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Organ Damage In Rats From Monsanto GMO Corn
jenningsthecat writes "A study published in December 2009 in the International Journal of Biological Sciences found that three varieties of Monsanto genetically-modified corn caused damage to the liver, kidneys, and other organs of rats. One of the corn varieties was designed to tolerate broad-spectrum herbicides, (so-called 'Roundup-ready' corn), while the other two contain bacteria-derived proteins that have insecticide properties. The study made use of Monsanto's own raw data. Quoting from the study's 'Conclusions' section: 'Our analysis highlights that the kidneys and liver as particularly important on which to focus such research as there was a clear negative impact on the function of these organs in rats consuming GM maize varieties for just 90 days.' Given the very high prevalence of corn in processed foods, this could be a real ticking time bomb. And with food manufacturers not being required by law to declare GMO content, I think I'll do my best to avoid corn altogether. Pass the puffed rice and pour me a glass of fizzy water!"
The invisible hand of the free market made the data and research invisible.
You are welcome on my lawn.
All you "free market" enthusiasts out there, answer this question for me:
How would the unencumbered "free market" handle a problem like this? Especially since none of us who eat corn are actually direct customers of Monsanto's GM corn?
Tell us how getting government out of business is going to prevent a little thing like people dying from organ failure for eating Monsanto's frankencorn?
You are welcome on my lawn.
,
That's the key: the problem is not the fact that this plant was genetically modified, but rather the specific proteins that it was engineered to produce.
This distinction will be lost on millions of reactionaries.
So... one year under a Democratic president with a Democratic congress exactly how many corporate abuses have been curtailed?
If you believe that any substantial difference exists between the two parties you are nothing more than a useful idiot.
During the 19th century the issue was contaminated food produced by the new breed of large processed food manufacturers: in the early 20th it was the meat packing industry. Now it's Monsanto. In the first two cases it turned out industry was unfit to regulate itself, and bribery of Government officials was rife. But nowadays we regard processed food manufacturers as mostly benign (well, except for the junk food industry), and nobody worries about tinned meat. Regulation in the end was good for the industry. Monsanto needs to stop pissing on anyone who suggests it isn't perfect, and start to come clean. It would be in its long term benefit.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
This is exactly right. The reason GMO corn exists and is widespread is that the gov't has incentivized corn production so much that it is practical to grow huge fields of it. This crop monoculture results in the excessive need of pesticides, hence the requirement of "Roundup-ready" crops in the first place.
I don't know enough about toxicity studies to analyze this too closely but then as I read it, there is some "fishy" stuff going on.. First off, though - these researchers did not set up these studies. They used lawyers to get data from some of these companies or something like that- it's kind of vague. I have NEVER seen a study where you report like you did the research but you actually didn't. You are just trying to take the numbers and draw your own conclusion.
They say in one part: "The most fundamental point to bear in mind from the outset is that a sample size of 10 for biochemical parameters measured two times in 90 days is largely insufficient to ensure an acceptable degree of power to the statistical analysis performed and presented by Monsanto. " They say that because they think Monsanto shouldn't say the corn is safe - but then they (these researchers) are using that same "Insufficient" data to say it's unsafe. That's the way this whole paper is- it just doesn't jive together.
They also note that the control corn fed the rats in these studies was not similar enough to the GM variety to be good controls.
OK - then why are they using these data at all - why not do their OWN study???!!! I"ll tell you why - because they found a way to skew this data for their own purposes. How can you pick apart an experimental design and then use that data and say YOUR conclusions are valid. This is insulting and I still do not believe this can be a legitimate journal (although I can't find much on it online).
They do it through lawsuits. They are a very litigious company as they sue their own customers for failing to disclose harvest data and seed information. Since they patended certain varieties of soybeans and corn, you cannot keep seed from one year to the next. Also, a neighboring farmer who has his own non-Monstanto crops contaminated by Monstanto crops are also being sued and asked to prove themselves innocent.
It's a travesty. I am not opposed to GM foods by any means, but this company's approach to solving problems with their products is completely unreasonable. A class-action suit seems to be the only answer.
