by
David Tribe on 23 June 2011
From GMO Pundit.
Nanotechnology Now – Press Release: “Nanostructured water treatment products to be worth $2.2 billion in 2015″
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| Warnings from nutritional hell, with apologies to El Bosco |
We live in a world where whole organisations make comfortable incomes by demonising technology. These self-styled “technology critics” early successes included active
blocking of the use of irradiation to make food safe or years. This largely unused technology is based on using electrons or radioactively generated gamma rays to kill germs.
Eleven years ago the German government vetoed the use of such radiation based technology to make food safe to eat in the EU. Odd that they should do this given that it’s a widely used and successful tool to avoid deadly infections during modern surgical operations. It could have prevented the ghastly current E. coli sproutbreak in Germany that has killed 44 and has condemned near 900 people to coping with the vile aftermath of HUS — which include kidney transplants or a lifetime of being hooked to dialysis machines. [It could also have prevented a second outbreak of sprout promoted lethal disease from the same E. coli strain now taking place in France.]
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This post was syndicated from GMO Pundit. You may comment here or on the original entry.
by
David Tribe on 10 June 2011
From GMO Pundit.
”Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”(George Santayana). (Here’s *a reminder* for those who have forgotten or do not know.)
Main lessons to be taken from this short history:
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| The type of food label needed here ?- from Bill Marler |
- Bean and various other seed sprouts are the suspects. Humans can carry and transmit the germ. The E. coli EHEC germ is spreading to other countries. Disease risks are severe. A serious global epidemic of a deadly disease is possible, even likely if immediate actions are not taken.
- Basic hygiene in all parts of fresh vegetable production and use in food needs to be given a thorough review everywhere and improvements communicated widely.
- Various special interests are likely to generate irrelevant noise that will obscure these messages getting through to potential victims: this noise should be ignored
- To avoid people being harmed, efforts and comments should be focussed on spreading the first two messages .
To understand the crux of this topic people just need to read this single Bloomberg story
By Niklas Magnusson – Jun 9, 2011 11:53 AM ET
All else is detail.
But the main details of what we know now follow for the more curious reader.
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This post was syndicated from GMO Pundit. You may comment here or on the original entry.
by
David Tribe on 10 June 2011
From GMO Pundit.
In 1975 right at the start of the genetic engineering era, all of the genetic behaviour of gut germs that explains the evolution of the HUS German outbreak strain of E. coli was well established [by about 1957, years before genetic engineering in laboratories was ever used]. Evolution of new virulence capabilities in bacteria were clearly identified. For many years the plasmid mini-chromosomes involved in evolution of multiple drug resistance to antibiotics had been well understood and extensively analysed. The topic was the subject of an important book by Prof Stanley Falcow, entitled surprisingly enough Infectious Multiple Drug Resistance.
A recent claim by a writer the Natural News website that the German outbreak E. coli strain was deliberately engineered by drug companies to confer multi-drug resistance on the germ, and that the proof of this:
…is written right in the DNA of the bacteria. That’s forensic evidence, and what it reveals cannot be denied. This strain underwent repeated and prolonged exposure to eight different classes of antibiotics, and then it somehow managed to appear in the food supply. How do you get to that if not through a well-planned scheme carried out by rogue scientists? There is no such thing as “spontaneous mutation” into a strain that is resistant to the top eight classes of brand-name antibiotic drugs being sold by Big Pharma today. Such mutations have to be deliberate.
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This post was syndicated from GMO Pundit. You may comment here or on the original entry.
by
David Tribe on 3 June 2011
From GMO Pundit.
A recent UK Times opinion piece by rational optimist Matt Ridley has really hit the nail of the head about food security, linking together many issues that are repeatedly tackled at this website.
The value of fertiliser.
The needs of Africa.
The tragedy of NGOs that harm people they want to help.
Problems and delays caused by of tying up innovation with over-zealous regulation.
Even the dangers of manure, with the risk of diarrhoea and death from faecal germs like pathogenic E. coli, as exemplified by the dreadful disaster playing out in Germany at the moment.
Oxfam are indeed trying genuinely hard to tackle the big and complex issue of food security. At least they understand there is a problem with the supply of food. Others chant incessantly the inane phrase “but the world has plenty of food”, as if the food supply automatically keeps pace with the ongoing growth in global food demand driven by population and wealth increases.
But Oxfam get things so wrong about technology and innovation.The bigger tragedy is that they are not alone in this, but that’s another story.
Matt Ridley: Why Oxfam Is Wrong On Food The Times, 2 June 2011, UK
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This post was syndicated from GMO Pundit. You may comment here or on the original entry.
by
David Tribe on 24 April 2011
From GMO Pundit.
The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science, and Fear by Seth Mnookin
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Wise words from George Santayana, US philosopher and poet (in Life of Reason, ‘Reason in Common Sense,’ ch. 12). William L. Shirer made these words the epigraph for his Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1959).
Seth Mnookin’s just released The Panic Virus is about the autism – MMR vaccine controversy. But there are compelling reasons for all participants involved in the debate about genetically modified organisms to read it.
We should all strive to fully understand how we can avoid the mistakes of the past. We should all try and do no harm. And in Panic Virus there are instructive lessons for both sides of the vaccine and the GMO debates that can help us all avoid doing harm. To borrow Paul Offit‘s aphorism, we all need to remember that by doing nothing we are doing something. By attempting to stop remedies for great ills we can do enormous harm. Tragically, the anti-vaccine crusade, despite being undoubtedly driven by the best of intentions to do good, has caused the resurgence of measles and whooping cough and many unnecessary infant deaths. These are genuine and horrible consequences of not using vaccines which demand careful attention to the full scientific evidence by all involved in public communication on these issues, especially communication through the internet. In the GMO debate, this vaccine history should make us all pause to consider the harmful consequences of not using new crops such as Golden Rice, which also promise, like vaccines do, to save infant lives.
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This post was syndicated from GMO Pundit. You may comment here or on the original entry.
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