With scientists on both sides of the GMO debate, how can you know who’s wrong or right?

People have lots of questions about GMOs. Here’s an interesting question posed by Micky about lists of signatures against GMOs:

Q: “Are these scientists all wrong, there are over 800 scientists who all believe GMOs are a bad idea. http://www.i-sis.org.uk/list.php How many scientist believe that GMOs are good and do all of these scientist work for big agro corporations?”

And here is my Answer to Micky’s question:

Scientific arguments are not settled by counting the number of people supporting an opinion. They start with a careful search for scientifically valid evidence, and they carry this forward with open-minded and careful logical reasoning and false conclusions are eliminated from the discussion. Good scientific reasoning also takes notice of the whole body of evidence on a topic, and updates the verdict as new evidence becomes available.

The I-SIS website mentioned in the question has a public letter with over 800 signatories. Most scientists when making a scientific judgment don’t really care about such lists, and who signed the letter doesn’t enter into their thinking. It is quite right that they take this line.

Albert Einstein said this best (quoting Michio Kaku’s article at Encyclopedia Britannica):

“One Hundred Authors Against Einstein was (a short book) published in 1931 [which said the Theory of Relativity is wrong]. When asked to comment on this denunciation of relativity by so many scientists, Einstein replied that to defeat relativity one did not need the word of 100 scientists, just one fact.”

So let’s take a scientific approach and look at what evidence is presented in the I-SIS letter, and evaluate whether the claims it makes are true.

Continue reading →

Will GMO wheat silence human genes?

A reader at the GMO Answers website recently posed this question:
QUESTION “I recently looked at an article that states the new genetically modified wheat can silence wheat genes and can match human genes. This is a little concerning to me, seeing as I buy whole wheat bread and other products for my family to begin with. I have attached a link to the article stating this. Can you help clarify? http://www.undergroundhealth.com/genetically-modified-wheat-silences-dna-sequences-in-the-body-can-cause-fatalities-in-children/ (Natural Health News and Holistic Healing website)
Question Submitted by: draechap2089 from West Memphis, AR
Yours truly (also humbly known at my personal blog as GMO Pundit ) had the opportunity to give an answer to draechap2089.
It was, in brief: Fortunately, recent research has proved this worrying claim to be false.
Even before these recent findings, there was a huge amount of scientific evidence showing that RNA eaten in food in the diet is very unlikely to ever reach a human gene and bring about gene silencing in the human body (summarised here by the Australian food safety regulator FSANZ ).

The Important Take Home Message is: Whole grain foods and food fiber are good for your health.

And the full answer I gave explaining this message was the following:
The Natural Health News and Holistic Healing website article in the link provided by this question about GM wheat raises really important and timely topics in human nutrition. It asks a good question about a genetically engineered wheat variety that has been developed by scientists at an Australian government crop-science institute called CSIRO.
These scientists used precise modern genetic methods to increase the fiber content of wheat. Food fiber is vital for good health, and adequate intake of food fiber may prevent colon cancer. Continue reading “Will GMO wheat silence human genes?” →

For GM food and vaccinations, the panic virus is a deadly disease

By David Tribe, University of Melbourne and Richard Roush, University of Melbourne

Seth Mnookin's book — Seth Mnookin’s book

Most readers are aware of the benefits of using vaccines to boost the immune system and prevent infectious disease. Many readers will not be aware of a very different disease prevention tool: supplementing vitamins in crops through genetic modification (GM).
Anti-science opposition to both is rife; to save lives, that opposition has to stop.
The disease-prevention benefits of supplemental vitamin A were accidentally discovered in 1986 by public health scientists. They were working to improve nutrition in the villages of Aceh, Indonesia, where families are heavily dependent on rice as their main source of nutrition.
These scientists discovered that simple supplementation of infant diets with capsules containing beta-carotene (a natural source of vitamin A) reduced childhood death rates by 24%.
White rice is a very poor source of vitamin A, so the people of Aceh (like millions of poorer people in large regions of the world) suffered from vitamin A deficiency. This impaired proper development of their biological defences against infection.
We now better understand vitamin A deficiency as a disease of poverty and poor diet, responsible for near two million preventable deaths annually. It is mostly children under the age of five and women who are affected.
Many other studies carried out in several Asian, African and Latin American countries reveal the health benefits of beta-carotene supplementation in the diets of people subsisting on vitamin A-deficient staple foods. Continue reading →

Natural GMOs Part 165. Novel double-stranded RNAs get served up in many conventional crops — such as rice.

