The shortage of doctors in the US may be, in part, to blame for their long hours and burnout. Their professional organizations have limited the number of medical school and residency slots, which partly explains how they're paid about twice as much as those in other developed countries. Given that a large majority of freshmen entering US universities have pre-med aspirations, there is no lack of potential doctors in the US. More reading here:
Sure, you'll need a shower at work if you ride any significant distance or in bad weather. And yeah, riding a bike is exercise. If you don't like sweating, it's probably not for you. I have friends who drive hours on the weekends to do wild adventures in the mountains, often involving some discomfort. Maybe it's hard to imagine, but adventure can be fun. That's the way I see it when I take off in bad weather. If you haven't been to Copenhagen or Amsterdam, you'd be surprised that the roads are *packed* with bike commuters, even when the weather gets a bit dicey.
And, not sure where you live, but I've been riding 10,000 miles/year for 25 years, in three states, in lots of cities and places, and I've never had any motorist *try* to hit me. I usually favor the same thoroughfares that you'd take in a car (if they have bike lanes) because it's faster and more efficient. Residential streets can be more dangerous with people pulling out of driveways, kids running into the streets, etc.
Yeah, I hear you. 95% humidity is a problem even when it's 26 C. That's part of the reason I moved to a less humid climate. But, I ride even when it's over 43 C (110 F) here (usually 20% humidity). It's surprisingly comfortable when it's really hot as the sweat evaporates immediately. For riding less than an hour, it's also not a problem well below freezing. You just have to have the right clothes. Of course, I have a place to shower on both ends.
... because I'm not. I've been commuting by bicycle for the last 20 years. It's like being on vacation while getting to work -- the best part of my day! It's a bit over 20 miles (33 km) each way so I'm on the bike for about two hours/day. What's great is that I get two hours of workout in per day for essentially one hour of time (it takes 30 minutes to drive each way). The thing most motorist don't understand is riding a bike is often faster than driving. On surface streets, it's almost always faster to ride a bike during commute hours. On average, cars go about 13 mph (21 kph) in cities, which is a very easy speed to ride a bike. Yeah, I live in California, but I've commuted year 'round in Michigan too, so there...
If you're writing for a lay audience, no one cares. If you're writing for an academic audience, you need to use plural verbs (think: data = numbers) as this rule is deeply entrenched in academia. I don't see this changing any time soon.
You may like to tack some political agenda onto what systematists do but I can tell you that it happens regularly without any thought to environmentalism or politics. Take for example naming species of algae -- an inordinate amount of splitting has been done with species (and subspecies and varieties!). Can you imagine how such splitting could help stop development of *anything*? My experience is that biologists don't tend to do things like systematics for political reasons.
This is an odd post for the Slashdot crowd as systematics is a somewhat esoteric field even among biologists. The truth is that there have always been wars between the "splitters" and the "lumpers," the former happily naming lots of new species while the latter arguing against such foolishness. The thing is that the only people who care about such nuances are the systematists themselves and maybe ecologists who are trying to use their naming system to classify ecosystems, etc. What I've found maddening is that systematists often seemed to care little about the definition of "species." If you have a continuum of organisms with slightly varying morphology, where do you draw species lines? Can they interbreed? Lots of basic biology ignored in the mad dash to name everything. It's a hard problem.
... another article regarding Roundup, Monsanto, and lax oversight by US EPA...
Internal EPA Documents Show Scramble For Data On Monsanto’s Roundup Herbicide The documents raise questions about how and why regulators for years have failed to require robust testing on what is the world’s most widely-used weed killer. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Interesting point, but the UCB report is not "pure BS." Actually, it's a pretty difficult problem to address and economists have been working on it for years. Like previous studies, it appears that the UW study has its own methodological problems. You probably quit reading before you got to this point in that seattleweekly.com post:
"Berkeley’s Reich did not return a phone call seeking comment, but in a memo released Monday he blasted the UW report, saying it was full of red flags.
Among other things, the UW study did not include multisite businesses in the study, which the UW researchers argued produced a cleaner data set but which Berkeley researchers said meant a huge portion of Seattle’s low-wage work force was left out of the study. Reich also notes that many of the UW team’s most dire conclusions fall outside what even highly critical research would suggest."
“The unlikely UW estimate of large negative employment effects likely results from the problems noted above. Their findings are not credible and drawing inferences from the report are unwarranted,” Reich wrote."
Another reason the feds may be lowering the fluoride standard is that we're getting more in our food recently. In 2004 and 2005, EPA registered sulfuryl fluoride for control of insect pests in harvested foods such as cereal grains, dried fruits, nuts, cocoa beans, etc. Sulfuryl fluoride breaks down to fluoride when it is applied and can leave fluoride residues on treated food. More info here: http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/....
