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50 HARMFUL EFFECTS OF GENETICALLY MODIFIED (GM) FOODS
In a sentence
This article outlines the many harms of genetically-modified (GM) foods (or genetically engineered foods) and genetically-modified organisms (GMOs).
By
We are confronted with what is undoubtedly the single most potent technology the world has ever known – more powerful even than atomic energy. Yet it is being released throughout our environment and deployed with superficial or no risk assessments – as if no one needs to worry an iota about its unparalleled powers to harm life as we know it – and for all future generations.
Updated 2008. Comments email: naturolism@gmail.com More blue links shortly in an ongoing update.
Introduction
Biotechnology is a vital issue that impacts all of us.
Largely between 1997 and 1999, genetically modified (GM) ingredients suddenly appeared in 2/3rds of all US processed foods. This food alteration was fueled by a single Supreme Court ruling. It allowed, for the first time, the patenting of life forms for commercialization. Since then thousands of applications for experimental genetically-modified organisms, including bizarre GMOs, have been filed with the US Patent Office alone, and many more abroad. Furthermore an economic war broke out to own equity in firms, those which either have such patent rights or means to control the genetically modified organisms to which they apply. This has been the key factor behind the scenes of the largest food/agri-chemical company mergers in history. The merger of Pioneer Hi-Bed and Dupont (1997), Novartis AG and AstraZeneca PLC (2000), plus Dow's merger with Rohm and Haas (2001) are three prominent examples, Few consumers are aware this has been going on and is ever continuing. Yet if you recently ate soya sauce in a Chinese restaurant, munched popcorn in a movie theatre, or indulged in an occasional candy bar – you've undoubtedly ingested this new type of food. You may have, at the time, known exactly how much salt, fat and carbohydrates were in each of these foods because regulations mandate their labeling for dietary purposes. But you would not know if the bulk of these foods, and literally every cell had been genetically altered!
In just those three years, as much as 1/4th of all American agricultural lands or 70-80 million acres were quickly converted to raise genetically-modified (GM) food and crops. On average, the worldwide acreage used to raise genetically-modified foods in the first ten years (1996-2005) grew steadily at a pace of about 9 million hectares per year, or from about one million to 90 million hectares. A hectare is approximately 2.5 acres. By 2005, hectares with genetically-modified plants were almost 30x more that those organically planted in the US, and 3x more worldwide. Worse yet, the rate of growth for genetically-modified crops worldwide has been double that of organic farming, even though the increase in organic plantings has been stellar. Thus in 2006 we find close to a 100 million hectares devoted to genetically-modified foods compared to 31 million hectares for organic farming worldwide.
In other words, while organic farming as been growing rapidly, it is not keeping pace and losing ground to genetically-modified approaches!
Also while organic farming represented just 0.6 percent of worldwide production in 2005, genetically-modified farming represented already about 2% or again three times as much and with the latter rate of growth being double.
To put things into another perspective, the US also led the world in GM technology, and within just three years alone managed to convert 25% of US agricultural land to GM use. Worldwide, over 90% of the genetically-modified crops have been planted in just seven countries, the US, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, China, India, Paraguay, and the US. This is because other countries have treated genetically-engineered foods with considerable alarm and subjected them to severe restrictions, moratoriums, being partially banned or requiring labeling, and with stiff legal penalties for non-compliance.
In the US, again there has been a quiet lightning-speed expansion led by the political influence of a handful of companies in the wake of these consolidations. We hear from their sales departments that nothing but positive results will follow, and for everyone from farmers to middlemen and the ultimate consumers. According to Monsanto, this "breakthrough" technology will aid the environment by reducing toxic chemical use, increase food production to stave off world hunger, and lead to an agricultural boom. In addition it will provide nutritionally heightened and much better storing and tasting foods. Finally, all of this is based on nothing but "good science" – which in the long run will convince the wary public that genetically-modified foods are either equivalent or better than the ordinary.
The size of the genetically-modified foods market penetration – 1/4 of US agriculture – is not necessarily indicative that the majority of these claims are true. Biotechnology attempts ultimately a deeper and stronger "control" over nature. But a powerful temporary control is illusionary. For example, a farmer in Ottawa Tony Huether planted three different kinds of genetically-modified canola seeds that came from the three leading producers (Monsanto's Roundup, Cyanamid's Pursuit, and Aventis' Liberty). At first, he was happy to see he needed to use less of costly herbicides. But within just three years, "superweeds" among canola plants had taken in the genes of all three types of those plants! This ultimately forced him to use not only more herbicides, but far more lethal products. There have been similar experiences in the UK.
The central problem underlying all of this technology is not just its short-term benefits and long-term drawbacks, but the overall attempt to "control" living nature based on an erroneous mechanistic view. In my other articles, What is Raw Wisdom and Moving Away from a Death-Centered Vision of Nature we directly take on the root and huge flaws of that mechanical vision of nature.
