Last month, On September 19,
French researcher Gilles-Eric Séralini attempted to fuel public opposition to
GM foods by showing the public how GM corn, with and without the pesticide
Roundup, caused huge tumours and early death in 200 rats that had consumed it
over two years. With many pictures of rats with tumours the size of ping-pong
balls, Séralini certainly captured the public’s attention. France’s health, ecology and
agriculture ministers promised a prompt investigation and threatened to ban
imports of Monsanto’s GM corn to the EU. Russia even blocked imports of Monsanto corn. But
Séralini’s research posed many problematic issues. For starters, the
Sprague-Dawley strain of rats he used is naturally prone to tumours. Studies of
Sprague-Dawley rats show that 88-96% of those that serve as experimental
controls develop tumours before they reach two years of age. But the public saw
only pictures of tumorous rats that had consumed GM corn and Roundup.
Séralini used only 20 rats as a control group to be fed ordinary corn with no Roundup. Of these, five died within two years, which is unusual, because studies of thousands of untreated Sprague-Dawley rats show about half should have died in that period. Using his low death rate as a base, Séralini claimed — with no statistical analysis — that the higher death rate (just below 40%) for the remaining 180 rats fed with GM corn and Roundup was suspicious.
Moreover, Séralini’s results contradict the latest meta-study of 24 long-term studies — up to two years and five generations — which found that the data do “not suggest any health hazards” and display “no statistically significant differences” between GM and conventional food. Oddly, Séralini permitted access to his paper to only a select group of reporters, and demanded they sign a confidentiality agreement preventing them from interviewing other experts before publication.
But, while the first round of articles read like press releases, the scientific community has since spoken out forcefully. The European Food Safety Authority, for example, has now concluded that the “design, reporting and analysis of the study, as outlined in the paper, are inadequate”.
The study was partly funded by Criigen, a group that campaigns against biotechnology. Criigen’s scientific board is headed by none other than Séralini.
This debacle matters because many GM crops provide tangible benefits for people and the environment. They enable farmers to produce higher yields with fewer inputs, such as pesticides. That, in turn, implies less human encroachment into natural ecosystems, enabling greater biodiversity.
Séralini used only 20 rats as a control group to be fed ordinary corn with no Roundup. Of these, five died within two years, which is unusual, because studies of thousands of untreated Sprague-Dawley rats show about half should have died in that period. Using his low death rate as a base, Séralini claimed — with no statistical analysis — that the higher death rate (just below 40%) for the remaining 180 rats fed with GM corn and Roundup was suspicious.
Moreover, Séralini’s results contradict the latest meta-study of 24 long-term studies — up to two years and five generations — which found that the data do “not suggest any health hazards” and display “no statistically significant differences” between GM and conventional food. Oddly, Séralini permitted access to his paper to only a select group of reporters, and demanded they sign a confidentiality agreement preventing them from interviewing other experts before publication.
But, while the first round of articles read like press releases, the scientific community has since spoken out forcefully. The European Food Safety Authority, for example, has now concluded that the “design, reporting and analysis of the study, as outlined in the paper, are inadequate”.
The study was partly funded by Criigen, a group that campaigns against biotechnology. Criigen’s scientific board is headed by none other than Séralini.
This debacle matters because many GM crops provide tangible benefits for people and the environment. They enable farmers to produce higher yields with fewer inputs, such as pesticides. That, in turn, implies less human encroachment into natural ecosystems, enabling greater biodiversity.
2 comments:
Gosh Govind.. u cannot just promote GM on the basis of non-scientific study of urs from one aspect only. U have nicely gone through the literature but this is very limited what u have read... I am purposely not commenting on any scientific issue, because I have not read that much. But there is a big lobby of intellect who are opposing GM, they are not nurds.
As u commented on Seralini's study, even the companies which have been promoted GM has not done adequate study over GM! They do experiment for just three months and there have been big policy pressure from capitalistic lobby! Moreover there is no regulatory framework to testify and permitting right GM modified seeds in the market. So we actually have no idea of contamination these seeds would have done in the whole food chain.
U should be reading more on this issue from various other aspects also, e.g. Vandana Shiva who opposed Monsato's seeds! Do read small booklet of "Brinjal Swaraj" in which point of view of scientist, policy makers and economist is mentioned on GM modified Brinjal. And link that logic in the article Denial of the rural - "http://server-t88.e2enetworks.net.in/node/4981?quicktabs_1=1"
Government has a big plan than what we could think of.
See GM is very much coming to our food and we don't know what we are going to eat. We should not be playing with our own deaths so naively.
Nice Govind,
There might be some cons on genetically modified food. Same is about pesticides that we are using now. They are also carciogenic. But we are silent about it. Just take example of BT cotton, it has really boosted the production of cotton in india and we are exporting it(see stats) . Production cost is less for gm food. Gnetically modified crops are need of an hour. Today we have 1.21 billion population by 2020 it will be 1.50 billion. Also by that time all natural resources providing engergy would have been consumed. We shall be required to shfit to green petrol/ fuel and it will require lots of grains. Unless we have gnetically modified crops we can not boost production. Forget about food but we can use them for other purposes like energy needs.
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