GMOs and Human Health

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16 Aug 2005 12:06:35 -0000

GMOs and Human Health

press-release

 

 

 

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press-release ISIS Director m.w.ho

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ISIS Press Release 16/08/05

 

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GMOs and Human Health

 

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Dr. Mae-Wan Ho told the People's Health Assembly that GM is

proving bad for health because it goes against the grain of

the new genetics science

 

A GMO or genetically modified organism is one whose natural

genetic material has been modified by having synthetic

genetic material inserted into it. That is how we have GM

crops grown for food and feed, for fibre and for a range of

pharmaceuticals and industrial products in the latest

offering, if we don't manage to stop it.

 

Maybe you have heard the mantra from certain scientists that

GM food is perfectly safe because the technology is so very

precise and wonderful and the regulation the strictest in

the world; that GM is good for biodiversity, increases

yield, reduces pesticide use, and so on. All of the claims

have been falsified, with data collected by the US

Department of Agriculture and by independent scientists .

 

The World Health Organization has just issued a report,

Modern food biotechnology, human health and development: an

evidence-based study (23 June 2005) claiming that although

there may be potential risks involved in the use of GMOs,

the GM crops that are grown today are not likely to present

health risks.

 

Yet there has been a string of incidents indicating GM food

and feed are far from safe. These include studies carried

out by biotech companies producing the GM crops, which they

have kept secret under confidential business information.

 

Kidney and blood abnormalities in rats fed one of Monsanto's

GM maize in Monsanto's secret dossier.

 

 

Villagers in the south of the Philippines who suffered

mysterious illnesses when another GM maize came into flower

in a nearby field two years in a row. Antibodies to the Bt

protein inserted into the GM maize were found in the

villagers.

 

 

A dozen cows that died after eating a third GM maize made by

Syngenta, and others in the herd had to be slaughtered

because of mysterious illnesses. Autopsies failed to be

carried out, which is why Greenpeace and farmers are

demonstrating in front of the Robert Koch Institute

 

 

Senior scientist Arpad Pusztai and colleagues in Scotland

found young rats fed GM potatoes ended up with damage in

every organ system; the most dramatic being an increase in

thickness of the stomach lining to twice that in controls.

Scientists in Egypt found similar effects in mice fed GM

potatoes with another gene.

 

 

The US Food and Drug Administration had data dating back to

early 1990s that rats fed GM tomatoes had developed small

holes in their stomach.

 

 

 

 

To cut a long story short, different species of GM food and

feed crops with different genes had adversely affected

several species of animals. You don't have to be a

scientific genius to see that there may be something in the

genetic engineering process itself that's harmful .

 

So what's wrong with GMOs?

 

First, new genes and combinations of genes made in the

laboratory, which have never existed in billions of years of

evolution, are being introduced into our food chain.

 

Allergies and other toxicities come to mind. In fact, 22 out

of 33 proteins incorporated into GM crops were found to have

similarities to known allergens, and are therefore suspected

allergens.

 

The synthetic genetic material are introduced into the cells

of organisms with invasive methods that are uncontrollable,

unreliable and unpredictable, and far from precise.

 

It ends up damaging the natural genetic material of the

organism with many unpredictable, unintended effects,

including gross abnormalities that you can see, and

metabolic changes that may be toxic that you can't see.

 

Many foreign synthetic genes are copies of those from

bacteria and viruses that cause diseases.

 

They also contain antibiotic resistance marker genes to help

track the movements of the foreign gene inserts and select

for cells that have taken up the foreign genes. Right from

the beginning, in the mid1970s, geneticists themselves have

worried that releasing those synthetic genetic material runs

the risk of creating new viruses and bacteria that cause

diseases, and spreading antibiotic resistance to make

infections untreatable. As the result of the Asilomar

Declaration, a moratorium was imposed. Unfortunately, the

moratorium was short-lived, as geneticists were in a hurry

for commercial exploitation of genetic engineering.

 

The dangers arise because the genetic material persists long

after the cells or organism is dead, and can be taken up by

bacteria and viruses that are in all environments

 

This process - called horizontal gene transfer and

recombination - is the main route to creating dangerous

pathogens.

 

Genetic engineering is nothing if not greatly enhanced

horizontal gene transfer and recombination, and nasty

surprises have already been sprung.

 

Researchers in Australia `accidentally' transformed a

harmless mousepox virus into a lethal pathogen that killed

all the mice, even those that were supposed to be resistant

to the virus. Headlines in the New Scientist editorial: " The

Genie is out, Biotech has just sprung a nasty surprise. Next

time, it could be catastrophic. "

 

The lead article continued in the same vein: " Disaster in

the making. An engineered mouse virus leaves us one step

away from the ultimate bioweapon. "

 

The researchers added a gene coding for an immune signalling

molecule to the virus, which they thought would boost

antibody production; instead, it suppressed immune

responses. The researchers had previously put the same gene

into a vaccinia virus and found it delayed the clearance of

virus from the animals, so it may well have the same immune

suppressive effects for all viruses. Imagine what would

happen if this gene ever got into a smallpox virus!

 

More surprisingly, researchers at the University of

California in Berkeley found that disrupting a set of

disease-causing genes in Mycobacterium tuberculosis , the

tuberculosis bacterium, resulted in a hyper-virulent mutant

strain that killed all the mice by 41 weeks, while all the

control mice exposed to the unmodified bacterium survived.

 

There is yet another insidious danger.

 

The synthetic genes created for genetic modification are

designed to cross species barriers and to jump into the

natural genetic material of cells. Such constructs jumping

into the natural genetic material of human cells can trigger

cancer .

 

This is not just a theoretical possibility. It has happened

in gene therapy, which is genetic modification of human

cells.

 

In 2000, researchers in the Neckar Hospital in Paris, France

treated infants with X-linked Severe Combined Immune

Deficiency apparently successfully by isolating bone marrow

cells from the patients, applying gene therapy, and then

injecting the genetically modified cells back into the

patients. But since 2002, 3 infants have developed

leukaemia. One child has died. The foreign synthetic gene

has inserted near a human gene that controls cell division,

making it overactive, resulting in uncontrollable

multiplication of the white blood cells.

 

I have only scratched the surface of the problems and

hazards of genetic modification. But you can already see

that there has been a massive campaign of misinformation and

disinformation on the part of the GM proponents.

 

The greatest danger, I think, is the mindset of the GM

proponents

 

Genetic engineering of plants and animals began in the mid

1970s under the illusion that the genetic material is

constant and static and the characteristics of organisms are

hardwired in their genes. One gene determines one

characteristic. But geneticists soon discovered to their

great surprise that the genetic material is dynamic and

fluid, in that both the expression and structure of genes

are constantly changing under the influence of the

environment. Geneticists have coined the term, " the fluid

genome " , which encapsulated this major paradigm change. The

genome is the totality of all the genetic material in an

organism.

 

The processes responsible for the fluid genome are precisely

orchestrated by the organism as a whole in a dance of life

that's necessary for survival. In contrast, genetic

engineering in the lab is crude, imprecise and invasive. The

rogue genes inserted into a genome to make a GMO can land

anywhere in any form and has a tendency to be unstable,

basically because these rogue genes do not know the language

of the dance. Genetic engineers haven't learned to dance

with life.

 

That is why dozens of prominent scientists from seven

countries launched ourselves as the Independent Science

Panel, to overcome the campaign of disinformation from pro-

GM scientists who are working to promote the corporate

agenda, and to reclaim science for the public good. We

compiled all the evidence against GM crops as well as the

evidence on the successes and benefits of all forms of

sustainable non-GM agriculture. Based on this evidence, we

are calling for a ban on the environmental releases of GM

crops and a comprehensive shift to sustainable agriculture.

I hope the Assembly will support this call!

 

Plenary lecture to the People's Health Assembly 2, 17-22

July 2005, Cuenca, Ecuador. For further information please

visit the Institute of Science in Society website: www.i-

sis.org.uk

 

 

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