As to other significant hazards we then create under the guidance of that misguiding vision, nuclear proliferation has been largely contained and chemical pollution can be made to recede. Genetic engineering, however, differs in that its impact penetrates so deeply into the core of life, into the DNA, that its end results are not necessarily containable or reversible.
Furthermore, " bioengineering" offers a contradiction in terms. "Bio" refers to life, what is not mechanistically predictable or controllable. "Engineering" refers to making the blueprints for machines that are predictable – but not alive. They are dead. Thus there is the joining of what is living with what applies to the opposite.
What is patentable also needs to be mentally "distinctive" – fixed or mostly unchanging in our minds to obtain an ownership or right-to-control patent. Again, something unchanging is not constantly and consciously adapting to its surrounding environment. It is less alive, and strategies to maintain that are often deadly. For example, much of GM technology is directed at eliminating surrounding biological environment – competing animals and plants by soaking them with lethal toxins. Secondly, there are terminator plants and suicide seeds that do not reproduce a second generation. This prevents a subsequent generation from escaping the controlling patented mold. In contrast to nature's rainforests teeming with life, GM technology has planted forests of flowerless and fruitless "terminator trees." They are not habitats for life but rather exude poisons from every leaf, killing all but a few insects. Thirdly, genetically-modified food companies have gone on multi-billion dollar buying sprees, purchasing seed companies and destroying their non-patented (potentially competitive) seed stocks. This includes Monsanto's 2005 purchase Seminis, the world's single largest developer, grower and marketer of vegetable and fruit seeds (supplying 40% of US vegetable seeds) and 20% worldwide), Monsanto is now the world's largest seed company overall, either owning or being partnered with 13 other major seed-owning corporations. It further announced its intention to purchase De Ruiter Seeds, in its on-going buying binge of seed-owning corporations. As a result just 10 seed-growing companies now own more than 55% of our planet's commercial seeds, and almost 2/3rds of all patented seeds. Time magazine referred to the consequences of a growing effort to buy out seed companies and eliminate their competitive stocks as the global Death of Birth. All of this is why "biotechnology," in its naked essence, has been tagged by some as thano- (meaning death) technology.
Back in the 1960's Rachel Carson wondered why suddenly there appeared such an ever-widening wave of death in the terrains of nature. On the surface it seemed this was because of a powerful marriage of monetary interests and the proliferation of pesticides so that the harms were not objectively faced. But there are also deeper reasons uniquely brought out in our articles What Is Raw Wisdom? and Moving Away from a Death-Centered Vision of Nature.
This brings to mind the pertinent quote from Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, condensed as follows: " A year after…a massive spraying…there was not a sound of the song of bird….. What was man doing to…our beautiful world…Who has made the decision that sets in motion…this ever-widening wave of death."
No doubt mechanical patterns in nature are one of nature's major potentials but not necessarily reflective of the opposite essence of life.
Hybridizations does work harmoniously with superficial aspects of nature without fully disturbing the life force at the center of each cell. Also with hybridizations, conscious life continues to make primary genetic decisions. We can understand this with an analogy. There is an immense difference between being a negotiating matchmaker and inviting two people for dinner, encouraging them to go on a date, as opposed to forcing the union or even a date rape.
With biotechnology, roses are no longer crossed with just roses. They are mated with pigs, tomatoes with oak trees, fish with asses, butterflies with worms, orchids with snakes. The technology that makes this all possible is called biolistics – a gunshot-like violence that pierces the nuclear membrane of cells. This essentially violates the consciousness that guides living nature. Some also compare it to the violent crossing of territorial borders of countries, subduing inhabitants against their will.
What will happen if this technology is allowed to spread? Fifty years ago few predicted that chemical pollution would cause so much vast environmental harm. Now nearly 1/3rd of all species are threatened with extinction (and up to half of all plant species and half of all mammals). Few also knew that cancer rates would skyrocket during this same period. Nowadays approximately 41% on average of Americans can expect cancer in their lifetime.
No one has a crystal ball to see future consequences of the overall GMO technology. Nevertheless, alarm signals already are going off when that technology thrusts itself directly into the center of living cell, and under the guidance of a mechanical or non-living way of restructuring or recreating nature.
The potential harm of genetically modified foods can actually far outweigh that of chemical pollution. This is because chemistry mostly deals with things altered by fire (and then no longer alive, isolated in laboratories – and not infecting living tertains in self-reproducible ways. Thus a farmer may use a chemical for many decades, and then let the land lie fallow to convert back to organic farming. The chemicals tend to break down into natural substances over time, Genetic pollution, however, can alter the life in the soil forever!
