Written by Steve Savage
From what I read on various blogs and comment streams, there is way too much angst out there about GMO crops. Too much angst because every significant panel of scientists that has reviewed this technology has concluded that it is as safe as any other domesticated food crop. Too much angst because the reality is that only a small number of crop species will ever be genetically engineered for commercial use. There are four main reasons why this is the case:
1. Brand protectionism
2. Unfavorable economics
3. Other ways to achieve the same goals, and
4. Anti-GMO activism
1. Brand Protectionism
For most crops, somewhere along the chain of commerce from the farmer to the consumer, there is a step where there is considerable “concentration.” This means that much of the market is in the hands of one or a few players. A classic case is potatoes. In the US, McDonalds corporation is such a dominant buyer of frozen fries, it was able to stop the commercial deployment of biotech potatoes with three phone calls. Unlike standard potatoes, the GMO potatoes in question are not planted into a supply of insecticide sufficient to be picked up by the roots for 60 days because they make their own, super-safe and specific “pesticide” in their leaves (Bt). The GMO potatoes also don’t need to be sprayed for aphids close to harvest because they are resistant to the virus those aphids spread. The potato growers were extremely excited about the technology, but purely for the sake of brand protection, McDonalds was able to deprive the entire industry of this advance. Potatoes are still a perfectly safe food. It could just be easier on the growers.
There are other cases of this sort of brand-protection power. The major frozen food companies and grocery retailers have been able to block most use of “Bt Sweet Corn” which could save farmers 8-10 insecticide sprays/season. Frito-Lay blocked the use of GMO, Bt white corn for corn chips even though that technology greatly reduces the risk of contamination with the mycotoxin, Fumonisin, which has been linked to neural tube defects in humans.
Brands are very valuable things and are protected fiercely. Activists like Greenpeace know this well, and they are able to use the threat of protest to turn that business instinct into decisions that are counter-productive for farmers and consumers alike.
2. Unfavorable Economics
Genetically engineering a crop is not that costly, but doing all the work necessary for the regulators is very expensive. Unless the crop in question is very large, very valuable or both, it will just never “pencil” to make the R&D investment, particularly if there is any marketing risk. I was once on a team that helped a major banana company and a biotech company think-through whether they should spend the money to develop a disease resistant banana. In Central America, it is necessary to spray this crop from the air almost every week to control a disease called Black Sigatoka. Bananas are a large, global crop so I was certain that the “business case” would be attractive. To everyone’s surprise, when we did the math, it came out as a poor investment! The problem is that banana plantations only get re-planted about every 20 years, so even if the new technology was available, only a small area would be planted each year. Saving >50 aerial sprays wasn’t enough to cover registration costs once the time-value-of-money is factored in.
So no minor crop and almost no perennial crop is ever going to become GMO unless the growers band together to make the investment. A coffee expert explained this to the global Specialty Coffee Association last year and suggested that they contemplate what it means that coffee will never be GMO. With the issues of climate change and declining labor availability, that entire industry is at risk.
3. Other Ways to Achieve the Same Goals
There has been a tremendous, public/private, global investment in biotechnology, far beyond that for the few crops that have been modified. That has led to the development of many new methods to alter the genes of plants etc. that don’t involve the introduction of any “foreign DNA.” Most of the crops that fit category 2 above will likely be improved using these alternatives (Marker Assisted Selection, Directed Mutagenesis, Induced Polyploidy…). These improvements will not involve expensive regulatory barriers, and so far, don’t draw the ire of activists. (With the exception of one attack on “Hidden GMO” sunflowers that were generated by mutagenesis.)
4. Anti-GMO Activism
Plant genetic engineering has been the most carefully thought-through new technology introduction in history. I remember attending major scientific conferences on the safety and environmental questions at least 10 years before the first commercial seeds were planted. We talked through everything with ecologists, botanists, sociologists, economists, molecular geneticists, food industry experts. But none of this influences the “environmental” groups who have seized on this issue to raise funds and draw attention. The activist’s task is made easier because molecular genetics is a fast-moving science that few consumers understand. The press has also been unwilling to take the time to understand this to the extent that journalistic standards would require and so many have not helped to counteract the fear-mongering. This is the only way I can explain some activist-driven rejections.
My all-time-most-read blog post was titled, “A Sad Day For Wine. A Sad Day For Science.” There is a virus called Grapevine Fanleaf Virus that is spread by a nematode (Xiphenema index). If the two ever infest a given vineyard site, good quality wine can never be produced there again because the vines will soon decline and die. That means that there are many wonderful vineyards around the world that have the an excellent “terrior” (something the French appreciate so much), but that site can no longer produce good wine. Grapes are grown on “rootstocks” and Cornell University had modified a rootstock to be resistant to the virus. This was an elegant solution to the Grape Fanleaf Virus problem because the top part of the vine is unchanged and only one kind of rootstock has to be developed. Last fall an experimental block of this new technology was ripped out of the ground by activists who believed they were saving the French wine industry from “genetic contamination.” That fear is 100% irrational – it is a rootstock under the ground that never flowers. Besides, grapes are not grown from seeds anyway. Different varieties of wine grapes are planted side-by-side all the time with no ill effects!
Is This Good Or Bad-Consider the Case of Wheat
So for a variety of reasons (some economic, some logical, some irrational, some selfish), very few additional crops will ever be GMO. That is not to say GMO is a small contribution to the food supply. Corn, Soy, Cotton, Canola, Sugarbeets and Alfalfa are GMO and cover hundreds of millions of acres and find their way into many processed foods, meat and milk. Still, I will continue to argue that GMO crops can be beneficial. The world will survive without a bit more excellent wine (very few vineyards in California, Chile, Argentina or Australia are contaminated!), but the other crop where activist-generated-fear has “won” by eliciting Brand Protectionism is – wheat, the second largest food crop on earth. By 2004, Greenpeace was able to generate enough fear in Europe to get major millers and bakers to threaten not to purchase North American wheat if any became GMO. The Canadian Wheat Board blinked, and two, nearly commercial wheat traits, were stopped in their tracks. One kind of GMO wheat would have been easier to farm with no-till methods and easier to keep pure for specialty uses. The other GMO wheat would have reduced disease-related yield losses as well as mycotoxin contamination.
It is far easier to stir up fear than it is to educate the public. There was an excellent article by Justin Gillis in the New York Times on 6/4/11 titled, “A Warming Planet Struggles to Feed Itself.” Much of the article is about how wheat production is failing to increase sufficiently to meet rising global demand. GM technology is not the full answer to this challenge by any means, but the fact that we are not including GM in the wheat improvement toolbox is a clear-cut “bad thing” in my book.
This post originally appeared on Sustainablog on 6/8/11.
You are welcome to comment here or to email me at applied.mythology@gmail.com. My website is Applied Mythology. Image of Edvard Munch’s 1893 painting, ”The Scream” from oddsock. French Fry image by Sun Dazed. Alsatian vineyard image near Colmar, France from Andreea.
Written by Guest Expert
Steve Savage has worked with various aspects of agricultural technology for more than 35 years. He has a PhD in plant pathology and his varied career included Colorado State University, DuPont, and the bio-control start-up, Mycogen. He is an independent consultant working with a wide variety of clients on topics including biological control, biotechnology, crop protection chemicals, and more. Steve writes and speaks on food and agriculture topics (Applied Mythology blog) and does a bi-weekly podcast called POPAgriculture for the CropLife Foundation.
John Fryer,
Please look at this:
http://xkcd.com/641/
John Fryer,
Do you have a reference to the ” predictions of bleeding disorders to come from such experiments”?
It has been explained to you repeatedly why fenugreek (Trigonella) is not now, nor likely ever to be, genetically modified. There is a big article on the topic on this blog.
There is a pretty complete list available of what plant species are known to have been artificially genetically modified, and which have been approved for agricultural release, and which have actually been deployed. Look it up.
You’re going on again with the HIV fantasy that it is somehow E. coli, or something? Do you knoe the difference between a bacteria and viruses?
You’re going on again about the Gereman outbreak somehow being related to “GMOs” of “chemtrails” or something? Please see the big article on this blog.
As if we all have nothing better to do…but in the interest of science communication, I can’t let Mr. Fryer’s reference to an article putatively about “E. coli splicing” go past my skeptic’s meter. The title of the article in his post at July 7, 9:25 am is, “Spliced early mRNAs of simian virus 40”, which was published by Berk & Sharp during 1978 in the Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. This paper has nothing to do with E. coli whatsoever. Indeed, if one searches within the pdf document for the keyword ‘coli’, you quickly find out that the only relationship is the use of a restriction enzyme and a polymerase from E. coli cells as tools to perform the experiments. This paper is about how the SV40 virus is able to commandeer its host cell to transcribe its genes and produce two types of proteins known at T antigens. The mechanisms are what viruses do naturally as we’ve learned over many years. The word splicing is used specifically to describe a phenomenon the authors call “spliced mRNAs”. So, in summary this article is about how a virus with a comparatively small genome is able to effectively “trick” its host into producing its component proteins. In other words, it’s an investigation of the mechanistic aspects of genome interactions. The piece is pretty good basic detective work and thus the reason why it was published in PNAS.
Additionally, I’ll second OrchidGrowinMan’s call for specific references about these “mysterious” illnesses that seemingly did not exist until after transgenic techniques were developed and deployed. By providing specific references, we have a basis for discussion and can address issues directly without veering off into a subjective wasteland. Also, thanks for the blog site with the skeptical cartoons. As if I needed one more thing to feed my info ADHD.
Allan
Try the Berkeley University student lectures
This explains well the problem but does not mention Professor Pollack but other experts who have theirown worries.
Slide 1 – Department of Molecular & Cell Biology
– [ Traduire cette page ]
mcb.berkeley.edu/courses/mcb140/urnov/08.ppt
Format de fichier: Microsoft Powerpoint – Version HTML
21 Sep 2007 – people said – ‘You cannot put SV40 into E. coli! … Spliced Segments at the 5’ Terminus of Adenovirus 2 Late mRNA … 1976: “Biohazards at Harvard: scientists will create new life forms – but how safe will they be?” …
Hope th elink works – check out slides 12, 13 and 14 for example;
Explain why some parts are left blank eg slide 35
So what in that paper is being spliced to what. For me it is clearly SV40 and E Coli spliced together.
I am happy to know if my reading is wrongbut splicing means to me joining together. Hybridisation ( pinching an old word but with a different meaning and todays GMO are all splicing technologies).
a
Okay, I examined the PPT file. This file is from a Genetics course taught at the University of California, Berkeley. FYI, the slide set and accompanying PDF handout to the students, along with the course syllabus, was updated in 2008 and can be found at this URL: http://mcb.berkeley.edu/courses/mcb140/syllabus.html. The particular subject matter is the lecture associated with September 22.
I’m not sure what you are concerned about. This lecture is in part a history of recombinant DNA research and the controversy at the time. The updated lecture file has more information about GM crops and “golden” rice. Regarding your concern about the splicing issue, all I can say is splicing is all natural. That is why a Nobel Prize was awarded. It was not known until the ~70’s about DNA introns and exons, and that the introns had to be excised and the exons spliced together during synthesis of mRNA. Indeed, in my last post about the PNAS article, I left off the purpose of the article. The term splicing was used because those investigators were trying to figure out out how the viral genome could code for two proteins, yet the genes for those proteins were significantly separated on the viral DNA. Thus, at the level of mRNA (i.e., in the host cells), the “genes” were spliced together. In other words, they investigated what all genomes have to do to make functional mRNA for eventual translation to protein.
Regarding why those slides in the lecture PPT were blank under the captions, I think the message is there was no evidence of anything bad happening as a result of recombinant DNA research. Regardless, the whole purpose of the instructor wanting his students to know the history would be to also let them know that because of public concern, sets of regulations were institutionalized. Such action illustrates that institutions, whether government, private, or in between are dynamic and do respond to public concerns. As a result, I would hope we don’t take things for granted, but at least sleep easier at night knowing about the existence of layers of regulations aimed to head off problems. When errors occur, the system of regulations does have protocols built in to correct the problems.
Dr Rader
You are in error.
You say GMO soya is not used in Europe.
Every week thousands of tons comes into the port of Lorient and is used where?
It doesn’t come here to be put in a big waste tip.
It comes here to be clandestinely used against the French people without their knowledge.
I insist on labelling and if it was labelled and admitted openly there is less chance for disputes.
People are getting ill in France in ever bigger numbers. Whether this is due to GMO in part or at all is not certain.
I am not sure of other things that are GMO orwhere they land.
Politicians and regulators work with the language.
Even the fact that GMO are banned for growing in France does not mean they are not grown. GMO wine is being grown in the Champagne and Pinot Noir areas. What happens when ordinary Champagne is found to be GMO’d accidentally? What will this effect have on Champagne prices?
As to importing GMO, then France is tied to buying them by trade agreements of SUBSTANTIALITY.
Exactly how plants with only 56 per cent similarity (GMO to non GMO) can be considered substantially the same is again abusing the use of our language. Especially when the 44 per cent represents a known TOXIC SUBSTANCE.
John,
The European Union is the world’s largest exporter of GM soy-based products. The soy is sent to crushing plants, with the oil re-exported, or diverted into biodiesel. The soy meal is also re-exported, though much is retained for animal feed.
It’s best to know the facts before starting an argument.
What I said was that nobody uses GMO soy for sprouts in Europe. And saying that it comes into France clandestinely is ridiculous.
Dr Rader
You say people dont use GMO plants in sprouts.
You have not replied to my comment on this.
I completely agree but how about GMO getting into GMO free seeds?
We already have statements that total contamination of an organic farm does NOT lose the licence for that farm under specified conditions.
