GMO Foods Cause Tumors?

Scientists are criticizing a study that said laboratory rats developed tumors after they ate genetically modified corn. The research appears in the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology and includes pictures of rats with large tumors. The study said the animals developed the growths after two years of being fed genetically changed maize.
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\tGilles-Eric Seralini from the University of Caen in French was the lead author.
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\t"GM foods have been evaluated in an extremely poor and lax way with much less analysis than we have done," he says.
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\tSeveral French scientific organizations and the European Food Safety Authority disputed the study.
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\tAlan McHughen of the University of California, Riverside, is a genetic expert with the National Academy of Sciences in the United States.
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\t"First of all, the authors of the study used a line of rats that was genetically predisposed to form tumors in the first place. So right off the bat the whole study was suspect."
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\tAt the University of California, Davis, toxicologist Alison van Eenennaam suggested that the study was an attempt to scare the public.
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\t"I think it was a cynical ploy to exploit the scientific process to create fear in the minds of consumers."
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\tEven opponents of genetic engineering agree there were some problems with the study methods. Michael Hansen with the group Consumers Union says there should be more long-term studies -- and more rules for genetically modified foods.
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\t"There should be required safety assessments before these crops are put on the market. That is not what happens in the United States."
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\tSafety assessments are voluntary when companies ask the government to approve new GM crops. These assessments often include ninety-day rat feeding tests. This is the international standard. And Alison van Eenennaam says longer studies have not found major problems.
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\tSeveral French science academies said the release of a book and film about the work at the same time as the study raised ethical concerns. The French food safety agency called for more publicly funded research that would last the lifetime of the experimental animals.
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\tIn the United States, the Grocery Manufacturers Association says about eighty percent of processed foods sold in supermarkets contain genetically modified ingredients.
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\tVoters in California will vote Tuesday on a ballot measure to require special notices on all foods made with genetically modified organisms.
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\t"A new study links genetically engineered corn to tumors and organ damage."
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\tSupporters of the ballot question have used the disputed new study to push their campaign for required GMO labeling in California......"



Montasanto, the company who created and has pushed GM foods, uses litigation to gag any opposition. It has an 'interesting' past and continues to exert pressure at a state level that would allow it to take over the food market, a move that has a profound impact on everyone. GM products are already found in a range of foods, such as chocolate bars, and most consumers are unaware that they're having them

"...The company has also contributed $4.2 million to oppose the passage of Proposition 37 in the US state of California, which would mandate the disclosure of genetically modified crops used in the production of California food products.[220][221][222] California is scheduled to vote in November 2012. The argument is that consumers have a right to know the content of their food and to choose to avoid it if they wish, while advocates such as Monsanto and the Council for Biotechnology Information, which represents companies such as Monsanto, call this an attempt to scare consumers and make them feel that the food is unsafe. Biotechnology labeling is not required by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), but it has been adopted by over 40 countries...."

After reading a history of their worldwide dealings it is obvious that Montsanto are not a company that should be trusted to tell us what is safe and what is not. Until truly independent research into GMO foods has been carried out we should view them with some suspicion.

Economically the hold that Monsanto has on farmers worldwide is crippling. Fifty years ago a farmer would grow a crop of wheat and hold a little seed over until the next year to plant it. Not any more. Famers are not allowed to reuse seed and have to buy new sees every year from Monsanto. This pushes up farming and food costs and also puts farmers in poorer countries into a cycle of debt from which they can't escape.

"...Since the mid‑1990s, Monsanto indicates that it has sued 145 individual U.S. farmers for patent infringement and/or breach of contract in connection with its genetically engineered seed.[111] The Center for Food Safety has listed 112 lawsuits by Monsanto against farmers for claims of seed patent violations.[112] The usual claim involves violation of a technology agreement that prohibits farmers from saving seed from one season's crop to plant the next, a common farming practice.[113] One farmer received an eight-month prison sentence for conspiracy to commit fraud during litigation with Monsanto[114] in addition to having to pay damages..."

United Kingdom

A UK government report showed that 67 chemicals, including Agent Orange derivatives, dioxins and PCBs exclusively made by Monsanto, are leaking from the Brofiscin quarry, near Groesfaen in Wales, an unlined porous quarry that was not authorized to take chemical wastes. It emerged that the groundwater had been polluted since the 1970s.[84][85] The government was criticised for failing to publish information about the scale and exact nature of this contamination. The UK Environment Agency estimated that it would cost £100m to clean up the site, called "one of the most contaminated" in the UK.

