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.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/search.html?s=y&authornamef=Andrew+Malone
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1082559/The-GM-genocide-Th
ousands-Indian-farmers-committing-suicide-using-genetically-modified-crops.h
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Neither Candidate for the office of President of the US is committed to controlling, labeling and eliminating GMOs.
That’s bad news for the environment and bad news for us.
But the situation is not hopeless. Take South Africa, for example.
Despite years of force feeding GMO staple foods, including white corn, which most of South Africa’s poor population lives on, the South African Government, despite a great deal of backing and filling, has finally made mandatory labeling of all GMO food and ingredients mandatory.
Why can’t we do the same? Why can’t we rouse enough outrage and pressure to force the US to retreat from its 1992 position, instituted upon the signing of an Executive Order by then-President George Bush Sr., making GMOs administratively (and pseudo-scientifically) “substantially equivalent” to non modified foods.
Science, on the other hand, makes it clear that nothing could be further from the truth. If you check out the GMO Files in this blog, you will find abundant – and very scary – data that makes it clear that these “foods” are not food at all, but industrial toxins.
Right now there are three laws before the US House of Representatives, sponsored by Rep. Denis Kuchinch (D, OH) which would require safety testing, labeling and scientific evaluation of all GMO crops and products.
Click here (http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=25920) to support those bills and ask your Congressional members to become both supporters and co-sponsors of this vitally important legislation.
In the meantime, I hope you will join the Natural Solutions Foundation’s vigorous and active No-GMO-Forum (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/no-genetically-modified-foods/join) and become part of the community of action to stop being fed industrial toxins instead of food, all with the connivance of the next POTUS (President of the United States).
And don’t forget to give generously to support the Natural Solutions Foundation as we keep health freedom free! Click here (http://drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=189) to make your recurring, tax exempt donation and here (http://drrimatruthreports.com/?page_id=1130) to order the best coffee in the world, our Valley of the Moon(TM) shade grown, chemical free coffee – ground or whole bean ~ A Little Bit of (NON GMO) Heaven in a Cup(TM) ~ while you support health freedom.
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
US election impact on GM food
By Sarah Hills, 31-Oct-2008 [www.nutraingredients-usa.com]
Genetically modified food companies should be paying particular attention to the results of next week’s presidential election as they could face tough times ahead, according to a Soil Association report. Click here () to read more.
Consumers, food manufacturers and farmers are increasingly moving away from GM products, the new study called Land of the GM-Free? How the American public are starting to turn against GM food, claimed.
At the same time the UK environmental charity said 87 percent of Americans want labels on food telling them whether Genetically Modified (GM) products have been used or not.
The SA added: “These developments, combined with the possibility of Democrat Presidential Candidate Barack Obama’s pledge to support legislation to label GM food if he should get elected, suggest that GM companies are in for a difficult few years in the USA.”
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.
http://www.gmfreeireland.org/news/index.php
The Natural Solutions Foundation has been deeply concerned for some time now about the possibility, enshrined in Executive Order, Homeland Security Directive, Patriot Actis 1 and HS Declares ‘Health Emergencies’ to Limit Legal Liability for harm done to victims of vaccine injury and other preventable medical disasters. We note with great alarm that the mechanism of “Emergency” declarations is being used with increasing frequency and take this opportunity to share with you a very serious issue which we urge you to take seriously and heed the potentially dire implications of.
Please remember that the Natural Solutions Foundation is the only organization pulling all of these threads together to give you a comprehensive picture of the threats to your health freedom, and our successes in protecting it.
And please give generously to support this organization working hard to keep your health freedom free. Click here (http://drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=189) to make your tax deductible contribution to health keep freedom free.
Thanks!
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
http://www.legitgov.org/HHS_declares_health_emergencies.html
HHS Declares ‘Health Emergencies’ to Limit Legal Liability for Anti-
terrorism Vaccines, Drugs
By Lori Price
www.legitgov.org
October Surprises: The U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary,
Michael Leavitt, has declared a series of ‘public health emergencies’
— due to risk of a bioterrorism attack — that continue through 2015.
