Celebrities Against GMOs

Monsanto has spent a lot of money trying to fight state labeling laws. Despite millions of dollars and deceitful ad campaigns, they haven’t been entirely successful. Laws mandating GMO labeling came close to passing in Oregon, California, and Washington. Vermont successfully passed a GMO labeling law, and initiatives to label genetically modified foods are being introduced all over the country.

Monsanto needed a federal solution to their problem, a federal law that could overturn the people’s will in Vermont and in other states. Unfortunately, Congress agreed. The bill is titled the Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act of 2015. It is better known by its critics as the DARK Act (which stands for Denying Americans the Right to Know). Despite vocal opposition from the public, independent scientists, and celebrities, the bill has passed the House and it is currently in the Senate’s agriculture committee. This bill, and California’s failed attempt to pass a GMO labeling law, motivated public responses from world-class celebrities. Refusing to passively accept corporate rule, many stars have become outspoken and have begun to use their fame in order to make it clear that they want to know what is in their food. Neil Young tells us in song.

Neil Young

If you don’t like to rock Starbucks A coffee shop
Well you better change your station ’cause that ain’t all that we got
Yeah, I want a cup of coffee but I don’t want a GMO
I like to start my day off without helping Monsanto

… From the fields of Nebraska to the banks of the Ohio
The farmers won’t be free to grow what they want to grow
When corporate control takes over the American farm
With fascist politicians and chemical giants walking arm in arm

… When the people of Vermont wanted to label food with GMOs
So that they could find out what was in what the farmer grows
Monsanto and Starbucks through the Grocery Manufacturers Alliance
They sued the state of Vermont to overturn the people’s will

Chuck Norris

In 2007 alone, the agricultural sector applied between 180 million and 185 million pounds of glyphosate to crops in this country. The home and garden sector applied 5 million to 8 million pounds, and industry, commerce, and government applied 13 million to 15 million pounds of glyphosate. It was the most widely used herbicide in U.S. agriculture and second-most widely used herbicide in the home and garden sector.

The reason it should be on our radar now is that glyphosate is under a standard registration review by the Environmental Protection Agency. The agency is determining whether glyphosate use should continue as is or be limited or even halted.

For years, various interest groups, as well as researchers and scientists from several countries, have complained that heavy use of glyphosate is causing problems for plants and animals, including humans. Studies have been conducted, and findings have been made.

…What do I believe when I read that even the EPA’s technical fact sheet on glyphosate states, for example, that chronic long-term exposure can cause kidney damage and reproductive effects?

And when an MIT study argues that glyphosate’s “negative impact on the body is insidious and manifests slowly over time as inflammation damages cellular systems throughout the body”?

Do I read this as it sounds – that maybe what is being called insignificant or low-risk in the short term could escalate into having a significant impact on health over the years? Is it something that could shorten a person’s life?

Jennifer Garner

My friend Gisele [Bundchen] and I are fed up with being kept in the dark about GMO and non-GMO labeling, I got involved because she said, “Do you know what’s happening?” She’s a firecracker. She said, “You have to educate yourself.”

It’s easy for me to shop at places where foods are labeled. Only 3% of the food we produce is non-GMO. But if that 3% is available to you, you kind of take that for granted, but the rest of the country is being fed food—certainly all of the animals that are being turned into our meat, they’re all being fed food that’s been genetically modified.

I cook for my kids, and we have a garden. We try to grow whatever we can, although I can’t say we have the hugest crop in the world, but I do try to pay close attention, and I do my best.

Gwyneth Paltrow

Next week I am going to DC to speak with members of the Senate about voting against a law that would let genetically modified organisms into our food supply without any labels! Monsanto and other big food do not want any GMO labeling. 89% of Americans do. And this law, which passed in the house last week, would overturn the states who have passed labeling laws. The evidence suggests that GMO’s are an environmental disaster, both in the long term and in the short. But I am not asking you to weigh in on whether they are good or bad. We just want a label! We have a right to know what is in our food like the 64 other countries who label or don’t allow GMO’s at all.

… Much the way I want to know if my food is farm-raised or wild or if my orange juice is fresh or from concentrate, I also believe I have the right, and we as Americans all have the right, to know what’s in our food. I’m not here as an expert. I’m here as a mother, an American mother, that honestly believes I have the right to know what’s in the food I feed my family.”

Roseanne Barr

The big island of Hawaii made GMOs illegal. We banned them. We worked so hard…Monsatan I call them. We banned their ass from the big island… It was signed into law.

Dave Matthews

Why would you want to know what’s in your food?

…. Here in America you don’t get the right to know if you’re eating genetically modified organisms.

… If there’s nothing wrong with GMOs, why not put it on the label?…MADE WITH GMOS!!

Tom Colicchio

It’s not surprising that as a chef, I want to know what I am feeding my customers. It’s also not surprising that as a father, I want to know what I am feeding my family. What is surprising is that some in Congress are working so hard to keep consumers like me in the dark as to what’s in the food we eat.

More and more consumers are taking an interest in the ingredients in the products they buy from the grocery store, including whether or not the food contains genetically modified organisms. However, in most cases, there is no way to determine whether or not what you buy at the grocery store contains GMOs. Even when packaging reads “All Natural,” it’s no guarantee that the product has not been genetically modified.

Who’s afraid of transparency? Who’s afraid of disclosure? People who have something to hide.

In a recent national survey, more than 90% of Americans favor GMO labeling. We should all be cheered by the fact that consumers want to be more knowledgeable about the foods they eat. That’s why it’s so disturbing that instead of making it easier for consumers to understand what’s in the food they are buying, there are some in Congress who are actively trying to deny us the basic right to know what we are putting in our bodies.

… I just want to know, I want to know what’s in my food. I really want to know what I’m feeding my family.

Eric Ripert

You don’t have to be a chef to know what is in your food.

Sara Gilbert

All we’re asking is to know what we’re eating and what our kids are eating.

Bill Maher

China labels GMOs – they put lead in baby food. We can’t have that in America, you know why? In America, corporations run the show. Even though nine out of ten Americans would at least like foods to be labeled. At least we know they are Frankenfoods. But it would hurt sales, so shut up and eat your mutant chili.

…Throughout the course of food labeling history, giant processed food companies have claimed that giving consumers basic information about their food would raise the cost of food and guess what? It never has. But that hasn’t stopped the chemical and junk food companies from using this faulty argument to mislead Californians into believing that a label to tell them if their food has been genetically engineered will raise the cost to their food. Enough with the scare tactics already don’t buy their BS.

Michael J Fox

I have a right to know what’s in my food, and you do, too.

… Until we know more about these newly invented foods, just label it.

Jack Johnson

I definitely think people have the right to know what’s in their food. I just shot a public service announcement for the Just Label It campaign, and I’m definitely behind Prop 37 [California’s attempt to pass a labeling law] and the idea that we are what we eat, so we should know what we’re eating. We all have the right to know what’s in our food. When you look at the fact that the European Union has completely banned GMOs, I think we have the right to at least know if we’re eating GMOs.

Julie Bowen

Every modern family has the right to know… What is in their food!!!! And I have the right to know what’s in my food! Don’t you want to know?!

James Franco

Large processed food companies have always claimed that giving consumers basic information about their food, using labels, would increase their grocery costs. And every time it’s been a lie.

Now those same companies are at it again, making more outlandish claims that your grocery bill will skyrocket under Proposition 37, which requires labels for GMOs, well it’s not true, and we’re fighting back with the truth.

… Isn’t labeling genetically modified foods just a fair idea?

Jim Carrey

I’m here to plant a seed today, a seed that will inspire you to go forward in your life with enthusiastic hearts and a clear sense of wholeness. The question is, will that seed have a chance to take root or will I be sued by Monsanto?

Ann Heche

We deserve to know what is on our food. The fact is, we are not being told the truth and there are no laws that demand it.

Rob Schneider

CALL YOUR SENATOR! TELL THEM TO VOTE NO ON THE DARK ACT 1599!! DEMAND THE RIGHT TO KNOW WHAT’S IN YOUR CHILD’S FOOD!