Farmers who view their land as their primary financial asset have reason to heed this warning. If new evidence of genetically-modified soil bacteria contamination arises, what is highly possible given the numerous (1600 or more) distinct microorganisms we classify in just a teaspoon of soil, and if that contamination is not remediable but remains permanent – someday the public may blacklist precisely those farms that have once planted genetically-modified crops. No one seems to have put up any warning signs when selling these inputs to farmers who own 1/4 of all agricultural tracks in the US. Furthermore, the spreading potential impact on all ecosystems is profound.
Writes Jeremy Rifkin, in The Biotech Century,
"Our way of life is likely to be more fundamentally transformed in the next several decades than in the previous one thousand years…Tens of thousands of novel transgenic bacteria, viruses, plants and animals could be released into the Earth's ecosystems…Some of those releases, however, could wreak havoc with the planet's biospheres."
In short these processes involve unparalleled risks. Voices from many sides echo this view. Contradicting safety claims, no major insurance company has been willing to limit risks, or insure bio-engineered agricultural products. The reason given is the high level of unpredictable consequences. Over eight hundred scientists from 84 countries have signed The World Scientist open letter to all governments calling for a ban on the patenting of life-forms and emphasizing the very grave hazards of GMOs, genetically-modified seeds and GM foods. This was submitted to the UN, World Trade Organization and US Congress. The Union of Concerned Scientists (a 1000 plus member organization with many Nobel Laureates) has similarly expressed its scientific reservations. The prestigious medical journal, Lancet, published an article on the research of Arpad Pusztai showing potentially significant harms, and to instill debate. Britain's Medical Association (the equivalent of the AMA and with over a 100,000 physicians) called for an outright banning of genetically-modified foods and labeling the same in countries where they still exist. In a gathering of political representatives from over 130 nations, drafting the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, approximately 95% insisted on new precautionary approaches. The National Academy of Science report on genetically-modified products urged greater scrutiny and assessments.. Prominent FDA scientists have repeatedly expressed profound fears and reservations but their voices were muted not due to cogent scientific reasons but intense political pressure from the Bush administration in its efforts to buttress and promote the profit-potentials of a nascent biotech industry.
To counterbalance this, industry-employed scientists have signed a statement in favor of genetically-modified foods. But are any of these scientists impartial? Writes the New York Times (Feb 20, 2000) (about a similar crisis involving genetic engineering and medical applications).
"Academic scientists who lack industry ties have become as rare as giant pandas in the wild…lawmakers, bioethics experts and federal regulators are troubled that so many researchers have a financial stake [via stock options or patent participation] …The fear is that the lure of profit could color scientific integrity, promoting researchers to withhold information about potentially dangerous side-effects."
Looked at from outside of commercial interests, perils of genetically modified foods and organisms are multi-dimensional. They include the creation of new "transgenic" life forms – organisms that cross unnatural gene lines (such as tomato seed genes crossed with fish genes) – and that have unpredictable behavior or replicate themselves out of control in the wild. This can happen, without warning, inside of our bodies creating an unpredictable chain reaction. A four-year study at the University of Jena in Germany conducted by Hans-Hinrich Kaatz revealed that bees ingesting pollen from transgenic rapeseed had bacteria in their gut with modified genes. This is called a "horizontal gene transfer." Commonly found bacteria and microorganisms in the human gut help maintain a healthy intestinal flora. These, however, can be mutated. Mutations may be able to travel internally to other cells, tissue systems and organs throughout the human body.
Not to be underestimated, the potential domino effect of internal and external genetic pollution can make the substance of science-fiction horror movies become terrible realities in the future. The same is true for the bacteria that maintain the health of our soil – and are vitally necessary for all forms of farming – in fact for human sustenance and survival.
Without factoring in biotechnology, milder forms of controlling nature have gravitated toward restrictive monocroping. In the past 50 years, this underlies the disappearance of approximately 95% of many native grains, beans, nuts, fruits, and vegetable varieties in the United States, India, and Argentina among other nations and on average, 75% worldwide. Genetically-modified monoculture, however, can lead to yet greater harm. Monsanto, for example, had set a goal of converting 100% of all US soy crops to Roundup Ready strains by the year 2000. If effected, this plan would have threatened the biodiversity and resilience of all future soy farming practices. Monsanto laid out similar strategies for corn, cotton, wheat and rice. This represents a deep misunderstanding of how seeds interact, adapt and change with the living world of nature.