Hardly good for food security, for being 100 per cent sure of no GMO in sprouts nd of course disastrous for the organic farms contaminated without redress.
I also agree 100 per cent about bo GMO fenugrec. My question was simply why do they insist in every advert that it is GMO free?
John Fryer,
Please look at this:
http://xkcd.com/641/
“used against the French people without their knowledge”
Can you substantiate this, or is it just scurrilous and libelous raving?
“56 per cent similarity (GMO to non GMO) can be considered substantially the same is again abusing the use of our language. Especially when the 44 per cent represents a known TOXIC SUBSTANCE.”
That would be GREAT! If I could make a plant that had, as dry weight (presumably) 44% protein, especially one as harmless and well-studied as the CRY toxin from the Bt used in Organic farming, I would eliminate protein insufficiency all over the world! That’s presuming two things: that the particular CRY toxin tastes acceptable or can be processed to be so, and that its amino-acid (woooo! ACID!) profile is reasonably close to human requirements. Does anybody know its compositional breakdown? I know that in plants modified to express it, it is (up til now) a vanishingly small contributor to the nutritional quality, so maybe nobody bothered to calculate it.
OrchidGrowinMan,
Just wanted to share with you a blast from the past. About 14 years ago — hard to believe it’s that long ago.
Anyhow, the whacktivists concocted the theory that since Cry proteins were proteins, they would be a superior source of nutrition for insect pests. Which means the insects would preferentially attack Bt crops.
Quite a howler. Gotta wonder why they haven’t resurrected that claim recently for a fresh media frenzy.
Oops, too late! Now that I’ve said that, someone with the whackos will read my comments and run with it. It’s so old, it’s new again! I should not have said this.
John Fryer Chemist said:
“I also agree 100 per cent about bo GMO fenugrec. My question was simply why do they insist in every advert that it is GMO free?”
I don’t know the real answer as it pertains to fenugreek, but my guess is that it’s the same deal as in poultry that are labeled ‘no hormones’ or ‘hormone-free’. Very misleading – makes the consumer think ‘oh, then some poultry must contain hormones’.
The fact is that NO poultry sold in the U.S. has added hormones.
(please don’t turn this into a poultry/meat discussion…I was merely using poultry as an example ;-))
Hi Sally
Thanks for that and yes it is important to keep on track of the European illness and death which is unprecedented and demands an answer.
Food security is the catch word of the GMO industry.
Today in Europe there is no security.
Looking at two experts in England one Professor Hugh Pennington an expert on both BSE and GMO he claimed that England was not involved although the Thompson & Morgan connection shows he was no expert on this point.
And this is key. If sincere people like him are flummuxed we cannot afford to leave anything out even if it is likely by experts to be of zero concern.
In this investigation I count too many wrongs so far and zero rights. Even the Egypt connection is being denied even today.
Dr Baumholder
Not sure about the Bt Toxins being food for insects, have you a reference to back your INFORMATION.
My take on Bt was that it was used in organic food growing and therefore should be fine spliced into every bit of food and non food GMO life forms.
With this zero science and the fact that the workers were not sure how it worked as an insecticide they put it in life forms anyway.
It never provided nutirition for any creature and there are serious doubts that it is good for any creature especially humans.
Its action is now well know. It leads to a kind of bleeding disorder and often death.
Sounds a bit too close to what is happening in Europe.
Any thoughts.
Serious ones please.
And is it responsible for CCD again this is a matter of life and death not some academic or research project on inanimate things.
John,
If you have trouble finding the many articles about the biochemical mechanism of the Cry proteins in causing toxicity to susceptible insects using a GOOGLE Search with the string, “Cry protein mechanism of toxicity”, please let me know and I’ll incorporate the citations. A lot of biochemistry research has been done and the information is incorporated into any modern course about crop biotechnology and/or pesticide toxicology.
John Fryer,
The toxins produced by Bt varieties have been extensiveley researched. They have been discusses extensively on this blog. They are exquisitely specific in their operation, as are many enzymes. They have been shown to have, at worst, at lab-obtainable concentrations (much much higher than could be achieved outside the lab) no detectable adverse effect on a large array of test organisms, other than the target ones. Their method of action is known, and there is no reaswon to question the results of the experiments.
Every day, you consume many different UNSTUDIED toxins, enzymes and other proteins produced by organisms; THOSE are rationally of more “danger” than the studied and demonstrated-to-be-harmless ones.
That a substance is bad for a specific organism not-similar to you, and that it’s method of action on that organism is inapplicable to you, and that it does no harm to organisms similar to you makes it something you can confidently say is on average safer than a random substance that may be present in an unnoticed bit of mold on your peanuts, bacteria in your apple, an errant bit of weed in your salad, some spores in the wind, a fly-speck on your chocolate bar, some sawdust in your workshop, or that slice of tomato on your sandwich.
,
Dr Baumholder,
Thanks for that information.
I will check it out as best I can and that is news to me.
I am not starting any arguments but collecting facts.
I am surprised though that GMOfood would come in be processed and sent back out.
Truth is stranger than fiction.
So Europe without allowing its people to eat GMO is happy to get involved in others eating it.
Sounds like dirty work to me.
Animals in Europe are suffering also from mysterious bleeding disorders and I along with many others are on record to government to suggest what happened this year would be the logical follow on.
From most people here who think GMO is 100 per cent safe it looks as if my prediction is right but gut destroying GMO spliced material that takes out insects is not responsible for humans with gut problems and Iam still hoping for at least one person here to recommend investigation of GMO causation even if onlyto rule it out.
Just one person interesed in seeking knowledge about the worlds biggest health catsatrophe.
Are we all happy to have total ignorance on GMO and health?
As far as I know independent safety checks on GMO are still illegal?
Orchid man
Dr Baumholder says and I have no facts to disprove him that every gram of the thousands of tons of GMO soya is turned into products to feed and maintain other people that are not European.
I commented on that.
The substantiation for giving anyone GMO food without their knowledge comes from a source in the GMO hierarchy that says we (people of the world) have eaten a TRILLION meals without harm.
Now it is certain that much if not the majority of those meals have been eaten in ignorance or have I got that wrong too?
orchidman
I ACCEPT and believe fenugrec has not been GMO’d.
This is an important fact and thanks for the verification.
If GMO evidence was found then it would be an exampleof genetic pollution from mans GMO activities?
This therefore is a hypothesis and not to be confused with facts.
I am asking for experts to investigate these kind of things.
The fact that nothing is found when thousands are getting very ill all over Europe and nothing can be found from tests is not normal.
Surely this means opening up the investigation and not foreclosing on hypotheses that could be right or probably could be wrong.
As E coli is used in GMO experiments today and in the past it does seem a reasonable line of enquiry.
And of ccourse if negative would show two things. First that people are not scared of looking but better that it is a FEAR only.
John Fryer Chemist,
There as so many scientific implausibilities and ambiguities, and seeming ignorance with known science in your many statements, it is hard to know where to start.
But let’s get two on the table.
1. What exactly do you mean when you repeated say “E. coli spliced into our food”? The use of the word spliced in English provides many opportunities for misunderstanding. The word is used in describing genetic engineering, and in that sense E. coli is definitely not spliced into these crops, but you seem to be implying that.
2. There is a simple straightforward plausible and realistic explanation for these disease outbreaks. It is contamination of crops with sewage, faeces, or contaminated irrigation water. You are floating complex conspirational theory type explanations. Science, with Occams razor, favours the simple obvious explanation. Why do you favour more complicated models.
Dr Baumholder
Re GMO Soya
I read your comment too quickly.
You seem to actually be in agreement with me.
You say much GMO residue is used for animal feed.
This is exactly what I was claiming.
Thousands of tons of soya comes into Lorient and we eventually eat it.
I did a calculation which may be way of in either direction that this means every French person eats directly or INDIRECTLY a kilogram every week of the GMO soya.
And again from memory or lack of information 1982 was the start date of HUS in America while 2003 was the start in France.
A bit close to the import and UNKNOWN GMO indirect consumption by French people WITHOUT their knowledge.
Add to this a HUGE largely unknown blleding problem to the animals fed directly with GMO soya and you reamise my fears which I have communicated to government and regulators who care not a t all except to say we have the BEST brains looking for the cause of bleeding calf syndrome and basically telling me to bog off.
I suspect the same brains working on bleeding calf disorder or more likely the same quality are working on bleeding human disorders?
The big problem with your fanciful theories John Freyer Chemist , is that they divert attention from solving the real problems. Here’s a much better and productive focus in terms of food safety: danger that is still in the EU food chain explained beautifully by a food-science writer who really knows her onions! Why not focus your obvious energy and enthusiamsm on real and present dangers like this:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/07/e-coli-3-years/
The latest news from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, the EU’s CDC, suggests that the massive outbreak of E. coli O104 is declining. The number of new cases being discovered has fallen, and the most recent onset of illness among confirmed cases was June 27. The toll is now 752 cases of hemolytic uremic syndrome and an additional 3,016 cases of illness in 13 countries, for a total of 3,768 illnesses including 44 deaths. (The EU adjusted that total to remove 161 cases that were suspected but not lab-confirmed. It also did not include the five confirmed cases, one suspect case and one suspect death in the United States.)
But a simultaneous report from the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) reveals that, despite the epidemic curve’s trending down, the outbreak can’t be considered over. The ultimate source — the contaminated seeds from which salad sprouts were grown — has been so widely distributed that no one really knows where they have gone or for how long they might remain for sale. One prediction, based on the probable package labeling, is that they could remain on shelves for 3 more years….
John Fryer,
Could you please give us the definition you are using for “GMO”?
I’m not a biologist, chemist or any sort of scientist, but I am trying to sort out what’s what with all the different messages out there related to GMOs.
With the outbreak of the new strain of E. coli, I actually wondered if it was related to GMOs too — but not in the sense that the food carrying the E. coli had been genetically modified or acquired some GM traits through cross pollination.
It sounds like feeding grain to cows and other ruminants to fatten them up, since their digestive systems are not designed to process things like corn, makes them E. coli factories. (Yes, I understand that we all have some of the bacteria in our systems, but it sounds like grain-fed livestock account for an increase in cases of E. coli affecting humans.)
So if cows are eating GMO grain, could the E. coli in their systems have a little gene transfer party and incorporate some of the foreign DNA to create a new strand like the one responsible for this outbreak? I don’t know how anyone would ever verify that’s what happened. I’m just wondering if something like that is possible.
Hi David
Thanks for the link to the lady with the latest Sherlock Holmes type investigations of the European health problem.
I am here simply to help to solve the E coli problem not to air fanciful theories or distractfrom the investigation.
I am not privy to this information which is liquid gold. One piece of information is the source of the fenugrec which I understand T & M actually are on record of refusing to give to the authorities.
Your blog is that there is too much anxiety over GMO foods and for me the European problem shows there is not enough anxiety over possible INDIRECT GMO harm.
The lady is thorough and provides MUCH new information to me and anyone who cares to read her article but it is also downplaying harm.
She says no cases since … This is incorrect as cases are coming along all the time.
She later says the problem may be ongoing. This is not closer to the truth but is exactly what I amsaying.
There is evidence of an exponential rise in cases roughly related to the desire to use GMO type foods.
Argentina as I said must be sitting on its hands as the HUS there makes the European view look like crying over NOTHING.
No country in the world has more HUS than Argentina and virtually no one uses or embraces GMO technology and food more.
The changes in Argentina are enormous to the detriment of most farmers and to the diversity of farming in general.
Finally nobody unless I missed it thinks that ANY GMO type investigation is necessary for this outbreak.
Coming from experts and teachers involved in GMO technology this is frightening. For my ideas to be called fanciful and for people to want to sit in a dark room etc etc is fair comment to them but doesnt help solve the European deaths and permanent illnesses.
This isnt about who is the biggest whatever but about solving the worlds biggest crisis which this lady admits may ONLY be the start.
I agree.
There is unequivocal EVIDENCE of indirect GMO involvement and if anyone denies that they are lying.
The comments of Professor Hugh Pennington the UK spokesmanfor biotechnology is so far off the mark to be scary.
He claims ABSOLUTELY no UK involvement in this health catastrophe.
This is clearly not true.
The UK may be the key to the problem just as Thompson & Morgan have been found to be part of the chain.
Specifically the UK have been involved in just this sort of splicing found in patients for more than a decade.
This makes the professor a political person in his statements rather than telling us as it is.
The plague is part of the makeup of the E coli and as far as I know it is UK research that has spliced the plague to various bacteria. Whether this includes E coli is not clear to me from the little I know of the UK research over the past decade into the plague.
Hi David
Thanks for your column.
Attacking point 2 the simplest theory is the best.
I agree completely.
The E Coli is spliced to the plague.
The UK worked on the plague vaccine more than ten years ago.
Surely this link is evident and needs EXAMINATION and EXPLANATION in the context of this health disaster?
As to spliced I accept my lack of expertise on GMO which is not my field of interest or learning but I understand to make the first GMO’s they used a concoction of virus, bacteria and antibiotics. These are in my terminology all spliced together.
The effects are not known.
The health problems today and in the past since GMO are the record of what is going wrong.
A point on that brilliant article is how the numbers are being pared DOWNWARDS to discount cases where no PROOF of E Coli harm has been found or analysed for.
My own case several years ago and my friends are all part of the DENIAL.
How big is the real harm of E Coli?
We see this everywhere back to thalidomide where my friends where denied any harm from thalidomide despite their mothers taking the drug and arriving dead or minus bits of their arms and legs.
History is repeating itself here.
What is wrong with globally enlarged numbers rather than insisting on COMPLETE proof before accepting E coli harm?
I suspect some sort of epidemiological contract will find GMO involvement or whatever is easy to obfuscate away.