More Celebrities Who Have Spoken Out Against GMOs and Monsanto

Alexandra Paul
Ali Larter
Alicia Silverstone
Amy Smart
Barbara Streisand
Bianca Jagger
Bill Maher
Blue Sky Drive (Band)
Chevy Chase
Caley Chase
Carter Oosterhouse
Danny DeVito
Darryl Hannah
Dave Matthews
Elijah Wood
Emily Deschanel
Emily VanCamp
Exene Cervenka
Frances Fisher
Frank Delgado
Gabriel Mann
Glenn Howerton
Ian Somerhalder
James Taylor
Jayni Chase
Jillian Michaels
John Cho
Jordana Brewster
Josh Bowmen
Julie Bowen
KaDee Strickland
Kaitlin Olson
Kimberly Elise
Kimberly Van Der Beek
Kristin Bauer van Straten
Leah Segedie
Mariel Hemingway
Maroon 5 (Band)
Mehcad Brooks
Nell Newman, founder, Newman’s Own Organics
Nick Wechsler
Rashida Jones
Roseanne Barr
Russell Simmons
Sarah Michelle Gellar
Suzanne Somers
Wilder Valderrama
Ziggy Marley

None of these celebrities are presenting themselves as scientists. So far, scientific objections to genetic engineering (which are many, and well founded) have been completely ignored. Instead of raising scientific objections to genetic engineering, these celebrities are objecting to being denied the right to know what is in our food. At the heart of the matter is freedom, the freedom to choose what goes into our bodies. They want to know what is in their food. Don’t you want to know as well?

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What Vaccines and GMOs Have in Common

Vaccines and GMOs have more in common than many people realize. Both the biotech and the pharmaceutical industry use the same arguments to get you to accept their products. If you are against GMOs or vaccines, then you must be anti-science!

Nothing could be further from the truth. It is the people who research vaccines and GMOs who turn against them. In today’s busy world, most people don’t feel that they have the time to research every product. A desire for convenience and a touch of apathy motivates people to trust the government to guarantee the safety of our products. The same people who claim that they don’t trust their government paradoxically trust the FDA, the USDA, and the CDC. What most people don’t know is that the same studies that the regulators use to verify product safety are funded by industry. Those who stand to benefit the most from product approval are the same ones doing studies that verify safety for vaccines and GMOs.

An Informed Opinion Leads to a Predictable Point of View

That old adage, “When we know better we do better,” holds true for both vaccines and GMOs, and some of us know better than others. More often than not, it is the highly educated who refuse vaccines and buy organic. The political elite is no exception.

While Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both espouse the benefits of GMOs, neither Hillary nor President Obama actually eat them. The White House doesn’t serve GMOs, and this elitism is not limited to Democrats. Both George Bush and Mitt Romney have strong ties to Monsanto, and both also only eat organic foods. If GMOs are not good enough for them, then why would they be good enough for you and your family?

It is the Highly Educated Who Refuse Vaccines

When it comes to vaccines, the situation is markedly similar. In Germany, a safer vaccine was offered to the politicians, soldiers, and civil servants than the rest of the population. Amid fears of a swine flu epidemic, the German government ordered the Pandemrix vaccine for the German public and the Celvapan vaccine for government officials and the military. Both vaccines vaccinated for the same disease; one was simply safer than the other.

Barry Loudermilk (R-GA) revealed that most of his children are not vaccinated.

I believe it’s the parents’ decision whether to immunize or not. And so I’m looking at my wife — most of our children, we didn’t immunize. They’re healthy. Of course, home schooling, we didn’t have to get the mandatory immunization.

The higher someone’s formal education and the more informed someone is about vaccines, the more likely they are to refuse them. Many former pharmaceutical employees refuse to vaccinate their children.

An education, whether formal or informal, changes you forever. When it comes to vaccines or GMOs, a little knowledge can go a long way. It is the same people who have read the vaccine warning labels and the people who learn about vaccine ingredients who invariably refuse them for their children. The more you know about GMOs, the less likely you are to eat them as well.

If knowledge is power, ignorance is powerlessness. It is ignorant to believe that we don’t need to know what is in our food because we are too scared of science. It is just as ignorant to believe that vaccines simultaneously work so incredibly well, and yet so phenomenally badly that everyone must have them. As GMO activists struggle to educate the world about what is in their unlabeled food, anti-vaxxers struggle to educate others about what is in vaccines.

The Same Struggle by Different Names

The struggles against GMOs and vaccines are intrinsically linked, and yet what happens more often than not, is that these activists fight against billion dollar companies alone, when the fight is essentially the same and the industries that oppose them are essentially the same people as well.

GMO activists want GMOs labeled for the same reason that anti-vaxxers oppose mandatory vaccines. They all want control over what is to be put in their bodies, or the bodies of their children. Admittedly, in vaccines, the struggle over labels is slightly different. Instead of having vaccines labeled (though some of the labeling is intentionally ambiguous) there is a push to get others to read the ingredients, and to read the warning labels. Most people refuse to even discuss what’s in a vaccine or the known risks involved in vaccination. One of the many known risks to vaccination is death. Dying from a vaccine or being permanently disabled is far more likely than dying or being disabled from the disease that the vaccine is supposed to prevent. This may sound hard to believe, but this is easily verifiable. Mortality statistics for all diseases are easily found by searching the Internet. For instance, measles hasn’t killed anyone in the U.S. in decades, but the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System admits to 329 deaths from the vaccine, and almost 7,000 serious adverse reactions. (Numbers for adverse reactions are most likely low due to underreporting.) The question becomes what’s worse, the disease or the vaccine? To those who know how to do the research, the answer is obvious.

Both of These Industries Want You To Trust Their Products and Not To Do Your Own Research

The majority of those opposed to vaccines and GMOs are highly educated. These people are not anti-science, they embrace the pro-precautionary principle. A good definition and description of the precautionary principle quoted from Mindfully.org follows:

When an activity raises threats of harm to the environment or human health, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.

Key elements of the principle include taking precaution in the face of scientific uncertainty; exploring alternatives to possibly harmful actions; placing the burden of proof on proponents of an activity rather than on victims or potential victims of the activity; and using democratic processes to carry out and enforce the principle – including the public right to informed consent.

…Sometimes if we wait for proof it is too late. Scientific standards for demonstrating cause and effect are very high. For example, smoking was strongly suspected of causing lung cancer long before the link was demonstrated conclusively that is, to the satisfaction of scientific standards of cause and effect. By then, many smokers had died of lung cancer. But many other people had already quit smoking because of the growing evidence that smoking was linked to lung cancer. These people were wisely exercising precaution despite some scientific uncertainty.

Often a problem – such as a cluster of cancer cases or global warming – is too large, its causes too diverse, or the effects too long-term to be sorted out with scientific experiments that would prove cause and effect. It’s hard to take these problems into the laboratory. Instead, we have to rely on observations, case studies or predictions based on current knowledge.

According to the precautionary principle, when reasonable scientific evidence of any kind gives us good reason to believe that an activity, technology or substance may be harmful, we should act to prevent harm. If we always wait for scientific certainty, people may suffer and die, and damage to the natural world may be irreversible.

Rather than conduct (or publish) long-term independent studies, both the biotech and the pharmaceutical industries opt to do their own short-term studies. They also both successfully lobby governments for special protection from liability.

In 1986 a law was enacted making it illegal to sue vaccine manufacturers: The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act. This law established a vaccine court, a system that will only compensate families for known vaccine reactions, and then far less than what actual standard liability would pay out. The vaccine court is funded by taxes on vaccines, and so far they have paid out over 3 billion. This court is far from fair or impartial. They pay a maximum of 250,000 dollars for wrongful death from vaccines, and they dismiss 80% of all cases presented to them. Buying the claimant’s silence is a common stipulation to receive any compensation.

A provision was added to the Agriculture Appropriations Bill that serves no purpose other than protecting the biotech industry at the expense of the public’s health. Specifically, HR 933, section 735 is the provision that makes genetically engineered foods immune from liability. This law has been dubbed the Monsanto Protection Act. President Barack Obama signed the bill into law.

If the pharmaceutical and biotech industries thought these products were safe, then why did they lobby the U.S. government for immunity from liability? It stands to reason that they wouldn’t spend millions of dollars lobbying for special protection from lawsuits if the products were safe to begin with.

