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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!"
what's most disturbing about this is forbes magazine just named monsanto company of the year.
When you recognize love in another and realize how precious it is, everything else seems so insignificant.
Monsanto did the research in 2000 and 2001, and obviously knew the outcome. So how did they manage to suppress the data and results for 8 years?
John
From their conclusions:
This can be due to the new pesticides (herbicide or insecticide) present specifically in each type of GM maize, although unintended metabolic effects due to the mutagenic properties of the GM transformation process cannot be excluded. All three GM maize varieties contain a distinctly different pesticide residue associated with their particular GM event (glyphosate and AMPA in NK 603, modified Cry1Ab in MON 810, modified Cry3Bb1 in MON 863). These substances have never before been an integral part of the human or animal diet and therefore their health consequences for those who consume them, especially over long time periods are currently unknown
It sounds to me like the issue isn't the GM itself, but the over-use of novel pesticides that it permits.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I have no idea.
If it's going to damage my liver, I'm switching to scotch. I'm sorry, Jack, but I just can't take the chance...
Unfortunately, your scotch and bourbon is likely fortified with a corn product.
The kind of "duh" think that I'm thinking about here is that, if this corn produces these insecticide-like chemicals, one should have to show that it is non-toxic in humans...
One could feasibly find a way to splice in genes that would make the product lethal to humans... so if you're "adding" something to the corn, it should be controlled the same as any other food additive.
Although, people wishing to avoid all GM foods, corn itself has been so selectively bred that it doesn't even resemble its nearest neighbors. It's even moribund if we ever disappear, because its seeds over compete and kill each other off. If you want to talk about crazy amounts of GM, take something that's essentially a grass, and turn it into corn.
Not like corn provides all its nutritional value unless its treated with a relatively strong-ish base anyways... lime is what's mostly used to break up the proteins on the kernel to produce vitamin B12...
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
Monsanto did the research in 2000 and 2001, and obviously knew the outcome.
You can't say "and obviously knew the outcome" unless you're Monsanto. I believe that GMO crops undergo far fewer tests for safety than pesticides. From the Wikipedia page on one of the three crops in question (MON 863):
In 1989 a 90-day rat-feeding trial done by the FDA, 40 rats that were fed the Bt corn developed multiple reactions typically found in response to allergies, infections, toxins and diseases. Gilles-Eric Seralini reviewed the study as part of the French Commission for Biomolecular Genetics and said that the response by the rats were similar to reactions caused by pesticides. Although the Bt-toxin is a pesticide, he points out that animal research on pesticide-producing corn is nowhere as thorough as that required for approval of pesticides. Follow-up studies on these serious findings were demanded from organisations worldwide. None were conducted and the corn was approved.
MON 863 is even approved for use in the EU which is surprising considering the long history of European countries denying crops imported from other countries like the US where GMO crops are allowed on the off chance that said crops were cross pollinated with GMO plants in other fields. Very recently I believe Germany banned cultivation of GMO plants. If you want your data don't look toward Monsanto or even the underfunded FDA. Look to the European Union, I hope more studies follow in the path of this research but unfortunately it's hard to think of a source for major funding if it's not our tax dollars.
My work here is dung.
as a scientist, it has two things I dislike listed on its webpage... 1. In a prominent position its "unofficial IMPACT FACTOR" ... ugh.
2. In a prominent position its "UNOFFICIAL impact factor" ... well, if TR/ISI can't find it important enough to tabulate (assuming this is what unofficial indicates), why should we care :(
in fact, this is the first time I have heard of the journal ... if the work is more widely useful, we not publish in a more widely-read journal?
OK, I haven't read the paper in detail, but my initial impression is that, if academic researchers have found evidence that GM food damages your health, why haven't they put it in a really major journal--Nature, Science, PNAS, or something like PlosONE if the whole publication really had to be open access? I've got a degree in biology, and this is the first time I've ever come across the 'International Journal of Biological Sciences'.
Glancing at their results table, it doesn't seem clear cut overall. E.g. there are cases where rats fed 11% GM corn show a response, but rats fed 33% GM corn don't, cases where male rats are apparently affected, but not females, and vice versa. They also don't name the maize they used as a control, so we don't know how accurate it is.
All in all, it looks like they did a rather unconvincing study that prominent journals weren't prepared to accept, so they stuck it out there in this way. That doesn't mean it's wrong, but take it with a pinch of salt.
The study shows no organ damage. This is a lie by the esteemed Slashdot editor.
The study shows slight changes in some parameters which could be signs of damage. It could also not be. Eating sausages will give you different kidney readings from eating chicken, yet neither sausages nor chicken has been banned. Correspondingly the study says these are "signs of toxicity and not proof of toxicity". I would have expected KDawsons "organ damage" to imply that organ damage had been found.
Some data seems surprising - there is a significant effect for female rats consuming 11% Monsanto corn, but not male rats or female rats consuming 33%?
Although I agree that multiple year teasts should be performed, and organ damage checked for. Though it would be extremely surprising if this has not already been done by anyone.
Of course, since I write this I must be paid by Monsanto or just be evil, since all good-thinking progressives would never question criticism of an evil megacorp like Monsanto.
