Hawaii Sees 10 Fold Increase in Birth Defects After Becoming GM Corn Testing Grounds
Waimea, HI – Doctors are sounding the alarm after noticing a
disturbing trend happening in Waimea, on the island of Kauai, Hawaii.
Over the past five years, the number of severe heart malformations has
risen to more than ten times the national rate, according to an analysis by local physicians.
Pediatrician Carla Nelson, after seeing four of these defects in
three years, is extremely concerned with the severe health anomalies
manifesting in the local population.
Nelson, as well as a number of other local doctors, find themselves
at the center of a growing controversy about whether the substantial
increase in severe illness and birth defects in Waimea stem from the
main cash crop on four of the six islands, genetically modified corn,
which has been altered to resist pesticide.
Hawaii has historically been used as a testing ground for almost all
GMO corn grown in the United States. Over 90% of GMO corn grown in the
mainland U.S. was first developed in Hawaii, with the island of Kauai
having the largest area used.
According to a report in The Guardian:
In Kauai, chemical companies Dow, BASF, Syngenta and
DuPont spray 17 times more pesticide per acre (mostly herbicides, along
with insecticides and fungicides) than on ordinary cornfields in the US
mainland, according to the most detailed study of the sector, by the Center for Food Safety.
That’s because they are precisely testing the strain’s resistance to
herbicides that kill other plants. About a fourth of the total are
called Restricted Use Pesticides because of their harmfulness. Just in
Kauai, 18 tons – mostly atrazine, paraquat (both banned in Europe) and
chlorpyrifos – were applied in 2012. The World Health Organization
this year announced that glyphosate, sold as Roundup, the most common
of the non-restricted herbicides, is “probably carcinogenic in humans”.