Centuries of selective breeding by it's very nature also includes centuries
of testing on humans. The pace and nature of the tinkering is such that
everything is self-governing and self-correcting. Once you have a megacorp
that can buy entire national governments and generally push everyone else
accelerating the process you really have very little to keep the process from
running amok.
Earth is a production system with no backups.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
But how am I going to be SCARED of GM corn if it's due to something else?
Big science-y words like "genetic" and "nuclear" are supposed to scare the pants off me for no reason!! You can't take that away from me, it's all I have!
Comment of the year
Maybe these "reactionaries" aren't as ill-informed as you think. Maybe at least some of them are aware that in an ideal world, with ethical and moral corporations performing proper testing on products prior to release (and with unbiased, independent regulatory bodies ensuring proper standards are met), there would be little to fear in GM foods. Maybe they aren't that naive...
Nah, I'm sure they're just a bunch of ignorant, tree-hugging hippies.
There are safe GM foods that have been feeding people for hundreds of years, but it only takes one to go wrong that will cause even the safe GM foods to banned.
I think the issue is that the old fashion way of genetic modification, or selective breeding, is more tried, true and gradual. Gene splicing and such, however, has more potential for "now that's interesting" events. Given that we're always finding new things that are good or bad in our foods, this is an understandable concern.
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
You are actually claiming that the US government is small and toothless.....
Unbelievable.....
Remember when you ask the big government to do what you want, that may be great for you, until they start doing what you don't want.
Nothing that Monsanto does comes as a surprise to anyone who has seen "Food, Inc.". http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1286537/
the problem with GMO crops is that they can't be contained. a farmer doesn't have to plant monsanto's corn or soy beans for them to start growing in their fields.
and to anyone who says "i will just avoid eating corn and corn products".... good luck. almost every product in the grocery store either contains corn or ate corn.
stephen
GM is an accelerated version of what happens in nature.
No it's not. It's the artificial manipulation of a genotype to get a desired trait by means that are not very well understood but that mostly work although their consequences are not very well grasped.
We need it to feed our billions.
No we don't. Crop rotation and the use of better seeds works much better and with far less pesticides and other toxic chemicals, notably in emerging markets.
However, a certain company won't get as rich if we go that way...
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
But selective breeding is an entirely different beast than the GMO process. Selective breeding allows corn to vary according to the "natural" laws of the corn itself. In GMO corn, companies have actually found a way to break down the barriers that the corn would naturally have to prevent the type of variation introduced. The DNA is altered in such a way that could NEVER happen naturally even after 1,000 years of naturally occurring variation. This at the least is a major cause for concern. Even more concerning is that so little research has been done on the effects of various GMO foods on the human body. Maybe it just gives us more gas. But even, then it would be nice to know.
My concern, which doesn't appear to have been raised yet, is this shit blows around in the wind and cross-breeds with non-GMO corn. I'm guessing nobody has any idea how badly this has happened yet. This stuff could be ending up in our food, making the most important and second largest cash crop (after marijuana) in the US poisonous to consumers. I wonder why that doesn't sit well with me.
So "The System Worked", uhh, how?
1. If you RTFA you'd see that Greenpeace lawyers had to go to great lengths and fight a mess of court battles to get at the data that shows this problem.
2. This corn is out in the food supply, and its not impossible that cross-pollination/etc is causing it to spread to other food sources.
3. I have no way of determining in the supermarket if either of these 3 varieties, or varieties which include these proteins, are present in the package of corn I'm about to buy.
You GM fanboys are fighting a straw-man. Folks like me don't hate the idea. I'd like to end world hunger. I'd like my car to run off sugar made from some superplant. What I don't want is some corporation like Monsanto to have no oversight, conflicts of interest all around (HELLO? They _fought_ the release of this information. They'd rather you die from liver disease than see a negative impact on their profits. Why the hell are you coming to their defense?) poisoning our food supply because they didn't want to spend the money or the effort to do it RIGHT.
