Sprintcyclist wrote on Apr 2^nd, 2012 at 12:44pm:

Just another serious problem as a result of GM.

In the early 1990s, Dr. Pusztai was awarded a $3 million grant by the UK government to design the system for safety testing genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

His team included more than 20 scientists working at three facilities, including the Rowett Institute in Aberdeen, Scotland, the top nutritional research lab in the UK, and his employer for the previous 35 years.

The results of Pusztai's work were supposed to become the required testing protocols for all of Europe. But when he fed supposedly harmless GM potatoes to rats, things didn't go as planned.

Within just 10 days, the animals developed potentially pre-cancerous cell growth, smaller brains, livers, and testicles, partially atrophied livers, and damaged immune systems. Moreover, the cause was almost certainly side effects from the process of genetic engineering itself. In other words, the GM foods on the market, which are created from the same process, might have similar affects on humans.

With permission from his director, Pusztai was interviewed on TV and expressed his concerns about GM foods. He became a hero at his institute -- for two days.

Then came the phone calls from the pro-GMO prime minister's office to the institute's director. The next morning, Pusztai was fired. He was silenced with threats of a lawsuit, his team was dismantled, and the protocols never implemented. His Institute, the biotech industry, and the UK government, together launched a smear campaign to destroy Pusztai's reputation.

Eventually, an invitation to speak before Parliament lifted his gag order and his research was published in the prestigious Lancet. No similar in-depth studies have yet tested the GM foods eaten every day by Americans.

    Epidemiologist Judy Carman used to investigate outbreaks of disease for a state government in Australia. She knows that health problems associated with GM foods might be impossible to track or take decades to discover. Moreover, the superficial, short-term animal feeding studies usually do not evaluate "biochemistry, immunology, tissue pathology, gut function, liver function, and kidney function" and are too short to test for cancer or reproductive or child health.

    Dr. Carman has critiqued the GMO approval process on behalf of the Public Health Association of Australia and speaks openly about her concerns. As a result, she is repeatedly attacked. Pro-GM scientists threatened disciplinary action through her Vice-Chancellor, and circulated a defamatory letter to government and university officials.

    Carman was awarded a grant by the Western Australia government to conduct some of the few long-term animal feeding studies on GMOs. Apparently concerned about what she might find, GMO advocates wrote letters to the government demanding that the grant be withdrawn. One scientist tried to convince the Western Australia Agriculture minister that sufficient safety research had been conducted and he should therefore cancel the grant.

     As his evidence, however, he presented a report summarizing only 60 GMO animal feeding studies -- an infinitesimal amount of research to justify exposing the entire population to GM foods.

    A closer investigation, however, revealed that most of the 60 were not safety studies at all. They were production studies, measuring, for example, the animals' carcass weight. Only 9 contained data applicable to human health. And 6 of the 9 showed adverse effects in animals that ate GM feed!

    Furthermore, there were several other studies with adverse findings that were mysteriously missing from the compilation. Carman points out that the report "does not support claims that GM crops are safe to eat. On the contrary, it provides evidence that GM crops may be harmful to health."

    When the Western Government refused to withdraw the grant, opponents successfully interfered with Carman's relationship with the university where she was to do the research.

Irina Ermakova, a senior scientist at the Russian National Academy of Sciences, was shocked to discover that more than half of the baby rats in her experiment died within three weeks. She had fed the mothers GM soy flour purchased at a supermarket. The babies from mothers fed natural non-GMO soy, however, only suffered a 10% death rate. She repeated her experiment three times with similar results.

    Embryologist Andrés Carrasco told a leading Buenos Aires newspaper about the results of his research into Roundup, the herbicide sold in conjunction with Monsanto's genetically engineered Roundup Ready crops.

    Dr. Carrasco, who works in Argentina's Ministry of Science, said his studies of amphibians suggest that the herbicide could cause defects in the brain, intestines, and hearts of fetuses. Moreover, the amount of Roundup used on GM soy fields was as much as 1,500 times greater than that which created the defects.