Industry Funded Pseudoscience

It is difficult to find truly independent research on vaccines. Most vaccine safety studies use all of the toxic ingredients that are found in vaccines for both the control group and the group receiving vaccines – the same adjuvants such as heavy metals, aborted fetal cells, formaldehyde, etc. The only difference between the “placebo” and the vaccine is that the “placebo” doesn’t have the attenuated pathogen, or the “placebo” is an experimental vaccine. Real long-term safety studies that study vaccinated versus unvaccinated or long-term studies that look at the safety of the entire vaccine schedule are never funded by the industry or the U.S. Government. The CDC has blatantly refused to study vaccinated versus unvaccinated because they know what they would find.

There is a similar situation with GMOs. All of the safety studies published by the industry are short-term studies, 90 days or less. The reason for this is that the harmful effects of GMOs typically begin to show up after 90 days. Neither the biotech industry nor the U.S. Government ever published long-term studies. There have been numerous studies conducted in Europe and Russia that reveal kidney damage, liver damage, cancer, and other health problems linked to GMO consumption.

Biotech and the Pharmaceutical Industries Are Separate in Name Only

Monsanto and Pfizer used to be one company, a pharmaceutical company and a biotech company. Pfizer and Monsanto still maintain close ties with both companies staffed by a revolving door of scientists and businessmen that switch back and forth between both companies and regulatory agencies. When you consider how pharmaceutical companies make money (the more sick people are, the more money they make) strong ties to a biotech company should be a major concern to the public.

Many people who are opposed to GMOs are pro-vaccine and vice-versa. These views are far from consistent, and any activist that is against one and for the other is an activist who fails to grasp the issues at hand. If an activist can’t tell what vaccines and GMOs have in common, they could be more of a hindrance than a help to their cause. In an effort to avoid dividing their followers, most anti-GMO and anti-vaccine movements avoid discussing anything they see as unrelated to their cause. This demarcation hurts both movements, as there is strength in numbers. When fighting against the influence and propaganda of companies that are worth billions, a united front would be far more effective. A well known, but often looked over fact, is that many vaccines contain genetically modified ingredients. If you wouldn’t want to ingest GMOs, then why would you want to have them injected into your body or your children’s bodies?

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How Monsanto Took Over Our Food – Infographic

The information starts with a history of Monsanto company, which was started in 1901 by John Francis Queeny and gave the company his wife’s maiden name. The company was started to manufacture saccharin then moved to vanilla and caffeine. By 1915 the company had made its first million and it kept on growing. Most people associate Monsanto with disease and bug resistant crops and rBGH for increased milk production, but the company is also linked to the production of the U.S. atomic bomb, agent orange, and Roundup weed killer which could be resulting in the decline of honeybees.
Infographic and written content courtesy of Top masters In Health.
Today Monsanto reports a revenue of nearly $16 billion. 93% of the U.S. soybeans and 80% of U. S. corn grown today are patented products of Monsanto. Also, there are a total of 282 million acres of farmland worldwide that are growing Monsanto crops and 404 facilities worldwide. In the United States, 40% of all crop acreage is using Monsanto products.

What price does someone pay to use Monsanto seed? There is a license agreement printed on every bag which some may find to be overstepping boundaries in the fact that it allows Monsanto to sue farmers for not following Monsanto procedures, or investigate the farmer’s fields anytime it chooses. Monsanto also has a hotline set up for neighbors to call if they suspect Monsanto seed is being used without a license.

Source:

How Monsanto Took Control of Our Food – Top masters In Health

Scientists Against GMOs – Hear From Those Who Have Done the Research

Biotechnology has long tried to paint the critics of genetic engineering as anti-science. A great effort has been made to convince the public that the majority of world’s scientists support genetic engineering. In reality, GMOs are heavily criticized in the scientific community. Here are the professional opinions of only a few of the thousands of scientists who are both critical and skeptical of GMOs.

There are three things that can’t be long hidden: the sun, the moon and the truth.” – Buddha

Vandana Shiva, Ph.D

Vandana Shiva was educated as physicist at the University of Punjab. Afterwards she went on to earn a Ph.D. from the University of Western Ontario Canada. Her field of study was known as “Hidden Variables and Non-locality in Quantum Theory”. Her work later evolved into inter-disciplinary research in science, technology, and environmental policy. Dr. Shiva is a courageous and tireless activist, author, scientific advisor, and mother. Forbes Magazine named Dr. Shiva as one of the Seven Most Powerful Women in the World.

Science is derived from the word scire — “to know”. Each of us should know what we are eating, how it was produced and what impact it will have on our health.

The knowledge we need for growing food is the knowledge of biodiversity and living seed, of living soil and the soil food web, of interaction between different species in the agro-ecosystem and of different seasons. Farmers have been the experts in these fields, as have ecological scientists who study the evolution of micro-organisms, plants and animals, the ecological web and the soil food web.

In industrial agriculture, the knowledge of living systems is totally missing, since industrial agriculture was externally driven by using war chemicals as inputs. Soil was defined as an empty container for holding synthetic fertilizers and plants were defined as machines running on external inputs. This meant substituting the ecological functions and services that nature and farmers can provide through renewal of soil fertility, pest and weed control, and seed improvement. But it also implied ignorance of the destruction of the functions by the toxic chemicals applied to agriculture.

This complex knowledge of interacting, self-organizing, self-maintaining, self-renewing and self-evolving systems that farmers have had is now being confirmed through the latest in ecology. At the agricultural systems level, agro-ecology, not the mechanistic and blind paradigm of industrial agriculture is the truly scientific approach to food production.

…Because living systems are not machines, they are a self-organized complexity, knowledge of a small, fragmented part in isolation of its relationships with the rest of the system translates into not knowing.

This epistemic violence is now being combined with the violence of corporate interests to viciously attack all scientific traditions, including those that have evolved from within Western science and transcended the mechanistic worldview.

It is actually becoming anti-science.

…The rhetoric for taking over food systems and seed supply is always based on “improved seed”. But what is not mentioned is that industrial seeds are only “improved” in the context of higher dependence on chemicals, and more control by corporations.

The latest in the anti-scientific discourse of industrial agriculture is about reducing everything to genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

“Intelligence” is based on the Latin word inter legere which means “to choose”. From the slime mould and bacteria, to plants and animals, including humans, intelligence is the choice we make in order to respond to changing contexts. Life is a cognitive system with communication constantly taking place in a network on non-separable patterns of relationship. Living beings innovate all the time to deal with environmental challenges that face them.

…Humans as a species are falling behind slime mold and bacteria to make an intelligent response to the environmental threats we face. And our intelligence is being thwarted by the false construction of the living Earth as dead matter, to be exploited limitlessly for human control, domination and greed.

The US Centre for Disease Control data shows that on current trends one in two children in the US will be autistic in a few decades. It is not an intelligent species that destroys its own future because of a distorted and manipulated definition of science.

As Einstein had observed, “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity and I’m not sure about the universe.”

Thierry Vrain, Ph.D

Dr. Vrain was formerly the Head of Biotechnology at Agriculture Canada’s Summerland Research Station. It was his job to address concerns regarding the safety of GMOs. He did his job faithfully for many years, assuring the public and other scientists of the safety of GMOs. Now, years after his retirement, he has reversed his position.

In the last 10 years I have changed my position. I started paying attention to the flow of published studies coming from Europe, some from prestigious labs and published in prestigious scientific journals, that questioned the impact and safety of engineered food.

I refute the claims of the biotechnology companies that their engineered crops yield more, that they require less pesticide applications, that they have no impact on the environment and of course that they are safe to eat.

…The Bt corn and soya plants that are now everywhere in our environment are registered as insecticides. But are these insecticidal plants regulated and have their proteins been tested for safety? Not by the federal departments in charge of food safety, not in Canada and not in the U.S.

Genetic engineering is 40 years old. It is based on the naive understanding of the genome based on the One Gene – one protein hypothesis of 70 years ago, that each gene codes for a single protein. The Human Genome project completed in 2002 showed that this hypothesis is wrong.

Richard Strohman, Ph.D.

Dr. Richard Campbell Strohman, was a professor emeritus of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He was an avid critic of the idea that genes determine destiny. Dr. Strohman died July 4, 2009.

When you insert a single gene into a plant or an animal, the technology will work. You will be able to move that gene from organism A to organism B. You will be able to know that the transfer was successful. You will be able to know that the gene is being expressed, and even that the function of the gene is being expressed. So you’ll get the desired characteristic. But you will also get other effects that you couldn’t have predicted from your original assumptions. You will have also produced changes in the cell or the organism as a whole that are unpredictable. And that’s what the science is having to deal with.

