As a physician I was trained to understand that there is a physicial underpinning to the function – or dis function- of any biological creature. It’s name? Biochemistry. Molecules support, or prevent, poison or allow all chemical reactions in the body. And there are lots of them. Every one of our trillions upon trillions of cells is carrying out about 35,000 enzymatic reactions at any moment and each of them is part of a chain of reactions that allow – or prevent – events “downstream” from that particular enzyme and its tasks.
Enzymes are robots. They are complexes of proteins (made up of chains of amino acids) and “nutritional metals” like magnesium, zinc, manganese, copper, and others). They have sulfur and other non metals and they are very, very precise.
After an enzyme does what it is there to day (for example, transferring a molecule from one side of a membrane to another) its shape has changed so it can no longer function, like a fork lift truck with its blades on backwards. Then another enzyme comes along and returns it to its origianl shape so that it can do the same job over again. The helper enzyme is now literally “bent out of shape” and ANOTHER enzymes comes along and fixes the fixer enzyme and then, you guessed it! Yet another enzyme fixes the fixer of the fixer. On and on it goes, one enzyme performing its job, then unable to perform again until another enzyme resets it, then needing to be reset itself.
If one step in this astonishing molecular dance is missed, there are consequences. If the cause of the mis-step is a drug, the consequences have a special name, “Side effects”. If the cause is the chronic lack of nutrients, only a few doctors understand that the disease which is identified is, in fact, chronic under nourishment. The treatment for most doctors trained in allopathic medicine is exactly wrong almost all of the time: they give drugs to poison more enzyme systems.
WHAT? That is, in a nut shell, the entire basis of pharmaceutical medicine. The only time I can see that it is justified, the ONLY time, is in the Emergency Room. Other than that, it has no place.
But for a few doctors, and many non-doctors, the treatment is obvious: if there is a deficiency not of a drug, but of a nutrient, or many, give the nutrient and its companion nutrients. Give it in a high enough dose that even starving cells and membranes can find the energy to absorb and begin to use the nutrients. And, Voila! people get better. Pretty much, in my experience, every single time.
This simple, intuitive and obvious fact is not at all obvious to those whose minds have been altered by drugs, either by the “education” shaped by the interests of the drugs (often referred to by its short hand name, “Medical School”) or drug regulators and others whose ability to think have been poisoned by the money involved in the drug system – more than all other industries when taken in the aggregate!
Science is often the last to know, like the girl whose boy friend is dating her best friend. Science has taken this long to notice that if you give children nutrients their brains function better. The article below, from the British Journal of Nutrition says that the paper published below is breaking new ground since this is the first time that the positive impact of nutrients on children’s capacity to carry out tasks has been shown to be impacted by supplements.
Or is it just that selective science is the last to know?
Consider:
Benton D; ILSI Europe a.i.s.b.l., The influence of children’s diet on their cognition and behavior., “… there is a growing body of evidence that diet can influence the development and functioning of the brain. Several lines of evidence support the view that the diet of the mother during pregnancy, and the diet of the infant in the perinatal period, have long-term consequences…”, Eur J Nutr. 2008 Aug;47 Suppl 3:25-37.
or
Gajre NS, Fernandez S, Balakrishna N, Vazir S., Breakfast Eating Habit and its Influence on Attention-concentration, Immediate Memory and School Achievement., “RESULTS: Comparison between groups indicated significant differences in the letter cancellation (LC) total scores with the regular breakfast group achieving the highest mean scores compared to the no breakfast group (P< 0.05). Marks scored by the regular breakfast group in subjects - Science, English and total Percentage were significantly higher compared to those scored by the children in the no breakfast group. Regular breakfast eating habit and weight for age percent were significantly (P< 0.001) associated with immediate recall memory score explaining 4.3 percent variation. CONCLUSIONS: Regular habit of eating breakfast as opposed to irregular consumption or skipping breakfast altogether had beneficial influence on attention-concentration, memory and school achievement.", Indian Pediatr. 2008 Oct;45(10):824-8.
or about a zillion other articles, books and studies showing the same thing. So why is this "news" rediscovered with wonder and astonishment over and over and over and over and over and....?
Because supplements are cheap and safe. And because doctors - and patients and parents - have been trained to discount this reality, provide garbage to their children and themselves which they mistakenly designate as "food" and then scurry to the nearest prescription pad when the "side effects" of malnourishment come piling up.
So while I am pleased to see this article, I am not pleased that the same findings continue to be "news" when the news is that real, appropriate, healthful, non GMO, chemical free food cures and lack of that kind of food creates illness, both behavioral and organ based illness.
Are there other causes of illness? Sure. But the major killers (and economic producers for the illness care industry, cancer, cardiovascular disease and stroke, diabetes, obesity and obesity, are specifically identified as the "non communicable epidemic diseases of under nutrition by the World Health organization, WHO.
Ah, yes! Killer disease of under nutrition creating a vast and wildly profitable market for dangerous drugs which kill people in greater numbers than the drugs themselves do! Can't make safe, cheap, effective nutrients available, now can we? Be serious. Instead, let's get Codex Alimentarius up and going and make sure that the food produced under its "Voluntary" Standards and Guidelines are as health hostile, chemical and industry friendly (including its beloved Biotech Industry) get as much support as possible.
Codex, you will recall, is the product of the mad -but very clever - mind of Fritz ter Meer, a Bayer Drug Company Executive who become the head of IG Farben, the civilian organization that made the German's participation in the Second World War a near-success. He was also a convicted criminal following his trial at the Nuremberg War Tribunals for his success and enthusiastic participation in creating the German Death Machine.
After he, and the 26 other IG Farben executives (many of them drug company executives) got out of jail a scant less-than-4-years after they entered, ter Meer was hard at work as the head of Bayer Pharmaceutical once again. His creativity was focused this time not on the slogan above the front gate of the Auswitz death camp ("Arbeit Macht Frei", or, in English, "work brings freedom") but to the creation of the concept of Codex Alimentarius. Subsequent events show that the idea of creating contaminated, poisoned food, full of chemicals, GMO adulteration, irradiation by products (like free radicals and dead bacteria and their spilled-out insides in "cold sterilization" processes), hormones, antibiotics, etc., etc. was a wonderful business decision for the pharmaceutical industry. Health people, after all, are generally eating healthy food. Take the healthy food, and the supplements that enhance nutrition, away and you have sick people who got that way from eating sick food. In short, you have the US "Food" Supply (more than 80% GMO, by the way) as the primary feeder (!) sending people into the illness care system - where they stay, literally until they die.
