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BookCorners
What Can Go Wrong with GM Foods
Review by Katherine Duff
Townsend
December 2003
Seeds of Deception: Exposing Industry and Government Lies About the Safety of the Genetically Engineered Foods You're Eating
Americans have some catching up to do on our understanding of genetically engineered foods, even though most of us are eating them every day. Europeans and Canadians have been actively fighting this takeover of our food supply for years and have not only slowed its progress but have provided the world with public records that reveal the abject failure of the scientific community and government regulatory agencies.
Seeds of Deception: Exposing Industry and Government Lies About the Safety of the Genetically Engineered Foods You're Eating by Jeffrey Smith, is a must read for everyone. Smith demonstrates in this book, that we are all being forced into serving as test subjects for a global experiment that will enrich a handful of corporations.
It is possible that Americans have lagged in their full appreciation of this revolution because the science can be a bit complicated, preferring to leave it to the professionals who are trusted implicitly. But as Smith tells us in the Introduction - genetically modified (GM) foods are nothing but the product in a massive business plan. With Monsanto's goal of controlling all of the world's seed supply in 20 years - genetically engineered and patented by them - Arthur Anderson Consulting Group devised a plan to accomplish just that. An integral part of that plan is to outfox any potential resistance to this new technology by rushing product into the marketplace. Once the marketplace is flooded, the consumers cannot do much about it.
Just what is it that is being rushed to market, a fully tested and safe product? No. As detailed in this book, the revered scientific method has been hijacked at every level. As research institutions have had to depend on more funding from the private sector, those holding the purse strings have had a stronger hand in controlling the results of research, what is published and what career changes may be in store for those daring to publish negative results. Smith's accounting of the monetary influence covers not just the researchers, but the government regulators who he finds spinning through the revolving doors of industry and government so fast they have been known to approve data as government employees that they prepared themselves as corporate employees.
The book starts with the story of a scientist in England, Dr. Arpad Pusztai, who with his team engineered a potato that would contain its own pesticide. The pesticide would be harmless to humans but would allow the plant to ward off pests. The feeding studies first showed results in reduced nutritional value of the potato. This alone should raise red flags as the US Food and Drug Administration approves GM foods as being the same as their natural counterparts, thus requiring no safety testing.
Even more alarming results were found after ten days of the study. The rats fed the GM potatoes suffered damaged immune systems which showed sluggish white bloods cells and damaged thymus and spleens. Some of the rats had smaller, less developed brains, livers and testicles and others showed enlarged pancreas and intestines. And most disturbing of all, there were structural changes and proliferation of cells in the stomach and intestines. This was not caused by the pesticide, but rather was a result of the process of genetic engineering itself. Dr. Pusztai used the same method used by the food companies.
Dr. Pusztai's results were not welcomed by the industry and the story of how his work was changed, manipulated, stopped from publication and the resulting damage to career is frightening. But his study is one of a very few studies being done, inside or outside industry. There exists a policy for governments and scientists of not asking the questions and not searching for answers regarding the safety of GM foods, lest they suffer the fate of Dr. Pusztai.
The strength of this book is the information about what can go wrong. For those comfortable with the fallacy that genetic engineering is just an advanced form of selective breeding, Smith offers a most cogent explanation of genetic engineering, putting to rest those incorrect notions. Genetic engineering is first of all based upon an out-dated assumption that each gene is coded for its own single protein. As it turns out - most human genes are theoretically capable of making at least two different proteins. This alone can account for some of the many surprises that occur in product development. But there are many other variables that will provide unpredictable outcomes in the new life form created.
The author does a superb job of explaining these complexities, of which he lists about twenty. First we learn that DNA instructs RNA to make protein, which it does by assembling amino acids. Splicosomes, or code scramblers, are a group of molecules that cut up the RNA, rearrange it and then reassemble it. When and how code scramblers are called into action is not yet well understood, but when they do function, they will produce an entirely new protein - one that is not intended by the scientist.
Other considerations are add-on molecules the author calls hitchhikers. Molecules such as phosphate, sulfate, sugars and lipids can alter a protein's effect on plants and animals. Predicting where and whether proteins will pick up hitchhikers is not now known, nor are the possible effects on humans. Chaperone proteins are sometimes needed to properly fold a protein. When a novel protein encounters a chaperone, it is not known whether the correct folding will take place, if at all.
The considerations Smith lists in this book are really questions researchers should be answering before allowing these products on the market. But lack of knowledge in this new technology is the green light for the go-ahead, not the warning to slowdown and get the answers. The Machiavellian business plan that will put the survival of humans into the hands of a few corporations that control the food supply is well on its way. But once these aberrant genes are released, they cannot be recalled and for better or worse the world will
have to contend with them. We already have failures that the author details in chapters about the bovine growth hormone, L-tryptophan and StarLink corn.
Smith's skills as an investigative reporter and communicator are a great help in telling this complicated story. Seeds of Deception lays bare the risks involved in this enterprise in a way that is accessible and convincing. To stop this disaster in the making, Americans will simply need to become better informed and this book is the place to start.
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