Saturday, March 7, 2015

GMOs Unsafe but Politically Connected

The Impacts of Genetic Engineering: Not Science, Just Lies and Propaganda: The Massive Fraud Behind GMOs Exposed Posted on March 6, 2015 Written by globalresearch.ca
‘Altered Genes, Twisted Truth’, a new Book by US Pub­lic Inter­est Lawyer Steve Druker.
This is not what the GMO indus­try wanted to see: ban­ner head­lines today in major news­pa­pers and across the inter­net expos­ing the fraud behind GMOs. But this con­sti­tutes much more than a PR night­mare. The story behind the head­lines shakes the very foun­da­tions upon which the indus­try is built.  
‘Altered Genes, Twisted Truth’ is a new book by the US pub­lic inter­est lawyer Steve Druker. The book is the result of more than 15 years of inten­sive research and inves­ti­ga­tion by Druker, who ini­ti­ated a law­suit against the US Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion (FDA) that forced it to divulge its files on GM foods. Those files revealed that GM foods first achieved com­mer­cial­i­za­tion in 1992 but only because the FDA cov­ered up the exten­sive warn­ings of its own sci­en­tists about their dan­gers, lied about the facts and then vio­lated fed­eral food safety law by per­mit­ting these foods to be mar­keted with­out hav­ing been proven safe through stan­dard testing.
If the FDA had heeded its own experts’ advice and pub­licly acknowl­edged their warn­ings that GM foods entailed higher risks than their con­ven­tional coun­ter­parts, Druker says that the GM food ven­ture would have imploded and never gained trac­tion anywhere.
He also argues that that many well-placed sci­en­tists have repeat­edly issued mis­lead­ing state­ments about GM foods, and so have lead­ing sci­en­tific insti­tu­tions such as the US National Acad­emy of Sci­ences, the Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion for the Advance­ment of Sci­ence and the UK’s Royal Society.
Druker states that con­trary to the claims of biotech advo­cates, humans have indeed been harmed by con­sum­ing the out­put of genetic engi­neer­ing. The technology’s first ingestible prod­uct (a food sup­ple­ment of the essen­tial amino acid, L-tryptophan) caused dozens of deaths and seri­ously sick­ened thou­sands of peo­ple (per­ma­nently dis­abling many of them). More­over, the evi­dence points to the genetic alter­ation as the most likely cause of the unusual con­t­a­m­i­na­tion that ren­dered the sup­ple­ment toxic.
He explains that lab­o­ra­tory ani­mals have also suf­fered from eat­ing prod­ucts of genetic engi­neer­ing, and well-conducted tests with GM crops have yielded many trou­bling results, includ­ing intesti­nal abnor­mal­i­ties, liver dis­tur­bances, and impaired immune systems.
Druker says: “Con­trary to the asser­tions of its pro­po­nents, the mas­sive enter­prise to recon­fig­ure the genetic core of the world’s food sup­ply is not based on sound sci­ence but on the sys­tem­atic sub­ver­sion of sci­ence – and it would col­lapse if sub­jected to an open air­ing of the facts.”
Emi­nent envi­ron­men­tal­ist and anthro­pol­o­gist Jane Goodall has writ­ten the fore­word to the book and states that Steven Druker is a hero for expos­ing this mas­sive fraud and is wor­thy of a Nobel prize for lift­ing the lid on the truth about GM.
She goes on to state that the indus­try worked 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. Yet this, as Druker points out, was clearly not true.”
Goodall adds that the com­pa­nies have spread dis­in­for­ma­tion to try and win pub­lic sup­port. She states: “Druker describes how amaz­ingly suc­cess­ful the biotech lobby has been – and the extent to which the gen­eral pub­lic and gov­ern­ment deci­sion mak­ers have been hood­winked by the clever and method­i­cal twist­ing of the facts and the prop­a­ga­tion of many myths. More­over, it appears that a num­ber of respected sci­en­tific insti­tu­tions, as well as many emi­nent sci­en­tists, were com­plicit in this relent­less spread­ing of disinformation.”
Jane Goodall is best known for her 55-year study of social and fam­ily inter­ac­tions of wild chim­panzees in Gombe Stream National Park, Tan­za­nia. She holds many awards for her envi­ron­men­tal and human­i­tar­ian work, includ­ing the Ben­jamin Franklin Medal in Life Sci­ence, the French Legion of Hon­our, the Ben­jamin Franklin Medal in Life Sci­ence, Japan’ s Kyoto Prize and the Tyler Prize for Envi­ron­men­tal Achievement.
She describes Druker’s work as one of the most impor­tant books of the last 50 years, and adds: “It will go a long way toward dis­pelling the con­fu­sion and delu­sion that has been cre­ated regard­ing the genetic engi­neer­ing process and the foods it cre­ates. Although this book tells a story that’s in many ways dis­tress­ing, it’s impor­tant that it has finally been told because so much con­fu­sion has been spread and so many impor­tant decision-makers have appar­ently been deluded.”
Steven Druker gave a press con­fer­ence in Lon­don on Wednes­day and has chal­lenged Britain’s Royal Soci­ety to apol­o­gise for its pro-GM stance and its part in rub­bish­ing sci­en­tists who have safety doubts over the crops and food. (Per­haps the likes of Owen Pater­son and Anne Glover should too for their role in dis­miss­ing legit­i­mate con­cerns about GMOs, espe­cially Pater­son for his recent tirade against crit­ics see this and this.)
His work high­lights research which has found tumours, liver and kid­ney harm in ani­mals given GM feed in tri­als. And he com­plains, that researchers who dare to raise these prob­lems have been pilloried.
He said: “Con­trary to the asser­tions of its pro­po­nents, the mas­sive enter­prise to recon­fig­ure the genetic core of the world’s food sup­ply is not based on sound sci­ence but on the sys­tem­atic sub­ver­sion of sci­ence – and it would col­lapse if sub­jected to an open air­ing of the facts.”
With the TTIP hav­ing the poten­tial to open the flood­gates to allow GMOs into Europe, Pat Thomas, direc­tor of the cam­paign­ing group Beyond GM, said:
“Steven Druker’s inves­ti­ga­tion into the his­tory of fraud and deceit that ush­ered in the era of GM deserves seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion before we take actions that will irre­versibly alter the Euro­pean food supply.”
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