Very Important: Franken Foods, health fears over secret study into GM food

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GMW: health fears over secret study into GM food

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Mon, 23 May 2005 18:28:21 +0100

 

 

 

 

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1.Revealed: health fears over secret study into GM food

2.The GM lobby must not play politics with our health

3.When fed to rats it affected their kidneys and blood counts. So what

might it do to humans?

We think you should be told

4.How the technology works, and what it promises

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1.Revealed: health fears over secret study into GM food

Rats fed GM corn due for sale in Britain developed abnormalities in

blood and kidneys

By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor

Independent on Sunday, 22 May 2005

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/story.jsp?story=640430

 

Rats fed on a diet rich in genetically modified corn developed

abnormalities to internal organs and changes to their blood, raising

fears that

human health could be affected by eating GM food.

 

The Independent on Sunday can today reveal details of secret research

carried out by Monsanto, the GM food giant, which shows that rats fed

the modified corn had smaller kidneys and variations in the composition

of their blood.

 

According to the confidential 1,139-page report, these health problems

were absent from another batch of rodents fed non-GM food as part of

the research project.

 

The disclosures come as European countries, including Britain, prepare

to vote on whether the GM-modified corn should go on sale to the

public. A vote last week by the European Union failed to secure agreement

over whether the product should be sold here, after Britain and nine

other

countries voted in favour.

 

However, the disclosure of the health effects on the Monsanto rats has

intensified the row over whether the corn is safe to eat without

further research. Doctors said the changes in the blood of the rodents

could

indicate that the rat''s immune system had been damaged or that a

disorder such as a tumour had grown and the system was mobilising to

fight

it.

 

Dr Vyvyan Howard, a senior lecturer on human anatomy and cell biology

at Liverpool University, called for the publication of the full study,

saying the summary gave " prima facie cause for concern " .

 

Dr Michael Antoniu, an expert in molecular genetics at Guy''s Hospital

Medical School, described the findings as " very worrying from a medical

point of view " , adding: " I have been amazed at the number of

significant differences they found [in the rat experiment]. "

 

Although Monsanto last night dismissed the abnormalities in rats as

meaningless and due to chance, reflecting normal variations between rats,

a senior British government source said ministers were so worried by

the findings that they had called for further information.

 

Environmentalists will see the findings as vindication of British

research seven years ago, which suggested that rats that ate GM potatoes

suffered damage to their health. That research, which was roundly

denounced by ministers and the British scientific establishment, was

halted and

Dr Arpad Pusztai, the scientist behind the controversial findings, was

forced into retirement amid a huge row over the claim.

 

Dr Pusztai reported a " huge list of significant differences " between

rats fed GM and conventional corn, saying the results strongly indicate

that eating significant amounts of it can damage health. The new study

is into a corn, codenamed MON 863, which has been modified by Monsanto

to protect itself against corn rootworm, which the company describes as

" one of the most pernicious pests affecting maize crops around the

world " .

 

Now, however, any decision to allow the corn to be marketed in the UK

will cause widespread alarm. The full details of the rat research are

included in the main report, which Monsanto refuses to release on the

grounds that " it contains confidential business information which

could be

of commercial use to our competitors " .

 

A Monsanto spokesman said yesterday: " If any such well-known

anti-biotech critics had doubts about the credibility of these studies

they

should have raised them with the regulators. After all, MON 863 isn''t

new,

having been approved to be as safe as conventional maize by nine other

global authorities since 2003. "

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2.The GM lobby must not play politics with our health

Independent on Sunday, 22 May 2005

 

Imagine that a leading scientist in his field carried out official,

government-funded research that gave reason to believe that 60 per

cent of

our processed foods might threaten human health. In any civilised

country, research would be organised while precautionary action would be

taken to inform the public in a non-alarmist way and to minimise any

risk...

 

Article Length: 410 words (approx.) - subscription necessary

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3.When fed to rats it affected their kidneys and blood counts. So what

might it do to humans?

We think you should be told

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/story.jsp?story=640402

 

The secret research we reveal today raises the potential health risks

of genetically modified foods.

 

Here, environment editor Geoffrey Lean, who has led this paper''s

campaign on GM technology for the past six years, examines the new

evidence.

And he asks the questions that must concern us all: why is Monsanto,

the company trying to sell GM corn to Britain and Europe, so reluctant to

publish the full results of its alarming tests on lab rats? Why are our

leaders so keen to buy the unproven technology against the wishes of

consumers? And why is the man who first raised these concerns six years

ago shunned by the scientific establishment and his former political

masters?

