GMO Dangers as Reported by Genetic Engineers

Unusually, the ini­tia­tive for the report came not from cam­paign­ers but from two genetic engi­neers who believe there are good sci­en­tific rea­sons to be wary of GM foods and crops.

One of the report’s authors, Dr Michael Antoniou of King’s College London School of Medicine in the UK, uses genetic engi­neer­ing for med­ical appli­ca­tions but warns against its use in devel­op­ing crops for human food and ani­mal feed.

Dr Antoniou said: “GM crops are pro­moted on the basis of ambi­tious claims—that they are safe to eat, envi­ron­men­tally ben­e­fi­cial, increase yields, reduce reliance on pes­ti­cides, and can help solve world hunger.

“I felt what was needed was a col­la­tion of the evi­dence that addresses the tech­nol­ogy from a sci­en­tific point of view.

“Research stud­ies show that genet­i­cally mod­i­fied crops have harm­ful effects on lab­o­ra­tory ani­mals in feed­ing tri­als and on the envi­ron­ment dur­ing cul­ti­va­tion. They have increased the use of pes­ti­cides and have failed to increase yields. Our report con­cludes that there are safer and more effec­tive alter­na­tives to meet­ing the world’s food needs.”

Another author of the report, Dr John Fagan, is a for­mer genetic engi­neer who in 1994 returned to the National Institutes of Health $614,000 in grant money due to con­cerns about the safety and ethics of the tech­nol­ogy. He sub­se­quently founded a GMO test­ing company.

Dr Fagan said: “Crop genetic engi­neer­ing as prac­ticed today is a crude, impre­cise, and out­moded tech­nol­ogy. It can cre­ate unex­pected tox­ins or aller­gens in foods and affect their nutri­tional value. Recent advances point to bet­ter ways of using our knowl­edge of genomics to improve food crops, that do not involve GM.

“Over 75% of all GM crops are engi­neered to tol­er­ate being sprayed with her­bi­cide. This has led to the spread of herbicide-resistant super­weeds and has resulted in mas­sively increased expo­sure of farm­ers and com­mu­ni­ties to these toxic chem­i­cals. Epidemiological stud­ies sug­gest a link between her­bi­cide use and birth defects and cancer.

“These find­ings fun­da­men­tally chal­lenge the util­ity and safety of GM crops, but the biotech indus­try uses its influ­ence to block research by inde­pen­dent sci­en­tists and uses its pow­er­ful PR machine to dis­credit inde­pen­dent sci­en­tists whose find­ings chal­lenge this approach.”

The third author of the report, Claire Robinson, research direc­tor of Earth Open Source, said, “The GM indus­try is try­ing to change our food sup­ply in far-reaching and poten­tially dan­ger­ous ways. We all need to inform our­selves about what is going on and ensure that we—not biotech­nol­ogy companies—keep con­trol of our food sys­tem and crop seeds.

“We hope our report will con­tribute to a broader under­stand­ing of GM crops and the sus­tain­able alter­na­tives that are already work­ing suc­cess­fully for farm­ers and communities.”

Notes

The report, “GMO Myths and Truths, An evidence-based exam­i­na­tion of the claims made for the safety and effi­cacy of genet­i­cally mod­i­fied crops”, by Michael Antoniou, PhD, Claire Robinson, and John Fagan, PhD is pub­lished by Earth Open Source (June 2012). The report is 123 pages long and con­tains over 600 cita­tions, many of them from the peer-reviewed sci­en­tific lit­er­a­ture and the rest from reports by sci­en­tists, physi­cians, gov­ern­ment bod­ies, indus­try, and the media. The report is avail­able here: http://earthopensource.org/index.php/reports/58

A shorter sum­mary ver­sion will be released in the com­ing weeks.