What are your current feelings on genetically modified foods?

MelT

 

Any snippets that you or anyone here can tell us about them would be very useful.

MelT

 

"The study found up to 50% of males and 70% of females died prematurely, compared to only 30% and 20% in the control groups, and developed two to three times more large tumours. The researchers said the GM maize and the herbicide both caused similar damage to the rat's health when consumed together or on their own, even at lower doses.
Females developed fatal tumours and pituitary disorders, while males developed more liver and kidney problems than the control group.
The researchers said previous studies feeding rats GM feed and pesticides had only been undertaken for 90 days, but the first detectable large tumours had emerged after this time, raising questions over the regulatory process for the products.
Patrick Holden, founder and director of the Sustainable Food Trust called for all foods containing imported GM maize to be clearly labelled..."

"...Some 85% of maize grown in the US is GM, while 70% of processed foods contain GM ingredients without GM labelling. In the UK and Europe GM maize is not consumed directly by humans but is widely used in animal feed without the requirement for GM labelling...."

 

How did Monsanto get away with foisting GMO onto the public? Well, one Mr M. Taylor said that they were a big company that must know what they were doing, that was it. So government said it was all okay. Who is Taylor?

"...Michael R. Taylor was an assistant to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner before working as an attorney for King & Spalding, a private-sector law firm that represented Monsanto among other clients.[251][252] He later served as deputy commissioner for policy to the FDA on food safety between 1991 and 1994 during which time the FDA approved rBST.[116] He was accused of a conflict of interest, but a federal investigation cleared him. Following his tenure at the FDA, Taylor returned to Monsanto as Vice President for Public Policy.[253][254][235] On 7 July 2009, Taylor entered government as Senior Advisor to the Commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration for the Obama administration.[255][256]

This is the company that brought you PCB's and Agent Orange. Nice people...

"...Public officials with indirect connections or who worked for Monsanto after leaving public office include:

1 - Mickey Kantor served on Monsanto's board after serving in government as a trade representative.[116]

2 - William D. Ruckelshaus served as the first head of the Environmental Protection Agency(EPA) in 1970, was subsequently acting Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and then Deputy Attorney General of the United States. From 1983 to 1985, he returned as EPA administrator. After leaving government he joined the Board of Directors of Monsanto; he is currently retired from that board.[259]

3 - Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was chairman and chief executive officer of G. D. Searle & Company, which Monsanto purchased in 1985. Rumsfeld's stock and options in Searle were $12 million USD at the time of the transaction.[116]..."

MelT

 

Monsanto's Dioxin Fraud
The following leaked memo to the US Environmental Protection Agency, summarised by The Ecologist, shows how Monsanto lied to the US authorities about its dioxin production, and deliberately falsified data to prevent compensation claims or the tightening of regulations.

\tDATE: November 15, 1990.
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\tSUBJECT. Criminal Investigation of Monsanto Corporation
\tCover up of Dioxin Contamination in
\tProducts Falsification of Dioxin Health Studies.
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\tFROM: Cate Jenkins, PhD, Chemist, Regulatory
\tDevelopment Branch.
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\tTO: John West and Kevin Guarino, Special Agent
\tOffice of Criminal Investigations, EPA.
​

As per our meeting yesterday, I am summarising information available to me supporting allegations of a long pattern of fraud by Monsanto Corporation. The fraud concerns 2,3,7,7tetrachlorodibenzodi (dioxin) contamination of Monsanto's dioxin exposed workers.


Significance of Monsanto's Dioxin Fraud Monsanto has in fact submitted false information to EPA which directly resulted in weakened regulations. The Monsanto human health studies have been submitted to EPA by Monsanto as part of public comments on proposed dioxin rules, and Agency wide dioxin health studies are continually relied upon by all offices of EPA to conclude that dioxins have not caused cancer or other health effects (other than chloracne) in humans. Thus, dioxin has been given a lesser carcinogenic potential ranking, which continues to be the basis of less stringent regulations and lesser degrees of environmental controls. The Monsanto studies in question also have been a key basis for denying compensation to Vietnam Veterans exposed to Agent Orange and their children suffering birth defects from such parental exposures.


