Feed Truth, Not GM crops, to the Public (France)
Scientist Stands by GM Warning
Experts Throw Out Research
George Monbiot The Guardian Weekly Volume 160 Issue 8 for week
ending February 21, 1999, Page 12 THE geneticist Dr Arpad Pusztai is a dangerous man. He has released into the
environment a virulent self-replicating organism, which is already running riot
across Britain. It is called the truth. Last week the Government moved rapidly
to round it up and shove it back into the flask from which it spilt.
Jack Cunningham, the Government's pest control officer, told the BBC that the
public had nothing to fear from Dr Pusztai's revelation that rats fed with
genetically modified potatoes suffered damage to their immune systems and
internal organs. Human health, he claimed, was the Government's overwhelming
priority. Genetic engineering had only been deployed experimentally in Britain
so far. Europe was introducing rigorous labelling requirements for engineered
foods. And no, English Nature had not called for a moratorium. The nation could
breathe a sigh of relief. The verminous truth was on the retreat.
But, like all dangerous pathogens, it has a nasty habit of cropping up again,
just when you thought it was under control. It has even managed to infect
English Nature's website. According to the website, the agency will "continue to
recommend a moratorium on commercial releases". In fact it's beginning to look
as if the only place the bug has not re-infected is the well-guarded inner
sanctum of the Government.
Dr Cunningham has used subtle tactics to shut it out. Yes, genetically
engineered crops have only been deployed experimentally: in British fields. But
they have been deployed wholesale in British food. Most processed food now
contains genetically modified products.
Yes, there are new labelling requirements for engineered foods. But no, they are
not rigorous. Thanks to lobbying by the British government, European regulations
are now so weak as to be almost meaningless. The British delegation insisted
that there need be no warning about the presence of food additives, refined oils
and flavourings made from engineered plants.
And no, Dr Cunningham, the British government has not put human health ahead of
other priorities. Last month it announced it was giving $21 million to the
biotechnology industry, to help improve its profile and win public confidence.
Last summer both Dr Cunningham and the deputy agriculture minister, Jeff Rooker,
held meetings with Monsanto, the world's most aggressive biotechnology company.
The meetings were arranged by Monsanto's public relations consultants, Bell
Pottinger. Last October Bell Pottinger was joined by Cathy McGlynn, previously
Dr Cunningham's special adviser.
Monsanto's lobbying has been spectacularly successful. The Government's Invest
in Britain Bureau now boasts that the UK "leads the way in Europe in ensuring
that regulations and other measures affecting the development of biotechnology
take full account of the concerns of business".
Business concerns are also heeded elsewhere. Last summer a part-time employee of
Monsanto's called Bill Clinton telephoned Tony Blair to insist that nothing be
done to restrict the biotech sector's expansion in Britain. Monsanto was one of
the largest donors of "soft dollars" to Bill's 1996 presidential campaign.
These considerations led the Prime Minister to tell MPs that imposing a
moratorium on engineered crops would increase rather than decrease public
concern. What he meant, of course, was that it would be bad for the image of the
biotechnology companies. The Government contends that genetically engineered
crops will help both to feed the world and save the environment. But the world
already produces 50 per cent more food than it needs. People go hungry not
because there is too little food but because land is concentrated in the hands
of the rich and powerful. The biggest threat to future supplies is the
environmental destruction caused by large-scale agro-industry: precisely the
type of farming facilitated by genetic engineering. The corporate control of the
food chain that modification allows will ensure that even less of the world's
food reaches those who need it most. We are Dr Cunningham's guinea pigs, the
subjects of a global experiment from which no good can come.
When Dr Pusztai told the truth, he was sacked from the government-funded
institute for which he worked. Its director, Philip James, had given him
permission to speak to a television crew about his research. When the programme
was broadcast, Professor James supported him. A day later, he sacked him. The 22
eminent scientists who wrote a statement of support for Dr Pusztai are among
thousands who would like to know why Prof James changed his mind.
The row has long been portrayed as a dispute between environmentalists and
scientists. But many of the most persuasive and cogent critics of this
technology are themselves among the foremost gene scientists in their fields.
The environment cannot sustain genetically engineered crops. Science mistrusts
them. The public doesn't want them. Isn't it time that the Government stopped
forcing us to eat them, and fed us, instead, with the truth? Return to TOP of page Author: Tim Radford The Guardian Weekly Volume 160 Issue 11 for week
ending March 14, 1999, Page 8 ARPAD Pusztai, who with a few sentences last August sparked a nationwide alarm
about genetically modified foods, told MPs on Monday that he had no regrets and
would do the same again.
Dr Pusztai had said, in interviews for a World In Action television programme,
that the general public were being used as guinea pigs. "I thought it was a fair
comment," he told the Parliamentary Select Committee on Science and Technology.
"Not a wise comment, but a fair one."That remark, and a description of the
effects experimental potatoes had on laboratory rats, provoked worldwide
reaction and within days led to the ending of his contract with the Rowett
Research Institute in Aberdeen. For more than six months, Dr Pusztai said, he
had kept his silence, partly because he understood his research contract
required it, and partly because he did not have all his own data.He had been
testing what happened when a gene for a particular natural insecticide -- a
protein known as a lectin, made by snowdrops - was transferred to potatoes. He
had believed this lectin to be damaging to insect pests, but not to mammals. "As
a matter of fact, it had a few beneficial properties," he said!
And, he said, the experiments had not been designed to see if the potatoes
would have been safe as human food. The experiments were designed to devise a
satisfactory way of testing for safety in general.
Dr Pusztai had become troubled by preliminary data which showed that the
transgenic potatoes affected rats in an unexpected way - and he was satisfied
that the results were more than chance.
He told the committee he regarded the scientific evidence on record of possible
effects of GM foodstuffs on humans - one single paper in a scientific journal
- as inadequate. And, he warned, with the explosion of GM crops expected in the
next decade, scientific committees set up to advise the Government would be
severely tested. Feed Truth, Not GM crops, to the Public
Scientist Stands by GM Warning
Author: Tim Radford
The Guardian Weekly Volume 160 Issue 22 for week ending May 30, 1999, Page 8
The row over genetically modified crops took a further twist last week as Britain's leading scientists dismissed the findings that sparked the latest furore.
A specially convened Royal Society group maintained that the experiments of
Arpad Pusztai - who said in August that GM potatoes stunted the growth of rats
- were "flawed". But, they said, that did not prove that GM foods were safe. Dr
Pusztai, an expert on plant toxins called lectins, said he had been treated
unfairly. "Obviously I don't agree with them. Why should we trust these six
unnamed referees?"
Dr Pusztai was bundled out of the Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen last
year, a few days after he had described in a World In Action television
programme his attempts to devise ways of testing the safety of GM foods -- and
the disturbing turn of his research.
He said rats fed potatoes modified with an insecticide gene from snowdrops
suffered damage to their organs and immune systems.
An internal audit at the Rowett found his conclusions unjustified. But in
February an international group of scientists rallied to his support, and
reopened the row.
James Meikle writes: The British research that did most to raise public alarm over potential health hazards from GM foods is
finally to be published, vindicating work that the scientific establishment and the Government tried to discredit. This week's
issue of the Lancet, the influential international medical research journal, will contain a paper showing changes in the guts of
rats fed GM
potatoes, raising questions as to why these may have occurred. Publication comes 14 months after Dr Arpad Pusztai
first suggested that the food may stunt the rats' growth.
NOTE: For context, read "GM Food Scandal Puts Labour on Spot"
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