Let’s Crowdfund the Ultimate GMO Study | NationofChange
Let’s Crowdfund the Ultimate GMO Study
In the field of biotechnology, something happened that has surprised
and shocked the scientific community - an event with potentially
dangerous consequences. Blatant corporate influence, reeking of conflict
of interest, has succeeded in squashing a scientific study that exposed
the dangers of GMOs. Science has not been under attack to such an
extent since Galileo was arrested for claiming that the earth revolved
around the sun. And there is something we can and should do about it.In
late 2012, French scientist Gilles-Eric Seralini published the results
of a two-year study on GMOs. His results showed that rats that were fed
Monsanto’s Roundup-ready corn (“NK603”) developed tumors and exhibited
damages to kidney and liver. The study was peer-reviewed and published
in a reputable journal called Food and Chemical Toxicology (FCT).
Few months later, the journal created a new position for an Associate
Editor, specially for a Richard Goodman who had spent seven years at,
you guessed it, Monsanto! Goodman’s job at Monsanto was to study
toxicity of GMOs and, of course, he never found any health risks
associated with GMOs. Now, with Goodman’s “able guidance,” FCT suddenly
realized that the Seralini paper should never have been published in the
first place and it retracted the paper. It’s as if the paper never
existed; as if the rats never developed tumors.
This is déjà vu all over again. This is exactly how Monsanto got
aspartame, rBGH and GMOs approved in the early 1990s. When the
scientists at the FDA had rejected aspartame twice and had serious
concerns about GMOs, Monsanto used their political influence to create a
special position at the FDA, just for their lawyer/lobbyist Michael
Taylor. Once Taylor got his foot inside the FDA, suddenly everything
that came out of Monsanto’s labs got promptly approved.
Of course, none of this matters to the mainstream media who see no
evil and hear no evil. Unless Monsanto comes out and puts out an ad
saying, “Yes, we corrupted, bribed and coerced people,” the corporate
media will regurgitate Monsanto’s public relations playbook.
As for the journal, the reasons they gave for the retraction of Seralini’s study are that:
1) The type of rats that were used (“Sprague-Dawley” or “SD”) are more prone to tumors
2) Not enough rats - 100 male and 100 female rats - were used in the study, and hence the results were “inconclusive.”
First of all, if these mattered so much, how come the journal
accepted and published the paper? How come the study was peer reviewed
by many other scientists and approved?
Of course, never mind that the rats used by Seralini were the same
type that Monsanto itself used in its study to get GMOs approved. Never
mind that Monsanto studied the rats for 90 days while Dr. Seralini and
his group studied the rats for 2 years. Never mind that the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services has a National Toxicology
Program that uses the same rats.
