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Hard to Swallow
by Michael Cheang
Article from The Star, (Malaysia) March 02, 2004
GENETICALLY modified food is potentially dangerous to human health and should be evaluated further before being fed to humans, said an expert at the Meeting of Parties for the Carta-gena Protocol.
According to Jeffery M. Smith, author of Seeds of Deception, a book that documents significant health dangers of genetically modified (GM) foods and the intense industry influence and political corruption that allow them on the market, the science of producing genetically modified food is still in its infancy and it is a long way off before the possibility of introducing genetical-ly modified crops into the wild, or GM foods into our diet, can even be considered.
GM food is food with genetic structure which has been tampered with or modified by inserting genes that do not occur naturally in that food. There are currently four major crops in the world that are being genetically modified and sold - soy, corn, cotton and canola. There are also smaller crops like the Hawaiian papaya and zucchini, as well as many others that are being field tested, for example, rice and wheat.
Smith, who is founding director of the Institute for Responsible Technology, urged caution against these foods, citing several studies and re-search that proved that GM food may be potentially hazardous to human health.
"In a study done in 1998, genetically modified potatoes were fed to rats. They later developed, over the equivalent of 10 human years, smaller brains, liver and testicles, partial atrophy of the liver, damaged immune systems and a potential pre-cancer cell growth in their stomachs and intestines," he said.
"The scientist concluded that the cause of the problems was likely to be the process of genetic engineering that the potato went through – the same process used in the foods that we eat. However, no published studies have evaluated these same effects on the food we eat, so it is possible that GM food on the market currently could also cause the same effects on humans." In other examples, rats fed GM tomatoes developed stomach lesions, and seven out of 40 rats died within two weeks. The tomato was later approved for human consumption and sold in the United States.
Soon after GM soy was introduced in Britain, soy allergies skyrocketed by 50% there. A GM bacteria used to create a food supplement called L-tryptophan is also almost certainly responsible for a deadly epidemic in the 1980s that killed over 100 Americans and caused 5,000 to 10,000 others to fall sick or become permanently disabled.
According to Smith, there are a few ways that GM foods can be dangerous: the materials inserted; disruptions of the DNA resulting from this insertion; and the process of insertion itself.
"Take, for example, an antibiotic resistant marker gene which is inserted into GM food. In a new study re-leased recently, a particular cauliflower-mosaic virus promoter, attached to inserted genes in nearly all GM foods, was found intact in rat tissues after a single meal, and was also confirmed to be active in human cells - an occurrence which was not supposed to happen, according to biotech advocates," explained Smith.
"This virus promoter could create, in theory, cell growth which could lead to cancer or create potential genetic instability that causes our own DNA to mutate and rearrange. It could also create genes that would not normally be turned on or activate dormant viruses in the human body or in animals."
During the process of insertion, many genes could change expression, too.
"In one study, 5% of the genes in a DNA either increased or decreased their expression," said Smith. "Sometimes genes are switched on. Sometimes they are turned off permanently. Sometimes the genetic code is scrambled as happened in the case of genetically modified soy currently in the market," said Smith.
"Consider this: if you eat GM food in a single meal, it is possible that the gene that was transferred into your body could in theory transfer to your internal organs. If it continues to be active, it could create a pesticide inside your body that could weaken the body’s response to allergic stimulants. The promoter that was put into the same food could also get into your tissues and create genetic instability inside your DNA which could turn on genes that could create allergens, toxins and diseases."
Smith’s goal now is to bring information about the health dangers posed by GM foods to those who are responsible for making policies in their countries so that they can evaluate it properly, and create more awareness about the dangers of GM foods.
"Research shows that the more people learn about GM foods, the less they trust it," said Smith. "In the United States, awareness about GM foods is so low that 58% of Americans claimed they have never eaten GM food even though they may be eating it in every meal."
Despite his misgivings about GM foods, Smith still sees great potential in biotechnology.
"There is great potential for biotechnology to help mankind and the environment. In theory, if we can efficiently manipulate a genome, we can enjoy lots of benefits," said Smith.
"However, at this point in time, the dangers far outweigh the benefits. We are still in the infant stages of this science, and many of the assumptions used as a basis of the safety claims have been proven untrue.
"Thus it is not safe to feed the products of this infant science to human beings or to release them into the environment at this time."
Publication Date: 02.03.2004
(The Star, Malaysia)
-- Michael Cheang
Journalist, StarTwo
The Star
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