After installing the OTA update from 4.2.2 > 4.3 (August 2013), my Nexus 4 wouldn't boot. A quick scan of the interwebs found that lots of people had the same problem. I could load Cyanogenmod (based on 4.2.2) or the stock Google 4.2.2 image but other attempts to load 4.3 did not work. Eventually, I shipped back to Google and they gave me a new phone.
Professor Seralini replies to FCT journal over study retraction
Professor Gilles-Eric Séralini and his team have responded to the letter from A. Wallace Hayes, editor of Food and Chemical Toxicology (FCT), telling Prof Séralini that he intended to retract his study on NK603 maize and Roundup.
Here’s the retraction notice from Elsevier, the publisher of FCT: http://prn.to/1euTk2W Response by Prof GE Seralini and colleagues to A. Wallace Hayes, editor of Food and Chemical Toxicology 28 Nov 2013
We, authors of the paper published in FCT more than one year ago on the effects of Roundup and a Roundup-tolerant GMO (Séralini et al., 2012), and having answered to critics in the same journal (Séralini et al., 2013), do not accept as scientifically sound the debate on the fact that these papers are inconclusive because of the rat strain or the number of rats used. We maintain our conclusions. We already published some answers to the same critics in your Journal, which have not been answered (Séralini et al., 2013).
Rat strain
The same strain is used by the US national toxicology program to study the carcinogenicity and the chronic toxicity of chemicals (King-Herbert et al., 2010). Sprague Dawley rats are used routinely in such studies for toxicological and tumour-inducing effects, including those 90-day studies by Monsanto as basis for the approval of NK603 maize and other GM crops (Sprague Dawley rats did not came from Harlan but from Charles-River) (Hammond et al., 2004; Hammond et al., 2006a; Hammond et al., 2006b).
A brief, quick and still preliminary literature search of peer-reviewed journals revealed that Sprague Dawley rats were used in 36-month studies by (Voss et al., 2005) or in 24-month studies by (Hack et al., 1995), (Minardi et al., 2002), (Klimisch et al., 1997), (Gamez et al., 2007).Some of these studies have been published in Food and Chemical Toxicology.
Number of rats, OECD guidelines
OECD guidelines (408 for 90 day study, 452 chronic toxicity and 453 combined carcinogenicity/chronic toxicity study) always asked for 20 animals per group (both in 1981 and 2009 guidelines) although the measurement of biochemical parameters can be performed on 10 rats, as indicated. We did not perform a carcinogenesis study, which would not have been adopted at first, but a long-term chronic full study, 10 rats are sufficient for that at a biochemical level according to norms and we have measured such a number of parameters! The disturbance of sexual hormones or other parameters are sufficient in themselves in our case to interpret a serious effect after one year. The OPLS-DA statistical method we published is one of the best adapted. For tumours and deaths, the chronology and number of tumours per animal have to be taken into account. Any sign should be regarded as important for a real risk study. Monsanto itself measured only 10 rats of the same strain per group on 20 to conclude that the same GM maize was safe after 3 months (Hammond et al., 2004).
The statistical analysis should not be done with historical data first, the comparison is falsified, thus 50 rats per group is useless
The use of historical data falsifies health risk assessments because the diet is contaminated by dibenzo-p-dioxins and dibenzofurans (Schecter et al., 1996), mercury (Weiss et al., 2005), cadmium and chromium among other heavy metals in a range of doses that altered mouse liver and lung gene expression and confounds genomic analyses (Kozul et al., 2008). They also contained pesticides or plasticizers released by cages or from water sources (Howdeshell et al., 2003). Historical
A member of the Academy of Sciences plans to publish a demolition of Séralini's critics, while Corinne Lepage MEP warns that issues about GMO safety will not go away.
Séralini and GMOs: A truly disturbing study Sophie Fabrégat actu-environnement.com, 28 Nov 2013 GMWatch translation of French original at http://bit.ly/1987Rxq
The journal Food and Chemical Toxicology could retract the article Gilles Eric Séralini on NK603 maize and the Roundup, published in September 2012. This reopens the debate on the assessment of long-term risks of GMO plants.
During an emergency press conference in the European Parliament this Thursday, November 27 [GMW: should be 28], Gilles Eric Séralini, the author of the controversial study on the long-term risks of maize NK 603 and its associated herbicide, denounced the withdrawal by the journal of his article revealing the results of this study. Originally released in September 2012, this article was pointing to the toxicity to rats of transgenic maize NK603 and its associated herbicide, Roundup, both produced by Monsanto.
On Tuesday, November 26, the scientist received a letter signed by the chief editor of the magazine, asking him to withdraw his article. The reason? "No fraud or manipulation of data" were detected by the reviewers, but "the results presented are inconclusive and therefore do not reach the threshold of the publication".