 

Independent on Sunday, 22 May 2005

 

One blustery day six years ago - at the start of The Independent on

Sunday''s successful GM campaign - I travelled to Aberdeen to meet a man

who had been sent to Coventry.

 

Dr Arpad Pusztai was then the bogeyman of the British scientific

establishment. No less a figure than Lord May - then the Government''s

chief

scientific adviser, now president of the Royal Society - had accused

him of violating " every canon of scientific rectitude " , and ministers and

top scientists had queued up to denounce him.

 

His crime had been to find disturbing evidence that the GM potatoes he

was studying damaged the immune systems, brains, livers and kidneys of

rats - and to mention it briefly in a television programme before his

research was completed and published.

 

His punishment was draconian; his research was stopped, his team

disbanded and his data confiscated (see box). He was ostracised by his

colleagues, forced into retirement and gagged for seven months,

forbidden to

put his case. I was the first journalist to interview him at length,

spending six hours with him.

 

I arrived, very sceptical, at his semi-detached house in the granite

city, where he had worked for the prestigious Rowett Research Institute

for 37 years, with two handwritten pages of hostile questions. But I was

surprised by what I found.

 

For a start, he proved to be no wild-eyed maverick, but the world''s

acknowledged top authority in his field, a small, vital, precise man with

270 papers to his name and a self-deprecating sense of humour. Far from

a headline-seeker, he was evidently a bewildered stranger to public

controversy, cautious in his language, anxious to cross every scientific

" t " before venturing a conclusion.

 

Perhaps most surprising of all he turned out to be, in his words, " a

very enthusiastic supporter " of genetic modification who had fully

expected his experiments - approved and funded by the Government - to

give it

a " clean bill of health " .

 

" I was totally taken aback, " he told me. " I was absolutely confident

that I wouldn''t find anything. But the longer I spent on the

experiments, the more uneasy I became. "

 

One by one he answered my questions. I can''t say I was totally

convinced, but I was persuaded of his integrity, and that he deserved a

hearing. Grey-faced with the strain - and just recovering from a minor

heart

attack that he put down to it - he spoke of the " intolerable burden " of

being attacked by the scientific community, without being able to

defend himself, of being " vilified and totally destroyed " .

 

As we walked to a nearby shop to photocopy some of his papers, he told

me that he believed his troubles had started with a phone call to his

employers, the Rowett Research Institute, from Downing Street. That

really did seem incredible at the time - though rather less so now after

the David Kelly affair and the revelations of the Hutton and Butler

inquiries.

 

Some supporting evidence for his suspicion since seems to have emerged

(see box). But whatever the truth about that, this was a time when the

Government was determined to press full-speed ahead with GM technology

- and to rubbish him.

 

Tony Blair had just put his full weight behind modified foods, letting

it be known that he would happily eat them himself. Jack Cunningham,

then in charge of the Government''s GM strategy, announced that Dr

Pusztai had been " comprehensively discredited " . His office drew up secret

plans - revealed in The Independent on Sunday - to enlist " eminent

scientists " to attack him and " trail the Government''s key messages " .

 

Worse, the Government refused to undertake the normal scientific

process of repeating Dr Pusztai''s experiments in order to either

confirm or

disprove his findings. Top officials at the then Ministry of

Agriculture, Fisheries and Food told me that it would be " wrong " ,

" immoral " and

" a waste of money " to do so - an extraordinary attitude given the

potential threat to public health, should he be right.

 

In the end all these official efforts were in vain. The public settled

the argument simply by refusing to eat GM food. Before the Pusztai

controversy, 60 per cent of processed foods on supermarket shelves

contained GM material. After it the big chains fell over themselves to

remove

them in the face of the consumer revolt. Eighty-four per cent of Britons

still say they will not eat them and even the most pro-GM ministers

admit there is no market for them.

 

Attention then moved away from the health effects of GM food to the

infinitely stronger evidence emerging on the environmental impact of GM

crops. Study after study - reported in our pages - showed that genes

escaped from them to breed superweeds and to contaminate organic and

conventional produce. Finally, the Government''s own trials - widely

expected

to support GM crops - found that growing most of them damaged wildlife.

 

The biotech companies - in stark contrast to their confidence before

the start of our campaign - abandoned their plans to grow GM crops in

Britain. Six years ago they were awaiting imminent government approval to

grow 53 different varieties of them. Not one of these applications now

remains, and no new one is expected to be made in the near future. The

Independent on Sunday''s campaign has been widely praised for its key

role in this volte-face.

