GMO Dangers: Facts You Need to Know (Connecting the Dots: Monsanto, Bayer, WHO, FDA, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) & Soros)

GMO Dangers: Facts You Need to Know (Connecting the Dots: Monsanto, Bayer, WHO, FDA, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) & Soros)

By Jonathan R. Latham, PhD

August 14, 2015 — Updated January 7th, 2019

https://nutritionstudies.org/gmo-dangers-facts-you-need-to-know/

By training, I am a plant biologist. In the early 1990s I was busy making genetically modified plants (often called GMOs for Genetically Modified Organisms) as part of the research that led to my PhD. Into these plants we were putting DNA from various foreign organisms, such as viruses and bacteria.

I wasn’t, at the outset, concerned about the possible effects of GM plants on human health or the environment. One reason for this lack of concern was that I was still a very young scientist, feeling my way in the complex world of biology and of scientific research. Another reason was that we hardly imagined that GMOs like ours would be grown or eaten. So far as I was concerned, all GMOs were for research purposes only.

Gradually, however, it became clear that certain companies thought differently. Some of my older colleagues shared their skepticism with me that commercial interests were running far ahead of scientific knowledge. I listened carefully and I didn’t disagree. Today, over twenty years later, GMO crops, especially soybeans, corn, papaya, canola and cotton, are commercially grown in numerous parts of the world.

Depending on which country you live in, GMOs may be unlabeled and therefore unknowingly abundant in your diet. Processed foods are likely to contain ingredients from GMO crops, such as corn and soy. Most crops, however are still non-GMO, including rice, wheat, barley, oats, tomatoes, grapes, beans, etc. For meat eaters the mode of GMO consumption is different. There are no GMO animals used in farming (although GM salmon has been pending FDA approval since 1993); however, animal feed, especially in factory farms, is likely to be mostly GMO corn and GMO soybeans. In this case, the labeling issue and potential impacts are complicated even further.

I now believe, as a much more experienced scientist, that GMO crops still run far ahead of our understanding of their risks. In broad outline, the reasons I believe so are quite simple. As a biologist I have become much more appreciative of the complexity of biological organisms and their capacity for benefits and harms, and as a scientist I have become much more humble about the capacity of science to do more than scratch the surface in its understanding of the deep complexity and diversity of the natural world. To paraphrase a cliché, I more and more appreciate that as scientists we understand less and less.

The Flawed Processes of GMO Risk Assessment

Some of my concerns with GMOs, however, are “just” practical. I have read numerous GMO risk assessment applications. These are the documents that governments rely on to ‘prove’ their safety. Though these documents are quite long and quite complex, their length is misleading in that they primarily ask trivial questions. Furthermore, the experiments described within them are often very inadequate and sloppily executed. Scientific controls are often missing, procedures and reagents are badly described, and the results are often ambiguous or uninterpretable.

In consequence, the government regulators who examine the data are effectively reliant on the word of the applicants that the research supports whatever the applicant claims. There are other elementary scientific flaws too; for example, applications routinely ignore or dismiss obvious red flags such as experiments yielding unexpected outcomes.

The Dangers of GMOs

Aside from grave doubts about the quality and integrity of risk assessments, I also have specific science-based concerns over GMOs. These concerns are mostly particular to specific transgenes and traits.

Many GMO plants are engineered to contain their own insecticides. These GMOs, which include maize, cotton and soybeans, are called Bt plants. Bt plants get their name because they incorporate a transgene that makes a protein-based toxin (sometimes called the Cry toxin) from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis. Many Bt crops are “stacked,” meaning they contain a multiplicity of these Cry toxins. Their makers believe each of these Bt toxins is insect-specific and safe. However, there are multiple reasons to doubt both safety and specificity. One concern is that Bacillus thuringiensis is all but indistinguishable from the well known anthrax bacterium (Bacillus anthracis). Another reason is that Bt insecticides share structural similarities with ricin. Ricin is a famously dangerous plant toxin, a tiny amount of which was used to assassinate the Bulgarian writer and defector Georgi Markov in 1978^[1]. A third reason for concern is that the mode of action of Bt proteins is not understood (Vachon et al 2012); yet, it is axiomatic in science, that effective risk assessment requires a clear understanding of the mechanism of action of any GMO transgene so that appropriate experiments can be devised to affirm or refute safety. All this is doubly troubling because some Cry proteins are toxic towards isolated human cells (Mizuki et al., 1999).

A second concern follows from GMOs being often resistant to herbicides. This resistance is an invitation to farmers to spray large quantities of herbicides, and many do. As research recently showed, commercial soybeans sold today routinely contain quantities of the herbicide Roundup (glyphosate) that its maker, Monsanto, once described as “extreme” (Bøhn et al 2014).