Yet, says Professor Séralini, many exchanges took place before publication of his article, over several months. The editor recognizes that "the problem of the low number of animals had been identified during the initial peer-review process" but the article "still had merit despite its limitations". It was published, sparking intense controversy and heated debate between advocates and detractors. The scientific quality was the focus of discussions.
The journal gave in to pressure?
Why this reversal today? Due to pressure from industry, denounced in turn Joël Spiroux, President of Criigen (Committee for Independent Research and Information on Genetic Engineering); Corinne Lepage MEP; Paul Deheuvels, statistician member of the Academy of Sciences; and François Veillerette, President of Future Generations, who all came in support of the researcher. For Gilles-Eric Séralini, the demand addressed to him was related to "the arrival on FCT's editorial board of Richard Goodman, a biologist who worked for several years at Monsanto," between 1997 and 2004.
The scientist scans the arguments of the publisher. The strain and the number of rats used in the two-year study are insufficient? Yet these are the same rats used by Monsanto to prove the safety of its products, Séralini replies. He goes even further, stating that an article presenting the results of a study demonstrating the safety of Monsanto NK603 were published in 2004 by the magazine, while the data of the study are "fraudulent", since the reference groups [ie control groups] are fed with seeds contaminated by GMOs and pesticides," he says.
The statistician Paul Deheuvels says that he is surprised "that on the one hand this study is rejected, while the criticisms that are made could be made to the original study of Monsanto since Séralini copied the structure of this experiment". This member of the Academy of Sciences [Deheuvels] announced the publication, by the end of the year, of an article demolishing point by point the criticisms leveled at the team of Professor Séralini. For him, this study is "truly innovative. The data are very significant. This is a pilot study which must be confirmed or refuted. But given the significance of the data, I doubt it will be overturned."
For an assessment of long-term risks of GMOs
Finally, François Veillerette recalled that there are no studies on the chronic effe
ENSSER (European Network of Scientists for Social and Environmental Responsibility) Comments on the Retraction of the Séralini et al. 2012 Study
Journal's retraction of rat feeding paper is a travesty of science and looks like a bow to industry
Elsevier's journal Food and Chemical Toxicology has retracted the paper by Prof. Gilles-Eric Séralini's group which found severe toxic effects (including liver congestions and necrosis and kidney nephropathies), increased tumor rates and higher mortality in rats fed Monsanto's genetically modified NK603 maize and/or the associated herbicide Roundup[1]. The arguments of the journal's editor for the retraction, however, violate not only the criteria for retraction to which the journal itself subscribes, but any standards of good science. Worse, the names of the reviewers who came to the conclusion that the paper should be retracted, have not been published. Since the retraction is a wish of many people with links to the GM industry, the suspicion arises that it is a bow of science to industry. ENSSER points out, therefore, that this retraction is a severe blow to the credibility and independence of science, indeed a travesty of science.
Inconclusive results claimed as reason for withdrawal
Elsevier, the publisher of Food and Chemical Toxicology, has published a statement[2] saying that the journal's editor-in-chief, Dr. A. Wallace Hayes, "found no evidence of fraud or intentional misrepresentation of the data". The statement mentions only a single reason for the retraction, namely that "the results presented (while not incorrect) are inconclusive". According to Hayes, the low number of rats and the tumour susceptibility of the rat strain used do not allow definitive conclusions. Now there are guidelines for retractions in scientific publishing, set out by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)[3]. Inconclusiveness of research results is not one of the grounds for retraction contained in these guidelines. The journal Food and Chemical Toxicology is a member of COPE[4]. 'Conclusive' results are rare in science, and certainly not to be decided by one editor and a secret team of persons using undisclosed criteria and methods. Independent science would cease to exist if this were to be an accepted mode of procedure.
Séralini paper a chronic toxicity study, not a full-scale carcinogenicity study
Most notably, Séralini and his co-authors did not draw any definitive conclusions in the paper in the first place; they simply reported their observations and phrased their conclusions carefully, cognizant of their uncertainties. This is because the paper is a chronic toxicity study and not a full-scale carcinogenicity study, which would require a higher number of rats. The authors did not intend to look specifically for tumours, but still found increased tumour rates. Secondly, both of Hayes's arguments (the number of rats and their tumour susceptibility) were considered by the peer reviewers of the journal, who decided they formed no objection to publication. Thirdly, these two arguments have been discussed at length in the journal following the publication of the paper and have been refuted by the authors of the paper and other experts. Higher numbers of animals are only required in this type of safety studies to avoid missing toxic effects (a 'false negative' result), but the study found pronounced toxic effects and a first indication of possible carcinogenic effects. The Sprague-Dawley strain of rat which was used, is the commonly used standard for this type of research. For these reasons, the statistical significance of the biochemical data was endorsed by statistics experts. The biochemical data confirm the toxic effects such as those on liver and kidney, which are serious enough by themselves. The tumours and mortality rates are observations which need to be confirmed by a specific carcinogenicity study with higher numbers of rats; in view of public food safety, it is not wise to simply ignore them. Unpleasant result
Umm, actually I've done all those things. On a regular basis. Commuting all year long in Michigan (down to -5 F) and in California where it regularly gets > 100 F. Rain is not a problem. It's really not that hard, in fact you'd be surprised how many people are able to ride in what you consider impossible weather. It's simply a matter of dressing properly and using some common sense. Americans are soft, spoiled by car-centric thinking...