Lets not forget the Richard Doll episode and GMO.
Dr Rader
Couldnt find your link but no GMO transport to France and its use there is known but I only mention it as many uniformed people seem to think Europeans do not face harm or goodness from eating GMO foods and because we do eat SIGNIFICANT amounts and because this type of illness is DISPLACED from the earlier incidents in America it must be part of any complete investigation of the E coli deaths today and tommorrow here in France.
Hi Orchid man
My definition of GMO.
Are you being serious?
The definition has absolutely nothing to do with me but describes the technology practised by MONSANTO, BAYER, BASF et al.
I do add that GMO in organic food is unacceptable and that conventional hybridising of GMO food does not make the food non GMO again.
In this way I do differ as clever monsanto people et al are using holes in peoples knowledge toclaim their GMO’s food is no longer GMO and therefore can be described as organic or not GMO;
This is clearly obfuscating as the pandora box analogy works.
Once you GMO you cannot unGMO it afterwards.
All the weeds which are resistant to herbicides and causing farming difficulties are still GMO even though man has never DIRECTLY experimented and performed the GMO transfromations on them.
If you deny that organic food is being contaminated with GMO or that GMO plants subsequently developed are not GMO or that weeds are not GMO when they take up genes of E Coli, otherbacteria and herbicide resistance then clearly we are at a difference.
An analogy would be that plutonium harm for the next 250 000 years is not the fault of Chernobyl or Fukushima or any other nuclear plant as it turns up in our food and we didnt get it directly from wherever.
We play with words when GMO type bacteria are killing Europeans who refuse GMO but have it thrust upon them by the kilogram every week down their throats. WITHOUT DISCLOSURE. And without any sign of an investigation into this aspect of the food chain today in Europe when people are dying on an unprecedented scale.
Okay, I have to comment, now. John, you claim the evolving problem of increased weed resistance to glyphosate herbicide is due to uptake of GMO genes, and thus indirectly these weeds are GMO. Here is your statement after first suggesting the idea: “If you deny that organic food is being contaminated with GMO or that GMO plants subsequently developed are not GMO or that weeds are not GMO when they take up genes of E Coli, other bacteria and herbicide resistance then clearly we are at a difference.” I’m not going to talk about contamination of organic food because this is a different issue. But I am going to categorically say that you are WRONG!!!!!!!!!!! The reason is steeped in the knowledge of the biochemistry of crops bred for glyphosate resistance and weeds that have evolved resistance due to artificial selection. Crops bred resistant to glyphosate have an extra EPSPS gene with reduced binding potential for glyphosate. You’re a chemist, so think of it as an altered Km (i.e., the Km would be higher for the altered EPSPS than for the normal enzyme). Thus, the shikimate acid metabolic pathway is not inhibited and the crop happily does what it does despite glyphosate exposure.
On the other hand, the evolution of weed resistance to glyphosate, which has been documented as occurring in a couple of species independent of the use of glyphosate on Roundup Ready crops as well as putatively associated in some cases with Roundup Ready crop use, is due to an entirely different biochemical mechanism. First, the EPSPS gene is not involved in evolution of weed resistance. Second, the mechanism has recently been elucidated with very convincing evidence in the 2010 publication by Yuan et al. titled, “Functional Genomics Analysis of Horseweed (Conyza canadensis) with Special Reference to the Evolution of Non–Target-Site Glyphosate Resistance” (Weed Science, 58(2):109-117. To simplify a longer story, selection for an altered transporter mechanism does not allow glyphosate to accumulate at its target site in the chloroplast (thats where the shikimate acid metabolic pathway lies). Thus, glyphosate applied at normal field rates becomes less effective. This mechanism of selection has nothing whatsoever to do with the manipulated EPSPS enzyme.
John, I think everyone reading this blog understands that you are trying to communicate an urgency for testing some hypothesis you have for linking “spliced E. coli”, “bleeding illness”, and in one of your recent posts, increasing death rate in Europe. But John, a hypothesis must be plausible. Typically, in formation of a plausible hypothesis you have to lay out the mechanisms that must be operational. So, please, if you would like your hypothesis to be taken seriously, what is the plausible mechanism? Note that you have to stay within the parameters of what is known and consistent with recognized biological principles. For example, we know the identity and sequence of all the genes associated with molecular breeding of crops. Indeed, molecular technique has advanced so much since 1995 that we even now know more specifically where the transgenes are incorporated specifically into the plant genome. Thus, any hypothetical mechanism must incorporate empirical information about the system.
Hi Orchid man
Your comments on Bt are covering a huge area.
Taking one point the known harm.
I must admit that the harm not known when used first has not been rigourously checked by me but taken as read.
If this is wrong then I am spreading misinformation.
Can you point to the first time we knew it damaged the gut system of living creatures.
And the first time I know of damage to human gut systems was in 1982 and predates Bt use in GMO.
Or were they splicing in Bt at this time.
Destruction of a gut is a serious health issue as shown in Europe today but is not necessarily with a single cause.
Your point that what is harmful to one living organism may not be harmful to another is full of examples to support this idea but as a rulme of thumb what harms one creature is not normally likely to be good for others.
No creature endures 100 degrees centigrade well but yes there are exceptions.
If Bt destroys guts then my gut does not want to be a guinea pig when normal food without Bt is perfectly plausible in a sane world.
We do live in a world where food is being developed not from the point of view of good nutrition but to line the pockets of a few very large greedy farmers at the expense of diversification and the consumer who is being fooled, lied too and and now allowed to die without GMO technology being whispered as being the reason the plague is spliced into E Coli today.
Hi Allan
Thanks for your helpful comments on CRY proteins.
As a researcher on health issues early knowledge is ABSOLUTELY critical.
I am interested in the first uses for Bt spliced or whatever the correct termis into GMO plants and animals.
Also the original or first ideas of why it killed insects and the mechanism.
As I understand it correctly or not this Bt was spliced BECAUSE IT KILLED not because people KNEW how it killed.
Hi Allan
Glad you founbd that ppt file which I have to admit I both learned more and was worried that my little bit by Professor Pollack et al was not there.
It is not clear of the position of the author which is good.
The blanks did provide me with worries which have not gone away.
I would like to ask for clarification on this.
There is clearly evidence of harm of whatever degree of proof.
The tryptophan incident has removed a valuable product from the market for several decades which before GMO attempts to improve the supply was never a problem before.
The actual finding of the culprit was a spectacular success for the single individual concerned not only in the discovery but making people take it seriously.
My own poor attempts meeting mostly total derision or at best reluctant and temporary hickups in the continued development of insecticides, pesticides et al.
I would be happy for a proper investigation into GMO with respect to the European E Coli deaths and do not think it would be in any way a diversion of time and resources.
It you look at Doctor Pusztai and what happened to him with his MILD criticism of the GMO potato you can understand fully BLANK holes in a hand out in thepublic domain.
Or is that getting too close to paranoia?
Why put this ENIGMA in a set of slides if meaningless?
JUST say it:
There is no harm from GMO!
Not that this would convince me.
What does convince me is that harm is on many slides but nodetails are then provided for us when we clearly know of tryptophan and many more disputed cases.
Yes David, we are loosing the focus on the problem of EHEC. The EHEC cases have been slowing down due to consumer habits. Salad is out and the vegetable sale has been dwindling. The winner of this market situation are the dutch farmers who had /have the image of using chemicals and ultramodern methods. Dutch salads are sold and the organic stuff is shrinking. The green establishment is in panic and is using every slightest hint to divert attention to GMO or Egypt. I wrote the secretary of acriculture in Westphalia to test all organic farms for proper production. If the EHEC came from a conventional farm the hype and countermeasures would have sent tectonic waves even to Australia. The bias of the authorities is unbearable end lethal for Europeans.
My prognosis is that EHEC will come back when it is hot, dry and the wells on the farm land run low.
Meh, I had attempted a reply earlier in the week, alas time spent cutting up GM corn plants in the field and bossing people about (which is less fun than it looks).
I shall therefore, alas, miss some of the earlier gems from John Fryer Chemist (JFC) and focus on the latter nonsense – most of it seems to have been dealt with anyway, and far more civilly than I would deem necessary.
Really John? There is a clear evolutionary relationship between HIV and simian viruses, viruses can jump species from time to time, quite often with catastrophic results (lack of coevolutionary arms races between host and vector for instance) – HIV quite obviously falls into this category – wild claims that it is engineered are quite frankly ridiculous.
Some strains we like, some strains we fear with good reason – inability to differentiate between the two and instead insist on being afraid of boogeymen is hardly a sensible approach.
Given that you apparently have such a twisted idea of what is an is not true why should what is or is not true for you have any bearing on anything?
So you’re happy about GMOs due to the reductions in pollution they have allowed? (reduced insecticide use, switches to less harmful herbicides, adoption of no-till, reduced CO2 output from farms utilizing them?)
Europe to enter modern world. Foundations of reality tremble.
There is no GMO pigweed. There is pigweed that is resistant to glyphosate due entirely to selection for variants within the natural population for resistance because of widespread useage of glyphosate – an entirely predictable outcome from utilization of a single control agent (although by all accounts a prediction which fell on deaf ears until it actually started playing out)
Because it makes zero sense, you offer no mechanism, experts in the field can see now way it could occur, and it would be mind blowingly obvious in the E.coli implicated if GMOs were implicated (I assume you’ve missed the entirety of Dr Tribes commentary on the issue which deals specifically with the evolutionary history of the strains involved and the molecular evidence for this)
Your timelines fail. GMOs were released after 1982, for a cause and effect the cause generally has to occur before, rather than after the effect. You fail to even highlight a correlation.
If having an illness made you an expert on the causes of the illness and the methods for prevention then I’d be making a buttload more money as a gastroenterologist. Oddly I’m not, and don’t expect to be any time soon.
It certainly isn’t. So stop doing so.
This is abundantly clear. It baffles me therefore why you decide to speak with such conviction while spewing out erroneous garbage.
Apparently you are as ignorant of history as you are of science. Congratulations.
You’re aware that the Spanish flu in the early 1900’s killed quite a few people – afaik there hasn’t been a similar flu outbreak since – one would expect it will eventually happen again.
Every reason – there’s no reason to put it into the investigation, it will detract from the real issues by investigating stupid nonsense – for similar reasons we’re not investigating the decline in literacy, rises in teenage pregnancy, or the baffling continued success of the “Idol” phenomenon as causative factors.
Read the paper. Tell us where E.coli is spliced into anything? The only mentions of Ecoli are an enzyme used to
cleave DNA for visualization taken from E.coli.
This is merely because your understanding of the matter is several tiers lower than one might expect from a mandarin orange.
What on earth are you talking about? Where are you getting the 56% similarity figure? What does it refer to? Which toxic substance are you blathering about? (and who in their right mind would believe that any plant or plant product would be considered remotely the same if 44% of it consisted of the transgenic product – it’d be either a sloppy amorphous blob of protein or a giant crystal.
First part correct – the Cry proteins as a family are incredibly well understood – second part, utterly wrong, unless you’re talking about the specific target insects, I presume however that you ain’t.
And spewing out nonsense, lets not forget that.
Ignorance of international trade can be added to the pile – is it really a surprise that cheap raw materials would be brought in, processed, and then sold on? Do you perchance live under a rock in Cornwall and only come out once every few hundred years to feast on the flesh of grasshoppers or something?
Europe allows people to eat GMOs, grow them not so much.
citation needed – you keep repeating this “mysterious bleeding disorder” nonsense without backing it up with anything.
The investigations have been done. The mode of action is well understood. You are simply wilfully ignorant on this point and appear to be using this as some sort of moral high ground.
Sure, 15 years of use of GMOs with no cases of harm reported is a bigger health catastrophe than the black death or the wiping out of a whole civilization by European diseases when the Americas were discovered – I guess I was jsut thinking about it wrong.
No, jsut you apparently – the rest of us are well aware of the non-ignorance on the subject which is readily available to anyone willing to spend a couple minutes perusing the scientific literature honestly.
This would once again support the hypothesis that what you know isn’t particularly a useful indicator about anything.
Experts, believe it or not, have better things to do than follow up on crackpot theories with absolutely no sound reasoning behind them – you are free to keep asking, but expect to be ignored.
Only to someone utterly ignorant of biology.
I believe you can colour us all fooled.
So wait, it isn’t the GMO crops but the desire to use them that is causing issues? That is awesome.
Other than Brazil, the US, likely Europe (you’re aware that Argentina exports the vsat majority of its food production I’m sure.)
Frankly before you brought it up I would have said that even the craziest of the crazies would be hard pressed to make that sort of spurious connection – this appears to be a variation of the whole “Once you think you’ve made something foolproof someone comes along andproduces a better kind of fool” approach to thinking.
Provide it please. I’m assuming it is the same evidence as the unequivocal evidence if indirect flatscreen TV involvment, or iphone involvement – technologies which simply happen to coincide with things and aren’t remotely causative.
Please desist from using the word splicing, you have no bloody clue what it means in any of its forms.
Case in point.
Your terminology is so far from useful that as yet undiscovered Amazonian tribes likely have a better grasp of the terminology as it applies to modern biotechnology.
How many of your friends were delivered dead? Just curious.
Sadly I think we need you to not only define what a GMO is to you, but what every remotely technical term you use is because you appear to simply pluck words out of the air and use them regardless of the context or whether or not they even make sense.
How so?
You don’t play with words, you torture them in ways that make my brain hurt – if they had any sort of sentience at all you’d be convicted on cruelty charges.