Dioxin Contamination of Monsanto Products Monsanto covered up the dioxin contamination of a wide range of its products. Monsanto either failed to report contamination, substituted false information purporting to show no contamination, or submitted samples to the government for analysis which had been specially prepared so that dioxin contamination did not exist.


The earliest known effort by Monsanto to cover up dioxin contamination of its products involved the herbicide used in Vietnam, Agent Orange. Available internal Monsanto correspondence in the 1960s shows a knowledge of this contamination and the fact that the dioxin contaminant was responsible for kidney and liver damage, as well as the skin condition chloracne.


Early internal Monsanto documents reveal that samples of Agent Orange and other chlorinated herbicides and chlorophenols submitted to the US Department of Agriculture in the 1970s were 'doctored'. In other words, highly contaminated samples were not submitted to the government... These analyses were subsequently adopted by EPA in a 1980 publication and were used without any data from other sources as the basis for 1984 regulations under RCRA.


Fraudulent Dioxin Health Studies The following are a few key instances where obvious fraud was utilised in the conduct of Monsanto's epidemiological studies:
Dr. Raymond Suskind at the University of Cincinnati was hired by Monsanto to study the workers at Monsanto's Nitro, West Virginia, plant. Dr. Suskind stated in published studies in question that chloracne, a skin condition, was the prime indicator of high human dioxin exposures, and no other health effects would be observed in the absence of this condition.


Unpublished studies by Suskind, however, indicate the fallacy of this statement. No workers except those having chloracne were ever examined by Suskind or included in his study. In other words, if no workers without chloracne were ever examined for other health effects, there is no basis for asserting that chloracne was "the hallmark of dioxin intoxication". These conclusions have been repeatedly utilised by EPA, the Veterans Administration, etc., to deny any causation by dioxin of health effects of exposed citizens, if these persons did not exhibit chloracne.


Dr. Suskind also covered up the documented neurological damage from dioxin exposures. At Workers Compensation hearings, Suskind denied that the workers experienced any neurological health effects. In the Kemner, et al. v. Monsanto proceedings, however, it was revealed that Suskind had in his possession at the time examinations of the workers by Monsanto's physician, Dr. Nestman, documenting neurological health effects.


Another Monsanto study involved independent medical examinations of surviving employees by Monsanto physicians. Several hundred former Monsanto employees were too ill to travel to participate in the study. Monsanto refused to use the attending physicians' reports of the illness as part of their study, saying that it would introduce inconsistencies. Thus, any critically ill dioxin exposed workers with cancers such as non Hodgkin's lymphoma (associated with dioxin exposures) were conveniently excluded from the Monsanto study.


There are numerous other flaws in the Monsanto health studies. Each of these misrepresentations and falsifications always served to negate any conclusions of adverse health effects from dioxins. A careful audit of these studies by EPA's epidemiological scientists should be obtained as part of your investigation.
The false conclusions contained in the Monsanto studies have been refuted by the findings of a recent study by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). This NIOSH study, recently circulated by Dr. Marilyn Fingerhut for review, found a statistically significant increase in cancers at all sites in the Monsanto workers, when dioxin exposed workers at Monsanto and other industrial locations were examined as an aggregate group.

 

[quote name='vipergts2207']There's nothing inherently wrong with GMO. People decrying GMOs are the climate change deniers of the left.

Then that would not be me as I have no politics. Climate change is real, GMO's of the kind that Monsanto makes are dangerous on a number of counts, some in the OP. The idea that they're safe comes from Monsanto themselves, who have fraudulently manipulated other studies to claim that their other products such as PCB's (I believe they produced around 80% of all the world's PCB's), Agent Orange and other dioxins are safe, when in fact they knew them to be toxic.

Humans have been modifying genetics for centuries, albeit at a much slower rate. Picking the desirable specimens and breeding them with other desirable specimens is a much slower version genetic modification.

That isn't what's taking place here. There's a massive difference between crop specialisation and actively changing genes within a plant in the ways that Monsanto does. See more on this in the following article, which talks about new research that shows that we are able to ingest gene regulators that bind to our RNA. As Monsanto hasn't even considered this as a possibility, how safe are GMO foods?

The Very Real Danger of Genetically Modified Foods - Ari LeVaux - The Atlantic

Also, "...Some scientists also worry that transplanted DNA or genes from one plant species into another food may cause unintended consequences like deadly allergic reactions. One ongoing study is experimenting with using a protein from peanuts to extend the shelf life of vegetables. Another study on soy beans enhanced with a protein from Brazil nuts found that the allergen from the nut transferred to the soy beans..."