Oct. 1, 2008: U.S. declares a ‘public health emergency’ due to the
risk of a bioterrorism attack. HHS Secretary, Michael Leavitt, said
the emergency began on Oct. 1 and would run through Dec. 31, 2015.
The declaration establishes legal immunity for public and private
officials who oversee the production or distribution of the anthrax
vaccine.
Oct. 10, 2008: U.S. declares more ‘public health emergencies’ for
smallpox, radiation sickness from the detonation of a nuclear device
and poisoning from botulinum toxins, the active ingredient of Botox.
This move provides the manufacturers, distributors, and others, of
‘anti-terrorism’ drugs and vaccines immunity from lawsuits, should
injuries or deaths occur due to the drugs or vaccines.
U.S. Limits Anthrax Vaccine Legal Liability By Elaine M. Grossman 07
Oct 2008 The U.S. Health and Human Services Department early this
month moved to shield government, industry and business officials
from lawsuits filed by those who have received the anthrax vaccine
(see GSN, Sept. 5, 2007). Health and Human Services Secretary Michael
Leavitt established legal immunity for public and private officials
who oversee the production or distribution of the anthrax vaccine by
declaring a “public health emergency†due to the risk of a
bioterrorism attack. He said the emergency began on Oct. 1 and would
run through Dec. 31, 2015. U.S. law provides protection from lawsuits
to individuals responsible for selected countermeasures, including
antibiotics, during a declared emergency. Under the Public Readiness
and Emergency Preparedness Act, which President [sic] George W. Bush
signed into law in December 2005, a health and human services
secretary’s emergency declaration can limit financial risk for
government program planners and the manufacturers or distributors of
pharmaceutical countermeasures.
Emergency declarations smooth way for vaccine makers –Consumer
advocates see action as giveaway to the drug industry that strips the
public of legal protections. 17 Oct 2008 In a little noticed move,
federal officials this month have declared a series of public health
emergencies relating to potential weapons of biological terror. On
Oct. 1, Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt declared an
anthrax public health emergency. On Oct. 10, he declared health
emergencies for smallpox, radiation sickness from the detonation of a
nuclear device and poisoning from botulinum toxins, the active
ingredient of Botox. There’s no clear evidence that terrorists have
managed to weaponize anthrax or stolen large caches of Botox from
cosmetic surgeons in Beverly Hills. But by declaring these public
health emergencies, HHS has granted manufacturers of anti-terrorism
drugs and vaccines and others involved with the products protection
from lawsuits if the drugs were to cause unfortunate side effects.
Bogus Anthrax ‘State of Emergency’ Protects Drugmakers, Not Public By
Brandon Keim 15 Oct 2008 Not a single case of human anthrax has been
reported in the United States this year, but the nation is now
officially in a state of anthrax emergency. The emergency was
declared earlier this month by the Department of Health and Human
Services, and will last until 2015. Whether it will protect public
health is debatable, but it will certainly protect makers of faulty
anthrax vaccines. Emergency exemption from legal liability is granted
to vaccine manufacturers by the Public Readiness and Preparedness
Act, passed in 2005 to protect against paralyzing lawsuits during
outbreaks of anthrax, avian influenza or other potentially pandemic
diseases. The act is supposed to be invoked when the Secretary of
Homeland Security has determined “that there is a domestic emergency,
or a significant potential for a domestic emergency, involving a
heightened risk of attack with a specified biological, chemical,
radiological, or nuclear agent or agents.”
37 human anthrax cases in northern Iraq outbreak 12 Oct 2008 Thirty-
seven people have been infected by anthrax in northern Iraq in the
country’s first outbreak of the disease since the 1980s, the health
minister in the Kurdish autonomous region said on Sunday. Health
Minister Ziryan Othman said the disease appeared to have been passed
on from livestock [?]. The first human case of the outbreak was
discovered in remote Dahuk province last month.
