are more valid today than they were then, because the author's predictions have mostly come true. I wish I could find it now to share with you. I don't remember the author's name, unfortunately.

I got involved in this thread-- as I have in others like it-- because I read statements about "mutant GMO crapola" accumulating in our bodies and such. I mean, there simply isn't any data to support statements like that, and worse, they reveal profound ignorance of biology and how organisms work. Even worse, they propagate fear rather than understanding, and any social outcomes based upon fear and ignorance are absolutely the worst curse I can imagine.

[no_hypocrisy]

11. Corn and products using corn.

Corn flakes, snacks (Fritos, Doritos), chicken, pork, and beef (corn mash feed).

Also soy beans and products (tofu, edame).

It's a challenge to avoid GM foods.

[ensho]

13. kicking so more people can know

nt