Doesn't it bug you that all those left wing GM-hating nutjobs were RIGHT? This is _exactly_ what we feared would happen. Its not the idea of GM we hate. Its Monsanto. And You. And all the other idiots who don't take a second to think about what MIGHT happen if poor oversight is mixed with singleminded financial motivation.
Why stick up for big business?
Actually, it sounds like the system worked to me.
And if you learn next year that you have some liver damage consistent with the Monsanto Syndrome, will you still feel the same way?
Since I have a mild intolerance to high fructose corn syrup (it, or something closely associated with it, contributes to my exercise induced asthma attacks which in turn make my bicycling much less fun), for several years I have been scanning ingredients labels for the word "corn". Some kind of processed corn is used in a surprisingly wide variety of foods, and is often near the top of the ingredients list. In the USA, much of this comes from the huge acreages of Monsanto owned agribusiness farms that would be growing one of Monsanto's GM corns, which would then be processed through one of Monsanto's operations before being sold in railroad tanker lots to Kraft, General Foods, Coca Cola, Kellog, Pepsi, Tyson, Little Debby, Hostess, etc. Fortunately the problem that I know about is limited to just HFCS so I don't avoid all corn products and can still eat a lot of stuff from the shelves of Safeway. I'm just pickier about which brands of hamburger relish, salsa, and crackers I buy.
But if there is anything unhealthy about Monsanto's corn operations, it could potentially affect all USA citizens who were not zealous in avoiding corn (because of severe allergies). That would probably be more than 90% of the USA population. Considering the size of the potential public health problem, I don't think there is sufficient oversight of Monsanto's operations, including its GM corn.
BTW, Monsanto gets a nice chunk of cash from the Federal Guvmint as a subsidy for growing corn. Although to be fair it should be noted that through their lobbying and campaign contributions they do return a lot of that to the political process....
Will
Selective breeding is not the same thing as modern genetic modification. Mendel wasn't putting bacterial genes into corn. We've had thousands of years of testing selective breeding. We have had a decade or so of testing bacteria protein laced corn and other genetically modified foods. See the difference? The damn hippies were right: we should have tested this stuff more.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
"This is _exactly_ what we feared would happen."
And what "_exactly_" is that, exactly? Do you really think they want to kill humans?
It's more like they don't care, to the point of criminally trying to withold the information that proves that their products are health hazards.
"I'm never quite so stupid as when I'm being smart" (Linus van Pelt)
I've seen this a lot on this site (unfortunately). Luddite is tossed around as a swear word to ridicule those who don't understand or see any benefits of modern tech. The opposite exists but we don't have a single word for it, people who automatically trust any new tech to be safe, without any evidence that it is safe, other than the inventor's and corporation's word for it. There's a word used that is close, but doesn't specify "as regards newer tech", that is a "pollyanna". We really need a new word for those who blindly "trust" but never "verify" all new high tech advances.
This issue with some of the GM corn mods has been known for years now, and dismissed by the big business sycophants/pollyannas. The largest misconception I have seen is equating *cross species modification* with naturally occurring or man made same species hybrids. These get equated all the freaking time by alleged tech savvy people as the excuse to just "trust". The "tech pollyannas" knee jerk automatically trust, based on a starting point of falsehood belief. It's just as loony and stupid as being a luddite based on erroneous or even zero knowledge of the subject.
I am a farmer and I will say I do NOT trust corporate big ag business (nor ag college academia that relies on the same big business for funding and has tame scientists in and out of the same big business) to be self regulating as to safety concerns nor do I trust the governmental regulators because of the revolving door "jobs" aspect that occur. (exactly the same as occurs with Wall Street/Federal Reserve/Treasury/SEC revolving door jobs). There's WAY too much money involved for there not to be corruption. Just human nature. Just because some person has many letters next to their name, or some official government title, is not any guarantee they are trustworthy as to being non corrupt or "bought off". They are just as likely or not as likely as anyone else, and as the currency units involved go up in number..we should take closer and closer looks as to this trust and verify business.
It would be nice to trust the system, but I can't the way it is set up now.
Here's an interesting video on this food subject, on how much trust we should place in huge global ag business and regulations as they exist now.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6262083407501596844
Look at software code. A chunk can be written, looked at, have other people look at it, vetted..few months later they missed something and there is an 0-day.