…Genes exist in networks, interactive networks, which have a logic of their own. The technology point of view does not deal with these networks. It simply addresses genes in isolation. But genes do not exist in isolation.

…We’re in a crisis position where we know the weakness of the genetic concept, but we don’t know how to incorporate it into a new, more complete understanding. Monsanto knows this. DuPont knows this. Novartis knows this. They all know what I know. But they don’t want to look at it because it’s too complicated and it’s going to cost too much to figure out. The number of questions, the number of possibilities for what happens to a cell, to the whole organism when you insert a foreign gene, are almost incalculable. And the time it would take to assess the infinite possibilities that arise is beyond the capabilities of computers. But that’s what you get when you’re dealing with living systems.

Gilles-Eric Seralini, Ph.D.

Professor Gilles-Eric Séralini is a biologist at the University of Caen. He was the first scientist to do a long- term, GMO, chronic toxicity study. His study was originally published in Food and Chemical Toxicology. After the study was retracted, it was later republished in Environmental Sciences Europe.

Agricultural GMOs are loaded with pesticides. Three-quarters of all GMOs contain large amounts of Roundup, the main pesticide in the world, designed to kill weeds. These plants have been genetically modified for this, such as Roundup-tolerant soybean and corn. The GM provides in this case the possibility to apply Roundup, whenever and as much as you want, because the plant will tolerate it. If one gives such a large dose of pesticides to a normal plant, it dies. GMOs facilitate intensive farming methods.

Agricultural GMOs do not exist independently of pesticides. We do not know enough. Three-quarters of them absorb pesticides, and the last quarter, like Bt corn, produce their own insecticide. There is already a toxicity due to pesticides within these GMOs, which is new in our diet. Before GMOs, we have never eaten such high levels of Roundup residues. Same for insecticides. Yes, GMOs are especially dangerous because they contain pesticides, but not only because of that. Our team also found toxic effects of GMOs without pesticides.

Our team is the most-published in the world on the impact of GMOs and pesticides on health. We have done studies on human cells and on rats, both short- and long-term (two years). Regarding studies in rats, we were the first ones to study so many parameters (tens of thousands for blood and urine) and for so long. These rats consumed regularly GMOs with pesticides, and at the same doses, GMOs without pesticides. The aim was to find out where any toxicity came from. We were the only ones in the world to do this, as companies and health agencies had never ordered tests lasting longer than three months. But the study was retracted with great violence by the journal which published it after a former employee of Monsanto was introduced onto the editorial board of the journal. He is the former head of GMO toxicology dossiers at Monsanto.

…GMOs contain pesticides that go into the food chain and accumulate. On the other hand, they make animals seriously ill, and to eat sick animals is very harmful for health. They may be more susceptible to infections and diseases. Eating them should be banned. Pesticides accumulate in the food chain and in the animal’s fat, at higher levels than in the treated plants [themselves]. Before, the debate focused on the possible dangers of GMO DNA getting into the food chain. This is not the problem. Nobody had shown that these animals [that eat GMOs] were sick. We showed that. Due to the nature of industrial production and the short lifespan [of livestock animals], we do not see it. And they are not differentiated from others.

Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D.; Nancy Swanson, Ph.D.; Shiv Chopra, Ph.D.; John Balatinecz, Ph.D.

Dr. Seneff is a senior research scientist, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, MIT. Dr. Swanson is a business owner, consultant (Optics), and author. Dr. Chopra was formerly with Health Canada (Senior Scientific Advisor, Microbiology) and is also an author. Dr. Balatinecz is an emeritus professor (Forestry), at the University of Toronto. The following are quotes from the collective group and quoted material from an opinion paper they wrote.

We are experiencing an autism epidemic in the US and the mainstream media won’t touch it. There is much hand-wringing over the latest numbers, but any suggestion of environmental toxins is considered off-limits.

The following opinion piece, written by four scientists (myself included), was submitted to the Toronto Star on April 9, but they refused to publish it because it is “too controversial.” It was then submitted to the New York Times on April 11, but they have not responded at all. It seems there is a media blackout on this topic.

What sort of world are we living in where our children are at risk and we refuse to even look at all possible solutions because they are “too controversial”? How did the chemical and drug industries come to wield such totalitarian power that the press won’t dare to expose them? We are a nation in grave danger. The press and the government refuse to confront the issue for fear of antagonizing the corporations whose bottom line trumps all.

…the US Centers for Disease Control released a new report stating that the prevalence of autism is now one in 68, up 30% since the reported estimate of one in 88 two years ago. (Our current rate of autism in the U.S. is 1 in 50) The rate was one in 10,000 in 1970.

…The recent dramatic increase in the rates of autism cannot be explained on the basis of genetics alone, so there must also be significant environmental contributions.

One of us (Dr. Stephanie Seneff) has considerable direct research experience concerning autism and its probable environmental causes. About seven years ago she became very alarmed by the strong evidence of an increase in autism rates in the US and, in collaboration with Mr. Anthony Samsel and Dr. Nancy Swanson, she decided to systematically investigate possible links with environmental toxins. Dr. Swanson has shown extremely strong correlations between glyphosate usage on corn and soy crops in the US and the increasing incidence of autism, along with obesity, diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s, senile dementia and others. Correlation does not necessarily mean causation, but when statistically significant correlation coefficients of over 0.95 are calculated for a list of diseases that can be directly linked to glyphosate, via its known biological effects, it would be foolish not to consider causation as the most plausible explanation of the correlations.

It is noteworthy that the rapid increase in autism rates coincides with the introduction of industrial agricultural practices such as the widespread use of herbicides (like glyphosate-containing Roundup), and pesticides, as well as genetically modified (GMO) crops (initially corn, soy and canola). GMO crops are engineered to resist glyphosate so that the herbicide will only kill the weeds and not the crop species. As a consequence, GMO foods are laced with glyphosate residues, a contaminant for which they are not required to be tested as products in our food chain. Sadly, the general public does not know this. What makes this even worse is that GMO foods are not required to be labeled by law in our two countries. Furthermore, it has become common practice to spray grain, dried pea & bean and sugar cane crops with glyphosate as a pre-harvest desiccant. What makes glyphosate especially dangerous is that it is generally viewed as being nearly harmless to humans and is therefore handled carelessly. Its effects work cumulatively and insidiously over time to erode health.

…The original approval process of glyphosate as a “safe herbicide” was based on misdirected and inadequate science & safety testing by the FDA. Corporate political lobbying was also part of the mix. The voice of an independent and diligent media has been conspicuously absent. Now, 25 years later, we are all paying the price for those misdeeds. Likely victims are the millions of innocent autistic children.

Autism symptoms also include: disrupted gut bacteria and inflammatory bowel disorder; defective aromatase (CYP) enzyme; high serum nitrate and ammonia; impaired immune function; chronic low-grade inflammation in the brain and deficiencies in sulfate, methionine, seratonin, melatonin, zinc and iron. Compare these to some negative biological effects of glyphosate. Glyphosate kills beneficial gut bacteria, thereby depleting aromatic amino acids. This leads to reduced serotonin availability. Serotonin deficiency is linked not only to autism, but also to obesity, Alzheimer’s disease, depression, and violent behavior, all of which are increasing in frequency today in step with increased glyphosate usage. Glyphosate chelates (traps) zinc, manganese, iron, cobalt, and molybdenum, which leads directly to a deficiency in these essential nutrients and widespread health consequences. Glyphosate also disrupts important enzymes in the liver leading to an inability to detoxify other toxins as well as an inability to activate vitamin D. Vitamin D deficiency is now widespread in North America.

… we believe that the biggest environmental factors linked to autism are the following: glyphosate (by far #1), mercury (in vaccines and dental fillings) and aluminum (in vaccines, antacids, antiperspirants, drugs and sunscreen). Mercury and aluminum act synergistically with glyphosate; e.g., the number of adverse events reported for vaccines in the US CDC VAERS database has risen over the past decade in step with the increased use of glyphosate.

David Suzuki, Ph.D.

David Suzuki, is the co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation, an environmentalist, scientist and broadcaster who is most well known for his radio and television programs that explain the complexities of the natural sciences in a compelling, easily understood way.