If that is NOT what you want for your food, then get even more active than you are in letting everyone on your list know that you are a Natural Solutions Foundation Health Freedom Advocate and that you need them to be a Health Freedom Advocate, too. Here's how"
1. Join the free Natural Solutions Health Freedom eAlert (http://drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=187) distribution list and take every action step in the Newsletter, each time it comes to your email box. Then send it along to your email list and other contacts asking them to do the same. If you voice is not raised loud and clear, speaking truth to power, how will we protect your health and health freedom?
2. Donate to the Natural Solutions Foundation (http://drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=189). Your 100% tax deductible donations make it possible for the largest, most active and most effective health freedom organization in the world to protect your interests.
3. Change your buying habits so that you are ONLY purchasing GMO free foods. Look for labels that say “GMO-Free” or “Contains No GMOs” or “Organic”. Even though the outlay appears higher, how expensive is cancer? diabetes? heart disease? stroke? For organic supplements (not sourced from genetically modified plants, viruses and animals, free of pesticides and other dangerous contaminants, visit www.Organics4U.org. And for helpful guides click here (http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=F.40991bfe-ae98-4e5b-b5d6-25e09b923db9) for a short version and here (http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=F.a9a511b9-bfd2-4199-80ad-44f8818c8831) for a more detailed one.
4. If you are a lucky enough to be a coffee drinker (or detox person), or know people who are, we have a wonderful way to combine health freedom donation and the purchase of wholesome food! Coffee is the second most heavily chemically sprayed substance consumed by humans, running a close second to tobacco. So brewing coffee makes a water extract of God-Alone-Knows-What. Toxins too dangerous for use in US agriculture are made by US companies and sold in high volume in the coffee producing regions of the world where workers, often illiterate, spray huge quantities of deadly poisons on the theory that “more is better”. And you drink it.
Not any more! The Natural Solutions Foundation is now producing delicious, smooth and flavorful chemical free, Shade Grown, 100% Hard Bean Specialty Valley of the Moon(TM) Coffee (http://drrimatruthreports.com/?page_id=1130) as part of its Valley of the Moon Eco Demonstration Project (http://www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org) in the highlands of Panama. In appreciation of your $25 dollar donation, we’ll send you a bag of the best coffee you have ever had. Remember to give some to your friends, (http://drrimatruthreports.com/?page_id=1130) and you will see why we say Valley of the Moon(TM) Coffee is “A Little Bit of Heaven in a Cup(C)” What a delicious way to donate to the Natural Solutions Foundation!
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org
www.Organics4U.org
www.NaturalSolutionsMarketPlace.org
www.NaturalSolutionsMedia.tv
Nutritional and dietary influences on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Sinn N.
Nutritional Physiology Research Centre, School of Health Sciences, University of South Australia, Adelaide, South Australia 5001, Australia. natalie.sinn@unisa.edu.au
The influence of children’s diet on their cognition and behavior.
Multivitamins and minerals help children’s brain function: study
By Stephen Daniells, 05-Nov-2008
Daily supplements of multivitamins and minerals may improve the brain function of children, says a new study from British and Australian researchers.
Twelve weeks of supplementation with vitamins and minerals was found to boost the attention scores of children, according to results published in the British Journal of Nutrition.
“This represents the first observation of acute behavioural effects of vitamins/minerals in human subjects,†wrote the researchers, led by Professor David Kennedy from Northumbria University in Newcastle.
“Naturally, these observations require replication in larger cohorts, but they do suggest that this matter should be given some priority,†cautioned the researchers.
Study details
The Newcastle-based researchers, in collaboration with scientists from Swinburne University in Australia, and the University of Westminster in London, recruited 81 children (average age 11) to participate in the randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel groups investigation.
The children were reportedly all healthy and free from food allergy. In addition, none of the children used other dietary supplements during the three months prior to the study. Participants were randomly assigned to daily multivitamin and mineral supplements or placebo for 12 weeks. The study used Pharmaton SA’s Pharmaton Kiddi blend of multivitamins and minerals. The Swiss company also provided funding for the study.
Cognitive performance was measured using a battery of laboratory assessments. Measures were taken before the study, after one and three hours after the first dose, and after 12 weeks.
Kennedy and his co-workers report that the children in the vitamin/mineral group performed more accurately on two tests of attention. Indeed, the researchers noted the first signs of improvement only three hours after the first dose on the first day.
“The most surprising facet of the improvement in attention task performance seen here is that it became evident by three hours post-dose on the first day,†they wrote.
“To the best of our knowledge, the possibility that vitamins or minerals could exert behavioural effects after a single dose has not been explored,†they added.
However, no effects were observed on measures of the children’s mood, they added.
Science behind the claims?
The researchers noted that the study was aimed at testing the claims of the manufacturer that the multivitamin and mineral could improve the physical development and neural performance of the children.
“The combination of vitamins, minerals and amino acids present… in the present study does not allow the results presented to be attributed to any one component,†wrote the researchers.
“Further work in this area could examine the constituent parts of this treatment in more detail, perhaps focusing on attentional measures and including acute, as well as chronic, assessment,†they added.
Source: British Journal of Nutrition
November 2008, Volume 100, Pages 1086-1096, doi:10.1017/S0007114508959213
“Cognitive and mood effects in healthy children during 12 weeks’ supplementation with multi-vitamin/mineralsâ€
Authors: C.F. Haskell, A.B. Scholey, P.A. Jackson, J.M. Elliott, M.A. Defeyter, J. Greer, B.C. Robertson, T. Buchanan, B. Tiplady, D.O. Kennedy
http://www.nutraingredients-usa.com/Publications/Food-Beverage-Nutrition/NutraIngredients/Research/Multivitamins-and-minerals-help-children-s-brain-function-study
Click here (http://drrimatruthreports.com/?page_id=1130) to donate to Natural Solutions Foundation and receive a half pound of Shade Grown, Chemical Free Specialty Coffee, “A Little Bit of Heaven in a Cup(C)”
Drinking Shade Grown Coffee is important to your health and to the eco system. As part of the Natural Solutions Foundation’s International Decade of Nutrition, www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org, the ecologically and socially responsible production of Panama’s “Black Gold†is part of taking reclaiming clean, safe food for ourselves and food producers. Our extraordinary Valley of the Moon(TM) Shade Grown Coffee is an certified as a Friendly Food. That means that it is friendly to you, your health, then workers and the environment.