One need only look at agricultural history – at the havoc created by the Irish potato blight, the Mediterranean fruit fly epidemic in California, the regional citrus canker attacks in the Southeast, and the 1970's US corn leaf blight. In the latter case, 15% of US corn production was quickly destroyed. Had weather changes not quickly ensued, the most all crops would have been laid waste because a fungus attached their cytoplasm universally. The deeper reason this happened was that approximately 80% of US corn had been standardized (devitalized/mechanized) to help farmers crossbreed – and by a method akin to current genetic engineering. The uniformity of plants then allowed a single fungus to spread, and within four months to destroy crops in 581 counties and 28 states in the US. According to J. Browning of Iowa State University: "Such an extensive, homogeneous acreage of plants… is like a tinder-dry prairie waiting for a spark to ignite it. "
The homogeneity is unnatural, a byproduct of deadening nature's creativity in the attempt to grasp absolute control, what ultimately can yield wholesale disaster. Europeans seem more sensitive than Americans to such approaches, given the analogous metaphor of German eugenics. Historical Context
Overall the revolution that is presently trying to overturn 12,000 years of traditional and sustainable agriculture was launched in the summer of 1980 in the US. This was the result of a little-known US Supreme Court decision Diamond vs. Chakrabarty where the highest court decided that biological life could be legally patentable.
Ananda Mohan Chakrabarty, a microbiologist and employee of General Electric (GE), developed at the time a type of bacteria that could ingest oil. GE rushed to apply for a patent in 1971. After several years of review, the US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) turned down the request under the traditional doctrine that life forms are not patentable. Jeremy Rifkin's organization, the Peoples Business Commission, filed the only brief in support of the ruling. GE later sued and won an overturning of the PTO ruling. This gave the go ahead to further bacterial gmo research throughout the 1970's.
Then in 1983 the first genetically-modified plant, an anti-biotic resistant tobacco was introduced. Field trials then began in 1985, and the EPA approved the very first release of a GMO crop in 1986. This was a herbicide-resistant tobacco. All of this went forward due to a regulatory green light as in 1985 the PTO also decided the Chakrabarty ruling could be further extended to all plants and seeds, or the entire plant kingdom.
It then took another decade before the first genetically-altered crop was commercially introduced. This was the famous delayed-ripening "Flavr-savr" tomato approved by the FDA on May 18, 1994. The tomato was fed in laboratory trials to mice who, normally relishing tomatoes, refused to eat these lab-creations and had to be force-fed by tubes. Several developed stomach lesions and seven of the forty mice died within two weeks. Without further safety testing the tomato was FDA approved for commercialization. Fortunately, it ended up as a production and commercial failure, ultimately abandoned in 1996. This was the same year Calgene, the producer, began to be bought out by Monsanto. During this period also, and scouring the world for valuable genetic materials, W.R. Grace applied for and was granted fifty US patents on the neem tree in India. It even patented the indigenous knowledge of how to medicinally use the tree (what has since been called biopiracy). Also by the close of the 20th century, about a dozen of the major US crops – including corn, soy, potato. beets, papaya, squash, tomato and cotton – were approved for genetic modification.
Going a step further, on April 12, 1988, PTO issued its first patent on animal life forms (known as oncomice) to Harvard Professor Philip Leder and Timothy A. Stewart. This involved the creation of a transgenic mouse containing chicken and human genes. Since 1991 the PTO has controversially granted other patent rights involving human stem cells, and later human genes. A United States company, Biocyte was awarded a European patent on all umbilical cord cells from fetuses and newborn babies. The patent extended exclusive rights to use the cells without the permission of the `donors. Finally the European Patent Office (EPO) received applications from Baylor University for the patenting of women who had been genetically altered to produce proteins in their mammary glands. Baylor essentially sought monopoly rights over the use of human mammary glands to manufacture pharmaceuticals. Other attempts have been made to patent cells of indigenous peoples in Panama, the Solomon Islands, and Papua New Guinea, among others.Thus the groundbreaking Chakrabarty ruling evolved, and within little more than two decades from the patenting of tiny, almost invisible microbes, to allow the genetic modification of virtually all terrains of life on Earth.
Certain biotech companies then quickly, with lightening speed, moved to utilize such patenting for the control of seed stock, including buying up small seed companies and destroying their non-patented seeds. In the past few years, this has led to a near monopoly control of certain genetically modified commodities, especially soy, corn, and cotton (the latter used in processed foods when making cottonseed oil). As a result, between 70-75% of processed grocery products, as estimated by the Grocery Manufacturers of America, soon showed genetically-modified ingredients. Yet again without labeling, few consumers in the US were aware that any of this was pervasively occurring. Industry marketers found out that the more the public knew, the less they wanted to purchase GM foods. Thus a concerted effort was organized to convince regulators not to require such labeling. Condensed Summary of Hazards
This article reviews and disputes the industry and certain government officials' claims that genetically-modified foods are the equivalent of ordinary foods not requiring labeling. It offers an informative list of at least fifty hazards, problems, and dangers. There is also a deeper philosophical discussion of how the "good science" of biotechnology can turn out to be thano-technology. When pesticides were first introduced, they also were heralded as absolutely safe and a miracle cure for farmers. Only decades later the technology revealed its lethal implications.