Glyphosate has been in the news recently because the World Health Organisation no longer considers it a relatively harmless chemical, but there are other herbicides applied to GMOs which are easily of equal concern. The herbicide Glufosinate (phosphinothricin, made by Bayer) kills plants because it inhibits the plant enzyme glutamine synthetase. This ubiquitous enzyme is found also in fungi, bacteria and animals. Consequently, Glufosinate is toxic to most organisms. Glufosinate, for good measure, is also a neurotoxin of mammals that doesn’t easily break down in the environment (Lantz et al. 2014). Glufosinate is thus a “herbicide” in name only. Even in normal agricultural its use is hazardous.

In GMO plants the situation is worse. Glufosinate is sprayed on the crop but degradation is blocked by the transgene, which chemically modifies it slightly. This makes the plant resistant to the herbicide, but when you eat Bayers’ Glufosinate-resistant GMO maize or canola, even weeks or months later, glufosinate, though slightly modified, is probably still there (Droge et al., 1992). Nevertheless, the implications of all this additional exposure of people were ignored in GMO risk assessments of Glufosinate tolerant GMO crops.

A yet further reason to be concerned about GMOs is that most of them contain a viral sequence called the cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV) promoter (or they contain the similar figwort mosaic virus (FMV) promoter). Two years ago, the GMO safety agency of the European Union (EFSA) discovered that both the CaMV promoter and the FMV promoter had wrongly been assumed by them (for almost 20 years) not to encode any proteins. In fact, the two promoters encode a large part of a small multifunctional viral protein that misdirects all normal gene expression and that also turns off a key plant defence against pathogens. EFSA tried to bury their discovery. Unfortunately for them, we spotted their findings in an obscure scientific journal^[2]. This revelation forced EFSA and other regulators to explain why they had overlooked the probability that consumers were eating an untested viral protein.

This list of significant scientific concerns about GMOs is by no means exhaustive. For example, there are novel GMOs coming on the market, such as those using double stranded RNAs(dsRNAs), that have the potential for even greater risks (Latham and Wilson 2015).

The True Purpose of GMOs

Science is not the only grounds on which GMOs should be judged. The commercial purpose of GMOs is not to feed the world or improve farming. Rather, they exist to gain intellectual property (i.e. patent rights) over seeds and plant breeding and to drive agriculture in directions that benefit agribusiness. This drive is occurring at the expense of farmers, consumers and the natural world. US Farmers, for example, have seen seed costs nearly quadruple and seed choices greatly narrow since the introduction of GMOs^[3]. The fight over them is thus not of narrow importance. Their use affects us all.

Nevertheless, specific scientific concerns are crucial to the debate. I left science in large part because it seemed impossible to do research while also providing the unvarnished public scepticism that I believed the public, as ultimate funder and risk-taker of that science, was entitled to.

Criticism of science and technology remains very difficult. Even though many academics benefit from tenure and a large salary, the sceptical process in much of science is largely lacking. This is why risk assessment of GMOs has been short-circuited and public concerns about them are growing. Until the damaged scientific ethos is rectified, the public is correct to doubt that GMOs should ever have been let out of any lab.

Connecting the Dots:

George H. Poste is and a director at the Monsanto Company and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (think tank).

Robert J. Stevens is a director at the Monsanto Company and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (think tank).

George Soros is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (think tank),

the founder & chairman for the Open Society Foundations, was the chairman for the Foundation to Promote Open Society and a supporter for the Center for American Progress.

Open Society Foundations was a funder at the Center for American Progress.

Foundation to Promote Open Society was a funder for the Center for American Progress.

Melody C. Barnes was the EVP for the Center for American Progress, the domestic policy council, director for the Barack Obama administration and is Barack Obama’s golf partner.

Carol M. Browner is a senior fellow, director at the Center for American Progress, was an administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the energy czar for the Barack Obama administration.

Barack Obama was the president for the Barack Obama administration and an intern at Sidley Austin LLP.

Michelle Obama was a lawyer at Sidley Austin LLP.

Sidley Austin LLP is the lobby firm for the Bayer HealthCare and was the lobby firm for the Monsanto Company.

Cameron F. Kerry is a senior counsel at Sidley Austin LLP, John F. Kerry’s brother and a fellow at the Brookings Institution (think tank).

Teresa Heinz Kerry is married to John F. Kerry and an honorary trustee at the Brookings Institution (think tank).

Foundation to Promote Open Society was a funder for the Brookings Institution (think tank).

George Soros was the chairman for the Foundation to Promote Open Society.