Part of the reason this coffee, available in sharply limited supply, is so exceptional is that it is strictly Shade Grown and chemical free.
You can taste it for yourself by clicking here (http://drrimatruthreports.com/?page_id=1130) and seeing for yourself what A Little Taste of Heaven in a Cup(c) is like.
But part of the Valley of the Moon(TM) magic comes from the fact that the coffee trees are carefully protected from the full intensity of the sun by a forest canopy of carefully tended trees producing the perfect combination of light and shade for the most exceptional coffee flavors.
Your understanding of what Shade Grown means will bring Shade Growing back to the coffee growers of the world. The only way to encourage shade grown coffee farming is to buy the product. Production follows demand, and many farmers are switching back to shade grown methods as consumer awareness increases.
Natural Solutions Foundation’s Valley of the Moon™ Coffee is not only shade grown, but has been the “test bed†for an all exceptional natural, safe and chemical free method of protecting crops and coffee trees from the devastating fungus, “Ojo de Gallo†without chemicals. Conventional fungicides poison workers, waters and consumers. Our novel system protects us all – and the Natural Solutions Foundation will be manufacturing it so that coffee growers across Central America can use it, too.
Because our coffee is friendly to the environment, the workers and your health, it is the first product to be awarded Friendly Food Certification by the Natural Solutions Foundation.
What Difference Does “ Shade Grown†Make?
Conventional, “modern” chemical-using coffee plantations are replacing wildlife habitat at an alarming rate because they require less care, less manpower and allow mass production of coffee.
As a result of the growth of industrial coffee growing, the population of songbirds across North and South America is in significant decline. “Shade grown” coffee, the traditional method of coffee farming, offers a promising alternative.
Benefits
* Taste. As the coffee beans mature more slowly in the shade, natural sugars increase and enhance the flavor of the coffee. Shade grown coffee tastes better!
*Biodiversity Protection Chemicals like 2-4-D (similar to Dixoin) are used on conventional coffee farms. The result is dead soil without bacteria, worms, insects, birds, snakes, frogs or life. And you drink these chemicals when you brew your java.
* Health. Coffee is second only to tobacco in the amount of chemical treatment sprayed on it. In fact, coffee is sprayed with more chemicals than any other product consumed by humans. Workers on conventional coffee plantations are chronically ill and experience serious diseases, infertility, birth defects in their children and other major problems because of the toxic chemicals they spray on the coffee. The cultivation of Shade Grown coffee generally uses organic techniques and is free of chemical use: Valley of the Moonâ„¢ is absolutely free of chemicals. We promise.
* Environment. Shade Grown coffee requires little or no chemical fertilizer, pesticides or herbicides so it promotes a healthy environment. Valley of the Moonâ„¢ Coffee uses no synthetic chemicals of any kind. The shade trees above the coffee plants filter carbon dioxide (a cause of global warming), and aid in soil moisture retention, minimizing erosion.
*Recycling. All coffee remnants from production are used in the continuing enrichment of the soil and habitat protection for the farm. The second skin of the coffee is used as fuel to dry the beans, avoiding cutting down trees to provide that fuel.
* Habitat. Shade Grown coffee provides important bird habitat and supports greater biodiversity. Migrating bird populations have been in rapid decline since the relatively recent introduction of “sun” coffee and the consequent destruction of rainforest for more coffee plantations. Our coffee collaborators, the Hartmann Family, have had more birds identified on their Shade Grown coffee finca than on any other finca in the world: 173 species, according to the Smithsonian Institute!
* Rain forest Preservation. Shade Grown coffee plantations help sustain rain forests. Chemically dependent coffee plantations suffer from soil depletion and increased erosion. Rain forest is stripped to provide fresh growing ground. Shade coffee farms are, for the most part, organic and sustainable. Valley of the Moonâ„¢ Coffee finca is 50% shade grown coffee plantation and 50% untouched mountain rain forest. Without this tree cover, the heavy rains in the Panamanian Highlands will rapidly denude the hills of their soil cover.
* Preserves Soil Vitality. Chemical coffee farming, dependent on synthetic fertilizer, damages the micro organism web of life which makes soil viable and healthy. Shade Grown, chemical free coffee growing reverses the trend towards chemicals and dependence on them induced by the progressive death of the soil. Since the soil in a chemical coffee finca is devitalized, more chemicals must be used to keep it producing, further polluting both the coffee and the environment. Shade coffee farms traditionally use little or no chemical fertilizer. And Valley of the Moonâ„¢ uses none.
History
Before the advent of “modern†coffee varieties, all coffee was Shade Grown. Traditional coffee varieties are naturally intolerant of direct sunlight, prefering a canopy of sun-filtering shade trees to thrive. The trees not only protect the coffee from direct sun, they also mulch the soil with their fallen leaves which helps retain soil moisturel, shelter birds, insects and pollinators and offer habitat protection for a wide variety of organisms and animals. The shade trees enhance the soil, provide all-important nitrogen fixation and offer vitally needed habitat for birds. The birds in turn provide natural insect control with their constant foraging and fertilization with their droppings. This sustainable method of farming typically uses little or no chemical fertilizers, pesticides or herbicides. Valley of the Moon™ never uses any.
In 1972, new hybrid varieties of coffee (non GMO varieties) were developed to increase production of the valuable coffee crop. These new varieties produced significantly more coffee beans which were larger and easier to harvest, and produced best in direct sunlight.
Many growers cut their shade trees and switched to the new varieties. Of the 6 million acres of coffee lands, 60% have been completely stripped of shade trees since 1972. Only the small, low-tech farms, often too poor to afford chemicals, preserved their shade trees. Valley of the Moon™’s shade trees are visually and environmentally breathtaking.
Tragically, the new varieties of “sun” coffee carried an additional cost as well: the new hybrids were dependent on high doses of pesticides and chemical fertilizers because they were neither hardy nor naturally resistant to pests, fungus and disease. Soil erosion, water runoff and soil depletion as a result of chemical use and poor agricultural management induced producers to clear vast tracts of rain forest for new soil to plant. It rapidly became apparent that this new method of growing coffee was unsustainable.
The loss of the shade trees on such a large scale also caused an estimated 20% decline in migratory bird populations in the last ten years, due to habitat loss. The diminished songbird population is apparent as far as 1500 miles away from the coffee growing regions in North America and Europe.