Correct, GM is truly a wonderful thing. But I do wonder if spot checks on produce wouldn't be advisable. Processed foods get spot checked, perhaps produce should as well. You can get a DNA sequencer on ebay for two grand now. Grabbing the sequence that produces abrin, or ricin from the rosary pea or castor bean respectively, and putting it in a couple corn plants, is within the ability of an undergrad certainly. The lab procedures are published out there, I saw them on the kindle store even. Corn is wind pollinated, so planting a few modified malcious plants upwind of a field could be really nasty. It is only going to get easier to do, and restricting the technology is the wrong way to try and prevent it. Spot checks of produce for common pathogens and dangerous chemicals would add to the price of food, so I wouldn't suggest they be mandatory. Might work kind of like an organic stamp, "Non-deadly GM" or somesuch.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
Are you sure about that? I'm not a farmer, and I don't know anyone who has had anything to do with Monsanto corn, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was a contract that you need to sign before buying Monsanto GM corn.
If the GMO corn has been bred for high sugar, as we know that's the main focus, then the rats more than likely consumed more calories which I would expect to have a detrimental effect on most systems in the body. From the study: We note that these unrelated, different non-GM maize types were not shown to be substantially equivalent to the GMOs. The quantity of some sugars, ions, salts, and pesticide residues, do in fact differ from line to line, for example in the non-GM reference groups. This not only introduced unnecessary sources of variability but also increased considerably the number of rats fed a normal non-GM diet (320) compared to the GM-fed groups (80) per transformation event, which considerably unbalances the experimental design. A group consisting of the same number of animals fed a mixture of these test diets would have been a better and more appropriate control.
If you spray an insect with water containing soap you will kill it too, are you going to stop taking baths? Salt has some rather nasty effects on slugs, so you better get rid of that. Insects are different that humans.
You have made the mistaken assumption that the techniques used to modify the corn and other plants works exactly as well in practice as it should in theory. The proteins that GMO foods are engineered to produce are already regulated as a food additive, but that's not enough to conclude that such products are safe. Unfortunately, Monsanto lobbied hard to ensure that they wouldn't have to prove the overall safety of the GM plants they were selling, just the safety of the specific proteins they were introducing. They've also done everything they can to ensure that studies that are critical of their products are suppressed. Without any new coverage of science specifically showing that their products are unsafe, they have successfully convinced the public (i.e. you) that their products should be safe in theory. "The World According to Monsanto" should be required viewing for people participating in this debate, it's a documentary about Monsanto's lobbying and litigation tactics, which have a history that goes further back than GM foods. For a much shorter read, see Árpád Pusztai
Companies must tell you if a food they sell contains grapes, raisins or hemlock, but if a food contains corn, they're not forced to tell you if it's "natural" or GM.
So, unless you're an ancient greek philosopher, you can choose to not introduce hemlock in your body but you haven't the choice to not introduce a possibly harmful GM substance but only the "natural" one.
Um, yes you can make a nontoxic species toxic by breeding. I'm thinking of the case of the insecitcide averse organic farmer who selected the best least insect damaged zucchinis each year for replanting until one year he had a quite pristine looking zuchinni crop. Except that when he ate them, they proved toxic. He'd been effectively breeding for insect resistance which meant breeding for higher and higher quantities of a toxin naturally present in zuchinni. Eventually it reached levels toxic to humans.
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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.
That's odd, I have heard the exact opposite from farmers. I grew up on a farm and my father still farms. He and many other use GM corn that is 'Roundup Ready'. They love it because it lets them use less herbicide. Before, they had to pick and choose herbicides so that they didn't kill the corn. Got milkweed? Use this one. Water hemp? Sorry, use a different one. This could lead to multiple applications and lots of herbicide being used overall. Even if you use just a little, having to reapply different herbicide several times increases the overall amount.
Now, they apply Roundup once and use much less herbicide than before. It's also much more effective. It's so effective in fact that many farmers have switched to no-till farming methods. This is a tremendous gain because it saves a lot of topsoil. Tilling helps to eliminate weeds so most people practiced it so they could avoid herbicides (they're expensive!). But it didn't quite deliver good yields. My dad used to say 'No-till is easy. No-till, no-crop, no check!'. Now he uses it and swears by it. You used to see so much dust kicked up on a windy day that you thought you'd suffocate. Whenever there was a flood the runoff was black - that was our topsoil going away.
But thanks to no-till and Roundup-ready corn we are saving the topsoil and using overall fewer chemicals to grow our food. This is a tremendous win for environmentalists. It's too bad they got caught up in anti-GMO fever.
http://angryee.blogspot.com
that will cause even the safe GM foods to banned.
Personally, I don't really mind GM foods, but I'd feel much safer if anything Monsanto touched was banned. Considering their track record of deliberate contamination and knowingly poisoning employees and residents in areas they've operated I certainly wouldn't expect them to warn anyone should they discover their products were hazardous to health. In fact, I'd expect them to try to cover it up any way they could, and attempt to silence any whistle blowers or outside researchers, and probably bribe officials to let them continue to operate if they can.