The following list also is divided into easily referred to sections on health, environment, farming practices, economic/political/social implications, and issues of freedom of choice. There is a concluding review of inner concerns – philosophical, spiritual and religious issues involving "deep ecology" – or our overall way of relating to nature. Furthermore there is a list of practical ideas and resources for personal, political and consumer action on this vital issue. Finally, this article as a whole is subject to change as new information becomes available.
The reader is encouraged to keep in touch with the many web sites that have updating information, to contact us for feedback, and to sign up for our newsletter so that we can exchange new information.
HEALTH
"Recombinant DNA technology faces our society with problems unprecedented not only in the history of science, but of life on Earth. It places in human hands the capacity to redesign living organisms, the products of three billion years of evolution. Such intervention must not be confused with previous intrusions upon the natural order of living organisms: animal and plant breeding…All the earlier procedures worked within single or closely related species…Our morality up to now has been to go ahead without restriction to learn all that we can about nature. Restructuring nature was not part of the bargain…this direction may be not only unwise, but dangerous. Potentially, it could breed new animal and plant diseases, new sources of cancer, novel epidemics."
Dr. George Wald: Nobel Laureate in Medicine, 1967 Higgins Professor of Biology, Harvard University
Deaths and Near-Deaths
- Recorded Deaths from GM: In 1989, dozens of Americans died and several thousands were afflicted and impaired by a genetically modified version of the food supplement L-tryptophan creating a debilitating ailment known as Eosinophilia myalgia syndrome (EMS) . Released without safety tests, there were 37 deaths reported and approximately 1500 more were disabled. A settlement of $2 billion dollars was paid by the manufacturer, Showa Denko, Japan's third largest chemical company. destroyed evidence preventing a further investigation and made a 2 billion dollar settlement. Since the very first commercially sold GM product was lab tested (Flavr Savr) animals used in such tests have prematurely died..
- Near-deaths and Food Allergy Reactions: In 1996, Brazil nut genes were spliced into soybeans to provide the added protein methionine and by a company called Pioneer Hi-Bred. Some individuals, however, are so allergic to this nut, they can go into anaphylactic shock (similar to a severe bee sting reaction) which can cause death. Using genetic engineering, the allergens from one food can thus be transferred to another, thought to be safe to eat, and unknowingly. Animal and human tests confirmed the peril and fortunately the product was removed from the market before any fatalities occurred. The animal test conducted, however, were insufficient by themselves to show this. Had they alone been relied upon, a disaster would have followed."The next case could be less than ideal and the public less fortunate," writes Marion Nestle author of Food Politics and Safe Food, and head of the Nutrition Department of NYU in an editorial to the New England Journal of Medicine. It has been estimated that 25% of Americans have mild adverse reactions to foods (such as itching and rashes), while at least 4% or 12 million Americans have provenly more serious food allergies as objectively shown by blood immunoglobins or IgE levels. In other words, there is a significant number of highly food-sensitive individuals in our general population. The percentage of young children who are seriously food-allergenic is yet higher, namely 6-8% of all children under the age of three. In addition, the incidence rates for these children has been decidedly rising. Writes Dr. Jacqueline Pongracic, head of the allergy department at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago. "I've been treating children in the field of allergy immunology for 15 years, and in recent years I've really seen the rates of food allergy skyrocket." The Center for Disease Control confirmed the spike on a US national level. Given the increased adulteration of our diets, it is no wonder at all that this is happening. Yet the FDA officials who are sacredly entrusted to safeguard the health of the general public, and especially of children, declared in 1992, under intense industry-lobbying pressure, that genetically-modified (GM) foods were essentially equivalent to regular foods. The truth is that genetically modified foods cannot ever be equivalent. They involve the most novel and technologically-violent alternations of our foods, the most uniquely different foods ever introduced in the history of modern agriculture (and in the history of biological evolution). To say otherwise affronts the intelligence of the public and safeguarding public officials. It is a bold, if not criminal deception to but appease greed-motivated corporate parties and at the direct expense and risk of the public's health. The FDA even decided against the advice of its own scientists that there was no need at all for FDA allergy or safety testing of these most novel of all foods. This hands-off climate (as promoted by the Bush Administration and similar to what was done with the mortgage and financial industry) is a recipe for widespread social health disasters. When elements of nature that have never before been present in the human diet are suddenly introduced, and without any public safety testing or labelling noticel, such as petunia flower elements in soybeans and fish genes in tomatoes (as developed by DNA Plant Technology Corporation in the 1990s), it obviously risks allergic reactions among the most highly sensitive segments of our general population. It is a well-know fact that fish proteins happen to be among the most hyper-allergenic, while tomatoes are not. Thus not labelling such genetically modified tomatoes, with hidden alien or allegenic ingredients, is completely unconsciousionable. The same applies to the typical GMO that has novel bacterial and viral DNA artificially inserted. Many research studies have definitively confirmed this kind of overall risk for genetically modified foods: CORN – Two research studies have independently shown evidence of allergenic reactions to genetically-modified Bt corn,
- Farm workers exposed to genetically-modified Bt sprays exhibited extensive allergic reactions.