In 1996, the movement to support Shade Grown coffee was sparked by the Smithsonian Institute’s Migratory Bird Center, which gathered environmentalists, farmers and coffee companies to address the problem and promote awareness of shade coffee. Today, sales of organically grown, shade coffee represent about 1%, or $30 million, of the U.S. market for coffee beans.
Cost and Selection
How do I know if my coffee is shade grown?
~ Make sure your coffee is Valley of the Moonâ„¢ Friendly Food Certified Coffee
~ Look for coffee which, like Valley of the Moonâ„¢ Coffee states on its literature, packaging or website, that it is “Shade Grown” coffee and uses no pesticides or herbicides.
~ Country of origin is an indicator. While there are exceptions, coffee produced from southern Mexico, El Salvador, Peru, Panama, Nicaragua and Guatemala are primarily shade grown. Also, coffee from Sumatra, Timor, New Guinea and Ethiopia are mostly shade grown. Coffees from Colombia, Brazil and Costa Rica are more likely to be “sun” coffees, although there are some shade producers from these regions.
Panama, the home of Valley of the Moon(TM) is one of the world’s smallest coffee producers but is recognized world-wide as the home of some of the world’s best coffees because Panamaninan Specialty Coffee Growers set their collective goal as the production of the world’s finest coffee. Valley of the Moon(TM) is proud to be part of the quality tradition of Panama.
Cost
Although Shade Grown coffee may be more expensive than pesticide-grown industrial coffee, there is far less cost to the environment and it is far less costly to your health.
Natural Solutions Foundation want to thank Eartheasy for this information on Shade Grown vs. industrial coffee.
And thank you for supporting health freedom, the International Decade of Nutrition and the Valley of the Moon(TM) Eco Demonstration Community with its farm, farm school, natural medical center, housing, community center and more. Visit us at www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org and visit us in person in the temperate, magnificent Highlands of Chiriqui, Panama.
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org
www.Organics4U.org
www.NaturalSolutionsMarketPlace.org
www.NaturalSolutionsMedia.tv
Here is what GMO technology brings: crops (and animals) controlled by corporations like Monsanto whose superficial commitment is to generate as much money as possible but whose deeper commitment is to accomplish a level of control never before seen: total control of the world’s food supply. Who lives and who dies clearly is of no importance to these corporations. Who controls the lives and deaths of farmers and consumers is literally at stake here.
We are well on the way to seeing the “Suicide Belt” of Maharashtra, India, in our own farmlands. If you think that this tragic and horrifying scenario cannot occur in your community, think again.
Monsanto takes over 500 family farms per year away from their owners because their GMO seed “volunteers”., that is, trespasses and invades, the fields of the family farmers. Claiming that their patented intellectual rights have been invaded, Monsanto seeks damages against the farmer which are so steep that the farmer looses his home and his farm – another win for Monsanto. And, of course, Codex, driven by the US FDA, allows all GMO FrankenFoods as if they were safe and wholesome.
What you are about to read is real and is coming to a farming community near you. But the final word is not yet in. Although more (much more, we believe) of the US food supply contains, or comes from, genetically modified “foods” (aptly called “Frankenfoods”), consumer outrage can, if properly harnessed, literally save the day.
Here are the steps you can take to prevent this disaster:
1. Band together with others of like mind. No one of us can do this alone, but as an electronic community, we have immense power.
a. Click here (http://drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=187) to become part of the rapidly growing Natural Solutions Foundation Health Freedom eAlert Community. It’s free, it’s secure and it’s powerful!
b. Take the Action Steps in each free issue.
c. Pass the eAlerts along to your entire email list, urging them to join and take the Action Steps, too.
2. Click here (http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=25920) to urge your Congressional Legislators to become co-sponsors of the GMO labeling and safety study bills proposed in the House of Representatives by Denis Kucinich (D-OH). This is a trans partisan issue and only public pressure will compel Congress to support our health instead of the BioTech industry’s profits
3. Commit yourself, without exception, to buy ONLY products which are labeled “Organic”, or “GMO-Free.
a. Many nutrients and supplements are made with, or sourced from, Genetically Modified Organisms like yeast, corn, soy, bacteria modified to produce vitamins, etc even if those products do not appear on the label. GMO ingredients are literally torn apart in vats and new “foods” assembled from them. If the word “organic” is not on the label, it isn’t organic. If the words “GMO-Free” or “Free of GMOs” are not on the label, then the product IS a GMO product.
b. The Natural Solutions Foundation has created an online store, www.Organics4U.org, where you can find GMO, organic health products. All profits from www.Organics4U.org sales go to this battle.
4. Purchase only fruits and produce whose code number on the small, oval tag (UPC code) begins with the number “9”. This signifies that the item is organic. If the UPC code begins with “4” it has been raised with conventional farming techniques (including fluoride sprays, herbicides, pesticides, soil de-mineralizing synthetic fertilizers, possibly mercury sprays and other toxic substances and procedures).
5. Write to the companies whose products you buy and ask if they use GMO ingredients in their foods. If they tell you that they “meet or exceed FDA standards” that means that the products are made with GMOs.
a. Write back to them and tell them you will not patronize them any longer and that you will share this information.
b. Send a copy of their letter to me at releyes@gmail.com and we will add the company and the specific product to either the Natural Solutions Foundation “GMO Hit List” or our “GMO Kiss List”. We’ll publicize these lists to help others make GMO free food choices as well.
6. Talk to your friends and neighbors, parents of other kids your kids play with, folks in your Seniro Center, people in your church or community organizations. Spread the word. Most people have no idea that they are eating foods which are killing them, making them infertile and damaging their loved ones as well as themselves.
a. Become a Natural Solutions Foundation Community Organizer. Hold meetings, get on the radio, start letter writing campaigns. We’ll show you how. If you write to Kathy Greene at kathy.greene@usa.net and put “Organizer” in the subject line, Kathy will send you a Natural Solutions Foundation Community Organizer’s Handbook and help you get started.
b. Use your creativity to organize your community awareness. Tell us what you are doing and we will assist you in any way we can.
7. Donate here (http://drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=189) to the Natural Solutions Foundation so that we can keep on keeping on to make sure that our health freedoms stay free. Right now, it is illegal to label GMO containing foods to say that they are toxic industrial force feeding products. We need to change that and we need to eliminate Bio Tech altogether for our sake, the planet’s sake and, perhaps most of all, our children’s sakes.