Dr. Suzuki is an award winning scientist – a geneticist and a recognized world leader in sustainable ecology. He is the recipient of UNESCO’s Kalinga Prize for Science, the United Nations Environment Program Medal, UNEPs Global 500, and the 2009 Right Livelihood Award. He is now a professor emeritus at UBC.

By slipping it into our food without our knowledge, without any indication that there are genetically modified organisms in our food, we are now unwittingly part of a massive experiment.

The FDA has said that genetically modified organisms are not much different from regular food, so they’ll be treated in the same way. The problem is this, geneticists follow the inheritance of genes. What biotechnology allows us to do is to take this organism and move it horizontally into a totally unrelated species. Now, David Suzuki doesn’t normally mate with a carrot and exchange genes. What biotechnology allows us to do is to switch genes from one to the other without regard to the biological constraints. It’s very, very bad science. We assume that the principals governing the inheritance of genes vertically, applies when you move genes laterally or horizontally. There’s absolutely no reason to make that conclusion.

In a different interview he said:

I believe that until the science is mature—that is, until we can take a completely specified sequence of DNA, insert it at exactly a specified sequence in a recipient and predict completely its behavior—the science is not ready to be applied. When we can do that, we won’t be able to publish, because we publish papers when we get results that we didn’t expect. Last time I looked, the papers and journals in biotech were exploding. To me, it indicates we must not know a helluva lot. In any revolutionary area, most of our current ideas are wrong. That’s how science proceeds—by invalidating, altering and discarding our current ideas. What we believed in 1961 when I graduated with a Ph.D. in genetics seems ludicrous today, and so will today’s ideas in 20 years.

Jane Goodall, Ph.D.

Before Jane Goodall’s work, our definition of mankind was “man the toolmaker.” Dr. Goodall has made many important scientific discoveries. She proved that chimpanzees use tools, that they eat meat, and that they have a complex social system. She earned her Ph.D. in ethology from Oxford University.

I well remember how horrified I felt when I learned that scientists had succeeded in reconfiguring the genetics of plants and animals.

The first genetically engineered (GE) plants were created in the 1980s, but I did not hear about them until the 1990s when they were first commercialized.

It seemed a shocking corruption of the life forms of the planet, and it was not surprising that many people were as appalled as I was – and that these altered organisms became known as ‘Frankenfoods’.

In fact, there were good science-based reasons to mistrust the new foods; yet GE crops have spread throughout North America and several other parts of the world. How has this come about?

As part of the process, they portrayed the various concerns as merely the ignorant opinions of misinformed individuals – and derided them as not only unscientific, but anti-science.

Engineering ‘concensus’ – where none exists

They then set to work to convince the public and government officials, through the dissemination of false information, that there was an overwhelming expert consensus, based on solid evidence, that the new foods were safe.

…the advocates of genetic engineering have steadfastly maintained that the crops created by this radical technology are essentially similar to those from which they have been derived, that the process is splendidly exact, and that GE foods, therefore, are if anything safer than their traditionally bred ‘parents’

In fact, there’s significant dissimilarity, the process is far from exact, and the risks are greater, especially the risk of creating unexpected toxins that are difficult to detect.

And what of the role of the media? How have the American public been so largely kept in the dark about the realities of GE foods – to the extent that until quite recently, a vast majority of the populace did not even know they were regularly consuming them?

But it seems to me that it is not those who point to the problems of the venture who are anti-science: it is quite the other way around.

Dr. Mae-Wan Ho, Ph.D.

Mae-Wan Ho earned her degree in Biology in and her Ph.D. in Biochemistry in the 1960s from Hong Kong University. Early in her academic career she won a competitive fellowship of the U.S. National Genetics Foundation. Afterwards, she became a senior research fellow in Queen Elizabeth College in the United Kingdom. Dr. Mae-Wan Ho then became a lecturer in Genetics in 1976 and then a reader in Biology in 1985 in the London Open University. Dr. Ho retired in June 2000 and remains a Visiting Reader in Biology at the Open University and is a visiting biophysics professor in Catania University, Sicily. Today, Dr. Ho’s work includes close to 300 publications and 47 experimental works.

Dr. Mae-Wan Ho is a highly-consulted scientist, one of the most influential figures in the scientific community. She has been ardently opposed to the use of genetically modified organisms. In 1999, she founded ISIS, which stands for the Institute of Science in Society in London.

If there is one thing that distinguishes the Third World from the industrialized countries, it is that they take science a lot more seriously than we do in the GM debate.

I was researcher and university lecturer of genetics throughout the mid-1970s to the early 1980s when new discoveries on the fluid genome made headlines every week. Researchers back then were building a new paradigm, dispelling once and for all the notion that a gene is constant and independent of context. The thought that a gene could be patented as an invention probably never crossed their mind. And if it did, they would have dismissed it as a joke.

…The paradigm change that should have occurred, did not. On the contrary, the scientific establishment remained strongly wedded to genetic determinism, which has misguided genetic engineering, making even the most unethical applications appear compelling, such as ‘therapeutic’ human cloning, for one [2]. Bioethics became a contradiction in terms as rampant commercialization of science took hold.

For the past seven years, I have had to follow developments in genetic engineering science much more carefully and extensively than many of the practitioners, only to find that all my fears concerning the problems and dangers of genetic engineering are being confirmed.

…The basic tools of genetic engineering are bacteria, viruses and other genetic parasites that cause diseases and spread drug and antibiotic resistance. All that fall into the hands of genetic engineers are exploited. Genes from dangerous agents, including antibiotic resistance genes, are profusely mixed and matched, or recombined. As every geneticist should know, recombination of genetic material is one of the main routes to creating new strains of bacteria and viruses, some of which may be pathogens. (The other route is mutation.) Moreover, the predominant orientation of genetic engineering in the past two decades has been to design artificial GM constructs and vectors that cross species barriers and invade genomes, both of which will enhance horizontal gene transfer and further increase the chance for recombination.

Instead of tightening the guidelines, our regulators have relaxed them.

My colleague, Prof. Joe Cummins has summarized more up-to-date literature showing that all GM crops may be unstable.

…The US Department of Agriculture has approved field release of GM pink bollworms this summer, made with a mobile genetic element, piggyBac, already known to jump many species. The element was first discovered in cell cultures of the cabbage looper, where it caused high mutations of the baculovirus infecting the cells, by jumping into the viral genome. In experiments in silkworms, researchers already found evidence that the inserts were unstable, and had a tendency to move again from one generation to the next.

These artificial transposons are already aggressive genome invaders, and putting them into insects is to give them wings, as well as sharp mouthparts for efficient delivery to all plants and animals… The predictable result is rampant horizontal gene transfer and recombination across species barriers. The unpredictable unknown is what kinds of new deadly viruses might be generated, and how many new cases of insertion mutagenesis and carcinogenesis they may bring.

…We must abandon GM crops and all other attempts to genetic engineer plants, animals and human beings with a technology that is widely acknowledged to be unreliable, uncontrollable and unpredictable.

Even the corporations are coming around to the view that “Food biotech is dead”. One by one, Aventis, Monsanto and Syngenta have announced they will concentrate on genomics and marker assisted conventional breeding. Though meanwhile, they are still forcing the world, especially the Third World, to accept GM crops.

But the whole world is in revolt.

…Organic and sustainable agricultural practices and technologies are succeeding, documented in study after study, despite the appalling lack of research funding compared to the hundreds millions that have gone into biotech. At least 3% of the arable land, some 28.9m hectares in Africa, Asia and Latin America are already farmed sustainably, with impressive gains in crop yield as well as social, economic and health benefits. Organic farming is also working well in the United States and Europe, with yields matching and even surpassing agrochemical agriculture. Organic farms are good for wildlife, supporting many more species of plants, songbirds butterflies spiders, earthworms. We need organic farming for the world to feed itself and for the planet to regenerate and thrive.

Sustainable agriculture is also important for alleviating, if not reversing global warming. A new report shows that sustainable agriculture can contribute significantly, not only to reducing consumption of fossil fuel, but increasing sequestration of carbon in the soil.

The new genetics is radically ecological, organic and holistic. That is why genetic engineering, at least in its current form, can never succeed. It is based on misconceptions that organisms are machines, and on a denial of the complexity and flexibility of the organic whole.

The challenge for western scientists is to develop a holistic science to help revitalize all kinds of non-corporate sustainable agriculture and holistic medicine that can truly bring food security and health to the world.