US controls bird flu vaccines over bioweapon fears 11 Oct 2008 When
Indonesia’s health minister stopped sending bird flu viruses to a
research laboratory in the U.S. for fear Washington could use them to
make biological weapons, Defense Secretary Robert Gates laughed and
called it “the nuttiest thing” he’d ever heard. Yet deep inside an 86-
page supplement to United States export regulations is a single
sentence that bars U.S. exports of vaccines for avian bird flu and
dozens of other viruses to five countries designated “state sponsors
of terrorism.” The reason: Fear that they will be used for biological
warfare.
Mail carriers, escorted by police, to bring drugs in anthrax attack —
HHS science advisor: Attack using crop-dusting airplane dumping
anthrax spores over a city is a possible scenario 01 Oct 2008
Government mail carriers would deliver emergency supplies of
antibiotics to people in U.S. cities in the case of an anthrax
attack, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services officials said
on Wednesday. The system has been tested in three large [blue] cities
— Seattle, Philadelphia and Boston — and a pilot program is set to
begin soon in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area in Minnesota. The U.S.
Postal Service carriers who would bring the antibiotics from door to
door all would be volunteers who would have advance supplies of
antibiotics to protect themselves and their families, officials said.
Following any new attacks, the mail carriers would be escorted by
local police as they deliver supplies of a few days’ worth of
antibiotics directly to residences throughout an affected community,
HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt said.
HHS Announces New Steps in Anthrax Preparedness (dhs.gov) 01 Oct 2008
HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt today announced two new actions in the
department’s ongoing activities to bolster the nation’s preparedness
for a potential outdoor anthrax attack. In development since March of
this year, the steps being implemented today build upon more than a
decade of preparedness efforts across HHS and other agencies of the
federal government. The first of today’s actions focuses on United
States Postal Service letter carriers who volunteer to deliver
medicines directly to residences in their communities during an
emergency… Over the past several years, under the Cities Readiness
Initiative (CRI), HHS and the Postal Service have successfully
developed and tested in three U.S. cities — Seattle, Philadelphia
and Boston –the ability of letter carriers to quickly deliver door-
to-door quantities of antibiotics from the Strategic National
Stockpile to residential addresses. This quick-strike capability is
intended to buy time for local and State public health authorities to
set up points of dispensing for further provision of antibiotics
across the community.
Judge Affirms Win for Plaintiffs in ‘Anthrax I’ Case By Elaine M.
Grossman 05 Sep 2007 For the first time, a federal judge last month
declared six U.S. defense personnel the definitive winners in a four-
year court battle over the anthrax vaccine. The Aug. 21 decision,
which revolves around payment of attorneys’ fees, is the latest
chapter in a protracted struggle over whether the Defense Department
can require service members to take the anthrax vaccine. U.S.
District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan decided the government defendants
must pay the plaintiffs’ expenses because the plaintiffs won the
case. The litigants — defense personnel who were required to take
anthrax vaccine shots in a Defense Department effort that began in
1998 — won the first round of litigation in October 2004, when
Sullivan issued a permanent injunction banning mandatory
inoculations. Based on a finding that the vaccine was never certified
to protect against “weaponized” airborne anthrax spores, the judge
declared the Pentagon’s mandatory vaccinations “illegal.”
HOMELAND SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE/HSPD-21, issued 18 October
2007, states that within one year of the directive’s date, ‘the
Secretaries of Health and Human Services and Defense, in coordination
with the Secretaries of Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security, shall
establish an academic Joint Program for Disaster Medicine and Public
Health housed at a National Center for Disaster Medicine and Public
Health at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences…
Department of Health and Human Services and Department of Defense
authorities will be used to carry out respective civilian and
military missions within this joint program.’