POTATOES – A study showed genetically-modified potatoes expressing cod genes were allergenic.
PEAS – A decade-long study of GM peas was abandoned when it was discovered that they caused allergic lung damage in mice.
SOY – In March 1999, researchers at the York Laboratory discovered that reactions to soy had skyrocketed by 50% over the year before, which corresponded with the introduction of genetically-modified soy from the US. It was the first time in 17 years that soy was tested in the lab among the top ten allergenic foods. Cancer and Degenerative Diseases
- Direct Cancer and Degenerative Disease Links: GH is a protein hormone which, when injected into cows stimulates the pituitary gland in a way that the produces more milk, thus making milk production more profitable for the large dairy corporations. In 1993, FDA approved Monsanto's genetically-modified rBGH, a genetically-altered growth hormone that could be then injected into dairy cows to enhance this feature, and even though scientists warned that this resulted in an increase of IGF-1 (from (70%-1000%). IGF-1 is a very potent chemical hormone that has been linked to a 2 1/2 to 4 times higher risk of human colorectal and breast cancer. Prostate cancer risk is considered equally serious - in the 2,8.to 4 times range.. According to Dr. Samuel Epstein of the University of Chicago and Chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition, this "induces the malignant transformation of human breast epithelial cells." Canadian studies confirmed such a suspicion and showed active IGF-1 absorption, thyroid cysts and internal organ damage in rats. Yet the FDA denied the significance of these findings. When two award-winning journalists, Steve Wilson and Jane Akre, tried to expose these deceptions, they were fired by Fox Network under intense pressure from Monsanto. The FDA's own experiments indicated a spleen mass increase of 40-46% – a sign of developing leukemia. The contention by Monsanto that the hormone was killed by pasteurization or rendered inactive was fallacious. In research conducted by two of Monsanto's own scientists, Ted Elasser and Brian McBride, only 19% of the hormone was destroyed despite boiling milk for 30 minutes when normal pasteurization is 15 seconds. Canada, the European Union, Australia and New Zealand have banned rBGR. The UN's Codex Alimentarius, an international health standards setting body, refused to certify rBGH as safe. Yet Monsanto continued to market this product in the US until 2008 when it finally divested under public pressure. This policy in the FDA was initiated by Margaret Miller, Deputy Director of Human Safety and Consultative Services, New Animal Drug Evaluation Office, Center for Veterinary Medicine and former chemical laboratory supervisor for Monsanto. This is part of a larger revolving door between Monsanto and the Bush Administration. She spearheaded the increase in the amount of antibiotics farmers were allowed to have in their milk and by a factor of 100 or 10,000 percent. Also Michael Taylor, Esq. became the executive assistant to the director of the FDA and deputy Commissioner of Policy – filling a position created in 1991 to promote the biotech industry and squelch internal dissent. There Taylor drafted a new law to undermine the 1958 enacted Delaney Amendment that so importantly outlawed pesticides and food additives known to cause cancer. In other words carcinogens could now legally be reintroduced into our food chain. Taylor was later hired as legal counsel to Monsanto, and subsequently became Deputy Commissioner of Policy at the FDA once again. On another front, GM-approved products have been developed with resistance to herbicides that are commonly-known carcinogens. Bromoxynil is used on transgenic bromoxynmil-resistant or BXN cotton. It is known to cause very serious birth defects and brain damage in rats. Glyphosate and POEA, the main ingredient in Roundup, Monsanto's lead product are suspected carcinogens.As to other degenerative disease links, according to a study by researcher Dr. Sharyn Martin, a number of autoimmune diseases are enhanced by foreign DNA fragments that are not fully digested in the human stomach and intestines. DNA fragments are absorbed into the bloodstream, potentially mixing with normal DNA. The genetic consequences are unpredictable and unexpected gene fragments have shown up in GM soy crops. A similar view is echoed by Dr. Joe Cummins, Professor of Genetics at the University of Western Ontario, noting that animal experiments have demonstrated how exposure to such genetic elements may lead to inflammation, arthritis and lymphoma (a malignant blood disease).
