A new French life-long study shows rats fed a particular variety of Monsanto’s GMO corn or exposed to glyphosate (Round Up) residues had a significantly higher risk of developing tumors and organ damage.
As a result of this study, Russia has suspended the import of US GMO corn.
This peer reviewed study showed a number of important things. The first was currently all testing is done for 3 months, and in this study the tumors didn’t develop until after the initial 90 days. This is also the first study that shows exposure to the GMO corn alone was enough to cause tumors, suggesting direct manipulation of the corn genome can itself cause cancer. The study also showed exposure to glyphosate residues can cause cancer.
Hopefully this will not turn out to be a flawed – http://scientificbeekeeping.com/ study similar to the Harvard study which found that Colony Collapse Disorder was caused by a common insecticide, imidacloprid, used on corn.
If the claims in this – http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22287-study-linking-gm-crops-and-cancer-questioned.html article are true, then this is another flawed piece of research that does more damage than good.
Thanks for the links Mike! I hadn’t seen either of them before.
If the findings of this study are completely torn apart and found invalid I won’t shed a tear, as long as they are built upon and further researched by others. You know this wasn’t the first study that found GMOs cause heath problems.
Another distinguished scientist, Árpád Pusztai, a Hungarian-born biochemist and nutritionist who spent 36 years at the Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen, Scotland, authored over 270 research papers and published 3 books, also found GM potatoes caused stomach lining and immune system damage in rats. His findings were also disputed, and in fact he lost his job over the incident.
As far as I’m aware there was never any follow up to try to confirm or disprove his findings, and many scientists from all over the world stood by him and his research, even though parts of it may have been flawed.
The problem is there are clearly a number of scientists who feel this matter deserves closer inspection, and it’s a little unreal that the terms of Monsanto’s patent prevent ‘unauthorized’ research. As long as free and open debate isn’t allowed within the scientific community, all we have are these glimpses at what might be valid research that disappear quickly out of sight. Of course they will all be criticized and discredited, but what else do we have?
While I don’t condone publishing lies, I’m not of the opinion that under the circumstances publishing something like this can do more harm than good. There’s lots of bad science out there, and I’ve seen a lot worse. Monsanto is certainly guilty of a lot themselves.
It’s generally known cancer can be caused by DNA damage to cells. The exact reasons are not always known, but this connection has been made before. It’s not unreasonable to suspect GMOs can be linked to cancer under some circumstances, and it’s not unreasonable to research this. It’s certainly not unreasonable to suspect a hormone base weed killer like Round Up could cause cancer.
If this study didn’t have enough rats for a statistically sound conclusion, or the breed of rat was not well suited to the study because it was prone to tumors, fine. Let Monsanto commission their own study to disprove the findings. If they do it through an independent research institute, the world might even believe them! After Monsanto completes their study, it will be time for someone to build on that.
I can’t speak for other places in the world, but I can certainly say that here in Europe there’s quite a bit of infighting within the scientific community over these kinds of issues right now. Scientists are getting tired of being told to shut up and to keep their opinions to themselves.
Let Monsanto commission their own study to disprove the findings
That’s not likely to be the tactic. I would expect Monsanto et al. to take the same approach as that taken by Big Tobacco and more recently those who reject man-made climate change: distort and lie in order to create uncertainty and confusion.
Mike, I agree completely.
In Europe those kind of tactics don’t seem to be accepted any more. Increasingly, people are reacting in a very angry way to this kind of nonsense. There’s a real war here brewing on several fronts. In many ways, I think the scientists who did this study know this and are stirring this kind of controversy on purpose.
The scientific community is becoming more and more divided, as is the seed industry. There are some real fault lines developing over these kinds of tactics. The next few years will be very interesting, and I predict one way or another some things will change.
Since I don’t have any idea what’s going on in NA, I’d like very much to hear what you think!
Patrick,
I’m not sure that I can tell you what’s going on in North America. I don’t get the sense that there is resistance to Big Tobacco-type tactics. It seems that Monsanto is viewed by many as the Great Satan but often without understanding and often with misinformation. I’ve had people tell me that Monsanto (along with Bill Gates) owns Svalbard. When you mention Pink Slime – http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/09/pink-slime-lawsuit to people, they look at you in disbelief and continue to buy the product. It’s my sense that people are at the stage of being nervous, that nervousness isn’t defined or focused. Having said that, it looks like California’s Proposition 37 – http://www.cornucopia.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/prop37-poster-sml31.jpg will pass in November. I’m not sure that labelling by itself is enough to cause a sea change in people’s views of GMO’s. I suspect that we need direct linkage à la Silent Spring or tobacco/lung cancer. People generally don’t react until presented with inescapable evidence.
With a genetic chimera (we should refrain from using the term “GMO” because it is not “genetically modified”, it is a chimera and that’s what it is) that produces its own insecticide, it is produced by each and every cells of the chimera.
As a result, the crops, that is to say billions of plant cells that have produced insectidice by their own, is 10000 to 100000 more concentrated in insecticide than industrial crop that would have been ‘just’ sprayed. I don’t see how we need years of studies to understand that and how such a thing is allowed for any feeding purpose because it will get you mighty sick, there’s no doubts about that whatsoever.
Even around the roots of such biocide-producing chimera the life cannot develop normaly.