Dr. Mae Won Ho is a brilliant and fearless truth teller. Her science is impeccable and her voice is loud and strong when it comes to telling the truth about dangerous make believe science. Nowhere is she more vigorous in alerting us to the absurdities and deadly consequences of corporate junk science and junk policies than in the area of Genetically Modified Organisms or GMOs.
The following article is a must read, must share one which I urge you to forward to as many people as possible so that they can join forces to make sure that all legislators understand that the FDA and USDA are not protecting our interests and Congress must take the reins from them before their criminal negligence kills us all.
The reallity is that stark.
Click here (http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=25920) to urge your legislators to become supporters of the suite of bills introduced by Rep. Denis Kucinich to require safety assessments of GMOs and require clear labeling of all GMO ingredients and components of food.
And then click here (http://drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=189) to make a tax deductible, recurring donation so that the Natural Solutions Foundation can continue to bring you the facts you need about your health freedom.
Thanks.
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
GM is Dangerous and Futile
We Need Organic Sustainable Food and Energy Systems Now
New genetics research invalidates the science underpinning the $73.5 billon global biotech industry and confirms why genetic modification is futile and dangerous; we must implement organic sustainable food and energy systems now Dr. Mae-Wan Ho
Invited Lecture at Conference on Future of Food: Climate Change, GMOs and Food Security, 1-2 October 2008, India International Centre, New Delhi
A fully referenced version of this article is posted on ISIS members’ website. Details here
An electronic version of this report with full references can be downloaded from the ISIS online store. Download Now
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I am deeply and doubly honoured to be part of this important conference on Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday, because it was Vandana Shiva and Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher who inspired me and turned me from an ivory tower academic into a science activist. Consequently, I was thrown out of my university and liberated to join civil society in fighting corrupt science and protecting good independent science.
Food Futures Now , *Organic *Sustainable *Fossil Fuel Free, How organic agriculture and localised food, and energy systems can potentially compensate for all greenhouse gas emissions due to human activities and free us from fossil fuels “Change to gene theory raises new challenges for biotechâ€
The headline appeared in the business section of the International Herald Tribune 3 July 2007 [1]. The article went on to say: “The $73.5 billion global biotech business may soon have to grapple with a discovery that calls into question the scientific principles on which it was founded.â€
It was referring to the findings of project ENCODE (Encyclopedia of DNA elements), organised by the US National Human Genome Research Institute. A consortium of 35 research groups went through 1 percent of the human genome with a fine-tooth comb to find out exactly how genes work.
To their surprise, researchers found that the human genome might not be a “tidy collection of independent genes†after all…Instead, genes appear to operate in a complex network, and interact and overlap with one another and with other components in ways not yet fully understood.â€
The Human Genome Research Institute said that these findings will challenge scientists “to rethink some long-held views about what genes are and what they do.â€
The author of the article Denis Caruso commented that, “the report is likely to have repercussions far beyond the laboratory. The presumption that genes operate independently has been institutionalized since 1976, when the first biotech company was founded. In fact, it is the economic and regulatory foundation on which the entire biotechnology industry is built.†She went on to point out that gene patents and safety assessment based on the same paradigm are also in trouble.
She is right on all counts. I pointed that out 10 years previously when a plethora of findings in molecular genetics had already invalidated the genetic determinist paradigm underpinning the biotech industry. In fact, the paradigm had begun to unravel almost as the industry was starting up twenty years earlier.
The Brave New World of GM Science
In Genetic Engineering Dream or Nightmare, the Brave New World of Bad Science and Big Business [2] first published in 1997/1998 I explained why the science behind GM is wrong and obsolete, and hence dangerous; a story elaborated further in Living with the Fluid Genome [3] published in 2003.
Genetic engineering of plants and animals began in the mid 1970s in the belief that the genome (the totality of all the genetic material of a species) is constant and static, and that the characteristics of organism are simply hardwired in their genome. This was encapsulated in the Central Dogma of molecular biology. The genetic information goes from DNA, the genetic material, to RNA, a kind of intermediate, to protein which determines the characteristic involved, such as tolerance to herbicide, for example. One gene determines one trait, so you can transfer one gene and get exactly the trait you want, be it herbicide tolerance, or resistance to insect pest.