Key points from the report

1. Genetic engi­neer­ing as used in crop devel­op­ment is not pre­cise or pre­dictable and has not been shown to be safe. The tech­nique can result in the unex­pected pro­duc­tion of tox­ins or aller­gens in food that are unlikely to be spot­ted in cur­rent reg­u­la­tory checks.
2. GM crops, includ­ing some that are already in our food and ani­mal feed sup­ply, have shown clear signs of tox­i­c­ity in ani­mal feed­ing trials—notably dis­tur­bances in liver and kid­ney func­tion and immune responses.
3. GM pro­po­nents have dis­missed these sta­tis­ti­cally sig­nif­i­cant find­ings as “not bio­log­i­cally relevant/significant”, based on sci­en­tif­i­cally inde­fen­si­ble arguments.
4. Certain EU-commissioned ani­mal feed­ing tri­als with GM foods and crops are often claimed by GM pro­po­nents to show they are safe. In fact, exam­i­na­tion of these stud­ies shows sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences between the GM-fed and con­trol ani­mals that give cause for concern.
5. GM foods have not been prop­erly tested in humans, but the few stud­ies that have been car­ried out in humans give cause for concern.
6. The US FDA does not require manda­tory safety test­ing of GM crops, and does not even assess the safety of GM crops but only “dereg­u­lates” them, based on assur­ances from biotech com­pa­nies that they are “sub­stan­tially equiv­a­lent” to their non-GM coun­ter­parts. This is like claim­ing that a cow with BSE is sub­stan­tially equiv­a­lent to a cow that does not have BSE and is thus safe to eat! Claims of sub­stan­tial equiv­a­lence can­not be jus­ti­fied on sci­en­tific grounds.
7. The reg­u­la­tory regime for GM foods is weak­est in the US, where GM foods do not even have to be assessed for safety or labelled in the mar­ket­place, but in most regions of the world reg­u­la­tions are inad­e­quate to pro­tect people’s health from the poten­tial adverse effects of GM foods.
8. In the EU, where the reg­u­la­tory sys­tem is often claimed to be strict, min­i­mal pre-market test­ing is required for a GMO and the tests are com­mis­sioned by the same com­pa­nies that stand to profit from the GMO if it is approved—a clear con­flict of interest.
9. No long-term tox­i­co­log­i­cal test­ing of GMOs on ani­mals or test­ing on humans is required by any reg­u­la­tory agency in the world.
10. Biotech com­pa­nies have used patent claims and intel­lec­tual prop­erty pro­tec­tion laws to restrict access of inde­pen­dent researchers to GM crops for research pur­poses. As a result, lim­ited research has been con­ducted on GM foods and crops by sci­en­tists who are inde­pen­dent of the GM indus­try. Scientists whose work has raised con­cerns about the safety of GMOs have been attacked and dis­cred­ited in orches­trated cam­paigns by GM crop promoters.
11. Most GM crops (over 75%) are engi­neered to tol­er­ate appli­ca­tions of her­bi­cides. Where such GM crops have been adopted, they have led to mas­sive increases in her­bi­cide use.
12. Roundup, the her­bi­cide that over 50% of all GM crops are engi­neered to tol­er­ate, is not safe or benign as has been claimed but has been found to cause mal­for­ma­tions (birth defects), repro­duc­tive prob­lems, DNA dam­age, and can­cer in test ani­mals. Human epi­demi­o­log­i­cal stud­ies have found an asso­ci­a­tion between Roundup expo­sure and mis­car­riage, birth defects, neu­ro­log­i­cal devel­op­ment prob­lems, DNA dam­age, and cer­tain types of cancer.

13. A pub­lic health cri­sis has erupted in GM soy-producing regions of South America, where peo­ple exposed to spray­ing with Roundup and other agro­chem­i­cals sprayed on the crop report esca­lat­ing rates of birth defects and cancer.
14. A large num­ber of stud­ies indi­cate that Roundup is asso­ci­ated with increased crop dis­eases, espe­cially infec­tion with Fusarium, a fun­gus that causes wilt dis­ease in soy and can have toxic effects on humans and livestock.
15. Bt insec­ti­ci­dal GM crops do not sus­tain­ably reduce pes­ti­cide use but change the way in which pes­ti­cides are used: from sprayed on, to built in.
16. Bt tech­nol­ogy is prov­ing unsus­tain­able as pests evolve resis­tance to the toxin and sec­ondary pest infes­ta­tions are becom­ing common.
17. GM pro­po­nents claim that the Bt toxin engi­neered into GM plants is safe because the nat­ural form of Bt, long used as a spray by con­ven­tional and organic farm­ers, has a his­tory of safe use. But the GM forms of Bt tox­ins are dif­fer­ent from the nat­ural forms and could have dif­fer­ent toxic and aller­genic effects.
18. GM Bt toxin is not lim­ited in its tox­i­c­ity to insect pests. GM Bt crops have been found to have toxic effects on lab­o­ra­tory ani­mals in feed­ing trials.
19. GM Bt crops have been found to have toxic effects on non-target organ­isms in the environment.
20. Bt toxin is not fully bro­ken down in diges­tion and has been found cir­cu­lat­ing in the blood of preg­nant women in Canada and in the blood sup­ply to their foetuses.
21. The no-till method of farm­ing pro­moted with GM herbicide-tolerant crops, which avoids plough­ing and uses her­bi­cides to con­trol weeds, is not more climate-friendly than plough­ing. No-till fields do not store more car­bon in the soil than ploughed fields when deeper lev­els of soil are measured.
22. No-till increases the neg­a­tive envi­ron­men­tal impacts of soy cul­ti­va­tion, because of the her­bi­cides used.
23. Golden Rice, a beta-carotene-enriched rice, is pro­moted as a GM crop that could help mal­nour­ished peo­ple over­come vit­a­min A defi­ciency. But Golden Rice has not been tested for tox­i­co­log­i­cal safety, has been plagued by basic devel­op­ment prob­lems, and, after more than 12 years and mil­lions of dol­lars of research fund­ing, is still not ready for the mar­ket. Meanwhile, inex­pen­sive and effec­tive solu­tions to vit­a­min A defi­ciency are avail­able but under-used due to lack of funding.
24. GM crops are often pro­moted as a “vital tool in the tool­box” to feed the world’s grow­ing pop­u­la­tion, but many experts ques­tion the con­tri­bu­tion they could make, as they do not offer higher yields or cope bet­ter with drought than non-GM crops. Most GM crops are engi­neered to tol­er­ate her­bi­cides or to con­tain a pesticide—traits that are irrel­e­vant to feed­ing the hungry.
25. High adop­tion of GM crops among farm­ers is not a sign that the GM crop is supe­rior to non-GM vari­eties, as once GM com­pa­nies gain con­trol of the seed mar­ket, they with­draw non-GM seed vari­eties from the mar­ket. The notion of “farmer choice” does not apply in this situation.
26. GM con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of non-GM and organic crops has resulted in mas­sive finan­cial losses by the food and feed indus­try, involv­ing prod­uct recalls, law­suits, and lost markets.
27. When many peo­ple read about high-yielding, pest- and disease-resistant, drought-tolerant, and nutri­tion­ally improved super-crops, they think of GM. In fact, these are all prod­ucts of con­ven­tional breed­ing, which con­tin­ues to out­strip GM in pro­duc­ing such crops. The report con­tains a long list of these con­ven­tional crop breed­ing successes.
28. Certain “super­crops” have been claimed to be GM suc­cesses when in fact they are prod­ucts of con­ven­tional breed­ing, in some cases assisted by the non-GM biotech­nol­ogy of marker assisted selection.
29. Conventional plant breed­ing, with the help of non-GM biotech­nolo­gies such as marker assisted selec­tion, is a safer and more pow­er­ful method than GM to pro­duce new crop vari­eties required to meet cur­rent and future needs of food pro­duc­tion, espe­cially in the face of rapid cli­mate change.
30. Conventionally bred, locally adapted crops, used in com­bi­na­tion with agroe­co­log­i­cal farm­ing prac­tices, offer a proven, sus­tain­able approach to ensur­ing global food security.