 

Now, the focus is swinging back to GM foods - and their safety. The

European Commission is pressing for more and more of them to be

allowed to

be sold in Britain and the rest of the EU. European governments are

almost evenly divided for and against them and, in the resulting

deadlock,

the commission is using a loophole in the democratic process to nod

them through one by one.

 

The latest modified crop to come up for approval for use in food is MON

863, a modified corn already grown and eaten in the US and Canada. On

Thursday officials from EU governments were deadlocked again, making it

likely that the commission will again wave it through later in the

year.

 

It is particularly controversial because, as we report on page one

today, secret research carried out on rats by Monsanto - which owns the

corn - suggests that eating it may damage their health.

 

It indicates that rats fed relatively high levels of MON 863 had

smaller kidneys and suffered potentially more harmful blood chemistry

than

those on a conventional diet. Monsanto dismisses the results as

meaningless and due to chance, reflecting normal variations between rats.

 

Environmentalists, however, will claim that it partially vindicates Dr

Pusztai''s research, and Dr Beatrix Tappeser, a top German GM official,

says that it gives " some reason for concern " .

 

Apart from any possible implications for public health, the research

data - as in Dr Pusztai''s experiments - are important because they

could, if found to be valid, challenge the whole system by which GM foods

are approved.

 

Regulatory bodies assume that if GM crops are similar to their

conventional counterparts in a restricted number of ways - such as the

amounts

of fibre and fatty acids, protein and carbohydrates, vitamins and

minerals they contain - then the chemical and genetic differences that do

exist between them will not make them more toxic. They pronounce them

" substantially equivalent " to non-GM ones and wave them through.

 

The official European Food Safety Authority, the Food Standards Agency

in Britain and other regulatory agencies back Monsanto''s view - as

does most weighty scientific opinion. It would be extremely foolhardy to

disregard their judgements and jump to alarming conclusions.

 

But it would be equally foolish to dismiss the few dissident voices.

For I have found, time after time, in covering controversial

environmental issues over the past 35 years, that lone scientists,

stubbornly

raising concerns in the teeth of entrenched opposition from industry

and the

scientific establishment, have often proved to be right.

 

Professor Derek Bryce-Smith of Reading University was ridiculed and

marginalised for decades after warning of the dangers of lead in

petrol in

the 1950s - but it is now being phased out all over the world. The now

much honoured Alice Stewart came under similar attack for first warning

of the hazards of radiation to the unborn child. And I well remember

one of Britain''s top officials solemnly informing me a quarter of a

century ago that Dr Irving Selikoff, who did more than anyone to sound

the

alarm on asbestos - now one of the main causes of premature death in

Britain - was " evil " .

 

I have sat in the august halls of the Royal Society and been told that

acid rain caused by pollution did not exist. I have been lectured by

one of Britain''s top meteorologists - now travelling the world to warn

about global warming - that the climate never changes, and that human

activities could not possibly cause it to do so. And who can forget the

constant reassurances from the political and scientific establishments

that BSE could not spread to people?

 

A few weeks ago my teenage daughter asked me to test her on her

environmental chemistry exam revision. As I checked her answers

against the

text book, I surprised her by letting out the occasional chuckle at its

dry contents. For there, presented as indisputable fact, were many of

these once highly controversial concerns raised by dissident scientists

and roundly dismissed by the weight of scientific opinion.

 

It is still a long shot, and the balance of probability is still

against it, but it is not impossible that in 25 years today''s apparently

alarmist concerns about the dangers of GM food will have found their way

into a new generation of text books. If so, Dr Pusztai will finally come

in from the cold.

 

The lone doctor who first exposed the risks to humans

 

It was a startling and sensational claim - a claim aired on prime-time

national television. Rats fed on genetically modified potatoes had

suffered serious damage to their immune systems and shown stunted growth.

 

This result, said Dr Arpad Pusztai, the scientist involved, was

immensely worrying, since it raised substantial questions about the

safety of

GM food. " I find it is very unfair to use our fellow citizens as guinea

pigs, " he remarked.

 

Dr Pusztai''s claims - broadcast by World in Action, one of the

nation''s most respected current affairs programmes - provoked one of

the most

intense scientific rows of the decade.

 

The backlash was orchestrated by ministers, led by Jack Cunningham,

then New Labour''s " Cabinet enforcer " , and by the British scientific

establishment.

 

Dr Pusztai, pictured, was a world authority on the subject, and his

remarks, in August 1998, had come at a crucial time for Tony Blair. It

ignited a public debate on the safety of GM foods, at a time when the

Prime Minister was committing the UK to take a leading role in the

bio-tech

revolution.

 

That brief interview left Dr Pusztai''s career in ruins.

 

That Monday evening, Professor Philip James, the head of Dr Pusztai''s

research centre, the Rowett Research Institute, had congratulated the

Hungarian scientist on his television appearance.

 

Over the next 48 hours, Dr Pusztai and some of his colleagues allege

that Professor James took two angry calls from Downing Street - a claim

the professor denies. Yet by Wednesday, the Rowett had retracted Dr

Pusztai''s findings.

 

Its senior officials alleged the Hungarian had admitted he had

misrepresented his findings. Rather than being fed GM potatoes, they

claimed,

the rats were given ordinary potatoes spiked with a protein which the

extra genes might have made.

 

They also stated these were preliminary findings which had not gone

through normal peer-review. In short, said Professor James, Dr Pusztai

should not have gone public.

 

Dr Pusztai still refutes these charges. His study was funded by the

Scottish Office''s agriculture department. His research was designed to

test the environmental safety of using GM potatoes with a toxin, lectin,

added.

 

In 2001, he told a Royal Commission on GMOs in New Zealand it was the

GM potatoes that produced the startling finding. The Rowett''s tests

showed that the GM potatoes were " significantly different " from normal

potatoes. Yet, in May 1999, a panel of Royal Society-appointed

toxicologists branded his research flawed.

 

And that was enough for Dr Cunningham to re-enter the debate. Dr

Pusztai''s findings were " not valid " , he said.

 

But Dr Pusztai may yet emerge as a prophet. The revelations about

Monsanto''s secret GM corn research may confirm that this pro-GM

scientist

has become a hero of the anti-GM movement.

 

Severin Carrell and Andy Rowell

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4.How the technology works, and what it promises

By Tom Anderson

Independent on Sunday, 22 May 2005

 

What is it?

 

Genetically modified (GM) food is produced from plants or animals that

have had their genetic material altered by scientists. Scientists are

able to extract genes from organisms with desirable properties - such as

a particular colour or resistance to a disease - and transfer them to

another organism.

 

The process has sharply divided opinion, between those who believe the

technology will enhance our lives and those who fear it will prove an

advance too far. By far the most commonly modified organisms are crop

plants. But the technology has been applied to almost all forms of life,

from pets that glow under UV light to bacteria that form HIV-blocking

" living condoms " , and pigs bearing spinach genes.

 

If GM lives up to the opinions of its most enthusiastic supporters, it

could reduce the use of pesticides and fertilisers, allow people to

farm in harsh environments and increase crop yields. It could also make

our food healthier and more nutritious to eat.

 

When did it begin?

 

Investment began pouring into the fledgling biotechnology industry in

the late 1970s, amid huge excitement about the new technology and

potentially enormous profits. Then in 1981, Monsanto, famous for its

Round Up

brand of herbicide and a pioneer in the field, started a biotech unit

of its own.

 

The first transgenic plant - a tobacco plant resistant to antibiotics -

was created in 1983. It was another 11 years before the first

commercial GM plant in the United States - a delayed-ripening tomato -

and

another two years (1996) before a GM product - Zeneca''s tomato paste

- hit

British supermarkets. In 1993 the US Food and Drug Administration

declared GM food was " not inherently dangerous " , clearing the way for

biotech companies to begin marketing genetically modified seed.

 

How much is it worth?

 

The global value of the GM crop market is projected at more than £2.8bn

for 2005. The estimated global area of crops for 2004 was 200 million

acres. But the biotech companies aren''t yet making the profits they

envisaged because the key European market eludes them.

 

Europe remains as hostile as ever to the idea of modified food, and

analysts are warning of a possible trade war with the US over the

labelling of GM food.

 

What foods are available?

 

In 2003 the US Department of Agriculture reported that 101.5 million

acres of GM crops were planted in the United States. It has been

estimated that 75 per cent of processed foods in the US contain some GM

ingredients.

 

They include Bac-Os, bacon-flavoured soya bits, and Schwartz salad

topping, a seasoning for salads, which uses bacon-flavoured GM soya

chunks.

 

Even Cheshire cheese, made for vegetarians, uses a GM-derived enzyme.

 

In Britain, hostility to the technology has persuaded all the main

supermarkets and manufacturers to withdraw GM ingredients, although

genetically altered food may be available in some imported products.

 

 

 

 

 

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