Scientists Suffer for Exposing Hazards of GMO's

[Guest guest]

Scientists Suffer for Exposing Hazards of Genetically

Modified Organisms in Your Food - San Francisco

Chronicle

 

 

 

 

This message is available on the Internet at

http://www.WantToKnow.info/050420gmocoverup

 

 

" After he reported his findings, which eventually

underwent peer review and were published in the United

Kingdom's leading medical journal, Lancet, Pusztai's

home was burglarized and his research files taken.

Soon thereafter, he was fired from his job at Rowett,

and he has since suffered an orchestrated

international campaign of discreditation, in which

Prime Minister Tony Blair played an active role. "

-- San Francisco Chronicle, 1/11/04

April 20, 2005

Dear friends,

 

Powerful economic forces are having an effect on the

food you eat. As you will read in the San Francisco

Chronicle article below, legitimate scientific

research into the danger of GMOs (Genetically Modified

Organisms) is being slammed by industries which stand

to lose billions of dollars if their products are

shown to be hazardous to public health. The media

appears to be taking a clear stand in support of big

industry, very rarely producing articles like the one

below.

 

Thanks to the power of the Internet, you can bypass

the media blockade and educate yourself on the dangers

of GMO products already present in some of the foods

you eat. An excellent summary at

http://www.wanttoknow.info/deception10pg provides

powerful information with excellent footnotes on the

collusion of government, media, and industry to keep

you from knowing what is being put in the food you

eat.

 

An excellent documentary available at

http://www.wanttoknow.info/resources#future also

reveals why many European countries have banned GMOs

from their food. For the sake of the health of you and

your children, I encourage you to inform yourself and

others on this vital issue, and to call for stringent,

objective research, free of industry influence, into

all GMO products before allowing them to enter our

food supply. Thanks for caring, and you have a good

day.

 

With best wishes,

Fred Burks for the WantToKnow.info Team

 

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/01/11/INGHT44\

JFS1.DTL

 

Biotech critics at risk : Economics calls the shots in

the debate

Mark Dowie

Sunday, January 11, 2004

 

Four biologists from Europe and North America met face

to face for the first time on the UC Berkeley campus

last month.

 

Although none of them is particularly famous as a

scientist -- not one Nobel among them -- they know

each other's names and work as well as if they had

been working together for 10 years in the same

laboratory. They share a painful experience.

 

Between 1999 and 2001, unbeknownst to the others, each

made a simple but dramatic discovery that challenged

the catechism of the same powerful industry --

biotechnology -- that by then had become the

handmaiden of industrial agriculture and the darling

of venture capitalists, who are still hoping they have

invested their most recent billions in " the next big

thing. "

 

If any one of the experiments of these four scientists

is proved through replication to be valid, the already

troubled agricultural arm of biotech will be in truly

dire straits. No one knows that better than Monsanto,

Sygenta and other biotech firms that have so

aggressively attacked the four discoveries in

question.

 

When he was the principal scientific officer of the

Rowett Institute in Aberdeen, Scotland, Hungarian

citizen Arpad Pusztai fed transgenically modified

potatoes to rodents in one of the few experiments that

have ever tested the safety of genetically modified

food in animals or humans. Almost immediately, the

rats displayed tissue and immunological damage.

 

After he reported his findings, which eventually

underwent peer review and were published in the United

Kingdom's leading medical journal, Lancet, Pusztai's

home was burglarized and his research files taken.

 

Soon thereafter, he was fired from his job at Rowett,

and he has since suffered an orchestrated

international campaign of discreditation, in which

Prime Minister Tony Blair played an active role.

 

While Pusztai was fighting for his professional life,

Cornell Professor John Losey was patiently dusting

milkweed leaves with genetically modified corn pollen.

When monarch butterfly larvae that ate the leaves died

in significant numbers (while a control group fed

nongenetically modified pollen all survived), Losey

was not particularly surprised.

 

The new gene patched into the butterfly's genome was

inserted to produce an internal pesticide, Bacillus

thuringiensis (Bt), intended to attack and kill the

corn borer and some particularly troublesome moth

caterpillars.