The bacteria involved aren’t GMO type, and I’d rather appreciate it if you’d stop flip flopping from “I just want an investigation” to ridiculous claims like this – it undermines your whole “I want the truth” approach – clearly you can’t handle the truth (or answers, or even terminology (a line which was cut as it lacked the dramatic panache of those left in)
Afaik Europe labels GMOs, so you’re a liar. And on an unprecedented scale? The civil war in England claimed the lives of over 1/4 of the population (if I remember my history right, and I rarely do) the Spanish ‘flu, world wars I and II, malaria in the third world, hunger in the third world, etc etc etc – the people of Europe are dying on an unprecedented scale only in the same respect as I am expanding rapidly at an unprecedented scale (my weight has been stable for about the last 2 years plus or minus a couple pounds)
Alas that’s it for me, back to the field to attempt to bring even more fear into John’s life.
Ewan,
Thank-You.
I’m unsure whether a reply to an earlier blog appears to everyone reading the end of the thread, so I’m repeating a direct response to John concerning the biochemical mechanistic difference between crop resistance to glyphosate and the evolution of weed resistance. Here it is (and sorry if I misunderstand how direct replies to earlier posts are viewed by others).
…………………
Okay, I have to comment, now. John, you claim the evolving problem of increased weed resistance to glyphosate herbicide is due to uptake of GMO genes, and thus indirectly these weeds are GMO. Here is your statement after first suggesting the idea: “If you deny that organic food is being contaminated with GMO or that GMO plants subsequently developed are not GMO or that weeds are not GMO when they take up genes of E Coli, other bacteria and herbicide resistance then clearly we are at a difference.” I’m not going to talk about contamination of organic food because this is a different issue. But I am going to categorically say that you are WRONG!!!!!!!!!!! The reason is steeped in the knowledge of the biochemistry of crops bred for glyphosate resistance and weeds that have evolved resistance due to artificial selection. Crops bred resistant to glyphosate have an extra EPSPS gene with reduced binding potential for glyphosate. You’re a chemist, so think of it as an altered Km (i.e., the Km would be higher for the altered EPSPS than for the normal enzyme). Thus, the shikimate acid metabolic pathway is not inhibited and the crop happily does what it does despite glyphosate exposure.
On the other hand, the evolution of weed resistance to glyphosate, which has been documented as occurring in a couple of species independent of the use of glyphosate on Roundup Ready crops as well as putatively associated in some cases with Roundup Ready crop use, is due to an entirely different biochemical mechanism. First, the EPSPS gene is not involved in evolution of weed resistance. Second, the mechanism has recently been elucidated with very convincing evidence in the 2010 publication by Yuan et al. titled, “Functional Genomics Analysis of Horseweed (Conyza canadensis) with Special Reference to the Evolution of Non–Target-Site Glyphosate Resistance” (Weed Science, 58(2):109-117. To simplify a longer story, selection for an altered transporter mechanism does not allow glyphosate to accumulate at its target site in the chloroplast (thats where the shikimate acid metabolic pathway lies). Thus, glyphosate applied at normal field rates becomes less effective. This mechanism of selection has nothing whatsoever to do with the manipulated EPSPS enzyme.
John, I think everyone reading this blog understands that you are trying to communicate an urgency for testing some hypothesis you have for linking “spliced E. coli”, “bleeding illness”, and in one of your recent posts, increasing death rate in Europe. But John, a hypothesis must be plausible. Typically, in formation of a plausible hypothesis you have to lay out the mechanisms that must be operational. So, please, if you would like your hypothesis to be taken seriously, what is the plausible mechanism? Note that you have to stay within the parameters of what is known and consistent with recognized biological principles. For example, we know the identity and sequence of all the genes associated with molecular breeding of crops. Indeed, molecular technique has advanced so much since 1995 that we even now know more specifically where the transgenes are incorporated specifically into the plant genome. Thus, any hypothetical mechanism must incorporate empirical information about the system.
Allan,
I suspect that in this case “Chemist” is in the French version of the German “Apotheker” or English “Pharmacist.”
I also suspect that John Fryer conceives of “GMO” as a sort of substance, like Neodymium or Dioxin, or, in this case, some sort of a mixture of bacteria and viruses that together have been “spliced [sic]” into the (plants/food).
Perhaps your perception has merit. On the other hand, I thought I could practice a few rules of risk communication (naively, obviously), but my head is getting bloody from pounding it against the wall and my work is suffering from blog addiction.
OrchidGrowinMan,
No, it’s more like the aether, phlogiston, and phrenology. With a bit of homeopathy thrown in as well. Definitely also a good dose of haruspicy.
“Haruspicy”? Is that an Indian dish?
http://teczcape.blogspot.com/2008/12/indian-green-beans-mild-spicy.html
But John Fryer Chemists repetition of the tryptophan myth should not go undiagnosed:
http://academicsreview.org/reviewed-content/genetic-roulette/section-1/1-20-gm-microbe-does-not-cause-ems/
1.20—High Doses of Tryptophan Cause EM
Tryptophan used as a food supplement causes health problems.
See Genetic Roulette’s False Claims at Bottom of Page
Analysis of Peer-Reviewed Research:
The claim that a GM microbe was at fault was made without any evidence. It is a sort of urban legend created by those who oppose GM crops in order to try to discredit them. No cause and effect between a GM microbe and the EMS disease has ever been established nor is there a need to find such a link, because another cause of the illness has been discovered. EMS is a dreadful and distressing illness which has caused a number of deaths. It is very important for people considering unusual diets or dietary supplements to get accurate information where there are real hazards. For some years now, an explanation for the illness has been known to medical scientists. EMS is triggered by consumption of large amounts of the dietary supplement L-tryptophan. We can prove that Jeff Smith is aware of this discovery and that he refuses to tell the truth about L-tryptophan. This could actually endanger people. The FDA has posted a warning on its webpage that consumption of L-tryptophan is potentially harmful. People need to know about this, but instead Genetic Roulette continues to propagate unfounded myths about GM technology.
1. It is known that large doses tryptophan itself cause EMS. Since a report by Smith and Garrett in 2005, medical science has known that genetic modification is irrelevant to EMS, and that the supplement itself—that is to say consuming large amounts of L-tryptophan, whether or not it was made using genetic manipulation, causes health problems. This has been suspected for many years. Smith avoids quoting FDA reports that contradict his story.
2. EMS is not exclusively associated with GM tryptophan. There are at least two reports in the medical literature of EMS disease caused by L-tryptophan in 1986, well before genetic engineered microbes were used in its manufacture. Tryptophan produced by different companies has also caused EMS.
3. Contaminants in L-tryptophan do not cause EMS. The search for evidence that contaminants in L-tryptophan produced by genetic engineering are toxic has proved fruitless, and there is no actual evidence that these contaminants are harmful.
4. A mechanism by which L-tryptophan could cause EMS has been identified. Metabolites formed from L-tryptophan itself inside the body are implicated in causing the condition known as EMS.
5. Smith refuses to tell the whole story. Jeffrey Smith has been made aware of these facts about L-tryptophan not being the cause of EMS since early 2006 but has chosen not to make any correction to misleading commentary about tryptophan in his book.
References:
Smith MJ, and Garrett RH (2005). Review. A heretofore undisclosed crux of Eosinophilia-Myalgia Syndrome: compromised histamine degradation. Inflammation Research 54: 435–450.
FDA, U. S. Food and Drug Administration, Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition Office of Nutritional Products, Labeling, and Dietary Supplements, (February 2001) Information Paper on L-tryptophan and 5-hydroxy-L-tryptophan http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/ds-tryp1.html accessed Dec 7 2008.
The following link is no longer active:
FDA, U. S. Food and Drug Administration, Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition Office of Nutritional Products, Labeling, and Dietary Supplements, (February 2001) Information Paper on L-tryptophan and 5-hydroxy-L-tryptophan http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/ds-tryp1.html accessed Dec 7 2008.
As can be seen it is a 2001 document so I doubt that it would be useful as to where the science is in 2011..
Let us look at what the recent reviewed scientific literature has to say about whether the EMS – GM L-tryptophan possible connection has been show to be not true as suggested in the above post.
The following is the title of a 2011 reviewed scientific article: “Post-epidemic eosinophilia myalgia syndrome associated with L-tryptophan”
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/art.30514/abstract
In the full paper, the following appeared: “Toxico-epidemiologic studies linked EMS to L-tryptophan (L-TRP) containing dietary
supplements manufactured using genetically-engineered bacteria.5
Initial analysis of implicated L-TRP revealed an impurity that was identified as 1’1’-ethylidenebis[tryptophan] (EBT).6”
ALSO: “The pathobiological basis of EMS remains unknown. Epidemiologic studies tracing implicated L-TRP to a single manufacturer, and quantitative analyses of EBT suffered from methodological limitations. EBT was just one of more than 60 minor impurities detected in implicated L-TRP, six of which were associated with EMS.7”
The previous Author in this thread made the following statement: “3. Contaminants in L-tryptophan do not cause EMS. The search for evidence that contaminants in L-tryptophan produced by genetic engineering are toxic has proved fruitless, and there is no actual evidence that these contaminants are harmful.”
H.Kuska comment. No specific scientific reference was given. Pleas provide.
References:
Smith MJ, and Garrett RH (2005). Review. A heretofore undisclosed crux of Eosinophilia-Myalgia Syndrome: compromised histamine degradation. Inflammation Research 54: 435–450. This is the key review. If you cannat get it I can email it to you.
I have both the review and the 2 followups. Here is one section concerning contaminants:
“As the proceedings of a symposium devoted to EMS amply
illustrate (J Rheumatol 1996; 23 (Suppl 46): 1–110), epidemiological data implicating fi nite microimpurities from one manufacturer are controversial and understandably so.”
Another:
“According to several analytical surveys, incriminated tryptophan
met Pharmacopeia criteria (DAB 9) for products
intended for medicinal purposes in Germany [23]. LTCDS
incriminated in the U.S. were Pharmacopoeia grade also
[11]; aside from one internally incongruent outlier about
inorganic impurities [24], no known data undercut widespread
evidence that other incriminated case lots had an
analytical purity of 98.5%5 or higher [5, 7, 25–27]. Analysis
of other incriminated case lots disclosed purities of 99.6%,
which meet Japanese Pharmacopoeia specifi cations [28–30].
Thus, the quantities of adulterants in incriminated LTCDS
remained exceedingly low – 650 ppm for the most prevalent
(confi rmed) impurity [31] – according to virtually all ascertainable evidence.”
H.Kuska request.
Please cut and paste what you feel supports your statement: “3. Contaminants in L-tryptophan do not cause EMS. The search for evidence that contaminants in L-tryptophan produced by genetic engineering are toxic has proved fruitless, and there is no actual evidence that these contaminants are harmful.”
As your statement is not consistent with the 2011 paper.
I would like to propose that Mr. John Fryer Chemist be somehow excluded. He is not rude or offensive, but his posts, time after time, are introducing false statements that cannot be corrected as fast as he introduces them.
Dr Rader
I propose that what you are suggesting is the proof that GMO studies are dangerous and that if people cannot discuss them or take note of past worries then we will slide from the current 4 000 plus permanent illnesses and deaths to a situation where this becomes accepted as normal.
Can I suggest people look at and take note of not fanciful talk by me but as David says some research that people including myself would do well to emulate.
http://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1023&context=edethicsinscience&sei-redir=1#search=%22dieter%20soll%20yale%20GMO%20danger%22
Discusses the Asilomar Conference and does have the bit about Professor Pollack.
The deaths and illnesses I repeat are caused by E coli spliced to the plague which cannot be made except by some past action of man and his GMO experiments.
The dangers of a dangerous technology cannot be made safe just because every university and biotech company is now using these techniques daily or because vast tracks of farmland are being put down to GMO crops.
A packet of seeds that kills Europeans today costs less than 2 pounds. The cost of a single DNA analysis on one sample costs 100’s of times more and there are thousands of peopleill or dead with not a single published DNA analysis on the seeds to see if GMO pollution has occurred.
How can you find causes of illness if you dont look or cant afford to look?
John Fryer Chemist
“How can you find causes of illness if you dont look or cant afford to look?”
How do you suppose health officials around the world consistently locate the sources of food-borne illness, and have never found a link to biotech foods, ever?
They can look, and quite obviously can afford to look.
I’d like to know what text you’re copying and pasting from. If it’s Jeff Smith or someone like that, do us a favor and post on the Greenpeace website instead.
Hi GMO pundit
It seems that in the GMO world everything is safe and all problems in the past can be changed using typical practices.
I remember studying this problem as it unfolded and the Japanese company involved denied harm and although it was fairly plain that only the GMO types of tryptophan caused harm there was no absolute prood of GMO harm so GMO got off the hook.
There were 47 impurities or chemicals in the tryptophan from this GMO company. None of them could be pinpointed as being the true cause of illness or death.
But in the same way GMO could not be proved resonsible to 100 per cent certainty neither could it be denied.
Proper investigation was halted by judicious losing, burning or steeling of data and information.
Theoretically GMO harm could neither be proved or disproved. At best the result could be called stalemate but with cause for concern at very high levels it is fail safe to suspect GMO involvement.
I understand the costs to the company were huge.
Also in the fall out, not only GMO but all forms of the drug were taken from circulation until the heat dies down which it has recently done and safe tryptophan or non GMO is quietly making a comeback.
I do know people who took the drug for years without harm.
This would be the non GMO type in the UK.
We see the same type of problem in the european deaths and illness on an unprecedented scale.
Numbers are clipped downwards, every few days we are told the illnesses are no longer occurring and anything not GMO related is getting the rough treatment. We also hear over and over again that we will never find the cause.
An attitude in science and discovery that makes no sense.
Before 1960 or some such similar date these kinds of illness did not happen.
I was looking at Nobel winner Werner Arber who at one time abandoned E Coli research because it would not propagate.