Well, that can be patched.
Can't say the same thing for food stuff once it is planted all over. Won't be any patches once it is out in the wild and air pollination starts spreading it. We are already seeing some of the first minor examples with canola/rapeseed "superweeds". Just wait until there are major examples.
It isn't a matter of if, it is a matter of when. There will be a hugemongous "whoops..heh heh heh, guess we missed that" excuse mumbling major screwup, by guys in black suits and white lab coats at some news conference, with the global food supply. This corn might be it, who knows, but it is coming.
"Selective breeding is nothing but a very slow primitive form of genetic engineering."
The "very slow" part is what completely differentiates selective breeding and natural evolutionary processes from genetic engineering. All of the genetic differences you see in something like dogs occurred very gradually, and with some degree of harmony with the ecosystem. Introducing these GMOs is basically bypassing thousands of years of evolution, and going off on a tangent that would have a minuscule probability of ever occurring, even through selective breeding. I think that's a very important distinction when we're talking about the potential health and environmental impacts of these things.
Selective breeding is certainly well tried and gradual, but "true" is misleading. All you are doing is leading evolution in a direction of your choosing, rather than allowing natural selection to take its course. But you're right in that no amount of evolutionary genetic recombination would result in the spontaneous production of Bt toxin in our lifetime.
It's worth noting that this is entirely different from the so-called "Roundup Ready" crops which by definition encourage the farmer to use potentially toxic doses of the herbicide. Bt toxin is a pesticide, and the degree of its expression in GM crops is not yet entirely predictable.
When I first started studying biotechnology 10 years ago, Roundup was commonly regarded as being no more toxic than coffee. We have since learned otherwise, and Monsanto's crude sledgehammer approach to farming practice has gone a long way towards discrediting the biotechnology industry in general.
So true about the corporatists. The corporation can do no wrong. Look at the suicide gene which has been developed in many food crops developed by Monsanto and other seed giants. "...Through natural pollination, their crop may now become partially pollinated by Monsanto's GM corn through no fault of their own. Now they are selling GM food without their knowledge. Furthermore, the crop seed that they may be holding bad to plant for next years crop may be completely sterile, which would have a devastating effect on the following years crop for that small farmer...." ahref=http://thegldc.com/blog/tag/monsanto/rel=url2html-26299http://thegldc.com/blog/tag/monsanto/>
Corporations like Monsanto are suing small farmers all over: "The odds are clearly stacked against the farmer: Monsanto has an annual budget of $10 million dollars and a staff of 75 devoted solely to investigating and prosecuting farmers. The largest recorded judgment made thus far in favor of Monsanto as a result of a farmer lawsuit is $3,052,800.00. Total recorded judgments granted to Monsanto for lawsuits amount to $15,253,602.82. Farmers have paid a mean of $412,259.54 for cases with recorded judgments". ahref=http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Goliath_and_David:_Monsanto's_Legal_Battles_against_Farmersrel=url2html-26299http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Goliath_and_David:_Monsanto's_Legal_Battles_against_Farmers>
Unfortunately, the cat is out of the bag and GMO has crossed over into non-gmo strains.
Wherever you go, there you are.
There is - you have to sign a technology agreement.
In addition, if you don't buy Monsanto corn, you are likely to be investigated. If your field is even partially pollinated by Roundup Ready® corn, and it's probably a virtual certainty by now, they'll set the lawyers on you. Since Monsanto can afford more lawyers than you, and your farm is likely to represent your family livelihood, most people cave in and settle out of court rather than lose their family inheritance. And I'm willing to bet that some of them start buying Monsanto just to avoid it happening again... maybe it even gets written into the settlements.
That's right, Monsanto now makes money out of farmers for NOT buying Monsanto products. The best thing for them about this business model is that it spreads itself - literally, with pollen - across national borders, regardless of consent or trade agreement.
How is patent encumbered food products a win for environmentalism? And you're talking about how silly anti-GMO fever is in an article saying how some of these products may actually be harmful?