8. Become involved in, visit, participate in, and/or lend your support to, the Natural Solutions Foundation Valley of the Moon Eco Demonstration Community (http://naturalsolutionsfoundation.org/) in the beautiful, fertile and temperate Chiriqui Highlands of Panama where we will
a. Create a demonstration BeyondOrganic Bio Dynamic Zero Emissions(TM) Farm and Farm School to help farmers from around the world re-learn how to grow food without chemicals and teach pollution-free Zero Emissions farming
b. Share the techniques of intensive “foot square gardening” to eliminate under nutrition in people who do not live on farms so that people everywhere can grow fresh, organic vegetables and fruits in very little space and at virtually no cost
c. Create a natural healing and wellness center
d. Offer seminars to guests from the area and beyond on a large number of topics (If you want to run a seminar at our new facility in Volcan, Panama, contact me at releyes@gmail.com!) with an all organic restaurant providing outstanding food in the near future
e. Raise pure, unadulterated food for ourselves and others. For example, we are already harvesting the chemical free, delicious Valley of the Moon Coffee. Every bag supports your health and your health freedom at the same time. Click here (http://drrimatruthreports.com/?page_id=1130) to make sure that you put A Little Taste of Heaven in a Cup(TM) and give everyone on your gift list the same delight in their cups, too!
f. Create a small boutique hotel where guests at the medical center and the seminars can stay.
How can you support this innovative effort to help farmers around the world reclaim the production of clean, safe food? By one of more of the following options:
1. Become personally involved by bringing your skills and abilities to the Valley of the Moon
2. Provide tax deductible donation or “friendly financing” support which has significant financial return
3. Connecting us with Foundations or potential donors who will find what we are doing interesting and worth considering for support. Visit www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org to find out more and then contact me at releyes@gmail.com with questions, suggestions or thoughts.
It’s really up to us. Reclaiming the production of food worldwide is essential to solving the problem. But so is making sure that we are buying clean, unadulterated food. Every time you make a food purchase, you are either helping the Bio Tech companies to destroy your health and the planet while they take over our food supply or helping to keep them from doing it.
Every time.
If we buy the food that the Bio Tech companies have poisoned we are giving them a profit from harming us. Let’s not do that, shall we?
The FDA and the USDA are worse than useless – the are literally paralyzed by a 1992 Executive Order by then-President George H. W. Bush which says that GMO foods are “substantially equivalent” to unmodified ones and forbids them to require or examine safety testing except for the most basic evaluation early in the development process which has been done by the Bio Tech company itself. There is no safety testing, there is no clinical testing, there is only a Bio Tech Fox in the consumer health hen house.
Think about it: the employees in Monsanto’s UK Headquarters in London refused to eat food in the cafeteria made with, or containing ANY GMO food. What do they know that you need to know? That all GMO food is dangerous, can have astonishingly high levels of pesticide, that this technology can cause hidden and as-yet unsuspected diseases, horrifying environmental damage, antibiotic resistance, birth defects, sterility, kidney, gut and immune system damage, infant deaths, cancer and on and on and on.
Read the article below, take it very, very seriously and then let’s get started putting an end to this collective nightmare which has been foisted upon us by a government to weak to stand up for any of our rights or for our health, too corrupt to care about either and too industry-friendly to even ask questions. It’s really up to us.
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org
www.Organics4U.org
www.NaturalSolutionsMarketPlace.org
www.NaturalSolutionsMedia.tv
The GM genocide: Thousands of Indian farmers are committing suicide after using genetically modified crops
By Andrew Malone
When Prince Charles claimed thousands of Indian farmers were killing themselves after using GM crops, he was branded a scaremonger. In fact, as this chilling dispatch reveals, it’s even WORSE than he feared.
The children were inconsolable. Mute with shock and fighting back tears, they huddled beside their mother as friends and neighbours prepared their father’s body for cremation on a blazing bonfire built on the cracked, barren fields near their home.
As flames consumed the corpse, Ganjanan, 12, and Kalpana, 14, faced a
grim future. While Shankara Mandaukar had hoped his son and daughter would have a better life under India’s economic boom, they now face working as slave labour for a few pence a day. Landless and homeless, they will be the lowest of the low.
Shankara, respected farmer, loving husband and father, had taken his own
life. Less than 24 hours earlier, facing the loss of his land due to debt, he drank a cupful of chemical insecticide.
Unable to pay back the equivalent of two years’ earnings, he was in despair. He could see no way out.
There were still marks in the dust where he had writhed in agony. Other villagers looked on – they knew from experience that any intervention was pointless – as he lay doubled up on the ground, crying out in pain and vomiting.
Moaning, he crawled on to a bench outside his simple home 100 miles from Nagpur in central India. An hour later, he stopped making any noise. Then he stopped breathing. At 5pm on Sunday, the life of Shankara Mandaukar came to an end.
As neighbours gathered to pray outside the family home, Nirmala Mandaukar, 50, told how she rushed back from the fields to find her husband dead. ‘He was a loving and caring man,’ she said, weeping quietly.
‘But he couldn’t take any more. The mental anguish was too much. We have lost everything.’
Shankara’s crop had failed – twice. Of course, famine and pestilence are part of India’s ancient story.
But the death of this respected farmer has been blamed on something far more modern and sinister: genetically modified crops.
Shankara, like millions of other Indian farmers, had been promised previously unheard of harvests and income if he switched from farming with traditional seeds to planting GM seeds instead.
Beguiled by the promise of future riches, he borrowed money in order to buy the GM seeds. But when the harvests failed, he was left with spiralling debts – and no income.
So Shankara became one of an estimated 125,000 farmers to take their own life as a result of the ruthless drive to use India as a testing ground for genetically modified crops.
The crisis, branded the ‘GM Genocide’ by campaigners, was highlighted recently when Prince Charles claimed that the issue of GM had become a ‘global moral question’ – and the time had come to end its unstoppable march.
Speaking by video link to a conference in the Indian capital, Delhi, he infuriated bio-tech leaders and some politicians by condemning ‘the truly appalling and tragic rate of small farmer suicides in India,
stemming… from the failure of many GM crop varieties’.
Ranged against the Prince are powerful GM lobbyists and prominent politicians, who claim that genetically modified crops have transformed Indian agriculture, providing greater yields than ever before.
The rest of the world, they insist, should embrace ‘the future’ and follow suit.
So who is telling the truth? To find out, I travelled to the ‘suicide belt’ in Maharashtra state.