Arber continued to develop skills in microbial genetics, working with colleagues in the United States for a short time before returning to Geneva at beginning of 1960. There, he continued working on lambda transduction in E. coli, but found that the virus would not efficiently propagate.
Times seem to have changed with no found E coli somehow multiplying and propagating so efficiently that thousands in France and Germany are becoming ill.
I also remember in the 1960’s that E coli was hamrless and used as a measure of pollution where the numbers decayed with time as the samples were kept.
Completely and diametrically opposed to what is happening now where pollution from E Coli is surviving transport for thousands of miles and long term storage while the seeds are stored and then distributed.
All going agianst classical biology but in harmony with GMO involvement.
And exactly what was the top of the worry list or angst list back at the Asilomar conference in 1975
This is not the exact point I was looking for which was a very similar description to 2011 E Coli harm in Europe but gives the flavour of what was known to be a genuine worry that has not gone away with time.
Yet when some experimenters proposed taking genetic material from viruses and seeing if
E. coli K12 would pick it up, microbiologists expressed alarm because they feared that genetically
enhanced K12 might come into contact with the other strain of E. coli that inhabits a small portion of human
intestines and create a human health hazard.
If only it was just this old and very stable form of E Coli but today the varieties have multiplied considerably so nearly every new outbreak is a new form of E Coli.
GMO pundit
Have you reference to the tryptophan harm in 1986.
Also can you establish that GMO was used by this time?
I say this because I remember when the finding by a doctor that everyone with this illness had taken tryptophan that he contacted a researcher who had studied the illness for a lifetime without success and could not believe an amateur could have an answer.
Likemany illnesses there are often multiple causes making any scientific investigation almost impossible from the start.
Which diseases are you claiming are impossible to investigate scientifically? Just out of interest.
Ewan,
This is part of why the Greens, etc demand ‘long-term feeding studies’. They know that such things involve so many variables that can’t be controlled for, that they will result in scary, mysterious outcomes. The Greens etc. appear to be uninformed etc. but they are actually smarter than most of us when it comes to shaping public opinions. It is good to be wary of an opponent good at PR, who is also heedless of human misery and death.
RE 1986 cases of EMS:
A gave you the key reference,.
It is pointless to discuss this without going through its text. Here is the reference again
References:
Smith MJ, and Garrett RH (2005). Review. A heretofore undisclosed crux of Eosinophilia-Myalgia Syndrome: compromised histamine degradation. Inflammation Research 54: 435–450.
The sad thing is that none of the lobby groups who spread fear about the tryptophan issue seem to have read and understood this comprehensive report.
John Fryer,
You are speaking rubbish, and we are all laughing at you.
You can not be persuasive by galloping-out more and more more and more outlandish unsupported and implausible claims.
Please, can you tell us why you do not look at the posts here on this blog that discuss these issues (and, incidentally, destroy your scurrilous and silly claims)?
Please, can you tell us when you are going to read a basic 10th-level book on Botany? You need it badly.
Please, can you tell us when you are going to read Federoff’s “Mendel in the Kitchen” book or similar? You need it badly.
May I suggest you look-up some general Biology/Microbiology text and read that too? You need it badly.
Google-U can give you sufficient knowledge of Epidemiology, Statistics, Risk-Assessment, and the histories of the various (unidentifiable) diseases you are trying to talk about. I suggest you make avail of it. You need it badly.
Ha ha ha.
Hi Allan
Yes there is urgency in finding the cause for the European E Coli harm not least for those yet to become ill.
And with cause comes prevention possibly.
I have witnessed in my life time a disastrous rise in pollution of all kinds and yes there are exceptions as technologies improve or change. No more concorde so no more whatever the problem was to the USA government.
And yes herbicide resistance is often just a simple genetic response to an insult.
And yes I am wrong to assume that these plants are GMO polluted but as said my knowledge is not always spot on with these things.
So taking pig weed and other crops as provenly non GMO but developing resistance by repetitions in their structure.
However there are claims and true ones of contamination and this is where I made my error.
Rather like rabbits, squirrels, trees and now increasingly GMO is mixing with non GMO and this is where I fear the illness is coming from for the Europeans getting ill.
Finding the cause as I keep stressing does not come by refusing to look because some person such as me hasn’t a degree in biotechnology.
Also on the other hand some claims in the GMO history are being changed maliciously to prevent harm or scientific progress.
I read about Paul Berg NOT splicing SV40 and E Coli together in 1972 or 1973 because of concerns which he admits IRRITATEDhimjust as people here do not want to take responsibility.
He did take responsibility but is it not WRONG that he refused to do the experiment? My reading is that Professor Pollack actually described to him an AIDS like scenario which from Professor Pollacks account he laughed away at first.
In respect of AIDS again malicious people were caught out trying to put the first AIDS case in pre GMO days when again GMO scientists concluded the 1950’s case was involving a late 1980’s strain of AIDS or to be blunt someone switched samples for this dead sailor.
LOL “rabbits, squirrels, trees” are interbreeding with GMOs? And these rabbits, squirrels, trees are making Europeans sick? How many Europeans eat rabbits, squirrels, and trees?
I fully appreciate the sentiments of some that J.F. Chemist should move on (even I think that from time to time), but it’s instructive to see how the Green Left actually think. If you call it thinking, that is.
The writing is so muddled, I can’t tell if Mr. Chemist thinks squirrels and trees are breeding or if there’s something else…
I’m sorry, but there is a point when written communication is so poor that I just don’t have time to try to interpret it 🙁
Dr Baumholder
The texts are not from Jeffrey
This one
already given
Arber continued to develop skills in microbial genetics, working with colleagues in the United States for a short time before returning to Geneva at beginning of 1960. There, he continued working on lambda transduction in E. coli, but found that the virus would not efficiently propagate.
is from the mouth of the worlds first or one of the first that used restriction enzymes to GMO living forms.
I read it that E coli at this time was very stable and not undergoing huge transformations so he at one time ceased to use it.
Today with the European deaths and illness it is one more new type of E Coli or one with a very limited history.
I dont know how many times faster E Coli changes now in post GMO days but the facts are available in the literature if people care or dare to do the calculations.
LOL E. coli is a bacterium, not a virus. And if you worry about the level of illness/death from microbes in the EU, go look for info on the Black Death. Then scratch your head, and hope for a sensible idea.
John F Chemist
I am going to say this again. I have the credentials to say this. I teach this topic in University courses, in graduate school even.
E. coli genomes are not stable. Your statement about E coli genetic stability are absolute scientific nonsense. Please stop repeatedly wasting people’s time with nonsense. You are saying nonsense about Paul Berg too. I was following this in 1972 and since then too. Your statements about Berg ignore all that we have learnt since then.
Hi Orchidman
Laugh do
While I cry for ALL those Europeans that get E Coli illness andneed dialysis for life.
And all those who may get in the future due certainly to the splicing of E Coli with Bubaonic Plague which almost certainly but with no 100 per cent guarantee occurred due to people who often work on GMOtransformations but have no notion what they do or the long term consequences.
My best guess is that this strain came from people working to find a vaccine to save people from the plague.
There is an irony there if you can see it.
I dont claim to be an expert of GMO but common sense I do have.
“My best guess”? Are you Jonas Salk, or what? It takes years of specialized study, and a series of successes in the laboratory, to establish a reputation so solid that a “best guess” is worth anyone’s attention.
Your comments about splicing genes from plague again reveal ignorant that natural movement of genes of this sort is exactly what is frequently seen in nature and natural mechanisms for this to happen are well understood. The carriers for many of these genes are bacterial viruses, the most numerous biological entities on the planet. The fact that you believe this “by common sense” that it indicates it was done in a laboratory only reveals your ignorance of factual evidence biology which is taught to evergu University student in microbiology and genetics courses, and usually in general biology courses also.
It’s public ignorance of this sort that is unethically exploited by many interest groups that seek to demonise GM technology. The sad fact is, too many ordinary good people have been misled by this chicanery. It seems that you are one of them. But your continual avoidance of the information supplied to you indicates a sloppy lack of intelligence or rationality. You are clear badly disciplined in the way you tackle intellectual problems. No amount of discussion here will help you until you address this issue. Unless you change tack, I will ignore your further posts. If you want a dialogue, start by addressing those responses of the several commentators here who have the courtesy to address your questions and statements.
Hi Ewan
Yes you picked up on the pig weed error of mine – I accpet it is normal resistance working there.
But GMO pollution has occurred and Monsanto have used the force of law to prosecute people whose land has had GMO pollution land there but NOT pigweed GMO.
But my point is the time line and your erroneous statement that GMO’s were not around in 1982.
So in your time line when does GMO start from?
clearlyvitally important for me I place it roughly at 1972 with possibilities of an earlier date but not by many.
J.F. Chemist,
The timeline of GMOs began with the earliest single-celled organisms, a few tens of millions of years ago, and the timeline continues. Get over it.
Multiple order of magnitude error there Eric.
~4000 million years surely qualifies as a different beast that a few tens.
“But GMO pollution has occurred and Monsanto have used the force of law to prosecute people whose land has had GMO pollution land there but NOT pigweed GMO.”
I hope you are not talking about the Canadian canola case (Schmeiser). A reading of the case shows that he chose to plant canola that he knew, or ought to have known, was GMO canola on his land.
Quotes from the ruling in the Supreme Court of Canada case:
Mr. Schmeiser complained that the original plants came onto his land without his intervention. However, he did not at all explain why he sprayed Roundup to isolate the Roundup Ready plants he found on his land; why he then harvested the plants and segregated the seeds, saved them, and kept them for seed; why he planted them; and why, through his husbandry, he ended up with 1,030 acres of Roundup Ready canola which would have cost him $15,000.
http://scc.lexum.org/en/2004/2004scc34/2004scc34.pdf
Quote from the original trial:
However, I am persuaded by evidence of Dr. Keith Downey, an expert witness appearing for the plaintiffs, that none of the suggested sources (proposed by Schmeiser) could reasonably explain the concentration or extent of Roundup Ready canola of a commercial quality evident from the results of tests on Schmeiser’s crop. His view was supported in part by evidence of Dr. Barry Hertz, a mechanical engineer, whose evidence scientifically demonstrated the limited distance that canola seed blown from trucks in the road way could be expected to spread. I am persuaded on the basis of Dr. Downey’s evidence that on a balance of probabilities none of the suggested possible sources of contamination of Schmeiser’s crop was the basis for the substantial level of Roundup Ready canola growing in field number 2 in 1997.
http://decisions.fct-cf.gc.ca/en/2001/2001fct256/2001fct256.html
I picked out slightly more than that – perhaps you could respond to the multitude of faults that have been pointed out in your posts – it’s generally a rarity that anyone will admit any fault, so for this at least a tip of the hat is warranted.
I think Richard covers the Schmeisser case itself rather well – with the court quotes and all – lets just reiterate here that there have been no instances where the presence of transgenics in a field is accidental (or pollution, as you so emotively put it) only where the presence is clearly the result of the actions of the farmer – who if they are even remotely awake (which Schmeiser doubtless was and is – the guy ain’t stupid, just dishonest) would be well aware of the legal ramifications of saving and propagating patented traits.
The mid 90’s I believe was the first instance of commercial release of GMOs in crops (early 90’s if you’re going to go to the flavr savr tomato, although as it flopped I prefer not to), which is the important timeline in terms of exposure of the public to transgenics – clearly earlier than that if you’re discussing modified bacteria – but implicating lab generated strains of bacteria in disease present today is lacking in sanity – as is claiming this wouldn’t be testable – it would be patently obvious to anyone capable of sequencing a bacterial genome (which can be done overnight on the current generation of sequencers) or even doing a simple restriction digest what the origin of the bacterium was.
As you were discussing the consumption of GMOs however it appears safe to say your timelines are utterly wrong. Unless you can point me to a source which shows they were utilized prior to the 90’s your whole arguement on bleeding guts falls apart – it’s a nonsense anyway – there is a wealth of pre-=1960 literature on Crohn’s disease, which I know first hand causes bleeding of the gastrointestinal tract, there are also pre-1960 scientific articles detailing, and I think you’ll enjoy this, SPREAD AND CONTROL OF ESCHERICHIA COLI DIARRHEAL DISEASE
which rather makes a nonsense of your whole ‘before 1960 E.coli was safe’ schtick. More nonsensical is your bizarre belief that diseases weren’t an issue pre 1960 in general – I wonder if you’ve ever encountered folk who’ve suffered from Polio, or tuberculosis or other diseases all but eradicated from modern life – perhaps you’d also care to explain ever increasing life expectancy in the developed world despite your claims to the contrary that the past was a gilded age where disease was none existant.
Dear Mr. Fryer,
Please pause for a moment and reflect on everything that has been written here by others. Munch time and a great deal of patience has been shown with your posts. Most of the ideas that you have brought forth that are within the realm of this website – that realm being fostering discussion about agriculture, especially plant genetics and genetic engineering – have been addressed. I have noticed a pattern developing in your responses:
John Fryer Chemist
July 8, 2011 at 4:27 pm
And yes I am wrong to assume that these plants are GMO polluted but as said my knowledge is not always spot on with these things.
John Fryer Chemist
July 5, 2011 at 4:50 pm • Reply
Ewan
We know people are dying after eating sprouts.
Some at least of these are GMO and will contain E coli spliced into them.
Followed by:
John Fryer Chemist
July 7, 2011 at 3:31 pm
I ACCEPT and believe fenugrec has not been GMO’d.
This is an important fact and thanks for the verification.
Granted – two may not be a pattern. However, the point I want to make is that a lot of information has been provided to you that counters the ideas that you originally had. As demonstrated above, you have accepted some of these items. I am not sure what you think of everything else that was provided to you. I only know you said this:
John Fryer Chemist
July 6, 2011 at 2:36 am
Everybody here does seem very honest and sincere and I do not want to spread misinformation any more than I need to be fed misinformation.