David Schubert, Ph.D.

Dr. Schubert, a biochemist, is a professor and the head of the Cellular Neurobiology Laboratory at the Salk Institute. Much of his research has been in studying hormones and other substances that affect the survival and function of brain cells.

Given the fact that genetically modified plants are going to make proteins in different amounts and perhaps totally new proteins than their parental species, what are the potential outcomes? A worst case scenario could be that an introduced bacterial toxin is modified to make it toxic to humans. Direct toxicity may be rapidly detected once the product enters the marketplace, but carcinogenic activity or toxicity caused by interaction with other foods would take decades to detect, if ever. The same outcomes would be predicted for the production of toxins or carcinogens via indirect changes in gene expression.

Finally, if the above problems are real, what can be done to address these concerns? The issue of secondary modification could be addressed by continual monitoring of the introduced gene product by mass spectroscopy. The problem is that some secondary modifications, like phosphorylation or sulfation can be lost during purification. However, the best, and to me the only reasonable solution, is to require all genetically engineered plant products for human consumption be tested for toxicity and carcinogenicity before they are marketed. These safety criteria are required for many chemicals and all drugs, and the magnitude of harm caused by a widely consumed toxic food would be much greater than that of any single drug.

Patrick Brown, Ph.D.

Dr. Brown is a professor in The Department of Plant Sciences, College of Agriculture and Environmental Science at the University of California. Dr. Brown is an agronomist who earned his Ph.D. from Cornell University.

This issue requires immediate and thoughtful attention from plant scientists. We must recognize that our knowledge of the processes that regulate gene incorporation and expression are in their infancy and that our capacity to manipulate the plant genome is crude. Given this current lack of understanding it is certainly possible that the current regulatory safeguards are inadequate and may not be offering sufficient protection against inadvertent creation of health and ecological problems.

Since the public education and research system is based upon a foundation of public trust, it is essential that we recognize and admit the unknowns associated with molecular biology and act with caution and integrity.

Sources:

The True Benefits of Organics

Agriculture plays a crucial a role in the clockwork of our global economy. Isn’t that reason enough for us to ensure its sustainability? Many would question the feasibility of going organic to feed the seven billion or so mouths in the world, but the fact that this is entirely possible is unfortunately not commonly known. As with every change, this shift in approach from chemical-intensive agricultural practice to organic farming will take time and patience.

For those who still doubt, the great news is that the road to going organic will naturally reap long-term environmental and financial benefits. Aren’t these what we hope to achieve – creating a better world for the future generations?

Health Benefits

With crops being treated heavily with chemicals like growth enhancers or pesticides, it is all but expected that these substances will find their ways into our bodies, albeit in small quantities each time. As consumers, the idea of how a negligible amount of artificial compound causing health problems may seem like a far-fetched thought.

However, the truth of the matter is that while we don’t find ourselves rushing to the hospital after consuming these produce smothered in chemicals, the long-term effects on our health are very real. With studies proving the carcinogenic properties of some pesticides and herbicides used in our food, it is now perhaps understandable why people are beginning to adopt an organic diet.

According to the World Health Organization, studies have shown that exposure to pesticides on a daily basis can increase the risk of health complications like lowered immunity, development of hormone-related disorders and cancer.

Going organic does not only benefit us, the consumers, but the producers, too. The people who toil and make a living from agriculture will find themselves going back to the basics and relying on what nature has to offer. The lack of chemicals employed in organic farming will without a doubt see farmers facing considerably fewer health hazards.

Environmental Benefits

The news of how GMO agriculture and chemical pesticides are killing nature’s little pollination helpers, the bees, isn’t new. Agriculture watchdogs sounded the alarm years ago when bee colonies began vanishing in the United States around the turn of the century, about the time when new insecticides were introduced into the market. The tip in the balance of our ecosystem can trigger a ripple effect, causing environmental consequences on a global scale – some of which we are already experiencing.

In order for sustainable agriculture to be possible, it is beyond vital that we maintain healthy and fertile soil. However, with the constant application of chemicals to the land, how does one expect the earth below to be toxin free? Albeit crops may be susceptible to pests and ever-changing weather, organic farming certainly ensures the “cleanliness” of the ground.

Economic Benefits

Despite being the alternative farming method, the organic farming industry is well worth over £1 billion a year. Imagine how much that figure will jump by when it becomes the only way to go?

With GMO agriculture, everything right down to the seeds requires a costly initial investment. Needless to say, equipment used for releasing the chemical pesticides also cost money. As a result, even before a crop can be harvested and sold for profits, a farmer needs to come up that large sum of money to get things going. Imagine the devastation a small farm located in a developing nation experiences when crops don’t grow.

One of the many unfortunate consequences of GMO farming is it being the cause of countless suicides when crops fail in third world countries.

Consider organic farming. What is actually involved in this method that would require massive investments? Not much, really. While it is always more costly to go the alternative route, it is undeniable that when organic farming becomes a common practice, cost of resources and products will surely decrease.

Why Not Organic Farming Then?

Having said all these, the truth is that organic farming is not in a popularity race of becoming the more well-liked option for those in the industry. Instead, it has to be the only method of farming as we move forward. In order for our natural environment to sustain us, it is imperative that we ensure that it is toxic free and healthy, for the sake of our future and the generations to come.

Sources:

Doctors Against GMOs – Hear From Those Who Have Done the Research

The evidence is mounting – GMOs are a danger to health. Long-term studies have revealed organ damage, cancer, and reproductive damage in second and third generation animal studies. There are doctors who are willing to publicly take a stand against genetic engineering. Here are a few of them.

Dr. Mehmet Oz

Dr. Mehmet Oz is a renowned heart surgeon and the host of the popular television show, The Dr. OZ Show.

Whether you support genetically engineered crops or not, the freedom to make an informed choice should belong to consumers. The bill in Congress this month proposing to block states from independently requiring labeling offers a coup to pro-GMO groups.

As a scientist, I am not that concerned about GMOs themselves, but I am worried about why they were created. Highly toxic herbicides would kill crops unless they were genetically modified, but with the genetic upgrade, these plants can be doused with much higher doses, with potential complications to the environment. The WHO believes that glyphosate is “probably a human carcinogen.” Perhaps we are all showing “disdain for science and evidence-based medicine,” but I would argue that unleashing these products creates a real-time experiment on the human species. Sure, we will eventually know if these pesticides are a problem, but at the expense of the pain and suffering and disease in real people. I owe my kids more. And so do you.

Dr. John H. Boyles

Board certified in the American Environmental Medicine and the American board of Otolaryngology, Dr. Boyles currently practices medicine in Centerville Ohio at the Dayton Ear Nose & Throat Surgeons, Inc.

This exchange of DNA between the species is totally against nature. We simply don’t know what it will produce. We don’t know if it is safe, and it has not yet been proven to be safe.

We do not fully understand how gene splicing works within a single species. We certainly can’t predict how it will work when attempting to combine more than one species.

Yes, the means by which to prove safety was developed around the year 2000. No companies performing the gene splicing will use the procedures, because if their product were to be proven unsafe, then they cannot sell that product.

Patients at Dayton Ear, Nose, & Throat Surgeons, Inc. were tested for allergies with organic and genetically modified varieties of foods. Some of the patients tested reacted both to the organic soy and the altered soy. Other patients reacted to the GMO soy, but had no reaction to organic soy. Another group tested positively to the organic, but had no allergic reaction to the GMO soy. And some patients had no allergic reaction to either the GMO soy or the organic soy.

It has come to our attention that by altering genes, scientists are creating a separate allergy to foods that did not exist in patients before. By changing or altering the structure of the plant, GMOs can cause separate reactions from the same food.

You owe it to yourself and your family to make healthier food choices. Any allergic person can benefit from a diet with increased organic foods. Control what you can, and steer clear of GMO foods.

Dr. Emily Lindner

Dr. Emily Lindner is an internist with a dual practice of Internal Medicine and Complementary/Integrative Medicine. She is certified in Functional and Nutritional Medicine.

I tell my patients to avoid genetically modified foods because in my experience, with those foods there is more allergies and asthma. … And what emanates from that is everything. Lots of arthritis problems, autoimmune diseases, anxiety… neurological problems; anything that comes from an inspired immune system response.