What I found was deeply disturbing – and has profound implications for countries, including Britain, debating whether to allow the planting of seeds manipulated by scientists to circumvent the laws of nature.
For official figures from the Indian Ministry of Agriculture do indeed confirm that in a huge humanitarian crisis, more than 1,000 farmers kill themselves here each month.
Simple, rural people, they are dying slow, agonising deaths. Most swallow insecticide – a pricey substance they were promised they would not need when they were coerced into growing expensive GM crops.
It seems that many are massively in debt to local money-lenders, having over-borrowed to purchase GM seed.
Pro-GM experts claim that it is rural poverty, alcoholism, drought and ‘agrarian distress’ that is the real reason for the horrific toll.
But, as I discovered during a four-day journey through the epicentre of the disaster, that is not the full story.
In one small village I visited, 18 farmers had committed suicide after being sucked into GM debts. In some cases, women have taken over farms from their dead husbands – only to kill themselves as well.
Latta Ramesh, 38, drank insecticide after her crops failed – two years after her husband disappeared when the GM debts became too much.
She left her ten-year-old son, Rashan, in the care of relatives. ‘He
cries when he thinks of his mother,’ said the dead woman’s aunt, sitting listlessly in shade near the fields.
Village after village, families told how they had fallen into debt after being persuaded to buy GM seeds instead of traditional cotton seeds.
The price difference is staggering: £10 for 100 grams of GM seed, compared with less than £10 for 1,000 times more traditional seeds.
But GM salesmen and government officials had promised farmers that these were ‘magic seeds’ – with better crops that would be free from parasites and insects.
Indeed, in a bid to promote the uptake of GM seeds, traditional varieties were banned from many government seed banks.
The authorities had a vested interest in promoting this new biotechnology. Desperate to escape the grinding poverty of the post-independence years, the Indian government had agreed to allow new
bio-tech giants, such as the U.S. market-leader Monsanto, to sell their new seed creations.
In return for allowing western companies access to the second most populated country in the world, with more than one billion people, India was granted International Monetary Fund loans in the Eighties and Nineties, helping to launch an economic revolution.
But while cities such as Mumbai and Delhi have boomed, the farmers’ lives have slid back into the dark ages.
Though areas of India planted with GM seeds have doubled in two years – up to 17 million acres – many famers have found there is a terrible price to be paid.
Far from being ‘magic seeds’, GM pest-proof ‘breeds’ of cotton have been devastated by bollworms, a voracious parasite.
Nor were the farmers told that these seeds require double the amount of water. This has proved a matter of life and death.
With rains failing for the past two years, many GM crops have simply withered and died, leaving the farmers with crippling debts and no means of paying them off.
Having taken loans from traditional money lenders at extortionate rates, hundreds of thousands of small farmers have faced losing their land as the expensive seeds fail, while those who could struggle on faced a fresh crisis.
When crops failed in the past, farmers could still save seeds and replant them the following year.
But with GM seeds they cannot do this. That’s because GM seeds contain so- called ‘terminator technology’, meaning that they have been genetically modified so that the resulting crops do not produce viable seeds of their own.
As a result, farmers have to buy new seeds each year at the same punitive prices. For some, that means the difference between life and death.
Take the case of Suresh Bhalasa, another farmer who was cremated this week, leaving a wife and two children.
As night fell after the ceremony, and neighbours squatted outside while sacred cows were brought in from the fields, his family had no doubt that their troubles stemmed from the moment they were encouraged to buy BT Cotton, a geneticallymodified plant created by Monsanto.
‘We are ruined now,’ said the dead man’s 38-year-old wife. ‘We bought 100 grams of BT Cotton. Our crop failed twice. My husband had become depressed. He went out to his field, lay down in the cotton and swallowed insecticide.’
Villagers bundled him into a rickshaw and headed to hospital along rutted farm roads. ‘He cried out that he had taken the insecticide and he was sorry,’ she said, as her family and neighbours crowded into her
home to pay their respects. ‘He was dead by the time they got to hospital.’
Asked if the dead man was a ‘drunkard’ or suffered from other ‘social problems’, as alleged by pro-GM officials, the quiet, dignified gathering erupted in anger. ‘No! No!’ one of the dead man’s brothers
exclaimed. ‘Suresh was a good man. He sent his children to school and paid his taxes.
‘He was strangled by these magic seeds. They sell us the seeds, saying they will not need expensive pesticides but they do. We have to buy the same seeds from the same company every year. It is killing us. Please tell the world what is happening here.’
Monsanto has admitted that soaring debt was a ‘factor in this tragedy’. But pointing out that cotton production had doubled in the past seven years, a spokesman added that there are other reasons for the recent crisis, such as ‘untimely rain’ or drought, and pointed out that suicides have always been part of rural Indian life.
Officials also point to surveys saying the majority of Indian farmers want GM seeds – no doubt encouraged to do so by aggressive marketing tactics.
During the course of my inquiries in Maharastra, I encountered three ‘independent’ surveyors scouring villages for information about suicides. They insisted that GM seeds were only 50 per cent more
expensive – and then later admitted the difference was 1,000 per cent.
(A Monsanto spokesman later insisted their seed is ‘only double’ the price of ‘official’ non-GM seed – but admitted that the difference can be vast if cheaper traditional seeds are sold by ‘unscrupulous’ merchants, who often also sell ‘fake’ GM seeds which are prone to disease.)
With rumours of imminent government compensation to stem the wave of deaths, many farmers said they were desperate for any form of assistance. ‘We just want to escape from our problems,’ one said. ‘We just want help to stop any more of us dying.’
Prince Charles is so distressed by the plight of the suicide farmers that he is setting up a charity, the Bhumi Vardaan Foundation, to help those affected and promote organic Indian crops instead of GM.
India’s farmers are also starting to fight back. As well as taking GM seed distributors hostage and staging mass protests, one state government is taking legal action against Monsanto for the exorbitant
costs of GM seeds.
This came too late for Shankara Mandauker, who was 80,000 rupees (about £1,000) in debt when he took his own life. ‘I told him that we can survive,’ his widow said, her children still by her side as darkness fell. ‘I told him we could find a way out. He just said it was better to die.’
But the debt does not die with her husband: unless she can find a way of
paying it off, she will not be able to afford the children’s schooling. They will lose their land, joining the hordes seen begging in their thousands by the roadside throughout this vast, chaotic country.
Cruelly, it’s the young who are suffering most from the ‘GM Genocide’ – the very generation supposed to be lifted out of a life of hardship and misery by these ‘magic seeds’.