I have learnt several very important facts or bits of information.
Please pause and reflect on the possibility that there is not a GMO conspiracy. Please pause and consider that the people on this website are trying to help you understand the biology involved in E. coli. Please pause and consider the possibility, based on what has been written in this post and elsewhere in this website, that there is sufficient regulation in place to ensure GMO products that are brought to market are safe. Please consider the possibility that multinational agriculture businesses are not involved in a conspiracy to bring unsafe products to the consumer.
Here is a start to the huge story of E. coli gene exchange
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/thoughtomics/2011/07/08/the-end-of-e-coli/
To get some grip on the slippery E. coli, Shana Leopold and her colleagues decided to focus on their ’backbone DNA’ – long stretches of DNA with few differences between the different strains. The problem of comparing all the E. coli genes – like in the 2009 paper – is that you also include the genes that are often shuttled between different strains. These mobile elements have different evolutionary histories than their hosts, and thus are of limited use for resolving their family relationships.
But even with these stable stretches of DNA, Leopold could not solve the evolutionary puzzle that is the E. coli family. She ended up with a different family tree depending on the segment of DNA that she analyzed. Sometimes group E appeared as an offshoot of group A for example, whereas it was located on one the main branches in other trees.
This is counter-intuitive for someone who believes stable species and strains. The only way to resolve this scenario is to accept that the strains of E. coli have mixed and matched (recombined) different portions their DNA in the past. Suppose that at some point, group A transferred some of its DNA to group E. Today, this piece of DNA will give the impression that group A and E are closer related to each other than the piece of DNA adjacent to it.
Hi David
The volume of traffic here has risen to such levels that perhaps I miss some important points. And the weekend is a time of rest for me.
If there are important points my email for contact by anyone is welcome:
johnfryer@orange.fr
David your reference to Lucas Brouwers is timely, up to date and reflects the cutting edge of evolutionary history of E Coli.
In my poor understanding, this is at the heart of the European deaths and illnesses and I am not here to stir up people or cause disinformation simply to demand ignorance is replaced by knowledge. DNA analysis is a key factor in tracing ancestry and therefore could be used to identify the evolutionary history of this health catastrophe. It is not for me to justify this approach and I am genuinely concerned when nearly everybody here who know far more than me block an obvious approach to illuminating what went wrong which is the modern method in biotechnolgy for solutions but not evidently if it will cause negative publicity for GMO technology. How else to solve GMO problems except by using GMO technologies? Clearly this E coli or is it E coli (see article) is GMO’d whether by GOD or humans.
GMO is being forced upon us Europeans against our wills and against any proven positive benefits to the consumer. Diversity is reduced, yields and pesticide use are not as originally promised to us. Costs of foods have risen dramatically and may or may not be because of recent GMO growth. And despite denials EPO et al are closely linked to GMO technology not responsible to people here but are clearly in the frame for association at the very least.
GMO has therefore unresolved safety implications not helped when workers in the field are summarily dismissed if they raise legitimate health issues. For example Doctor Arpad Pusztai 35 years and then dismissed in 2 days after a congrats from his boss for his work the day before!.
35 years minus D day and you the best. 35 years and you are fired. D for departure and S for surprise and not the ALMIGHTY DOLLAR.
If you google – Brazil GMO – you get not rosy pictures of a new revolution succeeding but of concerns after a precious few years and desire to get out of GMO by some at least. Not even necessary to add value words like good, bad or indifferent.
The same for Argentina despite the new holy human cows there. Here despite the continuing GMO progress the reduction in farmers who have left the industry is evident as is the diversity which is reduced. Not all positive for the farmers whose knowledge of GMO sadly must be less than all people on this site? In one country where GMO is used some farmers have no reading or writing ability but are expected by Monsanto to be RESPONSIBLE for ALL negative impacts of the technolgy. Is this REALISTIC? (INDIA)
The USA for all its approval of GMO likes to foist it on the aforementioned countries and secretly to Europe. I did note that many GMO scary trials occur in Hawaii for reasons immediately obvious to me. Isolated as is Bikini and Johnston Island which are used or were for other branches of modern science.
Three not necessarily connected barticles from the net explain both the growth and desire for GMO now somewhat dated as Brazil may be in reversal of their policies and one important on how to understand obfuscation, disinformation and the risk of taking government, industry and science publications at face value. Be your own person and do not blindly accept what is told to you in the same way most have not listened to what I say which I admit is subject to review such as the gaff on GMO weeds which needs to be first corrected before seeing if GMO weeds do exist as at present it is not evident they do to me when challenged on this point.
2008 information from a newspaper – very dodgy on accuracy!
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/europes-secret-plan-to-boost-gm-crop-production-973834.html
Daniela Contri of BASF in 2007
http://www.eurofins-ifs.com/media/11811/dcontri_basf.pdf
The approval of GMO potatoes for Germany and Sweden and other European nations this year is too close for comfort but on my observation not part of the reason for the current wave of illness and death here in Germany and France. I should think everyone here would agree with this assertion?
As a note the information again is dated by 4 years and may have changed somewhat.
Finally
Joanne Nova’s article on Bad Science while not on GMO work is transferrable and substantially equivalent for GMO science evaluations.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/you_dont_need_a_phd.html
Been done, being done – David has covered the amazingly fast progress on the strains in question in other posts here at biofortified. So rather than blocking anything it would appear that those who know the most on this issue here at biofortified (David) are actually up to date on the material and cover it with a certain degree of excitement.
False dichotomy between people and imaginaty sky faries – if you’re going to call anything which has evolved a GMO then everything that exists is a GMO, which I’m thinking rather makes a mockery of being all wound up about GMOs as there is no alternative life that hasn’t evolved.
As far as I am aware products in Europe which may contain GMOs say so, and why there need be proven benefits to consumers I am not sure (nor am I sure why reduced useage of insecticides, use of less toxic herbicides and reduced CO2 emissions would not be considered beneficial in general) – there are proven benefits to farmers, given that the GM tech only actually has an effect at the level of the farmer for all current commercialized GM traits it would appear that this is the crux point rather than demanding somewhat bizarrely that all technology used in production be of benefit to the end consumer of the production process.
Well yes, but if you use google uncritically as an indicator of reality then you’re a fantastic fool – you’ll rarely be right on anything, and when you are it is likely to be by accident.
citations for these? Given that Indian farmers using GM tech have seen improvements in income and reduction in insecticide use I’m not entirely sure that your picture is remotely useful.
Secretly as in getting regulatory approval and having documentation on shipments as to the traits contained therein, but then that utterly redefines the word… which appears to be a common thread throughout your ravings.
What is your source for this? Monsanto does raise a lot of seed in Hawaii, but alas not for nefarious seasons – you can grow corn all year round in Hawaii – which is rather a boon to a pipeline that tests thousands of genes – saves on having to alternate between Northern and Southern hemisphere growing and allows seed production to be spread month by month rather than having it all occur in a tight window with all the logistical nightmares that would come with that. I’m assuming your position is based on permits for growing regulated materials – in which case Hawaii would be a big hit all the time.
We’ve listened, you are however essentially weapons grade crazy in much of what you say – it has all been dissected either kindly, or not so – perhaps it would do you good not to blindly accept the set of sources which agree with your own personal worldview and analyze some of the points raised against your assertions.
How can it be too close for comfort if it has bugger all to do with the illnesses? Bad things happen all the time, so any GMO release will roughly coincide with some bad thing – connecting the two without good reason or sound mechanisms linking cause and effect will remain firmly in the realm of nutjob conspiracy and warrant no attention by serious scientists (luckily a title I myself cannot claim, hence my willingness to spend time on counter rants)
John, instead of googling GMO Brazil, I googled John Fryer chemist, and I found that you have previously posted extensive comments on the dangers of vaccination and of fluoridating water.
The conspiracy theorist trifecta.
Crank Magnetism
The autism fear propagandist and anti-vaccine activist from the United States named Jenny McCarthy boasts of having gone to the “University of Google”.
Jenny McCarthy summarises what we see in action here Google providing access to a vast amount of disorganised factoids that are used brainlessly to promote harm. The mindless extraction of panic virus via the “University of Google” is far more harmful than any GMO. Unfortunately it’s assisted by celebs such as Oprah Winfrey and Dr Mehmet Oz.
We also see here another example where the main torrents of the internet carrying the panic virus share the same pipelines. Anti-vaccine blather and anti-GM guff often come in the same pipeline.
Antivaccination activists have brought back the unnecessary debilitating diseases like measles. Outbreaks have been rare but they occur seasonally since vaccination is not sufficient anymore. The MSM fear nematodes, BSE or mercury but the body count is due to real hazards. As I recently posted we have reached a situation that Galileo has experienced rational reasoning against ideology.
Another issue raised by stream of misunderstanding from JFC is the wrong statements about cancer. I quote for convenience Matt Ridley
Evolving cures for cancer
from RationalOptimist.com – Blog by Matt Ridley
5 people liked this
Matt Ridley
Tumours evolve — so must cancer cures
My latest Mind and Matter column in the Wall Street Journal is on cancer and evolution by natural selection:
Last week the American Cancer Society reported that death rates from cancer are falling steadily, at an annual rate of about 1.9% in men and 1.5% in women. A study published this week by the University of Colorado found that most seniors who died after being diagnosed with breast cancer actually lived long enough to have died of something else.
Prevention explains much of the decline in cancer fatalities, especially the drop in smoking. As for treatment, the most promising new options harness the very force that makes cancer so stubbornly virulent in the first place: evolution.
Adjusted for age, the incidence of some cancers has also been falling, contradicting the expectation widespread in the 1960s and 1970s that cancer rates would surge because of chemical pollution and the use of pesticides. In thrall to this view, Wilhelm Hueper, the mentor of Rachel Carson, refused to accept that lung cancer was caused by smoking. He said the data “unmistakingly suggest that cigarette smoking is not a major factor in the causation of lung cancer” and “it would be most unwise at this time to base future preventive measures of lung-cancer hazards mainly on the cigarette theory.”….
Here’s a guy who has lots of concerns about GMOs:
If I looked like that, I’d be angry too.
Ewan R on July 11, 2011 at 1:37 pm stated the following: “……I’ll note that the discredited Aris & Leblanc paper heads up the list …….”
H. Kuska comment. Please provide the link(s) to what you base the “discredited” description on so that others can evaluate for themselves whether this paper is “discredited”.
As a start this is what one PRO GMO organization (The Agricultural Biotechnology Council) questions in the study:
“The Aris and Leblanc study
The Aziz and LeBlanc study does not identify any health or safety concerns related to consuming biotech foods. Cry1Ab has been subjected to extensive safety assessments (which include potential human exposure). These tests have demonstrated no toxicity risk to humans.
All of the women or infants involved in the study were healthy and had no unexpected or adverse issues.
The source of the Cry1Ab protein, glyphosate, and glufosinate in the Aziz and LeBlanc study is inconclusive and cannot be fully attributed to biotech varieties. The Cry1Ab protein is used in several agricultural production methods, and its presence is not limited to plant biotechnology. While the Cry1Ab protein is produced by certain insect-resistant biotech crops, it is also used in organic farming and gardening.
Previous feeding studies have found that the method of analysis used in this study — enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) — is not entirely reliable for blood analysis. The authors do not indicate whether the ELISA method used in this study was validated for blood analysis.”
Link for above: http://www.abcinformation.org/index.php?page=news
H.Kuska comment concerning “The authors do not indicate whether the ELISA method used in this study was validated for blood analysis.”
Why did the ABC not ask?
Henry,
You seem to have not read the reply to the question about discredited Aziz and Leblanc by Anastasia.
“Please note that the paper that claimed to find Bt in human blood is much in question. See: If you record noise, you don’t get music – you get nonsense. Even if there is Bt in human blood (which hasn’t been shown) there are more sources than just Bt in transgenic plants: There are a lot of different ways for Bt proteins to get into our food”
http://gmopundit.blogspot.com/2011/04/it-you-record-noise-you-dont-get-music.html
http://www.foodstandards.gov.au/consumerinformation/gmfoods/fsanzresponsetostudy5185.cfm
Your question:
“Why did not the ABC not ask?”
A more pertinent question is, “given that the problem of the ELISA assays is clear from the other published literature (see links just given) but not discussed by Azis and Leblanc, why didnt the paper reviewers not demand it?” Presumably it is because the journal is not expert in this topic, and probably that’s why in got published — they didn’t ask obvious questions.
GMO Pundit on July 11, 2011 at 6:34 pm · stated: “Henry,
You seem to have not read the reply to the question about discredited Aziz and Leblanc by Anastasia.”
H.Kuska reply. In my mind there is a large difference between what Anastasia stated “much in question” and the word Ewan used “discredited”.
I was (in my mind) a major contributer to her first reference and I feel that I was able to show that the major criticisms were not valid.
The second reference does not include specific references as to why the specific “scientific method concerns” are “concerns”, and does not even cite who the specific authors are. I feel that the use of this type of paper in scientific discussions should be avoided, whether pro GMO or con GMO.
I am very surprised that you feel that a statement containing “presumably” and “probably” belongs in this scientific discussion in this context. Are the authors and editor dead?
I was being polite. Discredited wouldn’t be an incorrect word here. Here’s a two-part take down of the Aris and Leblanc paper that I posted to ISU’s Sustainable Ag listserv after a student posted a link to the Natural News post about it.
As with so many things, the details are a bit different from what you can find in the news and on blogs. Long story short, the science of the study is less than sound, and their conclusions do not follow from the results. They found levels of Bt below the lower detection limit of the method they used and they didn’t determine what type of Bt was present. Even if they did definitively find Bt protein (whole or in pieces) in human blood (which they didn’t, for the afore mentioned reasons) that does not indicate that it is a “threat to human health”. Please see https://biofortified.org/2011/04/nonsense/ for some discussion of the Aris and Leblanc paper and https://biofortified.org/2011/05/bt-proteins/ for citations to multiple papers that have found evidence of “contamination” of Bt from sprays and from soil bacteria. You may also want to read the paper for yourself instead of taking Natural News’s word for it, you can find the paper here: http://somloquesembrem.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/arisleblanc2011.pdf
As for the human health effects of Bt, happily there is no indication that mammals, birds, or fish are harmed by Bt whether in organic sprays or in transgenic Bt expressing plants, due to the unique chemistry of the protein. You may find a review of the literature, conducted by scientists from ISU’s own entomology department, here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15941295 and another review, this one conducted by a USDA ARS scientist here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11161988 There are of course many studies that have been conducted on the safety of Bt but these two reviews provide a clear overall picture. If you would like me to provide PDFs of these, I would be happy to email them to you upon request.
Does this paper actually find Bt protein in human blood? Maybe. Their values are so low, that many of the values they call “detection” are below the lower detection limit. Their standards were 0.1–10 ng/ml and the values they detected were, oddly, -0.11 to 0.49 in maternal and 0 to 0.08 in fetal cord blood, according to Table 2. To make things worse, the kit they used to detect Bt has a lower detection limit of 1ng/ml, according to Agdia, the company that produces the kit. Can you use a kit with a listed lower detection limit and make it lower with a lower standard curve? I wouldn’t. Frankly, I’m surprised this part of the paper got through peer-review. Why didn’t they at least confirm their findings with a simple Western blot?
Strangely, the paper that described development of the method was not cited by Aris and Leblanc. In that paper, the kit was used to detect Bt in cows’ blood, and did not find any significant difference between cows that had been fed Bt and conventional maize for a two month period, and all values detected in all cows’ blood were less than 1.5ng/ml (http://www.lfl.bayern.de/ite/rind/35021/linkurl_0_2_0_6.pdf). Aris and Leblanc did cite a paper that found the ELISA method they used detects fragments of Bt in addition to intact Bt protein but neglected to mention the actual findings of the paper (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15740023). They also neglected to mention the findings of a paper that found no evidence of Bt protein or of the Bt gene in pigs that had been fed Bt maize, although they did cite it (http://goo.gl/rhYTn). Oops. Maybe something is getting lost in translation?
As for the safety of the protein, well, I already provided 2 review papers on that, both produced by non-industry scientists, both containing quite a bit of non-industry research. There is no indication that Bt protein (in transgenic plants or in sprays) is harmful to mammals, birds, or fish, and it has also been shown to be safe for many non-target insects as well. All of the evidence at this time shows that Bt is a safe insecticide against susceptible crop pests (or at least as safe as an insecticide can ever be expected to be).
Could there be something we don’t yet know? Sure. There always could be something else, but the evidence we have is pretty solid. However, one thing is clear. If one is to be concerned about Bt expressed by transgenic crops, then one must also be concerned about Bt residues from organic sprays (which include Cry1Ab) and from soil microorganisms as well, which all could be the sources of Bt in human blood if it was indeed present. While the Bt protein expressed in transgenic plants is of a truncated and more active form, digestion would presumably denature Bt from all three sources equally, although of course a study would be needed to test this.
Anastasia Bodnar on July 11, 2011 at 8:34 pm stated: “They found levels of Bt below the lower detection limit of the method they used”
AND
“Does this paper actually find Bt protein in human blood? Maybe. Their values are so low, that many of the values they call “detection” are below the lower detection limit. Their standards were 0.1–10 ng/ml and the values they detected were, oddly, -0.11 to 0.49 in maternal and 0 to 0.08 in fetal cord blood, according to Table 2. To make things worse, the kit they used to detect Bt has a lower detection limit of 1ng/ml, according to Agdia, the company that produces the kit. Can you use a kit with a listed lower detection limit and make it lower with a lower standard curve? I wouldn’t. Frankly, I’m surprised this part of the paper got through peer-review.”
H.Kuska comment. This possible point was discussed/refuted by me in the original thread https://biofortified.org/2011/04/nonsense/
I just discovered that none of my comments are in the first thread (with the same name) that Anastasia Bodnar cited. http://gmopundit.blogspot.com/2011/04/it-you-record-noise-you-dont-get-music.html
Her second statement links to the thread with the same name that that I contributed to. Her exact statement was: “Please see https://biofortified.org/2011/04/nonsense/ for some discussion of the Aris and Leblanc paper”
I should not have to repeat my comments here.
I apologize, but I do have a life away from Biofortified. When there are pages long comments with extensive requoting and nitpicking, I do my best to read them, but often just don’t have time.
Aris and Leblanc based their whole conclusion on a test that (based on previous literature) was not appropriate for what the amounts they wanted to test. If they wanted to prove it was a useful test for this case, then they should have backed it up with other data such as a Western blot. The end.
Anastasia Bodnar on July 11, 2011 at 8:34 pm stated:
“There is no indication that Bt protein (in transgenic plants or in sprays) is harmful to mammals, birds, or fish…”
H.Kuska comment: I will just discuss the “fish” part of the statement in this reply.
In the Conclusion section of a review published on the web 23 February 2011 (Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, 2011, 68:(3) pages 563-5.)
Title: Genetically modified plants as fish feed ingredients
Authors: Nini Hedberg Sissener, Monica Sanden, A°
shild Krogdahl, Anne-Marie Bakke, Lene Elisabeth Johannessen, and Gro-Ingunn Hemre
http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/abs/10.1139/F10-154
the following appears: “Among the insect-resistant (Bt) plants, data are more scant and inconclusive, both as less research has been carried out and more pronounced differences have been observed between fish fed Bt-maize and conventional maize. The cause of these differences is not clear and should be followed up, including a thorough evaluation of possible effects of the Bt-protein on the fish intestine and on growth, cellular stress, and immune responses.”
Earlier in the paper the following appeared “In another study, Atlantic salmon postsmolt fed GM maize (MON810) at 15% and 30% of the total diet had substantially reduced feed intake, growth rate, and final mass compared with fish fed non-GM maize (Hemre et al. 2007). Furthermore, major differences were revealed in organ indices: the relative mass of both liver and distal intestine was increased in the fish fed GM maize.”
AND
“Maltase activity in the midintestinal segment of fish fed the 30% GM diet was higher than the 30% non-GM group. Uptake of glucose in pyloric caeca was also substantially higher in fish fed the GM diet, reflecting findings in salmon fed GM soy (Bakke-McKellep et al. 2008). Fish health in this trial was evaluated focusing on stress – and immune-response biomarkers (Sagstad et al. 2007). SOD had higher activity in liver and distal intestine, while catalase (CAT) showed substantially lower liver activity in fish fed GM maize. HSP70 was significantly higher in the liver of fish fed GM maize compared with the fishmeal reference diet, while the non-GM maize group exhibited intermediate levels.”
AND
“Differential count of white blood cells revealed a considerably higher proportion of granulocytes in the blood of fish fed GM maize. The authors suggested that the GM maize MON810 caused changes in the immune response with a related mild cellular stress response. Altered liver metabolism was also indicated based on the higher liver index and changes of CAT, HSP70, and SOD.”
There is nothing wrong with the words presumably and probably nor other words that express uncertainly such as likely and perhaps. Science is full of uncertainties. Anyone who presumes otherwise is the one that is wrong, at least from a scientific standpoint.
Anastasia Bodnar on July 11, 2011 at 8:36 pm made the following reply: “There is nothing wrong with the words presumably and probably nor other words that express uncertainly such as likely and perhaps. Science is full of uncertainties. Anyone who presumes otherwise is the one that is wrong, at least from a scientific standpoint.”
to my statement: “I am very surprised that you feel that a statement containing “presumably” and “probably” belongs in this scientific discussion in this context. Are the authors and editor dead?”
I hope/expect that the readers of this thread will note that I used the words “in this context”.
Fine. Same thing, add “this context”. My comment stands.
It is appropriate to express uncertainly when talking about hypotheses – including in this context.
Henry
Its very difficult to make any sense of what you are saying.
The links that you were given twice in this thread specifically refer to published papers that detail that the analytical ELSA method used by Aris and Leblanc is flawed. Your responses do not acknowledge this so I assume that you didn’t follow through on reading and understanding these papers and the references they provide on this issue. It is also very odd that you seem to be claiming that a government regulatory agency FSANZ’s specific formal public rebuttal comment on this food safety issue is not relevant.
One is left wondering whether you don’t understand these cited references or alternatively prefer not to acknowledge the existence of scientific rebuttal of Aris and Leblanc?
In everyday terms, the ELISAs used by A and L don’t work on blood or human tissue. They are designed for plant tissue. They didn’t detect any valid signal, and in any case there are good reasons for believing no Bt (Cry) proteins is taken into the body, as explained at Marcel Kuntz website accessible via the links you were given.
David Tribe, if you use your “Find” command with the search term “kuska” on the thread that you introduced (“If you record noise, you don’t get music – you get nonsense.
by David Tribe on 29 April 2011”)
about the article on Marcel Kuntz website you will find something like 38 hits. Of course there are some duplicates in the same reply, but there are enough there for you to see the extensive rebutals (in context) of the attempted criticisms of the Aris and Leblanc paper.
If one does the same using the keyword “tribe”, 16 hits are reported but none of them correspond to you initiating a comment (much less any attempts to rebutal my posts).
Is anyone else noticing that this whole comment thread = massive goalpost shifting and ad homs? It goes like this:
1) Someone who is generally anti-biotechnology asks a question or makes a comment, sometimes politely, sometimes not.
2) Someone who is generally in favor of biotechnology takes the time to write out a response, more often than not supported by links to primary literature or at least supported with a logical argument.
3) The question asker or commenter does not respond to the logical argument or literature, and instead either ignores it, going on to rant about something else, or makes a direct attack, claiming the person is a shill or a liar.
And we wonder why nothing ever gets done. Such a shame.
Anastasia,
The main issue for You as an scientist will be not Your good practice and valuable results. It does not matter. The Anti GMO movement has the main stream medias on its side. The Romans asked „Cui bono?“. Assuming that GMO is no problem for humans and animals then Greenpeace, Friends of Earth and all the other green NGOs will be useless. These people need the fear mongering to have a job. As i recently posted the EU pumped over 9 billion Euros in the green NGOs 2009. The USA is not better: http://junksciencecom.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/eaja-study.pdf
The money is a waste of resources when one remembers that thousand of Europeans were frozen to death, the last winter. On the other hand You got the government which is incapable dealing with real threads for his citizens like desasters, crisis or security. So they need a fictive thread which will be gratefully exaggerated by the MSM. With a fictional thread there is no chance to tbe taken into responsibilty.
We had an endless discussion concerning Biphenyles last winter. The regional government was lowering the treshhold and we head the Biphenyle scandal. Fishing was prohibited in the river Rhine and fears were spread that plastic bottles are causing birth defects. Cui bono? Breweries, green NGO, recycling companies and the consulting Lab-Mafia took advantage of the plastic bottle biphenyle scandal. With advancing laboratory methods these scandals will be numerous. No intoxication or even death has been reported yet.
It does not matter what scientists are saying even though they proved via experiments or investigations their findings.
Using the “Find command” there are 3 uses of the word “shill” by 3 different people (4 if one includes Anastasia’s present comment and of course 5 if you include my present post).
There are 6 matches for posters using the word liar (put a space in front of liar to exclude false hits where the letters are part of a bigger word. One person used it twice and the others were each stated by different individuals.
I do not see how this can be related to a trend that starts with “1) Someone who is generally anti-biotechnology asks a question or makes a comment, sometimes politely, sometimes not.”
I agree with the following statement: ” Karl Haro von Mogel
July 5, 2011 at 11:04 pm · stated
Hi John, you appear to be new here. I would like to caution you about calling people liars because they may disagree with you. Please take a look at our comment policy.
https://biofortified.org/about/comment-policy/
“
You’re also not counting nasty comments that haven’t seen the light of day, which have been predominantly from the anti- perspective. Not exclusively, though.
Anastasia’s assessment applies to huge whacking great chunks of the above discussion thread – is it 100% predictive (or even postdictive)? No, but if you can’t see the trend (particularly earlier in the thread it must be said) then you appear to be reading a different set of posts than populate my screen when I load this particular post.
Just a thought………
If people think essential studies to show the safety of GM or links between GMOs and autism (for example) haven’t been done, why not do them yourself? Rather than complaiing that “scientists” haven’t done what you are proposing, if they’re so obvious and essential why not put a coherent case together in a grant application with the hypothesis and methods you would use to test it and apply do the work yourself? Lab space can be easily rented and the cost could be included in your application. That’s how science works. Apply to Greenpeace for funding (like Seralini) if needs be or if you think Big Pharma/Agri/Brother will delibereatly try to supress your research. If you get the funding it will pay your living wage and for all the studies you propose.
Radical plan but I think it might just work….or not if you just prefer being an armchair expert free from the constraints of reality.
Jonathan
Okay, Kuska’s comments at July 12, 2011 at 10:15 am in response to a Bodner statement have stimulated me to de-lurk. (BTW, in reading the tit for tat, I’ve come to the conclusion that it may be better to not directly reply to a specific person but just add a new comment and reference the blogger and time of their comment that your comment is referring to. In that manner, comments are less likely to be lost in the thread.) First, I thank Kuska for turning us on to a new paper. I’ve downloaded the paper and additionally downloaded many of the references in the paper so that I can check out what the referenced authors are actually saying.
