Today’s Synthetic Foods: Shrinking Our Brains, Testicles, and Livers?
by Conrad Miller
Here comes synthetic food
And their big time money
And they want to control
Our body and soul-Ziggy Marley, from "Tumblin' Down" (1988)
Bob Marley's son Ziggy warned us about synthetic food two decades ago, before corporations started commercially gene-gunning virus and fish sequences into DNA to corner the seed market. Now that 90 percent of our soybeans are genetically modified in this manner, along with 75 percent of our canola, 73 percent of our corn, and 83 percent of our cotton (which we eat in the form of cottonseed oil in our baked goods, potato chips, etc.), how come we all don't commonly know about it? About 80 percent of our processed foods contain genetically modified organisms (GMOs) amid their ingredients.
This is not true in Europe. There, GMO foods are banned for the most part. European supermarket shelves are practically devoid of any products with GMO ingredients. Why? Because of mandatory labeling. Plus, their media, food activists, and governments have revealed the many risks of GMO crops and the synthetic foods manufactured from them to a now-educated public. In fact, England's Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Food officially warned our Food and Drug Administration about the dangers of engineering foreign DNA into our plants and cells a decade ago.
On May 19 of this year, the American Academy of Environmental Medicine advised "physicians to educate their patients, the medical community, and the public to avoid GM (genetically modified) foods when possible and provide educational materials concerning [their] health risks." They warned that "several animal studies indicate serious health risks associated with GM food consumption," including infertility, immune problems, accelerated aging, insulin regulation and changes in major organs and the gastrointestinal system. Their conclusion was that "there is more than a casual association between GM foods and adverse health effects. There is causation."
Meanwhile, biotech companies are pushing for "synchronized commercialization of biotech traits" in wheat. Fifty percent of U.S. non-organic sugar will soon be GMO due to the approval of patented GMO sugar beets. Yet Monsanto's attempt to sell genetically altered alfalfa (or hay) has been rejected again, this time in a federal appeals court.
In one study rats fed gene-altered potatoes developed smaller brains, testicles, and livers, compared to rats fed the parent line of the very same potatoes. In another, when male rats were fed GMO soy, their testicles changed color "from the normal pink to dark blue."
Milk from cows injected with genetically modified or "recombinant" Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH) every two weeks (as about 17 percent of U.S. milk cows are) has been found to have up to ten times the amount of insulin growth factor-1 (IGF-1), which studies have linked to increased incidence of breast, prostate, and colon cancer. Yet forces within and without our government have prevented the labeling of milk as having rBGH, or being "Bovine Growth Hormone-Free" over the past decade.
Readers should not feel isolated about desiring labeling of GMO ingredients and crops in America. A CBS poll from May 11, 2008, showed that 87 percent of those polled wanted GMOs to be labeled, as is currently mandated for the foods consumed by 40 percent of the world's population. Yet there is no labeling requirement today in the United States for GMO foods. With 53 percent of those polled that day saying they won't buy food that has been genetically modified, nutritionist Marion Nestle explains that the "Gene Giant" corporations that produce GMO food "didn't want it labeled because they were terrified that if it were labeled, nobody would buy it."
The latest news relating this all to the Obama administration finds that the president is trying to put two major opponents of labeling GMO products in charge of food safety. Michael Taylor-a former vice president of Monsanto who orchestrated the approval of rBGH without adequate investigation while he was a lawyer working for the FDA, and then saw to it that government policy denied the need for safety testing any GMO foods or crops, and then went back to work for Monsanto-has been appointed senior advisor to the FDA commissioner on food safety. He also headed Obama's transition team for agriculture and energy. This is pertinent information if you have been wondering how a man like former Iowa governor and biotech enthusiast Tom Vilsack became our secretary of agriculture, or how pro-nuclear power physicist Steven Chu became secretary of energy.
