"The Largest Diet Experiment In History"

by Natasha Chart

categories: Corporate Kneebiters, Food Safety, Gene Modification, Health, Policy

Published June 05, 2009 @ 12:00PM PT

That's how Dr. Don Lotter describes GMOs in two new papers on genetic food crop science, as summarized by Bonnie Powell at the Ethicurean.

The first paper, The Genetic Engineering of Food and the Failure of Science – Part 1: The Development of a Flawed Enterprise, covers the flawed research and scientific assumptions that have produced genetically modified food crops. In it, he points to research revealing that transgenic yields are no better than that of the crops they replaced, eliminating their main claim to usefulness. He explains how the very imprecise art of genetic engineering actually works, and highlights the total lack of oversight and caution in the roll out of these products, as well as their unwanted side effects.

But the main message is simple; transgenic seed companies have no idea what they're doing:

... The biotechnology industry lobbied to have foods derived from genetically engineered plants classified as no different from food from conventionally bred plants. this was known as the policy, or doctrine, of ‘substantial equivalence’. there was resistance, however, from scientists within the FDA to the policy of non-regulation and substantial equivalence of transgenic foods. A 2004 paper (Freese and Schubert, 2004) showed that there were internal FDA memos documenting an overwhelming consensus among the agency’s scientists that transgenic crops can have unpredictable, hard-to-detect side-effects – allergens, toxins, nutritional effects, new diseases. they had urged their superiors to require long-term studies. According to the authors of the paper, these communications were ignored.

... Pollen migration and seed escape from grain transportation resulting in gene flow from transgenic crops to non-transgenic crops and to wild relatives of transgenic crops are issues of substantial concern (Chapela and Quist, 2001; eastham and Sweet, 2002; Mellon and rissler, 2003; Yoshimura et al., 2006; Caruso, 2007b; Heinemann, 2007; Dalton, 2008). Such transgene transfer and introgression has led to stable incorporation (six years) of herbicide resistance transgenes into wild or weedy relatives and to herbicide-resistant hybrid weeds (Légère, 2005; Warwick et al., 2007) as well as Bt-expressing hybrid plants in the wild (Vacher et al., 2004).

... there are reports from India of the deaths of hundreds of livestock in a number of incidents, all after traditional grazing of post-harvest cotton fields, in this case newly introduced transgenic Bt cotton (Ho, 2006; Mohabbat, 2007). Bt corn has also been implicated in mass allergic reactions in humans to wind-blown pollen from the transgenic crop in the Philippines. the victims blood turned up antibodies to the Bt toxin (Aglionby, 2004). there are reports from India that Bt cotton is associated with allergic reactions in cotton handlers (Gupta et al., 2005).

... Commenting on the lack of safety data on transgenic foods in the Journal of Medicinal
Food, David Schubert, head of the Cellular neurobiology Laboratory at the Salk
Institute in California, wrote in 2008:

"There are, in fact, no data comparing the food safety profiles of GM versus conventional breeding, and the ubiquitous argument that ‘since there is no evidence that GM products make people sick, they are safe’ is both illogical and false. There are, again, simply no data or even valid assays to support
this contention. Without proper epidemiological studies, most types of harm will not be detected, and no such studies have been conducted (Schubert, 2008)." ...

Read the whole thing. Please. It's worth it.

The second paper, The Genetic Engineering of Food and the Failure of Science – Part 2: Academic Capitalism and the Loss of Scientific Integrity, covers the institutional takeover and corruption spawned of the success of the transgenic food industry.

It's also worth reading, but this paragraph is about the best condensation of all the problems inherent in the current approach to biotechnology:

... The New York Times, in a 2009 article ‘Crop scientists say biotechnology seed companies are thwarting research’ (Pollact, 2009) reported that 26 crop scientists submitted a statement to the US environmental Protection Agency protesting the agreements they are required to sign in order to acquire transgenic seed, which limit their ability to do needed research on transgenic crops. the result, they write, is that ‘no truly independent research can be legally conducted on many critical questions regarding the technology’. the scientists requested that their names not be used as they feared repercussions that would affect their careers. ...

As I've said many times, I'm rather fond of science and think it can be a force for tremendous good. I wanted to make it my career before one of my favorite professors and a good friend both encouraged me to consider pursuing my passion for political activism. After much thought, I came to believe that my interest in scientific issue areas outside the usual political discussions could bring a useful perspective, whatever one more voice might be worth.

So it is with reluctance that I criticize the application of scientific research in the case of industrial agriculture as falling far short of its aspirations and stated goals. I would like very much to be in a 'better living through chemistry' sort of world, but a person has to face facts.

As much as we've learned in the last few decades, we haven't figured out how to really improve on the diets we spent thousands of years field testing for safety and health promotion. We can grow more of certain foods, but we're not yet capable of growing better foods.

There's not necessarily any shame in not knowing something, or in making mistakes in the quest for more knowledge. But the willful refusal to admit that you're wrong even as evidence mounts that you're causing serious damage - that's just negligent, and it's a problem.