Second, I’m detecting a creeping confusion between hazard, risk, and just plain old homeostatic physiological phenomena that are neither adverse effects, hazards, or risks. Specifically, Kuska cites Bodner as saying, ““There is no indication that Bt protein (in transgenic plants or in sprays) is harmful to mammals, birds, or fish…”. He indirectly refutes this generality by referring to the review article by Sissener et al. (2011) and then to Sissener’s summary of some of the papers that she reviewed. The quotes in Sissener’s article does not refute Bodner’s statement. The evidence for this can be drawn directly by examining the referenced author’s own words. For example, the longest section in Sissener et al. (2011) that was quoted by Kuska refers to a paper by Sagstad et al. (2007). wherein immune system parameters among others was found to differ in a comparison of reference diet-fed fish, GM corn diet-fed fish, and non GM corn-diet fed fish. However, the question is health effects, which is not addressed by examining immune system biomarkers (I’ll come back to what Sagstad et al. (2007) really showed). A better paper, on which Sagstad is an author, is the one by Hemre et al. 2007 in Aquatic Nutrition, in which they conclude the following (from the abstract) : “Based on the present findings, the conclusions made are: Atlantic salmon smolts fed GM maize (event MON810), its near-isogenic parental line and suprex maize (Reference diet), all resulted in high growth rates, ADC and feed utilization. Health, when evaluated by means of mortality (low), normal ranges of blood and plasma parameters, except somewhat elevated ASAT values and minor variations in organ sizes, were considered good in all diet groups. The changes in the glucose transport mechanism and intestinal maltase enzyme activity in the gastrointestinal tract warrant further studies.” If the last statement is worrisome, then consider what the conclusion is based on. Whereas the vast majority of comparisons for the measured parameters were made between three treatment groups: a reference diet control, non GM corn, and GM corn, the latter statement is based on an in vitro study of isolated brush border membrane cells but DID NOT INCLUDE the reference diet fish. This is important, because sometimes there might be a difference between non-GM and GM fed group parameters, but the parameters do not differ significantly between the GM and reference diet group.
Now back to the Sagstad et al. 2007 article and those immune system biomarker results for my third point. Here is where you have to actually look at Table 4 to find out the following. First, the data are expressed as the percentage proportion of several different innate immune system cells in the sampled population of white blood cell populations from the reference diet, non-GM corn, and GM corn diet groups. While it is true that some significant differences in proportions of cells amounting to several percent were found when non-GM corn and GM corn were compared, there were no statistical differences between the reference diet and the GM diet fish. So, what does it mean? I argue it does not mean anything other than observation about homeostatic mechanisms owing to differences in environment. What do I mean by differences in environment? Well, you take 45 fish and isolate them from another group of 45 fish and you’ve automatically changed their environment. Don’t think that fish have personalities and quickly establish dominance hierarchies? I suggest you haven’t observed animals enough. (BTW, I can find no indication of fish sexing prior to group establishment. Lack of sexing could be a confounder, maybe.) The bottom line is that WE EXPECT minor differences in biomarkers between groups, whatever the exposure treatment, because by isolating animals we have changed their environment. The fact that SMALL differences in immune cell proportions were reported by Sagstad, with no statistical difference from a reference diet (that contained an equivalent amount of corn starch as the other diets) tells me there is no consistent physiological effect related directly to treatment. Certainly, these data mean NOTHING regarding health. The important conclusion about health is in the Hemre et al. (2007) paper referenced above.
As an aside, lest you think that Monsanto is hiding something and the regulators don’t know about these studies, consider that Monsanto is credited with providing these researchers with MON 810 corn and its isogenic non GM line. Thus, you can bet that Monsanto had the data and furthermore, as required under FIFRA, had to report those results to the EPA. After all, MON 810 is a registered pesticide (the technical term is a PIP, plant incorporated pesticide). Monsanto was not involved in the GM soya feeding studies because those papers did not use an isogenic line. Differences in cultivars will lead to differences in biomarkers, but even then, the researchers did not see any effects on health, broadly defined for their purposes as effects on growth parameters and mortality (lest you get picky, I’m skipping a lot of details here).
Fourth, the weight of the evidence based on examining more fish GM vs. non GM diet papers shows that the small cadre of authors involved in these studies have more often than not concluded no effects of putting large proportions of plant protein in fish food. And this brings me to the conceptualization of risk in this case. The objective of the research reported in these papers is basically two-fold. First, can you substitute a lot of plant protein for fish meal when rearing fish in aquacultural operations? Second, if the fish health is not affected (remember for this case health = growth parameters, mortality, and proximate nutrient content), will having 15-30% of the plant protein content come from GM soy or corn, affect health? Regulatory toxicology relies on the weight of the evidence, and of the perhaps 20 papers I quickly downloaded following Kuska’s remarks, I see no concern expressed by these authors about health. Where specific biomarker parameters were different, the authors call for more study, but what bona fide scientist doesn’t call for more study?
Finally, this forum is a lot more fun when people actually discuss the data and don’t react as if personally threatened by every new bit of information.
Allan above – Bookmarked for the next community type award – seriously awesome analysis.
Aw, shucks.
Ewan, seconded.
Bravo! I agree 100%. Please join the conversation more often!
Allen stated : “However, the question is health effects”
H. Kuska comment: Allen thank you for taking the time to analysise the question of fish health, but Anastasia Bodnar on July 11, 2011 at 8:34 pm stated: “There is no indication that Bt protein (in transgenic plants or in sprays) is harmful to mammals, birds, or fish…”
Please notice the difference “harmful” and health effects”.
In the review abstract the following is stated: “This review will present the current state of knowledge regarding GM plants as fish feed ingredients, focusing on fish performance and health.
Please notice that they are looking at both fish performance and health. This is closer to the broader “harmful” effects statement which I adressed my post to.
First lets cover the subgroup “health”. It is very easy to put the term “health” into the the PDF search box. We then have to exclude hits that apply to other GM containing non BT products.
Here is what the authors wrote, and the reviewers, and editor allowed to be said about BT and fish health:
“Fish health in this trial was evaluated focusing on stress – and immune-response biomarkers (Sagstad et al. 2007). SOD had higher activity in liver and distal intestine, while catalase (CAT) showed substantially lower liver activity in fish fed GM maize. HSP70 was significantly higher in the liver of fish fed GM maize compared with the fishmeal reference diet, while the non-GM maize group exhibited intermediate levels. The differences in activity and protein levels of CAT, SOD, and HSP70 were not reflected in levels of mRNA coding for these proteins. Differential count of
white blood cells revealed a considerably higher proportion
of granulocytes in the blood of fish fed GM maize. The authors
suggested that the GM maize MON810 caused changes
in the immune response with a related mild cellular stress
response. Altered liver metabolism was also indicated based on the higher liver index and changes of CAT, HSP70, and
SOD. Construction of an SSH-library from distal intestine,
followed up by qPCR, revealed only minor differences between
the diet groups in gene transcription (Frøystad-Saugen
et al. 2009). Microarray data from liver and distal intestine
of these fish are currently being evaluated.”
There also is a discussion of future methods to study health effects better. But that does not pertain to Anastasia Bodnar’s statement.
Regarding the larger group under harmful (such as fish performance), one can start by using the keyword “growth”.
“In another study, Atlantic salmon postsmolt fed GM
maize (MON810) at 15% and 30% of the total diet had substantially
reduced feed intake, growth rate, and final mass
compared with fish fed non-GM maize (Hemre et al. 2007).”
I submit that reduced “growth rate and “final mass” are “harmful” effects.
Google Scientific indicates that there is a very recent (2011)followup paper concerning the Atlantic salmon paper:
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8297140
Title: “Are apparent negative effects of feeding GM MON810 maize to Atlantic salmon, Salmo salar, caused by confounding factors?”
Abstract: “The present study was conducted to follow up on apparent differences in growth, relative organ sizes, cellular stress and immune function in Atlantic salmon fed feed containing GM Bacillus thuringiensis maize compared with feed containing the non-modified parental maize line. Gene expression profiling on the distal intestinal segment and liver was performed by microarray, and selected genes were followed up by quantitative PCR (qPCR). In the liver, qPCR revealed some differentially regulated genes, including up-regulation of gelsolin precursor, down-regulation of ferritin heavy subunit and a tendency towards down-regulation of metallothionein (MT)-B. This, combined with the up-regulation of anti-apoptotic protein NR13 and similar tendencies for ferritin heavy chain and MT-A and -B in the distal intestine, suggests changes in cellular stress/antioxidant status. This corresponds well with and strengthens previous findings in these fish. To exclude possible confounding factors, the maize ingredients were analysed for mycotoxins and metabolites. The GM maize contained 90 μg/kg of deoxynivalenol (DON), while the non-GM maize was below the detection limit. Differences were also observed in the metabolite profiles of the two maize varieties, some of which seemed connected to the mycotoxin level. The effects on salmon observed in the present and previous studies correspond relatively well with the effects of DON as reported in the literature for other production animals, but knowledge regarding effects and harmful dose levels in fish is scarce. Thus, it is difficult to conclude whether the observed effects are caused by the DON level or by some other aspect of the GM maize ingredient.”
Pro-GMOers poke holes in anti-GMO studies. Anti-GMOers poke holes in pro-GMO studies. What’s new?
What’d be new would be assessing the quality of the holes poked.
I haven’t seen any convincing arguements countering the holes poked by pro-GMO folk (as anastasia points out what one generally gets is handwaving, goalpost shifting and the like), whereas holes poked in the pro-GMO studies are generally, on further examination, not really holes.
Ewan,
The anti-GMOers have poked lots of holes in arguments favoring the use of gene engineering.
Trouble is, they do that by concocting future scenarios where GM crops cure everything that is troublesome, anywhere on the planet. Straw man, essentially.
A weird part of the mantra is their bashing of the notion that ‘GM crops will feed the world’. Anyone able to extrapolate a trend line would easily see that GM crops are increasingly feeding the world already, and there’s no indication that there’s a barrier to future improvements.
Humans have always innovated their way around the vaunted neo-Malthusian bottlenecks. The only proven difficulty with this is neo-Luddites who insist on bottle-necking.
Eh, I don’t like using “pro” GMO. I’m “pro” science.
See https://biofortified.org/2010/08/not-pro-gmo/ for some pretty interesting convo in the comments regarding being “pro” GMO.
Anastasia,
Very good point. During my years in this field, I have met only one ‘pro-GMO’ person, and that was over a decade ago.
If you’re truly a ‘pro-GMO’ person, you’ll want your cats, dogs, house plants, and perhaps your next-door neighbor modified. Faulty reasoning.
GM is a process, not a product. Proponents like GM because it works, and that’s that. If a shaman walked out of the rain-forest and showed that calling on the gods in the proper way reliably introduces useful novel traits into crops, transgenesis would in a short while be but a footnote to the history of agriculture.
And the scientists would back the shaman. And his methods, of course. Interestingly, improved crops derived from this process would likely not be regulated as GMOs.
What is the response to scientists arguing that long-term studies to determine the health effects of food crops with foreign DNA (like the cry protein) haven’t been done?
It seems rather narrow-minded to say that these crops are just a different variety of the same plant. There are many different varieties of mushrooms. Some are fine to eat and others are quite harmful. And the response of, “Well, do we need to test every new hybrid then?” seems to dodge the question.
Some find faults with the paper that claims the cry protein has been found in human blood. But if nothing else, it should warrant some suspicion that the cry protein is being absorbed into blood and perhaps compel those who discount it to perform testing to their own satisfaction.
As it is, the scientific paper leaves people wondering how the cry protein was absorbed into human blood if experts insisted it would be broken down via digestion — which undermines the credibility of those experts and makes one wonder what other ways these foreign genes are acting unexpectedly.
So has long-term testing been done? The claim that it hasn’t seems to be the most compelling argument from those who believe more caution should be exercised before making such food a regular part of the American diet.
James,
We have been eating the Cry1a protein for more than 60 years. It was the active in the sprayable Bt (DiPell etc) products that have been used in conventional and Organic farming since ~1950. Several other Bt toxins have been commercialized for a long time. When the EPA approved the Bt crops (corn, cotton, potatoes) in 1996, it did so with the confidence not just of the non-existent mammalian toxicity of that protein, but the very long history of its use on food crops. It is an extremely safe protein with no history of allergenicity.
Steve, your point about sprays has been discussed in the “Google world”. Some feel that a spray is a different animal that an incorporation into the food itself (cannot be washed off).
1996 data is just that – 1996 data. EPA has approved many chemicals that were later shown to be dangerous.
Henry,
First of all, washing does not remove as much as most people think, particularly on rough surfaces. Second of all, the Bt protein sprayed on the surface of the plant is partially degraded by UV radiation and by biological activity. That is why it has to be re-applied very frequently. There is nothing known about the nature or the toxicity of those breakdown products. However, in general, there are very few proteins that are problematic. There are definitely some toxic or allergenic ones, but considering that all foods contain thousands of unique ones, that is a very small risk for either the sprayed or in-plant versions. If you are worried about eating proteins in general, you don’t have any options for food.
Steve, I did not state anything that could be formally extended to justify your statement that (” If you are worried about eating proteins in general, you don’t have any options for food.”. Your statement is an example of trying to set up a “straw man”.
Readers, please note his extension to the very broad “about eating proteins in general”.
Also, please note the use of the words “some feel” in my statement. “Some feel that a spray is a different animal that an incorporation into the food itself (cannot be washed off).”
I acknowledged in a previous comment that the cry protein has been on our food for quite some time, but it was probably buried by more recent comments. So here it is again with the remaining question of whether the cry protein might be digested differently when engineered into a crop’s DNA versus sprayed on a crop: