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Suppressed Report Shows Cancer Link to GM Potatoes
Doc Ruby writes "After an 8-year-long court battle, Welsh activists have finally been allowed to released a Russian study showing an increased cancer risk linked to eating genetically modified potatoes. While the victory of the Welsh Greenpeace members in the courtroom would seem to vindicate the work of the Russian scientists that did the original research, there are still serious questions to be answered. The trials involved rats being fed several types of potatoes as feed. The rats who were fed GM potatoes suffered much more extensive damage to their organs than with any other type; just the same, serious questions remain about the validity of the findings. The Welsh group wants to use this information to stop the testing of GM crops in the UK, tests currently slated for the spring of this year."
"And _do not_ give me that old "it'll help starving people" crap."
Most of the GM foods being pushed have nothing to do with starving people - it's all about increasing corporate profits, as usual. The "terminator gene" was being pushed to prevent poor third-world farmers from saving their own seed after buying grain crops once. Roundup-ready crops are developed to allow farmers to use increasing amounts of Glyphosate to control weeds, because of the inherent problems with how large-scale agriculture is "managed". Flavr-Savr tomatoes were designed to be picked at an even less ripe state so they survive shipping better. All of that runs counter to helping starving people - heck, even for the "first world" it means crops that are less nutritious than before.
The only GM crop I know of that was developed in an attempt to actually help the third world is golden rice - a rice that provides beta carotine. That was developed at a university, and while given lip service by the agro-giants it's not high on their agenda.
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What we have a hard time accepting is that 99.5% similarity means jack, when we have something like 90% DNA similarity with sunflowers.
.5% different from rats, that means that .5% represents a hell of a lot of difference, not the other way around.
Wrong. You can't compare humans/animals and plants in terms of DNA similarity (or lack thereof). The basic structure is too different to make any comparisons worthwhile.
If we are only
Wrong. Most of the 0.5% difference between mice and humans involves genes that are currently classified as inactive. Thus they basically have no identifiable effect, even after decades of study. The amount of DNA that actually causes the differences between humans and mice is remarkably small. While 0.5% of the total DNA is different, approximately 98.5% of that 0.5% is considered inactive.
And like I said in my earlier post, decades of studies have shown that mice are a very accurate representation of humans, when it comes to testing chemicals. The organs are proportioned almost exactly the same, and comparable responses to humans have been observed again and again and again. Doubt it if you wish. The fact remains that if something is harmful to mice, we can be sure that a relative proportion of that chemical is harmful to humans.
That's the right question, left neglected and alone by the story.
Poking around a bit, it turns out that the genetic engineers and the researchers were both looking at one particular lectin, introduced to make the potatoes resist insects and nematodes better. Which is important because "lectin" is a whole family of chemicals with different biological effects.
Now, the natural chemical defenses in plants are bad enough. Wild potatoes may need elaborate preparation to be safe to eat. Farmed ones are screened for solanine. Potatoes, in case you didn't know, are in the nightshade family.
So the real question here is what other research was done and what results it had. Does other work confirm or contradict the Russian study?
Then there's the systems question, which is whether we're better off with the risks of the engineered potatoes or the risks of the pesticides needed to keep "natural" ones alive. The word "natural" is in quotes because they're quite different from their wild relatives.