(An earlier version of this post appeared at GMO Pundit blog.)
Some people have raised worries about whether novel double-stranded RNA molecules present in plant foods might be harmful to people.
Naturally occurring plants often produce novel double-stranded RNA molecules, so we have long been exposed to this potential risk.
One example of a novel plant double-stranded RNA (that was not introduced by lab genetic engineering) has been characterised in detail by Japanese scientists Makoto Kusaba and colleagues (see science reference below). It is an RNA that is present in low protein variety of rice called LGC-1 that is used as a diet therapy for patients with kidney disease.
The LGC acronym stands for Low Glutelin protein Content. Glutelin proteins are a major forms of protein storage inside rice seeds.
These Japanese scientists have analysed the fine detail of the LGC-1 mutation conferring this low-protein production in rice and discovered a mechanism that explains the low protein content of the rice. It is caused by gene silencing triggered by a plant double stranded RNA that gets generated from the mutated region of the chromosome that has been altered by the LGC mutation.
Continue reading “Natural GMOs Part 165. Novel double-stranded RNAs get served up in many conventional crops — such as rice.” →

Silencing the bird flu gene: scientists prep live hen trials

Chickens_seeking_shade (1) — Image from Geoffrey McKim Bloomington, IN, USA/Wikipedia

By Sunanda Creagh, Reposted from The Conversation
Researchers hoping to produce modified chickens hatched with in-built resistance to bird flu will conduct trials on live hens later this year, an Australian scientist said on Tuesday.
CSIRO research scientist, Dr Tim Doran, has been using a technique called gene silencing to “switch off” virus genes that make chickens susceptible to H5N1, the bird flu that has devastated livestock and killed 359 people worldwide since 2003.
H5N1 can be transmitted from bird to human; however, health authorities fear a pandemic could break out if the disease mutates and develops the ability to jump more readily from person to person.
Dr Doran said his team has shown, in mice and in fertilised chicken eggs, that gene silencing techniques can stop bird flu by interrupting the virus’ reproduction processes. They have now produced transgenic chickens, which should be resistant to H5N1 and be able to pass that resistance onto their chicks.
“We are getting geared up to do what we call a challenge experiment, where we test our transgenic chickens for resistance to bird flu virus. We expect the first lot of those experiments to be conducted late this year or early next year,” Dr Doran said on Tuesday, speaking from the CSIRO’s Emerging Infectious Diseases Symposium in Geelong, Australia. Continue reading →

Calls for labelling GM food reveal attempts at market domination

[American business interests that are behind the current push for GM food labelling in California play a major part in this Australian story, reposted from The Conversation website.]

By Richard Roush, University of Melbourne and David Tribe, University of Melbourne
Australia has one of the more rigorous food labelling systems in the world for genetically modified (GM) attributes. All foods with more than 1% GM in any ingredient are required to be identified as “genetically modified” on the label, other than at restaurants.
But some stakeholders are demanding more extensive labelling. Given that the current system is already quite tough, we need to ask why more is needed. But first, let’s look at what we do right now.

Peculiar attention

There’s a great disparity between how different foods are labelled in Australia.
Non-GM food products with very real serious risks of containing allergens, such as nuts, are allowed on the market with no more than a “may contain” label. And we still accept artificial food ingredients with established health risks, such as trans fats, without a labelling requirement.
But lobbyists and consumer interest groups have focused on the labelling of genetically modified food. This seems to be much more of a political and commercial marketing campaign than one based on science, the environment or health.
There’s no scientific evidence for health or environmental risks from genetically modified crops. To the contrary, there’s scientific consensus that foods from GM crops are at least as safe as foods from conventional crops.
And, in contrast to genetically modified crops, conventional plant breeding is not routinely evaluated for unintended effects, even though detailed evaluation consistently shows GM crops to be less risky than conventionally bred crops.
Continue reading “Calls for labelling GM food reveal attempts at market domination” →

Genetically modified corn and cancer – what does the evidence really say?