 

What did surprise Losey was the vehement attack on his

study that followed from Novartis and Monsanto, their

open attempts to discredit his work and the extent to

which mass media leapt to their support. Losey is

still at Cornell, where his future seems secure.

 

Not true of Ignacio Chapela, a microbial ecologist in

the plant sciences department at UC Berkeley. In 2000,

Chapela discovered that pollen had drifted several

miles from a field of genetically modified corn in

Chiapas into the remote mountains of Oaxaca in Mexico,

landing in the last reserve of biodiverse maize in the

world.

 

If genes from the rogue pollen actually penetrated the

DNA of traditional crops, they could potentially

eliminate maize biodiversity forever. In his report,

Chapela cautiously stated that this indeed might have

happened. He expressed that sentiment in a

peer-reviewed study published by Nature in November

2001.

 

After an aggressive public relations campaign mounted

for Monsanto by the Bivings Group, a global PR firm

that began with a vicious e-mail attack mounted by two

" scientists " who turned out to be fictitious, Nature

editors did something they had never done in their 133

years of existence. They published a cautious partial

retraction of the Chapela report. Largely on the

strength of that retraction, Chapela was recently

denied tenure at UC Berkeley and informed that he

would not be reoffered his teaching assignment in the

fall.

 

When Tyrone Hayes, a UC Berkeley endocrinologist

specializing in amphibian development, exposed young

frogs in his lab to very small doses of the herbicide

Atrazine, they first failed to develop normal larynxes

and later displayed serious reproductive problems

(males became hermaphrodites), suggesting that

Atrazine might be an endocrine disrupter.

 

Hayes' subsequent experience differed slightly from

the other panelists', but was no less troubling to

academic scientists. As soon as word of Hayes'

findings reached Sygenta Corp. (formerly Novartis) and

its contractor, Ecorisk Inc., attempts were made to

stall his research. Funding was withheld. It was a

critical time, as the EPA was close to making a final

ruling on Atrazine. Hermaphroditic frogs would not

help Sygenta's cause.

 

Hayes continued the research with his own funds and

found more of the same results, whereupon Sygenta

offered him $2 million to continue his research " in a

private setting. " A committed teacher with a lab full

of loyal students, Hayes declined the offer and

proceeded with research that he knew had to remain in

public domain.

 

This time he found damaging developmental effects of

Atrazine at even lower levels (0.1 parts per billion).

When his work appeared in the prestigious Proceedings

of the National Academy of Sciences, Sygenta attacked

the study and claimed that three other labs it

contracted had been unable to duplicate Hayes'

results.

 

Hayes, who keeps his head down on the Berkeley campus,

has obtained tenure and continues to teach. But his

studies that could affect approval of the most widely

used chemical in U.S. agriculture are being stifled at

every turn.

 

In a public conversation attended by 500 people and

Webcast to 4,000 more worldwide recently on the

Berkeley campus, Pusztai, Losey, Hayes and Chapela

shared their experiences and together explored ways to

prevent similar fates from ever happening to their

peers. Their similar stories provide a unique window

into a disturbing trend in modern science.

 

None of the four complained that his science had been

challenged, although in each case it had. All science

is and should be challenged. No one knows that better

than a practicing scientist, who also knows that if

tenure depended on a perfect experimental record,

there would be very few tenured scientists anywhere in

the world.

 

These four men were not attacked because of flawed or

imperfect experiments but because the findings of

their work have a potential economic effect. The sad

part is that the academies and other allegedly

independent institutions that once defended scientific

freedom and protected employees like Hayes, Chapela,

Losey and Pusztai are abandoning them to the wolves of

commerce, the brands of which are being engraved over

the entrances to a disturbing number of university

labs.

 

Mark Dowie lives in Point Reyes and teaches a science

writing class at UC Graduate School of Journalism.

 

Page D - 3

 

Note: To become more informed of the dangers of GMO

foods, to download a letter to food manufacturers, and

to learn how to avoid buying and eating GMO foods, see

http://www.seedsofdeception.com. To sign up for an

excellent newsletter on Genetically Modified Organisms

and their impact, see

http://www.seedsofdeception.com/Public/Newsletter/index.cfm#optin

 

 

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