Here in the suicide belt of India, the cost of the genetically modified future is murderously high.
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The Independent on Sunday, one of Britain’s leading newspapers, published the following report about a secret meeting in which each of the Prime Ministers of the EU’s 27 countries were asked to nominate a representative to attend a secret meeting designed to develop strategies to force GMOs on a vigorously resistant public.
In the EU, all GMO foods and ingredients must be clearly labeled although animals fed GMO feeds are not labeled despite the fact that their meat and other products contain GMO materials.
Predictably, there is a growing push back movement in the EU against this food tyranny. There needs to be more or same here since, according to a New York Times article, 87% of the American people want clear identification of any GMO products or ingredients in the “foods” they are eating.
More than 80% of all foods consumed in the US contain unlabeled and unidentified GMOs.
Please click here (http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=25920) to let your Congressional legislators know that you support the GMO safety and labeling legislation presented by Denis Kucinich (D-OH) and that you want them to support it and become co-sponsors of these bills.
And please forward this to your entire list so that they, too, can get their legislators on board. Now.
Thanks for your activism
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org
www.Organics4U.org
www.NaturalSolutionsMarketPlace.org
www.NaturalSolutionsMedia.tv
Europe’s secret plan to boost GM crop production
Gordon Brown and other EU leaders in campaign to promote modified foods
By Geoffrey Lean
Sunday, 26 October 2008
GM corn growing in France, which has since suspended cultivation of modified crops
Gordon Brown and other European leaders are secretly preparing an unprecedented campaign to spread GM crops and foods in Britain and throughout the continent, confidential documents obtained by The Independent on Sunday reveal.
The documents – minutes of a series of private meetings of representatives of 27 governments – disclose plans to “speed up” the introduction of the modified crops and foods and to “deal with” public resistance to them.
And they show that the leaders want “agricultural representatives” and “industry” – presumably including giant biotech firms such as Monsanto – to be more vocal to counteract the “vested interests” of environmentalists.
News of the secret plans is bound to create a storm of protest at a time when popular concern about GM technology is increasing, even in countries that have so far accepted it.
Public opposition has prevented any modified crops from being grown in Britain. France, one of only three countries in Europe to have grown them in any amounts, has suspended their cultivation, and resistance to them is rising rapidly in the other two, Spain and Portugal.
The embattled biotech industry has been conducting a public relations campaign based round the highly contested assertion that genetic modification is needed to feed the world. It has had some success in the Government, where ministers have been increasingly speaking out in favour of the technology, and in the European Commission, with which its lobbyists have boasted of having “excellent working relations”.
The secret meetings were convened by Jose Manuel Barroso, the pro-GM President of the Commission, and chaired by his head of cabinet, Joao Vale de Almeida. The prime ministers of each of the EU’s 27 member states were asked to nominate a special representative.
Neither the membership of the group, nor its objectives, nor the outcomes of its meetings have been made public. But The IoS has obtained confidential documents, including an attendance list and the conclusions of the two meetings held so far – on 17 July and just two weeks ago on 10 October – written by the chairman.
The list shows that President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany sent close aides. Britain was represented by Sonia Phippard, director for food and farming at the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
The conclusions reveal the discussions were mainly preoccupied with how to speed up the introduction of GM crops and food and how to persuade the public to accept them.
The modified products have to be approved by the EU before they can be sown or sold anywhere in Europe. But though the Commission officials are generally strongly in favour, European governments are split, causing the Council of Ministers, on which they are represented, to be deadlocked.
In that event the bureaucrats on the Commission wave them through anyway. They are legally allowed to do this, but overruled governments and environmental groups are unhappy.
The conclusions of the first meeting called for the “speeding up of the authorisation process based on robust assessments so as to reassure the public”, while the second one added: “Decisions could be made faster without compromising safety.”
But the documents also make clear that Mr Barroso is going beyond mere exhortation by trying to get prime ministers to overrule their own agriculture and environment ministers in favour of GM. They report that the chairman “recalled the importance for prime ministers to look at the wider picture”, “invited the participants to report the discussions of the group to their heads of governments”, and “stressed the importance of drawing their attention to ongoing discussions in the Council [of Ministers]”.
Helen Holder of Friends of the Earth Europe said: “Barroso’s aim is to get GM into Europe as quickly as possible. So he is going straight to prime ministers and presidents to tell them to step on their ministers and get them into line.”
The conclusions of the meetings on public opposition are even more incendiary. The documents ponder “how best to deal with public opinion” and call for “an emotion-free, fact-based dialogue on the high standards of the EU GM policy”. And they record the chairman emphasising “the role of industry, economic partners and science to actively contribute to such a dialogue”. He adds that “the public feels ill-informed” and says “agricultural representatives should be more vocal”. And in a veiled swipe at environmental groups he says that the debate “should not be left to certain stakeholders who have a legitimate but vested interest in it”.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/europes-secret-plan-to-boost-gm-crop-production-973834.html
I am nearly speechless by the stupidity and ill-conceived arrogance of industry scientists who are playing havoc with my world and yours.
Read this for yourself and see if you do not believe that you need strong allies to fight this madness back into the nightmare it came from.
That ally is the Natural Solutions Foundation. Give us the voice and give us the strength to carry this battle forward by making sure that you are on the distribution list of the free Health Freedom eAlerts (sign up on our home page, www.HealthFreedomUSA.org) and by forwarding the eAlerts to your entire list and asking them to take the action steps therein.
This madness MUST stop.
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org
www.Organics4U.org
www.NaturalSolutionsMarketPlace.org
www.NaturalSolutionsMedia.tv
Invasion of the warrior insects
Clive Cookson
Financial Times, October 11 2008
Scientists are about to unleash a new weapon in mankind’s running battle
against insect pests: a genetically modified flying army. The first
commercial release of GM insects, to protect US cotton fields from the
voracious pink bollworm, is expected within the next two years. The second
target will be the mosquito that spreads dengue fever in Asia.
This new airborne offensive is being mounted from a business park near
Abingdon, Oxfordshire, where a set of low-key laboratories houses the
world’s leading centre for GM insect development. Oxitec, a private company
spun out of Oxford University in 2002, holds tens of thousands of moths,
mosquitoes and flies in its insectaries. They are undergoing genetic
engineering as part of the fight against agricultural pests and carriers of
human disease.