A re-post of an article by Ashley Ng, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, Australia

French scientist Gilles-Eric Seralini caused quite a stir last week when he claimed he’d shown cancer in rats increased when they were fed genetically modified corn and/or water spiked with the herbicide Roundup. The paper, which seven of his colleagues co-authored, was published in the peer-reviewed journal Food and Chemical Toxicology.
France’s ministers for agriculture, ecology and health responded swiftly by commissioning the National Agency for Health and Safety to look into the claims. Depending on the findings, they could invoke an emergency suspension of imports of the Monsanto GM maize strain NK603, used in the study, into Europe. Now that’s what I call high impact.
But how did the authors come to their conclusion? And can such a significant claim be made using the study data? Continue reading “Genetically modified corn and cancer – what does the evidence really say?” →

Frankenfood or crops of the future? Gaps in the perception of GM food safety

Cooking s66hx52s-1345441972 — Cooking and other pre-treatments protect us from the chemicals in plants.

Humans have always faced tricky safety problems with food because we eat plants, which are the most ingenious pesticide chemists on the planet. Plants produce an amazing panoply of chemicals to deter animals from eating them. We’ve responded biologically to this challenge by evolving chemical detoxification mechanisms in the liver.
Culturally, we’ve responded by inventing cooking and other food pre-treatments that allow us to eat dangerous foods, such as kidney beans, rapeseed oil and tapioca.
We even add spice to life by adding low quantities of plant poisons to recipes to improve flavour. And we breed our crop plants to reduce toxins. In short, “natural foods” are not necessarily safe and most of our crops are not as natural selection produced them.
Continue reading →

Genetically modified crops shrink farming’s pesticide footprint

By Richard Roush, University of Melbourne and David Tribe, University of Melbourne
Recent news reports claim one in ten Australians believe the world will end on December 21, 2012, based largely on internet gossip about the meaning of ancient stone carvings from the Mayans of Central America. Such is the disturbing power of frightening myths to influence human belief.
No wonder modern apocalyptic mythology about agriculture, sinister stories about pesticides and assertions that genetic engineering of crops break a biological taboo find a very receptive audience, especially among those who don’t ever go to a modern farm.
In truth, there’s a lot to feel good about in the way modern agriculture is shaping up to the big challenges of the present – reducing carbon emissions, preventing soil erosion and minimising any environmental damage by herbicides and pesticides.

Helping the environment

One of the most significant crop management improvements in recent times has been the increasingly common practice of sowing seeds by direct drilling them into the stubble of the previous season’s crop. This approach forgoes a massive amount of soil tillage with the plough. Such minimum-tillage or no-tillage farming means that much less diesel oil is used in tractors and carbon levels can buildup in the soil rather than be released to the atmosphere.
It’s been estimated that the carbon emission savings from introduction of genetically engineered crops that encourage no-till farming are equivalent to removing 19.4 bn kilogram of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere worldwide. This is equal to the carbon emissions savings from removing 8.6 million cars from the road for one year.
Minimal tillage farming also has several other benefits, such as better moisture retention in the soil and reduction in soil erosion.

Genetically modified insect protected cotton on the left, next to a closely related conventional cotton variety on the right which is showing the damage from heavy insect feeding pressure. Greg Kauter, Courtesy of Australian Cotton Growers Research Association Inc, Narrabri, NSW.
Modern crop genetic engineering has provided farmers with much better crop variety options for use in no-till farming. One of these is crops that are tolerant of the herbicide glyphosate. This is the most widely used types of GM crop. Glyphosate-tolerant crops include soya beans, canola, cotton and maize. Glyphosate has much lower environmental impact than chemicals such atrazine, which it replaces. Unlike atrazine, which is banned in the European Union, glyphosate is relatively rapidly degraded in the soil and does not easily leach into water run-off to river basins. Continue reading “Genetically modified crops shrink farming’s pesticide footprint” →

An inconvenient truth being ignored by GM wheat protesters Take the Flour Back

(Originally Posted at GMO Pundit Blog)

Protest organisation Take the Flour Back (TTFB) and and others who support them are basing some of their claims about lack of safety of genetically modified food on a particular study by Canadian workers which claims to detect insect protection protein known as Bt in blood fluids of pregnant women and in human foetuses.
Maternal and fetal exposure to pesticides associated to genetically modified foods in Eastern Townships of Quebec

The same protein Bt is present in many genetically modified insect protected plants such as Bt corn.
Claims about this protein entering the human body are made by TTFB in promotional videos present on the protest website for instance, and have been recently been reported in British newspapers by food writers sympathetic to the claims of TTFB.
The information is spurious.
The scientists reporting finding Bt protein in the human samples (Aris and Leblanc) are detecting only noise in the assay system because they use an invalid assay system (Agdia) intended to test plants, not animals for Bt.
Continue reading “An inconvenient truth being ignored by GM wheat protesters Take the Flour Back” →