TFA mentions that Washington state has a ballot initiative to label genetically engineered foods. Perhaps more importantly, Connecticut just passed a labeling law (http://grist.org/news/connecticut-will-label-gmos-if-you-do-too/).
The Connecticut bill includes a crucial requirement: the labeling requirement won’t actually go into effect until similar legislation is passed by at least four other states, one of which borders Connecticut.
Also note that 37 labeling proposals have been introduced in 21 states so far this year.
Weighed myself this morning and am the same as I was in college (ca. 1980). I ride a bike to work every day, all year long. 35 miles (58 km) round trip. It takes about an hour longer than driving. So, I get two hours workout for an hour's time. Yeah, I live in California but I rode all year long in Michigan and Colorado. You just need to dress right...
Besides, knowing California, the law will probably require a prominent label that says, "Warning: This product contains genetically modified food. Some genetically modified food is known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm."
Not necessarily.
In California, the state requires Proposition 65 warning labels on anything that is known to cause cancer (http://oehha.ca.gov/prop65.html). You see these warnings everywhere you go here -- on buildings, gas stations, etc. Everyone just ignores them. Otherwise, you'd basically have to stay home. Labeling genetically engineered food may turn out to have the same effect. If you see the warning on practically every food label are you going to quit eating? Of course, you could shop at a natural food store or buy organic but will the average Joe or Jane go to that trouble?
RoundUp, last I checked, was an herbicide, not a pesticide.
Actually herbicides are a class of pesticides formulated to kill weeds. Pesticides are a broad category of "economic poisons" which kill pests. Other kinds of pesticides include:
> We have a hypothesis so we want people to panic and give us funding so we can actually see if there is a direct relationship > between Colony Collapse Disorder
If you have been following the colony collapse story, you would already know that many entomologists suspect neonicotinoids as a possible part of the problem. Since pollination is a huge deal for agriculture, a lot of people really want to know the answer to CCD so it's not necessary to conjure up weird hypotheses to get funding. If you read any of the articles, you would also know that respected entomologists reviewing the papers thought they were well done.
"Antibiotics have been used in animal feed for about 50 years ever since the discovery not only as an anti-microbial agent, but also as a growth-promoting agent and improvement in performance...."
The best way to select for antibiotic resistant bugs (on humans or any other animal) is to continually subject them to an antibiotic-filled environment (hospitals and farms). The story of resistant bacteria jumping from host to host, from farm to people vice versa, across the ocean, etc. doesn't seem particularly surprising. There are plenty of examples of bacteria & viruses moving between species. And, with global trade and travel, it's just a matter of time before diseases spread all over.
Antibiotics are like pesticides for the body. There are costs and benefits. Integrated pest management says that you should not prophylactically spray pesticides just in case you might get pests. You need to know whether you have economically damaging levels of the pest. Indiscriminate spraying leads to resistant insect pests or plant pathogens. Likewise, it's not wise to treat any animal with antibiotics without diagnosis of a disease. There might be short term gains but in the long run, you and everyone else loses with resistant pests...
Recently I had to deal with Apple's App Store. Our agency's purchasing people had no idea how to handle the App Store as the purchase has to be done from the user's computer. I spoke with an Apple government rep and he admitted that things are not set up for companies unless you're buying at least 30 (?) of something. Our purchasing folks ended up giving me the department credit card (now, there's trust!) and let me make the purchase from my cubicle. Not that hard to deal with, but certainly not standard procedure...
Slashdot Mirror
The shortage of doctors in the US may be, in part, to blame for their long hours and burnout. Their professional organizations have limited the number of medical school and residency slots, which partly explains how they're paid about twice as much as those in other developed countries. Given that a large majority of freshmen entering US universities have pre-med aspirations, there is no lack of potential doctors in the US. More reading here:
The problem of doctors’ salaries
https://www.politico.com/agend...
Sure, you'll need a shower at work if you ride any significant distance or in bad weather. And yeah, riding a bike is exercise. If you don't like sweating, it's probably not for you. I have friends who drive hours on the weekends to do wild adventures in the mountains, often involving some discomfort. Maybe it's hard to imagine, but adventure can be fun. That's the way I see it when I take off in bad weather. If you haven't been to Copenhagen or Amsterdam, you'd be surprised that the roads are *packed* with bike commuters, even when the weather gets a bit dicey.
And, not sure where you live, but I've been riding 10,000 miles/year for 25 years, in three states, in lots of cities and places, and I've never had any motorist *try* to hit me. I usually favor the same thoroughfares that you'd take in a car (if they have bike lanes) because it's faster and more efficient. Residential streets can be more dangerous with people pulling out of driveways, kids running into the streets, etc.
Yeah, I hear you. 95% humidity is a problem even when it's 26 C. That's part of the reason I moved to a less humid climate. But, I ride even when it's over 43 C (110 F) here (usually 20% humidity). It's surprisingly comfortable when it's really hot as the sweat evaporates immediately. For riding less than an hour, it's also not a problem well below freezing. You just have to have the right clothes. Of course, I have a place to shower on both ends.
... because I'm not. I've been commuting by bicycle for the last 20 years. It's like being on vacation while getting to work -- the best part of my day! It's a bit over 20 miles (33 km) each way so I'm on the bike for about two hours/day. What's great is that I get two hours of workout in per day for essentially one hour of time (it takes 30 minutes to drive each way). The thing most motorist don't understand is riding a bike is often faster than driving. On surface streets, it's almost always faster to ride a bike during commute hours. On average, cars go about 13 mph (21 kph) in cities, which is a very easy speed to ride a bike. Yeah, I live in California, but I've commuted year 'round in Michigan too, so there...
If you're writing for a lay audience, no one cares. If you're writing for an academic audience, you need to use plural verbs (think: data = numbers) as this rule is deeply entrenched in academia. I don't see this changing any time soon.
You may like to tack some political agenda onto what systematists do but I can tell you that it happens regularly without any thought to environmentalism or politics. Take for example naming species of algae -- an inordinate amount of splitting has been done with species (and subspecies and varieties!). Can you imagine how such splitting could help stop development of *anything*? My experience is that biologists don't tend to do things like systematics for political reasons.
This is an odd post for the Slashdot crowd as systematics is a somewhat esoteric field even among biologists. The truth is that there have always been wars between the "splitters" and the "lumpers," the former happily naming lots of new species while the latter arguing against such foolishness. The thing is that the only people who care about such nuances are the systematists themselves and maybe ecologists who are trying to use their naming system to classify ecosystems, etc. What I've found maddening is that systematists often seemed to care little about the definition of "species." If you have a continuum of organisms with slightly varying morphology, where do you draw species lines? Can they interbreed? Lots of basic biology ignored in the mad dash to name everything. It's a hard problem.
... another article regarding Roundup, Monsanto, and lax oversight by US EPA...
Internal EPA Documents Show Scramble For Data On Monsanto’s Roundup Herbicide
The documents raise questions about how and why regulators for years have failed to require robust testing on what is the world’s most widely-used weed killer. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Interesting point, but the UCB report is not "pure BS." Actually, it's a pretty difficult problem to address and economists have been working on it for years. Like previous studies, it appears that the UW study has its own methodological problems. You probably quit reading before you got to this point in that seattleweekly.com post:
"Berkeley’s Reich did not return a phone call seeking comment, but in a memo released Monday he blasted the UW report, saying it was full of red flags.
Among other things, the UW study did not include multisite businesses in the study, which the UW researchers argued produced a cleaner data set but which Berkeley researchers said meant a huge portion of Seattle’s low-wage work force was left out of the study. Reich also notes that many of the UW team’s most dire conclusions fall outside what even highly critical research would suggest."
“The unlikely UW estimate of large negative employment effects likely results from the problems noted above. Their findings are not credible and drawing inferences from the report are unwarranted,” Reich wrote."
The University of Washington study comes to a very different conclusion than a UC Berkeley report.
How a Rising Minimum Wage Affects Jobs in Seattle
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...
...considering that watching commercials makes you stupid...
Another reason the feds may be lowering the fluoride standard is that we're getting more in our food recently. In 2004 and 2005, EPA registered sulfuryl fluoride for control of insect pests in harvested foods such as cereal grains, dried fruits, nuts, cocoa beans, etc. Sulfuryl fluoride breaks down to fluoride when it is applied and can leave fluoride residues on treated food. More info here: http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/....