I have a nut allergy and am a vegetarian. In future I and thousands like me will have to avoid soy and other foods. Does that really sound like we're heading in the right direction?

GMO foods are in a massive number of products already on the shelves and there is little doubt that you and I eat them every day - without it stating as much on the packaging, and without us knowing how it might affect us. This quote from Monsanto's website should send a shudder down the spine of every reader.

Monsanto: "There is no need for, or value in testing the safety of GM foods in humans.

A company with a record of falsification of evidence, with billions of dollars to lose or gain, says their own products are perfectly safe for humans, without ever testing them on humans?

MelT

 

The danger of GMO's
The question of whether or not genetically modified foods (GMO's) are safe for human consumption is an ongoing debate that does not seem to see any resolution except in the arena of public opinion. Due to lack of labeling, Americans are still left at a loss as to whether or not what is on the table is genetically modified. This lack of information makes the avoiding and tracking of GM foods an exercise in futility. Below are just some of the food products popularly identified to be genetically modified:

1. Corn - Corn has been modified to create its own insecticide. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has declared that tons of genetically modified corn has been introduced for human consumption. Monsanto has revealed that half of the US's sweet corn farms are planted with genetically modified seed. Mice fed with GM corn were discovered to have smaller offspring and fertility problems.

2. Soy - Soy has also been genetically modified to resist herbicides. Soy products include soy flour, tofu, soy beverages, soybean oil and other products that may include pastries, baked products and edible oil. Hamsters fed with GM soy were unable to have offspring and suffered a high mortality rate.

3. Cotton - Like corn and soy, cotton has been designed to resist pesticides. It is considered food because its oil can be consumed. Its introduction in Chinese agriculture has produced a chemical that kills cotton bollworm, reducing the incidences of pests not only in cotton crops but also in neighboring fields of soybeans and corn. Incidentally, thousands of Indian farmers suffered severe rashes upon exposure to BT cotton.

4. Papaya - The virus-resistant variety of papaya was commercially introduced in Hawaii in 1999. Transgenic papayas comprised three-fourths of the total Hawaiian papaya crop. Monsanto bestowed upon Tamil Nadu Agricultural University in Coimbatore technology for developing papaya resistant to the ringspot virus in India.

5. Rice - This staple food from South East Asia has now been genetically modified to contain a high amount of vitamin A. Allegedly, there are reports of rice varieties containing human genes to be grown in the US. The rice will create human proteins useful for dealing with infant diarrhea in the 3rd world. China Daily, an online journal, reported potential serious public health and environment problems with genetically modified rice considering its tendency to cause allergic reactions with the concurrent possibility of gene transfers.

6. Tomatoes - Tomatoes have now been genetically engineered for longer shelf life, preventing them from easily rotting and degrading. In a test conducted to determine the safety of GM tomatoes, some animal subjects died within a few weeks after consuming GM tomatoes.

7. Rapeseed - In Canada, this crop was renamed canola to differentiate it from non-edible rapeseed. Food stuff produced from rapeseed includes rapeseed oi (canola oil) l used to process cooking oil and margarine. Honey can also be produced from GM rapeseed. German food surveillance authorities discovered as much as a third of the total pollen present in Canadian honey may be from GM pollen. In fact, some honey products from Canada were also discovered to have pollen from GM rapeseed.

8. Dairy products - It has been discovered that 22 percent of cows in the U.S. were injected with recombinant (genetically modified) bovine growth hormone (rbGH). This Monsanto created hormone artificially forces cows to increase their milk production by 15 percent. Milk from cows treated with this milk inducing hormone contains increased levels of IGF-1 (insulin growth factors-1). Humans also have IGF-1 in their system. Scientists have expressed concerns that increased levels of IGF-1 in humans have been associated with colon and breast cancer.

9. Potatoes - Mice fed with potatoes engineered with Bacillus thuringiensis var. Kurstaki Cry 1 were found to have toxins in their system. Despite claims to the contrary, this shows that Cry1 toxin was stable in the mouse gut. When the health risks were revealed, it sparked a debate.

10. Peas - Peas that have been genetically modified have been found to cause immune responses in mice and possibly even in humans. A gene from kidney beans was inserted into the peas creating a protein that functions as a pesticide.

Learn more: GMO alert: top 10 genetically modified foods to avoid eating


MelT