Then there is dairy farmer and Pennsylvania Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff, who is just being nominated under-secretary of agriculture for food safety. Wolff spearheaded legislation in Pennsylvania that would have taken away the rights of consumers to know whether their milk and dairy products were contaminated with Monsanto's (now Eli Lilly's) genetically engineered Bovine Growth Hormone.
This may be politically troubling to many Americans who expected change and new direction from Obama, whose wife, Michelle, planted the first organic garden at the White House.
Many of us hear that GMO foods will solve the world's hunger problem. However, as Bill Freese wrote on the Council for Responsible Genetics website in January, "The UN and World Bank recently completed an unprecedentedly broad scientific assessment of world agriculture, the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science, and Technology for Development, which concluded that biotech crops have very little potential to alleviate poverty and hunger." Last year Syngenta's chairman told the London Guardian, "GM won't solve the food crisis, at least not in the short term."
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's "Agricultural Outlook 2004 to 2013" report found that "the growth rate in the production of most agricultural products is expected to be larger than that for consumption, leading to a continuation of the long-term decline in real food prices [adjusted for inflation]." With Monsanto et al patenting seeds and crops to increase their control of the world's food supply, while also increasing sales of their herbicide Round-Up, the claim about feeding the world's hungry-but perhaps at a higher price-appears misleading at best.
The Pesticide Action Network noted in 2001 that "about 73 percent of all genetically engineered crops planted last year were engineered to be used with weed killer-not to increase yields or to be drought tolerant, but to increase sales of special brands of weed killer."
Americans should be aware that Monsanto's Round-Up has been banned in Denmark since 2003. We should also know that its active ingredient, glyphosphate, has been found to damage "placental cells at exposure levels ten times less than what Monsanto claims is safe," according to a June 2005 report in the Environmental Health Perspectives scientific journal. Exposure to glyphosphate can lead to spontaneous abortions and fetal gene mutations that are expressed when a child is born.
Distribution is actually the main problem in feeding the world's 700 million hungry people. If food can be produced locally with better efficiency in many poorer nations-without compromising the genes or environment or abandoning many cultures' age-old practice of saving seeds to be freely shared-the numbers of hungry individuals can be decreased worldwide over time.
However, the so-called "Gene Giant" corporations want to patent their genetically constructed seeds and chemical entities, and have them called "genetically equivalent" to the same plant from which they altered the DNA make-up. They object to safety testing or labeling, and because of their power, they are still having their way in the United States.
Scientifically, what must be divulged is that by gene-gunning foreign genetic sequences into DNA strands, strange things are happening that will take a long time to understand and discover.
Dormant virus sequences that incorporated themselves into our DNA or a plant's DNA can be awakened and wreak unpredictable havoc. Active or inactive gene sequences already on the DNA can be joggled or displaced, leading to abnormal function of the cell.
We now know that, despite claims to the contrary that this could not occur, GMO DNA has been absorbed into our vital organs. This could lead to an alteration in these organs' normal processes, possibly producing cancer, allergies, and imbalances in what these organs produce.
Here are some of the gene-gunning attempts that have been tried, as listed by author Jeffrey M. Smith on his Seeds of Deception website:
- arctic fish genes were implanted into tomatoes and strawberries to produce a tolerance to frost
- jellyfish genes were introduced into pigs' DNA to light up their noses in the dark
- human genes were inserted into corn to produce spermicide
- corn was engineered with hepatitis virus genes.
Nutty as this all sounds, and dangerous as the reality is, Tom Vilsack, our new secretary of agriculture, championed the engineering of experimental pharmaceutical sequences into plants to help develop new drugs. Unfortunately, the plots of these plants were not necessarily adequately greenhoused or isolated: the corn pollen could drift into another field and contaminate the corn there with its experimental drug sequence. This obviously could adversely affect an unsuspecting eater of this unlabeled contaminated corn.
The fact that a federal court upheld the ban on GMO alfalfa this June (because its pollen could similarly contaminate the alfalfa in other non-GMO fields) should give us pause to question the wisdom of furthering more GMO-patenting of our plants without adequate study and safety testing. Not everyone in the United States is ignorant of the possible calamities that might arise with the advent of unrestrained biotechnology development.