About the authors

Michael Antoniou, PhD is reader in mol­e­c­u­lar genet­ics and head, Gene Expression and Therapy Group, King’s College London School of Medicine, London, UK. He has 28 years’ expe­ri­ence in the use of genetic engi­neer­ing tech­nol­ogy inves­ti­gat­ing gene organ­i­sa­tion and con­trol, with over 40 peer reviewed pub­li­ca­tions of orig­i­nal work, and holds inven­tor sta­tus on a num­ber of gene expres­sion biotech­nol­ogy patents. Dr Antoniou has a large net­work of col­lab­o­ra­tors in indus­try and acad­e­mia who are mak­ing use of his dis­cov­er­ies in gene con­trol mech­a­nisms for the pro­duc­tion of research, diag­nos­tic and ther­a­peu­tic prod­ucts and human somatic gene ther­a­pies for inher­ited and acquired genetic disorders.

John Fagan, PhD is a lead­ing author­ity on sus­tain­abil­ity in the food sys­tem, biosafety, and GMO test­ing. He is founder and chief sci­en­tific offi­cer of a GMO test­ing and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion com­pany. He is a direc­tor of Earth Open Source. Earlier, he con­ducted can­cer research at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and in acad­e­mia. He holds a PhD in bio­chem­istry and mol­e­c­u­lar and cell biol­ogy from Cornell University.

Dr Fagan became an early voice in the sci­en­tific debate on genetic engi­neer­ing when in 1994 he took an eth­i­cal stand chal­leng­ing the use of germline gene ther­apy (which has sub­se­quently been banned in most coun­tries) and genetic engi­neer­ing in agri­cul­ture. He under­lined his con­cerns by return­ing a grant of around $614,000 to the US National Institutes of Health, awarded for can­cer research that used genetic engi­neer­ing as a research tool. He was con­cerned that knowl­edge gen­er­ated in his research could poten­tially be mis­used to advance human germline genetic engi­neer­ing (for exam­ple, to cre­ate “designer babies”), which he found unac­cept­able on grounds of both safety and ethics. For sim­i­lar rea­sons, around the same time, he with­drew appli­ca­tions for two addi­tional grants totalling $1.25 mil­lion from the NIH and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). In 1996 he founded one of the pio­neer­ing GMO test­ing and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion com­pa­nies after real­is­ing that this could be use­ful to assist indus­try in pro­vid­ing con­sumers with the trans­parency that they desired regard­ing the pres­ence of GMOs in foods.

Claire Robinson, MPhil is research direc­tor at Earth Open Source. She has a back­ground in inves­tiga­tive report­ing and the com­mu­ni­ca­tion of top­ics relat­ing to pub­lic health, sci­ence and pol­icy, and the envi­ron­ment. She is an edi­tor at GMWatch (www.gmwatch.org), a pub­lic infor­ma­tion ser­vice on issues relat­ing to genetic mod­i­fi­ca­tion, and was for­merly man­ag­ing edi­tor at SpinProfiles (now Powerbase).

Source: Earth Open Source Release