GM is being deployed to extend the “sterile insect” technique that has
already successfully eradicated pests such as screw-worms and Mediterranean
fruit flies (medflies) in parts of north America. The idea is that vast
numbers of sterile yet virile males – at least 10 times as many as the wild
population – are released in infected areas. These sterile newcomers swamp
the native males, mating with all available females, which then fail to
produce any offspring.
Until now, insects have been sterilised before release by old-fashioned
irradiation from radioactive isotopes. But this is a crude technique that
works only on some species. “It doesn’t work for mosquitoes because a
radiation dose big enough to sterilise the insect will also incapacitate or
kill it,” says Luke Alphey, founder and research director of Oxitec.
With colleagues at Oxford University he discovered how to achieve the same
effect more gently and specifically, by inserting a “dominant lethal” gene
into the insects. “The males produce viable sperm which will fertilise the
egg, but the embryo [larva] dies in development,” says Alphey, who left the
university this year to work full time for the company.
“Of course the system needs to be reversible, so that we can breed the
insects in the first place,” he adds. This is achieved by designing the
lethal gene so that it can be suppressed by adding the antibiotic
tetracycline to the captive insects’ diet. In the absence of tetracycline,
the larvae die.
The lab insects live in clear plastic containers of various shapes,
typically about the size of an archive box. Some have fine mesh or gauze on
one side. Fruit flies, for example, lay their eggs on the mesh, where they
can easily be collected by lab staff.
Female mosquitoes receive what’s known as their “blood meal”, which they
need to breed, through the gauze. Genevieve Labbe, who is in charge of the
mosquito breeding programme, gives them horse blood heated to 37Æ’C, twice a
week. “First we blow into the cage to tell them there’s something to bite,”
she explains. Carbon dioxide in the breath alerts the insects to the
presence of a warm-blooded animal.
The mosquitoes, which have been sitting or flying lethargically around their
box, begin buzzing energetically in response to Labbe’s breath. Then a
cylinder of warm blood, with one end covered with sausage skin, is placed
against the gauze – and the mosquitoes gorge themselves.
Oxitec’s highest-profile project is to attack Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, the
carriers of dengue fever, which afflicts an estimated 100m people every
year. The work is funded with a $5m grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation, part of the charity’s drive to reduce the toll from tropical
diseases.
“Both the incidence and severity of dengue are increasing,” warns Alphey.
“There are no drugs or vaccine, and $1bn has been spent – largely
ineffectively – on dengue control through insecticide fogging and site
sanitation.” (The mosquitoes breed in small rainwater pools, such as those
that form in discarded tyres.)
The Malaysian government is collaborating with Oxitec to run a field trial
with GM insects on Pulau Ketam, an island east of Kuala Lumpur inhabited
mainly by Chinese fishing families. Its relative isolation makes Pulau Ketam
a good test site, because were Aedes aegypti to be suppressed locally, the
success would not be masked by mosquitoes moving in from elsewhere. But some
residents are objecting to what they call “warrior” mosquitoes.
“What else will the ‘warrior’ mosquitoes kill?” asked Saw Lek, a retired
teacher quoted in the South China Morning Post. “We fear, once released,
there is no way to control the new mosquito if anything goes wrong.”
There are also objectors further afield. Mae-Wan Ho, director of the
Institute of Science in Society, based in London, calls the use of
“terminator mosquitoes” to control dengue “dangerous and costly”. She
believes there is a risk of the lethal genes moving from the released GM
mosquitoes into other organisms and disrupting the already fragile
environmental balance.
But Oxitec scientists insist their GM mosquitoes are environmentally benign.
First, they argue, only the non-biting males are released; they are easily
sorted from the females in the breeding facility because their pupae are
smaller.
“The natural population density of Aedes aegypti is not high,” says Alphey.
“For a city of 1m people you are probably talking about releasing 10-20
mosquitoes per person per week. I don’t think anyone would notice the
increase in the mosquito population.”
He points out too that Aedes aegypti, like the other pests targeted by
Oxitec, is not a native species (it originates in Africa) but has been
spread around the world by human activities. Its eradication would not
disrupt any local ecosystems. “There is no breeding route into a wild
population,” Alphey insists. And if the terminator gene does inadvertently
get into wild mosquitoes, it “absolutely will not spread”, because any
insects carrying it would not survive.
The promise to keep genetic modification out of the wild population may make
the Oxitec technology more acceptable to sceptics than other ways of using
GM insects, which are being studied but are further from commercial
application. Scientists at Imperial College London, for example, plan
permanently to change the genetic make-up of wild mosquitoes, so that they
can no longer transmit a human pathogen such as the malaria parasite.
Safe or not, GM technology will get nowhere without winning over the people
living near release sites, warns Anthony Wilson, an expert on insect-borne
disease at the UK-based Institute of Animal Health. “If you can see a
facility releasing clouds of mosquitoes, you’ll want to be very sure that
you are not just being used for experimental purposes,” says Wilson. In the
1970s, long before scientists could genetically engineer insects, the World
Health Organisation and the Indian government had to cancel an ambitious
dengue control project after local newspapers caused a furore with erroneous
claims that it was a camouflaged US germ warfare experiment.
In the US, Oxitec’s pink bollworm project is not meeting hostility, partly
because American public opinion is less suspicious of genetically modified
organisms than Asian and European. Another reason is that the GM insects
released in the US would replace insects sterilised by irradiation in the
fight against cotton bollworm, rather than adding millions of new insects to
the existing population. “We have had three years of field trials, releasing
our GM pink bollworm from the air over cotton in Arizona,” says David
Brooks, Oxitech chief executive. “We had a very positive environmental
impact report [from the US Department of Agriculture] and we could go into
commercial operation next year or in 2010.”
A bigger prize in the agricultural sector would be the medfly, a scourge of
fruit-growers worldwide. Oxitec hopes the US government will eventually
adopt GM technology to replace the irradiation facilities that it is funding
in central America to push medfly further away from the US. The
sterilisation plant in Guatemala produces a staggering 2bn sterile flies
every week – that’s 20 tonnes of living insect.
Once the GM medflies have proved themselves in field trials, the US
authorities, nervous about the potential security risks posed by radioactive
sources, may indeed prefer the cleaner and simpler technique of genetic
sterilisation. But it is hard to imagine GM insects being released in
Britain or Europe for the foreseeable future. If activists are determined to
trash static biotech crops, imagine the uproar that would greet GM on wings.
Clive Cookson is the FT’s science editor.
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