When I change people from a GMO diet to a GMO-free diet I see results instantaneously in people who have foggy thinking and people who have gut symptoms like bloating, gas, irritation. In terms of allergies, it might take two to five days. In terms of depression, it starts to lift almost instantaneously. It takes from a day, to certainly within two weeks.

Dr. Robin Bernhoft

Dr. Robin Bernhoft is a surgeon who retrained in environmental medicine after suffering from an environmental illness caused by the toxic skin scrubs used before surgery. He has since regained his health.

“…all physicians should prescribe non-genetically modified food for all patients, and that we should educate all of our patients on the potential health dangers, and known health dangers of GMO food.”

Dr. Mercola

Dr. Mercola is an osteopathic physician and an entrepreneur. He is known for being a strong proponent of alternative medicine.

Monsanto and other biotech companies claim genetically modified (GM) crops have no impact on the environment and are perfectly safe to eat.

Federal departments in charge of food safety in the US and Canada have not conducted tests to affirm this alleged “safety,” but rather have taken the industry-conducted research at face value, allowing millions of acres of GM crops to overtake farmland.

These foods, largely in the form of GM corn and soy (although there are other GM crops, too, like sugar beets, papaya and crookneck squash), can now be found in the majority of processed foods in the US.

In other words, if you eat processed foods, you’re already eating them… and these crops are already being freely planted in the environment. But what if it turns out that Monsanto was wrong, and the GM crops aren’t actually safe?

Monsanto is the world leader in GM crops, and their Web site would have you believe that they are the answer to world hunger. Thanks to their heavy PR campaign, if you’ve been primarily a reader of the mainstream press, you’ve probably been misled into thinking GM crops are, in fact, the greatest thing since sliced bread, that they provide better yields of equal or better quality food, pest and weed resistance, reduced reliance on pesticides, and more… But thankfully, the truth is unfolding and the tide is finally beginning to turn.

Dr. Russell Blaylock

Dr. Blaylock is a board certified neurosurgeon. He practiced medicine for 25 years before pursuing his nutritional studies and research full time. He now owns a nutritional practice, and is a health practitioner, lecturer, and author. He is known for confronting controversial issues in medicine and backing up his arguments with impeccable research. He warns that most of the studies on GMOs are terminated within or at ninety days and test animals are destroyed – with good reason. The following comments are in response to a long-term GMO study published in the journal, “Food and Chemical Toxicology.”

Virtually all of these studies use rats and are terminated at 90 days.This study clearly shows that most of the harmful effects of GMO foods occur after 90 days.

In this study, animals were fed the GMO corn for two years in concentrations commensurate to what people would eat. What they found is beyond shocking.

The animals fed GMO food died two to three times more often than the animals eating a normal diet. Male rats demonstrated liver damage 2.5 to 5.5 times more often than control rats.

Of extreme concern was the finding that the females developed massive breast tumors at a high rate in the GMO-fed animals.

Even more frightening is that almost half of all babies are now being fed soy-based formula. This is not the only study to find problems with GMO foods, but it is the most damning.

In my estimation, all GMO foods should be removed from stores, and GMO crops should be destroyed. The implications of this disaster is almost beyond belief and GMO crops are being heavily promoted all over the world by the IMF, Council on Foreign Relations, and other international organizations.

Dr. Richard Lacey M.D., Ph.D

Dr. Lacey is an expert in food safety issues who served for four years on a U.K. government advisory panel on food as it relates to human and animal health. In 1989-1990, he warned against the practice of feeding cattle rendered meat from sheep and other animals, predicting the “mad cow” epidemic before it occurred. He has written five books on food safety, including one published by Cambridge University Press in 1994 containing a detailed discussion of genetically engineered food. He does not believe GMOs are safe and clearly reminds us that their safety has never been established.

It is my considered judgment that employing the process of recombinant DNA technology (genetic engineering) in producing new plant varieties entails a set of risks to the health of the consumer that are not ordinarily presented by traditional breeding techniques. It is also my considered judgment that food products derived from such genetically engineered organisms are not generally recognized as safe on the basis of scientific procedures within the community of experts qualified to assess their safety.

Recombinant DNA technology is an inherently risky method for producing new foods. Its risks are in large part due to the complexity and interdependency of the parts of a living system, including its DNA. Wedging foreign genetic material in an essentially random manner into an organism’s genome necessarily causes some degree of disruption, and the disruption could be multi-faceted. Further, whether singular or multi-faceted, the disruptive influence could well result in the presence of unexpected toxins or allergens or in the degradation of nutritional value. Further, because of the complexity and interactivity of living systems — and because of the extent to which our understanding of them is still quite deficient — it is impossible to predict what specific problems could result in the case of any particular genetically engineered organism.

…To the best of my judgment, neither genetically engineered foods as a general class nor any genetically engineered food in particular is generally recognized as safe among those experts qualified by training and experience to evaluate their safety…

…In my opinion, the number of scientists who are not convinced about the safety of genetically engineered foods is substantial enough to prevent the existence of a general recognition of safety. Second, there is insufficient evidence to support a belief that genetically engineered foods are safe. I am not aware of any study in the peer-reviewed scientific literature that establishes the safety of even one specific genetically engineered food let alone the safety of these foods as a general class. Few properly designed toxicological feeding studies have even been attempted, and I know of none that was satisfactorily completed. Those who claim that genetically engineered foods are as safe as naturally produced ones are clearly not basing their claims on scientific procedures that demonstrate safety to a reasonable degree of certainty. Rather, they are primarily basing their claims on a set of assumptions that, besides being empirically unsubstantiated, are in several respects at odds with the bulk of the evidence.

The main assumptions are: (a) that producing food through recombinant DNA technology in itself entails no greater risks than producing it through sexual reproduction between members of the same species and (b) that the same safeguards commonly employed by breeders using conventional techniques will suffice for genetically engineered foods.

As far as I can ascertain, the current policy of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is primarily based on these two assumptions. Therefore, although it claims to be “science-based,” this claim has no solid basis in fact. The only way to base the claims about the safety of genetically engineered food in science is to establish each one to be safe through standard scientific procedures, not through assumptions that reflect more wishful thinking than hard fact.

American Academy of Environmental Medicine

This is an official statement from the American Academy of Environmental Medicine.

Genetically Modified Foods

According to the World Health Organization, Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) are “organisms in which the genetic material (DNA) has been altered in such a way that does not occur naturally.” This technology is also referred to as “genetic engineering”, “biotechnology” or “recombinant DNA technology” and consists of randomly inserting genetic fragments of DNA from one organism to another, usually from a different species. For example, an artificial combination of genes that includes a gene to produce the pesticide Cry1Ab protein (commonly known as Bt toxin), originally found in Bacillus thuringiensis, is inserted in to the DNA of corn randomly. Both the location of the transferred gene sequence in the corn DNA and the consequences of the insertion differ with each insertion. The plant cells that have taken up the inserted gene are then grown in a lab using tissue culture and/or nutrient medium that allows them to develop into plants that are used to grow GM food crops.

Natural breeding processes have been safely utilized for the past several thousand years. In contrast, “GE crop technology abrogates natural reproductive processes, selection occurs at the single cell level, the procedure is highly mutagenic and routinely breeches genera barriers, and the technique has only been used commercially for 10 years.”

Despite these differences, safety assessment of GM foods has been based on the idea of “substantial equivalence” such that “if a new food is found to be substantially equivalent in composition and nutritional characteristics to an existing food, it can be regarded as safe as the conventional food.” However, several animal studies indicate serious health risks associated with GM food consumption including infertility, immune dysregulation, accelerated aging, dysregulation of genes associated with cholesterol synthesis, insulin regulation, cell signaling, and protein formation, and changes in the liver, kidney, spleen and gastrointestinal system.

There is more than a casual association between GM foods and adverse health effects. There is causation as defined by Hill’s Criteria in the areas of strength of association, consistency, specificity, biological gradient, and biological plausibility.The strength of association and consistency between GM foods and disease is confirmed in several animal studies.

…Also, because of the mounting data, it is biologically plausible for Genetically Modified Foods to cause adverse health effects in humans.