The push to gain approval of GMO wheat was abandoned in 2004 due to opposition from virtually every major wheat user in the world. But now, with the political force of Monsanto and Syngenta-along with the Obama administration's choice of men like Vilsack, Taylor, and Wolff, instead of those who would favor organic sustainable agriculture-a new push to make GMO wheat worldwide is afoot. And who is reporting this to the people of the world?
The sugar story is very frightening because sugar is so ubiquitous in our food supply and no labeling of GMO sugar is required. Half of U.S. sugar currently comes from sugar beets. To be certain you are not getting exposed to sugar from GMO sugar beets, you'll have to buy organic sugar or sugar cane.
For optimum understanding of the problem with GMOs, let us look at the most common "promoter" that is gene-gunned into the DNA to ensure expression of the desired accompanying engineered genetic sequence: the Cauliflower Mosaic Virus (CaMV) promoter with its 1100 base pairs. Biotech geneticists know that the CaMV promoter works like a highly amplified complex turned up 10 to 10,000 times louder than other genes around it. This can cause the gene sequence(s) closest to it to be expressed successfully. However, this also may drown out the normal symphony and harmony of the plant's functioning. Other sequences may also unintentionally be turned up, leading to their expression in heretofore unanticipatable ways.
Other gene sequences may be turned on or off, adversely affecting the cell's functioning. If a native gene sequence that prevented the expression of some toxin is turned off, this may lead to an increase in the level of that toxin. Or a "hot spot" may be created in the DNA, possibly making the entire DNA section or chromosome unstable. This can cause breaks in the DNA strand or exchanges of genes with other chromosomes. Mutations can result which may change the essence of the plant. And the entire Cauliflower Mosaic Virus promoter complex has been found to be absorbed by humans. This disturbance can damage our immune systems, as well as affect our organs: lab rats developed severe viral infections in this way. "Scientists from all over the world have expressed concern about the Cauliflower Mosaic Virus, calling for an immediate ban," Jeffrey M. Smith informed us back in 2003.
Alas, much of this information has not been imparted to the American public. You may be surprised to learn that Monsanto has moved 50 percent of its research and development funding toward "marker-assisted breeding" with an eye toward the future and away from the rather random gene-gunning cellular "engineering" the company has employed to gain its share of the market. Marker-assisted breeding utilizes the annotating/gene-mapping of traits discovered in different plants and animals to then aid in more old-fashioned cross-breeding of two carefully chosen plants, or two similarly chosen animals. Syngenta, another Gene Giant corporation, is spending 80 percent of its research and development money exploring marker-assisted breeding.
Meanwhile crop yields are not increasing as advertised in GMO soybean fields. This is due to herbicide resistance, the adverse effects of glyphosphate (Round-Up's active ingredient) on plant health, and unintended effects of the genetic engineering process used to create the plant. Two to five times more pounds of Round-Up per acre are used in GMO soybean fields, in comparison to the herbicide usage on non-GMO soybean fields. Add to this the linkage of glyphosphate exposure to increased risk of non-Hodgkins lymphoma by the American Academy of Family Physicians; to an increased risk for miscarriage in a Canadian study; and to the increased incidence of attention deficit disorder in children in a 2002 study. Yet Monsanto is still saying Round-Up is one of the "safest" herbicides on the market!
What will Vilsack, Taylor, and Wolff do to help ensure a safe food supply? If the American people knew the facts, as sampled above, would they go along with what may happen on the fields and in the protoplasm of Earth's life forms as championed by this trio of biotech proponents? Or can the apparent tide be turned in favor of sustainable agriculture and organic food development?
Conrad Miller, MD, is a board-certified emergency medicine physician. On GMO foods, see his book The Most Important Issues Americans THINK They Know Enough About (2008) and www.crestofthewave.com. To protest the Taylor/Wolff appointments, visit www.organicconsumers.org.
