If I can live without food for 5 days, I can also live without food for 50 days… A recent study shows rats fed for 2 years on GM corn from fields highly sprayed with Roundup develop more tumors than those fed with other corn. The benefits of genetically modified foods produced by Monsanto are that the GM plant can withstand far more Roundup pesticides than normal.
A 2 year long study was conducted by a French team of researchers in the university of Caen led by molecular biologist Professor Gilles-Eric Seralini. The study showed that rats fed with GM corn where more likely affected with kidney damage and breast tumors:
We need to point out that this research was conducted over 2 years, where the industry only test the safety of GM corn on rats fed over a period not longer than 3 months. In other words: this is the first research that looks at long term consequences.
So the logic is as follows: short term studies conclude "there is no problem eating GM corn", hence you can consume it for the rest of your life… The same conclusion like: I can live without food for 5 days, so it’s safe to say I can live without food for 50 days… If this isn’t silly enough, then read on what Stanford University said at the beginning of this month (September 4th, 2012).
Stanford researches say organic food is not healthier
In the beginning of this month (September 4th, 2012), Stanford University concluded that
- the health effects of organic foods are unclear
- organic food consumption could reduce your exposure to antibiotic-resistant bacteria and residues of pesticides.
On the stanford.edu website they added the following:
- There isn’t much difference between organic and conventional foods, if you’re an adult and making a decision based solely on your health.
- Two studies of children consuming organic and conventional diets did find lower levels of pesticide residues in the urine of children on organic diets, though the significance of these findings on child health is unclear.
Notice the conclusion: adult’s health won’t be affected eating food with pesticides and for children: well, we don’t know what the effect of having pesticide residues in their system will be: nor short term, nor long term when they are adults.
So how can safety assessments of GM crops only be based on short term studies?
The 2 year long French study pointed out clearly:
the majority of tumors were only detectable only after 1 and a half year, meaning that the long term effect can – obviously – only be detected in long-term feeding trials.
What is strongly overlooked?
What is strongly overlooked in all the research is that rats are fed corn, but most humans don’t eat corn. Humans eat animals that have been fed with the corn and therefore humans are exposed to much more pesticide residues than the rats in the studies.
Remember DDT and the almost extinction of the bald eagles? If you simply examine the water, you could conclude there is nothing too harmful going on there that we can measure. But the higher in the foodchain, the more pesticides residues built up occurred until the eggs of the eagles where so poisoned, the embryos in the eggs died.
You cannot conclude: "all is safe" based on research that only focuses on 1 isolated aspect and concludes not to see any problem in that particular area.
Don’t slap the hand that feeds you
The spokesman of the Agricultural Biotechnology Council which speaks for the GM industry, Dr Julian Little, insists that GM foods are safe. That’s however a different discussion, the French study looks at GM foods sprayed with Roundup.
Professor of cell biology at Edinburgh University, Anthony Trewavas, questions the ability to draw conclusions when you do studies on only 200 rats. As far as I know, for every research you can calculate how significant your outcome is. The answer can be given by mathematicians if Anthony Trewavas really wants an answer in stead of just making his statement: it looks like random variation to me. Professors that start their sentences with "it looks like…" aren’t far better than your grandchildren that make similar assumptions without further ado.
Professor Anthony Trewavas also claims that the French professor is an anti-GM campaigner… Doh, can we focus on the research findings and conduction of the research, rather than the fact that the French professor obviously isn’t employed by Monsanto?
Conclusion
There is no indication that the benefits of genetically modified foods are aimed to improve people’s health.
Obviously there is a problem that:
- long term effects of any kind aren’t studied enough
- assumptions are made that short term studies are exemplary for long term outcomes.
- isolated study results don’t look at the possible bigger picture.
Examples that you can’t base health safety on short term studies are the almost extinction of the bald eagles until DDT was banned (1972) and the above French study that extended the normal feeding trials of 3 months to 2 years and found significant cancer problems occurring after 18 months.
Other than that , the consequences for the health of the earth and the sustainability of farming on land when using GM and GM modified crops in order to continue spraying pesticides are not discussed.