- Indirect, Non-traceable Effects on Cancer Rates: The twentieth century saw an incremental lowering of infectious disease rates, especially where a single bacteria was overcome by an antibiotic, but a simultaneous rise in systemic, whole body or immune system breakdowns. The epidemic of cancer is a major example and is affected by the overall polluted state of our environment, including in the pollution of the air, water, and food we take in. There are zillions of potential combinations for the 100,000 commonly thrust upon our environent. The real impact cannot be revealed by experiments that look at just a few controlled factors or chemicals isolates. Rather all of nature is a testing ground. Scientists a few years ago were startled that combining chemical food additives into chemical cocktails caused many times more toxic effects than the sum of the individual chemicals. More startling was the fact that some chemicals were thought to be harmless by themselves but not in such combinations. For example, two simple chemicals found in soft drinks, ascorbic acid and sodium benzoate, together form benzene, an immensely potent carcinogen. Similarly, there is the potential, with entirely new ways of rearranging the natural order with genetic mutations and that similar non-traceable influences can likewise cause cancer. We definitively know X-rays and chemicals cause genetic mutations, and mutagenic changes are behind many higher cancer rates or where cells duplicate out of control. In the US in the year 1900, cancer affectedonly about 1 out 11 individuals. It now inflicts 1 out of 2 men, and 1 out of 3 women in their lifetime. Cancer mortality rates rose relentlessly throughout the 20th century to more than triple overall.
Viral and Bacterial Illness- Superviruses: Viruses can mix with genes of other viruses and retroviruses such as HIV. This can give rise to more deadly viruses – and at rates higher than previously thought. One study showed that gene mixing occurred in viruses in just 8 weeks (Kleiner, 1997). This kind of scenario applies to the cauliflower mosaic virus CaMV, the most common virus used in genetic engineering – in Round Up ready soy of Monsanto, Bt-maise of Novaris, and GM cotton and canola. It is a kind of "pararetrovirus" or what multiplies by making DNA from RNA. It is somewhat similar to Hepatitis B and HIV viruses and can pose immense dangers. In a Canadian study, a plant was infected with a crippled cucumber mosaic virus that lacked a gene needed for movement between plant cells. Within less than two weeks, the crippled plant found what it needed from neighboring genes – as evidence of gene mixing. This is significant because genes that cause diseases are often crippled to make the end product "safe." Results of this kind led the US Department of Agriculture to hold a meeting in October of 1997 to discuss the risks and dangers of gene mixing and superviruses, but no regulatory action was taken.
- Antibiotic Threat Via Milk: Cows injected with rBGH have a much higher level of udder infections and require more antibiotics. This leaves unacceptable levels of antibiotic residues in the milk. Scientists have warned of public health hazards due to growing antibiotic resistance.
- Antibiotic Threat Via Plants: Much of genetic implantation uses a marker to track where the gene goes into the cell. GM maize plants use an ampicillin resistant gene. In 1998, the British Royal Society called for the banning of this marker as it threatens a vital antibiotic's use. The resistant qualities of GM bacteria in food can be transferred to other bacteria in the environment and throughout the human body.
- Resurgence of Infectious Diseases: The Microbial Ecology in Health and Disease journal reported in 1998 that gene technology may be implicated in the resurgence of infectious diseases. This occurs in multiple ways. There is growing resistance to antibiotics misused in bioengineering, the formation of new and unknown viral strains, and the lowering of immunity through diets of processed and altered foods. There is also the horizontal transfer of transgenic DNA among bacteria. Several studies have shown bacteria of the mouth, pharynx and intestines can take up the transgenic DNA in the feed of animals, which in turn can be passed on to humans. This threatens the hallmark accomplishment of the twentieth century – the reduction in infectious diseases that critically helped the doubling of life expectancy. Allergies
- Increased Food Allergies: The loss of biodiversity in our food supply has grown in parallel with the increase in food allergies. This can be explained as follows. The human body is not a machine-like "something" that can be fed assembly line, carbon copy foods. We eat for nourishment and vitality. What is alive interacts or changes with its environment. Unnatural sameness – required for patenting of genetic foods – are "dead" qualities. Frequently foods we eat and crave are precisely those testing positive for food allergies. Cells in our body recognize this lack of vitality, producing antibodies and white cells in response. This is analogous to our brain's cells recognizing and rejecting mechanically repeated thoughts – or thinking "like a broken record." Intuitively our body cells and the overall immune system seems to reject excess homogeneity. Birth Defects, Toxicity, and Lowered Nutrition.
- Birth Defects and Shorter Life Spans: As we ingest transgenic human/ animal products there is no real telling of the impact on human evolution. We know that rBGh in cows causes a rapid increase in birth defects and shorter life spans.
- Interior Toxins: "Pesticidal foods" have genes that produce a toxic pesticide inside the food's cells. This represents the first time "cell-interior toxicity" is being sold for human consumption. There is little knowledge of the potential long-term health impacts.