Klaus Kleinfeld is a trustee at the Brookings Institution (think tank) and a director at Bayer AG.

Bayer Corporation is the North American subsidiary of Bayer AG.

Mayer Brown was the lobby firm for the Bayer Corporation.

William M. Daley was a partner at Mayer Brown and the chief of staff for the Barack Obama administration.

Robert A. Helman is a partner at Mayer Brown and was an honorary trustee at the Brookings Institution (think tank).

Vernon E. Jordan Jr. is an honorary trustee at the Brookings Institution (think tank), a senior counsel for Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, LLP and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (think tank).

Jose H. Villarreal is a director at the Center for American Progress and a senior adviser at Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, LLP.

Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, LLP is the lobby firm for Monsanto Company.

George H. Poste is and a director at the Monsanto Company and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (think tank).

Robert J. Stevens is a director at the Monsanto Company and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (think tank).

George Soros is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (think tank) and was the chairman for the Foundation to Promote Open Society.

Foundation to Promote Open Society was a funder for the Brookings Institution (think tank).

Mark B. McClellan was a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution (think tank) and a commissioner for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Paul M. Achleitner is a trustee at the Brookings Institution (think tank) and a supervisory board member for Bayer AG.

Klaus Kleinfeld is a trustee at the Brookings Institution (think tank), was a supervisory board member for Bayer AG.

Bayer Corporation is a North American subsidiary of Bayer AG.

Konrad M. Weis was the president & CEO for the Bayer Corporation, a director at the Heinz Endowments, is an emeritus life trustee at the Carnegie Mellon University and a trustee emeritus at the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.

Teresa Heinz Kerry is the chair for the Heinz Endowments, an emeritus life trustee at the Carnegie Mellon University, a trustee emeritus at the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, married to John F. Kerry and an honorary trustee at the Brookings Institution (think tank).

John F. Kerry is married to Teresa Heinz Kerry, the secretary at the U.S. Department of State for the Barack Obama administration and Cameron F. Kerry’s brother.

Cameron F. Kerry is a fellow at the Brookings Institution (think tank), John F. Kerry’s brother and a senior counsel at Sidley Austin LLP.

Barack Obama was an intern at Sidley Austin LLP and the president for the Barack Obama administration.

Michelle Obama was a lawyer at Sidley Austin LLP.

Sidley Austin LLP is the lobby firm for the Bayer HealthCare and was the lobby firm for the Monsanto Company.

Faith Elizabeth Gay was an attorney at Sidley Austin LLP and is a board of adviser’s member for the American Constitution Society.

Open Society Foundations was a funder for the American Constitution Society.

George Soros is the founder & chairman for the Open Society Foundations and was married in 2013.

Ramona E. Romero was a director at the American Constitution Society and is the general counsel for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Jim Yong Kim was a guest at George Soros’s 2013 wedding and a director, HIV-AIDS department for the World Health Organization (WHO).

Resources: Past Research

Monsanto and Bayer CropScience in deals to share technology (Past Research on Monsanto & Bayer)

MONDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2013

https://thesteadydrip.blogspot.com/2013/10/monsanto-and-bayer-cropscience-in-deals.html

John Kerry to Deliver Major Address on Israel on Wednesday (Past Research on Cameron Kerry and Sidley Austin)

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2016

https://thesteadydrip.blogspot.com/2016/12/john-kerry-to-deliver-major-address-on.html

Heroin (Epidemic) (Past Research on Bayer & John Kerry)

SUNDAY, JUNE 18, 2017

https://thesteadydrip.blogspot.com/2017/06/heroin-epidemic_18.html

FDA Fails to Protect Americans from Dangerous Drugs and Unsafe Foods (Past Research on the FDA)

SUNDAY, MAY 10, 2015

https://thesteadydrip.blogspot.com/2015/05/fda-fails-to-protect-americans-from.html

Bayer And Monsanto Should Pay Cleanup Costs For Toxic PCB Chemicals, Says German Environmental Group (Past Research on Bayer HealthCare & Sidley Austin)

SUNDAY, MARCH 16, 2014

https://thesteadydrip.blogspot.com/2014/03/bayer-and-monsanto-should-pay-cleanup.html

Improper Food Stamp Payments Hit $2.6 Billion (Past Research on the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA))

THURSDAY, JULY 7, 2016

https://thesteadydrip.blogspot.com/2016/07/improper-food-stamp-payments-hit-26.html

World Health Organisation: Bacon As Bad As Asbestos, Tobacco, Plutonium (Past Research on the World Health Organisation (WHO))

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2015

https://thesteadydrip.blogspot.com/2015/10/world-health-organisation-bacon-as-bad.html