    Tragically, his research had been inspired by the experience of desperate peasant and indigenous communities who were suffering from exposure to toxic herbicides used on the GM soy fields throughout Argentina.

    According to an article in Grain, the biotech industry "mounted an unprecedented attack on Carrasco, ridiculing his research and even issuing personal threats." In addition, four men arrived unannounced at his laboratory and were extremely aggressive, attempting to interrogate Carrasco and obtain details of his study. "It was a violent, disproportionate, dirty reaction," he said. "I hadn't even discovered anything new, only confirmed conclusions that others had reached."

    Argentina's Association of Environmental Lawyers filed a petition calling for a ban on Roundup, and the Ministry of Defense banned GM soy from its fields.

    Prominent virologist Terje Traavik presented preliminary data at a February 2004 meeting at the UN Biosafety Protocol Conference, showing that:

        Filipinos living next to a GM cornfield developed serious symptoms while the corn was pollinating;
        Genetic material inserted into GM crops transferred to rat organs after a single meal; and
        Key safety assumptions about genetically engineered viruses were overturned, calling into question the safety of using these viruses in vaccines.

    The biotech industry mercilessly attacked Dr. Traavik. Their excuse? -- he presented unpublished work. But presenting preliminary data at professional conferences is a long tradition in science, something that the biotech industry itself relied on in 1999 to try to counter the evidence that butterflies were endangered by GM corn.

    Ironically, three years after attacking Traavik, the same biotech proponents sharply criticized a peer-reviewed publication for not citing unpublished data that had been presented at a conference. The paper shows how the runoff of GM Bt corn into streams can kill the "caddis fly," which may seriously upset marine ecosystems. The study set off a storm of attacks against its author, ecologist Emma Rosi-Marshall, which Nature described in a September 2009 article as a "hail of abuse."

"Agritech companies have given themselves veto power over the work of independent researchers ... Only studies that the seed companies have approved ever see the light of a peer-reviewed journal."

I don't doubt that there is a fair bit of skullduggery going on by both Monsanto and the anti-GMO advocates. On balance, I don't believe that Monsanto or any other corporation would knowingly produce crops that would actually harm people.  It wouldn't make sense from a liability standpoint for one thing. (Think James Hardie)

The oil companies and their supporters that oppose banning petroleum-based pesticides cite the increased yield as reason to keep the industry going.

It would be ironic if their chemicals actually inflicted the biggest loss of crop yields in history by wiping out bees which are needed for pollination.

I may be wrong, but I was under the impression that neonicotinoids were produced from  plants such as nicotiana (tobacco species) and another one whose name escapes me for the moment (Duboisia perhaps?).  It's not a petroleum product. It's actually alkaloid based.

They are almost certainly to blame for the drop in insect populations gievn the catasrtophic effects reported in Eastern Europe where they were first used. .

I may be wrong, but I was under the impression that neonicotinoids were produced from  plants such as nicotiana (tobacco species) and another one whose name escapes me for the moment (Duboisia perhaps?).  It's not a petroleum product. It's actually alkaloid based.

They are almost certainly to blame for the drop in insect populations gievn the catasrtophic effects reported in Eastern Europe where they were first used. .

bobbythefap1 wrote on Apr 4^th, 2012 at 4:00pm:


What's your problem? Have I ever said that neonicotinoids were justified? I was just replying to falah's point about the evil Oil companies and doing some research in the process. I noted that they were derived from nicotiana plants. Is a plant derivative more "natural" than an "oil" derivative anyway?  The real concern is its ecotoxicity, is it not? 

I already said that  neonicotinoids are probably to blame for the drop in bee population. There may indeed be other factors.

I was just taken aback at the fact that they are present in a fairly well known product like Advantage. I'd hazard a guess that these substances are very widely used.