- Lowered Nutrition: A study in the Journal of Medicinal Food (Dr. Marc Lappe, 1999) showed that certain GM foods have lower levels of vital nutrients – especially phytoestrogen compounds thought to protect the body from heart disease and cancer. In another study of GM Vica Faba, a bean in the same family as soy, there was also an increase in estrogen levels, what raises health issues – especially in infant soy formulas. Milk from cows with rBGH contains substantially higher levels of pus, bacteria, and fat. Monsanto's analysis of glyphosate-resistant soya showed the GM-line contained 28% more Kunitz-trypsin inhibitor, a known anti-nutrient and allergen. General
- No Regulated Health Safety Testing: The FDA only requests of firms that they conduct their own tests of new GM products in what Vice President Quale back in 1992 referred to as a "regulatory relief program." The FDA makes no review of those tests unless voluntarily requested by the company producing the product. Companies present their internal company records of tests showing a product is safe – essentially having the "fox oversee the chicken coup." As Louis J. Pribyl, an FDA microbiologist explained, companies tailor tests to get the results they need. They further relinquish responsibility as Pjil Angell, Monsanto's director of corporate communications expressed it "Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech foods. Our interest is in selling…Assuring its safety is the FDA's job." But the FDA has not assumed the responsibility. Essentially it is "like playing Russian roulette with public health," says Philip J. Regal, a biologist at the University of Minnesota. In his contacts with the FDA, he noted that in the policy of helping the biotech industry grow "government scientist after scientist acknowledged there was no way to assure the health safety of genetically engineered food… [yet] society was going to have to bear an unavoidable measure of risk." The situation was summarized by Richard Steinbrecher, a geneticist working for the Women's Environmental Network "To use genetic engineering to manipulate plants, release them into the environment and introduce them into our food chains is scientifically premature, unsafe and irresponsible."
- Unnatural Foods: Recently, Monsanto announced it had found "unexpected gene fragments in their Roundup Ready soybeans. It is well known that modified proteins exist in GE foods, new proteins never before eaten by humanity. In 1992, Dr. Louis J. Pribyl of the FDA's Microbiology Group warned (in an internal memo uncovered in a lawsuit filed) that there is " a profound difference between the types of expected effects from traditional breeding and genetic engineering." He also addressed industry claims of no "pleiotropic" (unintended and/or uncontrolled) effects. This was the basis for the industry position that GM foods are "equivalent" to regular foods, thus requiring no testing or regulation. "Pleiotropic effects occur in genetically engineered plants…at frequencies of 30%…increased levels of known naturally occurring toxicants, appearance of new, not previously identified intoxicants, increased capability of concentrating toxic substances from the environment (e.g. pesticides or heavy metals), and undesirable alterations in the level of nutrients may escape breeders' attention unless genetically engineered plants are evaluated specifically for these changes." Other scientists within the FDA echoed this view – and in contrast to the agency's official position. For example, James Marayanski, manager of the FDA's Biotechnology Working Group warned that there was a lack of consensus among the FDA's scientists as to the so-called "sameness" of GM foods compared to non-GM foods. The reason why this is such an important issue is that Congress mandated the FDA to require labeling when there is "something tangibly different about the food that is material with respect to the consequences which may result from the use of the food."
- Radical Change in Diet: Humanity has evolved for thousands of years by adapting gradually to its natural environment – including nature's foods. Within just three years a fundamental transformation of the human diet has occurred. This was made possible by massive consolidations among agri-business. Ten companies now own about 40% of all US seed production and sales. The Biotech industry especially targeted two of the most commonly eaten and lucrative ingredients in processed foods – corn and soy. Monsanto and Novaris, through consolidations, became the second and third largest seed companies in the world. They also purchased related agricultural businesses to further monopolize soy and corn production. Again within three years, the majority of soybeans and one third of all corn in the US are now grown with seeds mandated by the biotech firms. Also 60% of all hard cheeses in the US are processed with a GM enzyme. A percentage of baking and brewery products are GM modified as well. Most all of US cotton production (where cotton oil is used in foods) is bioengineered. Wheat and rice are next in line. In 2002, Monsanto plans to introduce a "Roundup" (the name of its leading herbicide) resistant wheat strain. The current result is that approximately two-thirds of all processed foods in the US already contain GM ingredients – and this is projected to rise to 90% within four years according to industry claims. In short, the human diet, from almost every front, is being radically changed – with little or no knowledge of the long-term health or environmental impacts.
ENVIRONMENT
"Genetic Engineering is often justified as a human technology, one that feeds more people with better food. Nothing could be further from the truth. With very few exceptions, the whole point of genetic engineering is to increase sales of chemicals and bio-engi
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Palash Biswas
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http://nandigramunited.blogspot.com/
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