In spite of this risk, the biotechnology industry claims that GM foods can feed the world through production of higher crop yields. However, a recent report by the Union of Concerned Scientists reviewed 12 academic studies and indicates otherwise: “The several thousand field trials over the last 20 years for genes aimed at increasing operational or intrinsic yield (of crops) indicate a significant undertaking. Yet none of these field trials have resulted in increased yield in commercialized major food/feed crops, with the exception of Bt corn.” However, it was further stated that this increase is largely due to traditional breeding improvements.

Therefore, because GM foods pose a serious health risk in the areas of toxicology, allergy and immune function, reproductive health, and metabolic, physiologic and genetic health and are without benefit, the AAEM believes that it is imperative to adopt the precautionary principle, which is one of the main regulatory tools of the European Union environmental and health policy and serves as a foundation for several international agreements.

…With the precautionary principle in mind, because GM foods have not been properly tested for human consumption, and because there is ample evidence of probable harm, the AAEM asks:

Physicians to educate their patients, the medical community, and the public to avoid GM foods when possible and provide educational materials concerning GM foods and health risks.
Physicians to consider the possible role of GM foods in the disease processes of the patients they treat and to document any changes in patient health when changing from GM food to non-GM food.
Our members, the medical community, and the independent scientific community to gather case studies potentially related to GM food consumption and health effects, begin epidemiological research to investigate the role of GM foods on human health, and conduct safe methods of determining the effect of GM foods on human health.
For a moratorium on GM food, implementation of immediate long term independent safety testing, and labeling of GM foods, which is necessary for the health and safety of consumers.

(This statement was reviewed and approved by the Executive Committee of the American Academy of Environmental Medicine on May 8, 2009.)

Conclusion

In America, there is a fascination and an appreciation of most new technologies. Before GMOs were widely adopted more medical professionals and scientists marveled at the technological advancements making genetic engineering possible; this awe and wonder was widespread long before the downsides of GMOs became well known. It turns out they are worse than almost anyone thought.

Now that GMOs have been widely adopted in the American diet, more and more doctors are discovering that GMOs are devastating to our health. It is becoming more common for doctors to advise their patients to avoid GMOs. Recently, members of Sermo, an online community of physicians, were surveyed as to whether or not they support GMO labeling. The majority, 68% of them are in favor of requiring food manufacturers to label products containing GMOs.

For years, there has been a tired argument that if you’re against GMOs then you’re against science, but just because we have the technology to do something, it doesn’t necessarily follow that we should. The majority of new technologies are abandoned due to flaws that become painfully apparent after they have become widespread. At present we are feeling that pain.

Be sure to check out Doctors Against Vaccines and Understanding and Detoxifying from GMOs.

Sources:

H.R. 1599, the “DARK” Act, Sets Out to Put the Final Nail in the Organic Industry’s Coffin

(The Free Though Project.com) Washington, D.C. – Congress is considering a bill that would make it illegal for states to require GMO labeling. It would negate the ability of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to create a national GMO labeling standard and specifically allow for the labeling of products as “natural,” even when containing GMOs.

But perhaps the most disturbing part of the bill is the fact that it would make it illegal for counties and states to place any restrictions on the planting of GMO crops.

The ominous bill, H.R. 1599, ironically called the Safe Food and Accurate Food Labeling Act (commonly referred to as the DARK Act – the Deny Americans the Right to Know Act), was recently passed by subcommittee and now moves on to a full vote on the House floor.

The ranking member of the House Agriculture Committee, Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN), has expressed confidence that the bill will pass in the House. Supporters, such as Peterson, emphatically tout the safety of GMO products, claiming that no scientific experts have proven any legitimate safety concerns; a widely disputed position.

“Consumers increasingly want to know more about where their food comes from and how it is produced. I think H.R. 1599 satisfies that demand while also recognizing what we know about the safety of the foods that our farmers produce. The bill is a workable solution that will alleviate the potential mess of 50 states with 50 different labeling schemes,” Peterson said.

A huge portion of America’s food contain GMOs, with estimates that as much as 80 percent of packaged foods in grocery stores contains GMO ingredients, according to the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which opposes GMO labeling.

A number of politicians and groups, such as the Center for Food Safety and the Environmental Working Group (EWG), have strongly come out against the bill.

“Americans have the right to know what’s in food and how it was grown — the same as citizens of 64 other nations that require GMO labeling,” said Scott Faber, EWG’s vice president of government affairs. “It’s time for lawmakers to recognize that right and stand for GMO labeling.”

There is currently no companion legislation in the Senate, but if the bill passes the House similar legislation is expected to be introduced.

Currently, the states of California, Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington have restrictions in place on the placement of planting of GMO crops. Vermont, Maine, and Connecticut have passed laws requiring GMO labeling.

The planting restrictions are in place to control for the risk of organic farms being contaminated by GMOs, as drift and pollen carried via bee can spread to the organic farms.

Regardless of what you think about the health and safety of GMOs, it is not disputed that Monsanto uses them to predatorily attack farmers. Monsanto has a team of “inspectors” who roam the country looking for their seeds in unauthorized locations.

Farmers don’t even know that this Monsanto GMO is growing in their fields, as it has blown in from a nearby farm, or from a passing truck. However, Monsanto will then sue them for infringing on their patented seed because it is growing in their fields.

This contamination is so widely spread that it is estimated that most organic corn in the U.S. typically contains anywhere from half a percent to 2 percent GMOs, according to companies that sell such corn to organic dairies or poultry farmers.

For organic farmers, the prospect of losing their organic certification has dark implications. Not only would it inevitably drive them out of business due to not being able to sell their products as organic, but this could systematically drive organic farming as whole to the brink of extinction.

Each local jurisdiction has specific sets of issues which need to be addressed when contemplating GMOs. Crafting blanket laws to protect big business interests is contrary to the idea of allowing people to decide what they feel is in their own best interest.

Whether in favor of labeling or not, politicians have shown a blatant disregard for the people whom they claim to represent by attempting to usurp their ability to make these important choices on a state and local level.

The DARK Act is a dangerous piece of legislation, which serves as a blatant example of how the collusion of power and money, in the form of a major lobby and their political cronies, can serve to take away liberty from the American people.

How can anyone claim that not allowing people the ability to know what is in their food, if they choose to know, is somehow a good thing? Outlawing the people of states and counties from deciding what is right for them reeks of oppressive tyranny.

Celebrities Against GMOs

Neil Young

Chuck Norris

Jennifer Garner

Gwyneth Paltrow

Roseanne Barr

Dave Matthews

Tom Colicchio

Eric Ripert

Sara Gilbert

Bill Maher

Michael J Fox

Jack Johnson

Julie Bowen

James Franco

Jim Carrey

Ann Heche

Rob Schneider

More Celebrities Who Have Spoken Out Against GMOs and Monsanto

Recommended Reading:

Sources:

What Vaccines and GMOs Have in Common

An Informed Opinion Leads to a Predictable Point of View

It is the Highly Educated Who Refuse Vaccines

The Same Struggle by Different Names

Both of These Industries Want You To Trust Their Products and Not To Do Your Own Research

Industry Funded Pseudoscience

Biotech and the Pharmaceutical Industries Are Separate in Name Only

Recommended Reading:

Sources:

How Monsanto Took Over Our Food – Infographic

Further Reading:

Source:

Scientists Against GMOs – Hear From Those Who Have Done the Research

Vandana Shiva, Ph.D

Thierry Vrain, Ph.D

Richard Strohman, Ph.D.

Gilles-Eric Seralini, Ph.D.

Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D.; Nancy Swanson, Ph.D.; Shiv Chopra, Ph.D.; John Balatinecz, Ph.D.

David Suzuki, Ph.D.

Jane Goodall, Ph.D.

Dr. Mae-Wan Ho, Ph.D.

David Schubert, Ph.D.

Patrick Brown, Ph.D.

Recommended Reading:

Sources:

The True Benefits of Organics

Health Benefits

Environmental Benefits

Economic Benefits

Why Not Organic Farming Then?

Further Reading:

Sources:

Doctors Against GMOs – Hear From Those Who Have Done the Research

Dr. Mehmet Oz

Dr. John H. Boyles

Dr. Emily Lindner

Dr. Robin Bernhoft

Dr. Mercola

Dr. Russell Blaylock

Dr. Richard Lacey M.D., Ph.D

American Academy of Environmental Medicine

Conclusion

Further Reading:

Sources:

H.R. 1599, the “DARK” Act, Sets Out to Put the Final Nail in the Organic Industry’s Coffin

Recommended Reading: