Exploiting Kids as Guinea Pigs - The New GM Food Trials

[Guest guest]

Exploiting Kids as Guinea Pigs - The New GM Food Trials

By Jenny Thompson on 04/13/2009

_http://www.healthiertalk.com/exploiting-kids-guinea-pigs-new-gm-food-trials

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It*s an outrage. And it*s infuriating. And they*re using your money to

make it happen.

 

To whet your appetite for a stunning corruption of ethics, I*ll start off

with this quote from HSI Panelist Allan Spreen, M.D.: **Whistle-blowers in

the GM industry all say the same thing: One genetic modification ALWAYS

causes more than just the desired change (and that*s if you only modify one

thing!).**

 

Mess with Mother Nature, and sooner or later she will mess you up. That*s

a promise.

 

Judgment at Nuremberg

 

To violate the Nuremberg code you*ve got to do something so wrong that

even a schoolboy would know it*s wrong.

 

Speaking of schoolboys…

 

Could you ever imagine testing a potentially dangerous food on children?

But wait. First we*ll give the benefit of the doubt and say, sure, you might

consider doing this if the food had been thoroughly tested in animals and

was found to be harmless.

 

But if you skipped the animal testing and went straight to the young human

subjects, you would be violating the Nuremberg code. Twice.

 

A group of more than 20 international scientists recently sent a letter of

protest to Tufts University School of Medicine to express their **shock

and unequivocal denunciation of the experiments being conducted by your

colleagues which involve the feeding of genetically modified golden rice to

human subjects (adults and children.).**

 

According to the scientists, the Tufts experiments violate the Nuremberg

code because they involve children as subjects (children can*t legally give

their consent), and because exactly zero animal trials have been conducted

to establish the safety of golden rice.

 

And here*s the capper:

The experiments were administered and funded by the National Institutes of

Health.

That*s right: U.S. tax dollars at work, driving down ethical standards for

research on children.

 

If you*d like to read the section of the Nuremberg code that pertains to

human experimentation, you can easily find it on the website for the Office

of Human Subjects Research _http://ohsr.od.nih.gov/_

(http://ohsr.od.nih.gov/) . Which happens to be a division of…yep - the

National Institutes of

Health.

 

Inadvertent and unpredictable

 

Golden rice is a good idea on paper. But in the real world, one big **if**

still lingers.

 

In developing countries, thousands of children go blind every year due to

a dietary deficiency of vitamin A. Golden rice was genetically engineered

to produce a beta carotene-packed staple food in the hopes that impoverished

children and adults might have abundant, easy access to vitamin A.

 

What*s wrong with this picture? I*ll let the scientists who sent the Tufts

letter explain:

**There is now a large body of evidence that shows that GM crop/food

production is highly prone to inadvertent and unpredictable pleiotropic

effects,

which can result in health damaging effects when GM food products are fed

to animals.**

 

So it*s hard to imagine why the Tufts program simply passed on the animal

stage for testing golden rice. Here's how Dr. Adrian Dubock (Golden Rice

Organization project manager) tried to justify the decision in an interview

with the Daily Mail: **As humans are the designed beneficiaries of Golden

Rice, animal testing could not answer the questions posed.**

 

I*ve got to think Dr. Dubock is fully aware that his statement is some of

the purest, grade A hogwash we've ever been offered. In any case, his plan

to skip animals and use children is a reckless and dangerous decision and

he should be held personally accountable.

 

Sources:

**Tufts University Involvement in Golden Rice Feeding Trials**

Open Letter from GM Free Cymru, 2/12/09, gmfreecymru.org

 

British Scientists Condemn Using Children in GM Food Trials as Unacceptable

Sean Poulter, Daily Mail, 2/17/09, dailymail.co.uk

**What's the probability your supermarket plums are genetically modified?**

The Ideal Bite, idealbite.com

 

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