That headline catches your eye, doesn’t it?

We’ve seen such claims made in popular media such as the March 2010 Fury as EU approves GM potato: Critics claim plant could spread antibiotic-resistant diseases to humans in the Independent: “Opponents fear bacteria inside the guts of animals fed the GM potato – which can cause human diseases – may develop resistance to antibiotics.” Groups that actively work against deregulation of genetically engineered crops have been making such claims for years.

We’ve also seen these claims in peer-reviewed journals (although, far less frequently than in non-peer reviewed media and reports). For example, in the February 2009 issue of Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, the review Health Risks of Genetically Modified Foods: “An area of concern focuses on the possibility that antibiotic resistance genes used as markers in transgenic crops may be horizontally transferred to pathogenic gut bacteria, thereby reducing the effectiveness of antimicrobial therapy.”

Are antibiotic marker genes in genetically engineered crops really a risk to human health? Many people have raised this question and there seems to be a lot of confusion about the issue. It’s time to look into the risks and reasons more deeply.

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