After installing the OTA update from 4.2.2 > 4.3 (August 2013), my Nexus 4 wouldn't boot. A quick scan of the interwebs found that lots of people had the same problem. I could load Cyanogenmod (based on 4.2.2) or the stock Google 4.2.2 image but other attempts to load 4.3 did not work. Eventually, I shipped back to Google and they gave me a new phone.
Here's the Seralini team response to FCT. Basically, Seralini is challenging them to also retract the Monsanto study (e.g., Hammond et al. 2004):
http://gmoseralini.org/professor-seralini-replies-to-fct-journal-over-study-retraction/
Professor Seralini replies to FCT journal over study retraction
Professor Gilles-Eric Séralini and his team have responded to the letter from A. Wallace Hayes, editor of Food and Chemical Toxicology (FCT), telling Prof Séralini that he intended to retract his study on NK603 maize and Roundup.
Here’s the retraction notice from Elsevier, the publisher of FCT: http://prn.to/1euTk2W
Response by Prof GE Seralini and colleagues to A. Wallace Hayes, editor of Food and Chemical Toxicology
28 Nov 2013
We, authors of the paper published in FCT more than one year ago on the effects of Roundup and a Roundup-tolerant GMO (Séralini et al., 2012), and having answered to critics in the same journal (Séralini et al., 2013), do not accept as scientifically sound the debate on the fact that these papers are inconclusive because of the rat strain or the number of rats used. We maintain our conclusions. We already published some answers to the same critics in your Journal, which have not been answered (Séralini et al., 2013).
Rat strain
The same strain is used by the US national toxicology program to study the carcinogenicity and the chronic toxicity of chemicals (King-Herbert et al., 2010). Sprague Dawley rats are used routinely in such studies for toxicological and tumour-inducing effects, including those 90-day studies by Monsanto as basis for the approval of NK603 maize and other GM crops (Sprague Dawley rats did not came from Harlan but from Charles-River) (Hammond et al., 2004; Hammond et al., 2006a; Hammond et al., 2006b).
A brief, quick and still preliminary literature search of peer-reviewed journals revealed that Sprague Dawley rats were used in 36-month studies by (Voss et al., 2005) or in 24-month studies by (Hack et al., 1995), (Minardi et al., 2002), (Klimisch et al., 1997), (Gamez et al., 2007).Some of these studies have been published in Food and Chemical Toxicology.
Number of rats, OECD guidelines
OECD guidelines (408 for 90 day study, 452 chronic toxicity and 453 combined carcinogenicity/chronic toxicity study) always asked for 20 animals per group (both in 1981 and 2009 guidelines) although the measurement of biochemical parameters can be performed on 10 rats, as indicated. We did not perform a carcinogenesis study, which would not have been adopted at first, but a long-term chronic full study, 10 rats are sufficient for that at a biochemical level according to norms and we have measured such a number of parameters! The disturbance of sexual hormones or other parameters are sufficient in themselves in our case to interpret a serious effect after one year. The OPLS-DA statistical method we published is one of the best adapted. For tumours and deaths, the chronology and number of tumours per animal have to be taken into account. Any sign should be regarded as important for a real risk study. Monsanto itself measured only 10 rats of the same strain per group on 20 to conclude that the same GM maize was safe after 3 months (Hammond et al., 2004).
The statistical analysis should not be done with historical data first, the comparison is falsified, thus 50 rats per group is useless
The use of historical data falsifies health risk assessments because the diet is contaminated by dibenzo-p-dioxins and dibenzofurans (Schecter et al., 1996), mercury (Weiss et al., 2005), cadmium and chromium among other heavy metals in a range of doses that altered mouse liver and lung gene expression and confounds genomic analyses (Kozul et al., 2008). They also contained pesticides or plasticizers released by cages or from water sources (Howdeshell et al., 2003). Historical
http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php/news/archive/2013/15189
A member of the Academy of Sciences plans to publish a demolition of Séralini's critics, while Corinne Lepage MEP warns that issues about GMO safety will not go away.
Séralini and GMOs: A truly disturbing study
Sophie Fabrégat
actu-environnement.com, 28 Nov 2013
GMWatch translation of French original at
http://bit.ly/1987Rxq
The journal Food and Chemical Toxicology could retract the article Gilles Eric Séralini on NK603 maize and the Roundup, published in September 2012. This reopens the debate on the assessment of long-term risks of GMO plants.
During an emergency press conference in the European Parliament this Thursday, November 27 [GMW: should be 28], Gilles Eric Séralini, the author of the controversial study on the long-term risks of maize NK 603 and its associated herbicide, denounced the withdrawal by the journal of his article revealing the results of this study. Originally released in September 2012, this article was pointing to the toxicity to rats of transgenic maize NK603 and its associated herbicide, Roundup, both produced by Monsanto.
On Tuesday, November 26, the scientist received a letter signed by the chief editor of the magazine, asking him to withdraw his article. The reason? "No fraud or manipulation of data" were detected by the reviewers, but "the results presented are inconclusive and therefore do not reach the threshold of the publication".
Yet, says Professor Séralini, many exchanges took place before publication of his article, over several months. The editor recognizes that "the problem of the low number of animals had been identified during the initial peer-review process" but the article "still had merit despite its limitations". It was published, sparking intense controversy and heated debate between advocates and detractors. The scientific quality was the focus of discussions.
The journal gave in to pressure?
Why this reversal today? Due to pressure from industry, denounced in turn Joël Spiroux, President of Criigen (Committee for Independent Research and Information on Genetic Engineering); Corinne Lepage MEP; Paul Deheuvels, statistician member of the Academy of Sciences; and François Veillerette, President of Future Generations, who all came in support of the researcher. For Gilles-Eric Séralini, the demand addressed to him was related to "the arrival on FCT's editorial board of Richard Goodman, a biologist who worked for several years at Monsanto," between 1997 and 2004.
The scientist scans the arguments of the publisher. The strain and the number of rats used in the two-year study are insufficient? Yet these are the same rats used by Monsanto to prove the safety of its products, Séralini replies. He goes even further, stating that an article presenting the results of a study demonstrating the safety of Monsanto NK603 were published in 2004 by the magazine, while the data of the study are "fraudulent", since the reference groups [ie control groups] are fed with seeds contaminated by GMOs and pesticides," he says.
The statistician Paul Deheuvels says that he is surprised "that on the one hand this study is rejected, while the criticisms that are made could be made to the original study of Monsanto since Séralini copied the structure of this experiment". This member of the Academy of Sciences [Deheuvels] announced the publication, by the end of the year, of an article demolishing point by point the criticisms leveled at the team of Professor Séralini. For him, this study is "truly innovative. The data are very significant. This is a pilot study which must be confirmed or refuted. But given the significance of the data, I doubt it will be overturned."
For an assessment of long-term risks of GMOs
Finally, François Veillerette recalled that there are no studies on the chronic effe
ENSSER (European Network of Scientists for Social and Environmental Responsibility)
Comments on the Retraction of the Séralini et al. 2012 Study
Journal's retraction of rat feeding paper is a travesty of science and looks like a bow to industry
Elsevier's journal Food and Chemical Toxicology has retracted the paper by Prof. Gilles-Eric Séralini's group which found severe toxic effects (including liver congestions and necrosis and kidney nephropathies), increased tumor rates and higher mortality in rats fed Monsanto's genetically modified NK603 maize and/or the associated herbicide Roundup[1]. The arguments of
the journal's editor for the retraction, however, violate not only the criteria for retraction to which the journal itself subscribes, but any standards of good science. Worse, the names of the reviewers who came to the conclusion that the paper should be retracted, have not been published. Since the retraction is a wish of many people with links to the GM industry, the suspicion arises that it is a bow of science to industry. ENSSER points out, therefore, that this retraction is a severe blow to the credibility and independence of science, indeed a travesty of science.
Inconclusive results claimed as reason for withdrawal
Elsevier, the publisher of Food and Chemical Toxicology, has published a statement[2] saying that the journal's editor-in-chief, Dr. A. Wallace Hayes, "found no evidence of fraud or intentional misrepresentation of the data". The statement mentions only a single reason for the retraction, namely that "the results presented (while not incorrect) are inconclusive". According to Hayes, the low number of rats and the tumour susceptibility of the rat strain used do not allow definitive conclusions. Now there are guidelines for retractions in scientific publishing, set out by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)[3]. Inconclusiveness of research results is not one of the grounds for retraction contained in these guidelines. The journal Food and Chemical Toxicology is a member of COPE[4]. 'Conclusive' results are rare in science, and certainly not to be decided by one editor and a secret team of persons using undisclosed criteria and methods. Independent science would cease to
exist if this were to be an accepted mode of procedure.
Séralini paper a chronic toxicity study, not a full-scale carcinogenicity study
Most notably, Séralini and his co-authors did not draw any definitive conclusions in the paper in the first place; they simply reported their observations and phrased their conclusions carefully, cognizant of their uncertainties. This is because the paper is a chronic toxicity study and not a full-scale carcinogenicity study, which would require a higher number of rats. The authors did not intend to look specifically for tumours, but still found increased tumour rates. Secondly, both of Hayes's arguments (the number of rats and their tumour susceptibility) were considered by the peer reviewers of the journal, who decided they formed no objection to publication. Thirdly, these two arguments have been discussed at length in the journal following the publication of the paper and have been refuted by the authors of the paper and other experts. Higher numbers of animals are only required in this type of safety studies to avoid missing toxic effects (a 'false negative' result), but the study found pronounced toxic effects and a first indication of possible carcinogenic effects. The Sprague-Dawley strain of rat which was used, is the commonly used standard for this type of research. For these reasons, the statistical significance of the biochemical data was endorsed by statistics experts. The biochemical data confirm the toxic effects such as those on liver and kidney, which are serious enough by themselves. The tumours and mortality rates are observations which need to be confirmed by a specific carcinogenicity study with higher numbers of rats; in view of public food safety, it is not wise to simply ignore them. Unpleasant result
Umm, actually I've done all those things. On a regular basis. Commuting all year long in Michigan (down to -5 F) and in California where it regularly gets > 100 F. Rain is not a problem. It's really not that hard, in fact you'd be surprised how many people are able to ride in what you consider impossible weather. It's simply a matter of dressing properly and using some common sense. Americans are soft, spoiled by car-centric thinking...
TFA mentions that Washington state has a ballot initiative to label genetically engineered foods. Perhaps more importantly, Connecticut just passed a labeling law (http://grist.org/news/connecticut-will-label-gmos-if-you-do-too/).
The Connecticut bill includes a crucial requirement: the labeling requirement won’t actually go into effect until similar legislation is passed by at least four other states, one of which borders Connecticut.
Also note that 37 labeling proposals have been introduced in 21 states so far this year.
Weighed myself this morning and am the same as I was in college (ca. 1980). I ride a bike to work every day, all year long. 35 miles (58 km) round trip. It takes about an hour longer than driving. So, I get two hours workout for an hour's time. Yeah, I live in California but I rode all year long in Michigan and Colorado. You just need to dress right...
Besides, knowing California, the law will probably require a prominent label that says, "Warning: This product contains genetically modified food. Some genetically modified food is known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm."
Not necessarily.
In California, the state requires Proposition 65 warning labels on anything that is known to cause cancer (http://oehha.ca.gov/prop65.html). You see these warnings everywhere you go here -- on buildings, gas stations, etc. Everyone just ignores them. Otherwise, you'd basically have to stay home. Labeling genetically engineered food may turn out to have the same effect. If you see the warning on practically every food label are you going to quit eating? Of course, you could shop at a natural food store or buy organic but will the average Joe or Jane go to that trouble?
RoundUp, last I checked, was an herbicide, not a pesticide.
Actually herbicides are a class of pesticides formulated to kill weeds. Pesticides are a broad category of "economic poisons" which kill pests. Other kinds of pesticides include:
insecticides (insects)
fungicides (fungus, typically plant diseases)
nematicides (nematodes)
rodenticides (rodents)
> We have a hypothesis so we want people to panic and give us funding so we can actually see if there is a direct relationship
> between Colony Collapse Disorder
If you have been following the colony collapse story, you would already know that many entomologists suspect neonicotinoids as a possible part of the problem. Since pollination is a huge deal for agriculture, a lot of people really want to know the answer to CCD so it's not necessary to conjure up weird hypotheses to get funding. If you read any of the articles, you would also know that respected entomologists reviewing the papers thought they were well done.
"Antibiotics have been used in animal feed for about 50 years ever since the discovery not only as an anti-microbial agent, but also as a growth-promoting agent and improvement in performance...."
The best way to select for antibiotic resistant bugs (on humans or any other animal) is to continually subject them to an antibiotic-filled environment (hospitals and farms). The story of resistant bacteria jumping from host to host, from farm to people vice versa, across the ocean, etc. doesn't seem particularly surprising. There are plenty of examples of bacteria & viruses moving between species. And, with global trade and travel, it's just a matter of time before diseases spread all over.
Antibiotics are like pesticides for the body. There are costs and benefits. Integrated pest management says that you should not prophylactically spray pesticides just in case you might get pests. You need to know whether you have economically damaging levels of the pest. Indiscriminate spraying leads to resistant insect pests or plant pathogens. Likewise, it's not wise to treat any animal with antibiotics without diagnosis of a disease. There might be short term gains but in the long run, you and everyone else loses with resistant pests...
Recently I had to deal with Apple's App Store. Our agency's purchasing people had no idea how to handle the App Store as the purchase has to be done from the user's computer. I spoke with an Apple government rep and he admitted that things are not set up for companies unless you're buying at least 30 (?) of something. Our purchasing folks ended up giving me the department credit card (now, there's trust!) and let me make the purchase from my cubicle. Not that hard to deal with, but certainly not standard procedure...
Actually, Steve Ballmer is not mentioned in TFA. The quote is attributed to "Nate McLemore, general manager of the Microsoft Health Solutions Group."
But, the irony stands...