But geneticists soon discovered that the genome is remarkably dynamic and ‘fluid’. It is constantly in conversation with the environment, and that determines which genes are turned on, when, where, by how much and for how long. Moreover, the genetic material itself could also be marked or changed according to experience, and the influence passed on to the next generation. Most of that was known by 1980, long before the Human Genome Project was conceived.
The best thing about the Human Genome Project is to finally explode the myth of genetic determinism [4] (The Myth that Launched a Thousand Companies, SiS 18), revealing the layers of molecular complexity that transmit, interpret and rewrite the genetic texts [5] (Life Beyond the Central Dogma series, SiS 24). The ENCODE project has confirmed and extended the complexities especially with regard to what constitutes a gene. Traditionally, a gene is a sequence of DNA that codes for a protein with a well-defined function. This idea has been well and truly shattered [6]; as Barry Patrick wrote in the Science News [7] “genes are proving to be fragmented, intertwined with other genes, and scattered across the whole genome.â€
The genetic engineer’s idea of a gene is presented in Figure 1. It has a regulatory signal, a promoter that says to the cell, go and make lots of copies of the coding sequence that would be translated into a protein, and a terminator that says stop, end of message. This is what genetic engineers put into cells to make a genetically modified organism (GMO).
A gene expression cassette, the genetic engineer’s idea of a gene
Figure 1. A gene expression cassette, the genetic engineer’s idea of a gene
Instead, within the human genome, and indeed other mammalian genomes, coding sequences are in bits (exons) separated by non-coding introns, and exons contributing to a single protein could be in different parts of the genome. Coding sequences of different proteins frequently overlap. Regulatory signals are similarly scattered upstream, downstream, within the coding sequence or in some other distant part of the genome. Coding sequences occupy just 1.5 percent of the human genome, but between 74 and 93 percent of the genome produce RNA transcripts [7], many now known to have regulatory functions. So much so that the project of mapping genetic predisposition to diseases, the original rationale for the Human Genome Project, has now run into serious trouble.
David M. Altshuler, associate professor of genetics and medicine at Harvard Medical School and his research team showed that the risk for type 2 diabetes involves more than a mutated gene. Instead, diabetes, heart disease, some cancers, and other deadly ailments involve non-coding DNA as well as in genes [8]. “We’re realizing that things happening ‘somewhere else’ in the genome, not in genes, are playing critical roles†in sickness and in health, Altshuler said.
David B. Goldstein at Duke University is very pessimistic. He said the effort to nail down the genetics of most common diseases is not working [9]: “There is absolutely no question that for the whole hope of personalized medicine, the news has been just as bleak as it could be. After doing comprehensive studies for common diseases, we can explain only a few percent of the genetic components of most of these traits.†For schizophrenia and biopolar disorder, there is almost nothing, for type 2 diabetes, 20 variants, but they explain only up to 3 percent of familial clustering, and so on.
Goldstein added: “we have cracked open the human genome and can look at the entire complement of common genetic variants, and what do we find? Almost nothing. That is absolutely beyond belief.â€
That is just what I predicted soon after the human genome sequence was announced [10, 11] (Human DNA ‘BioBank’ Worthless, SiS 13/14; Why Genomics Won’t Deliver, SiS 26)
Fresh attempts are now made to redefine a gene either in terms of a protein product [12] or a transcript [13], neither of which are satisfactory or would save the industry. All patents on genes based on the old concept are no longer valid; ultimately because the patent is awarded on a supposed function attached to a DNA sequence. But as genes exist in bits interweaving with other genes, so are functions. Multiple DNA sequences may serve the same function, and conversely the same DNA sequence can have different functions. Again, I have explained Why Biotech Patents Are Patently Absurd [14].
Despite the bewildering complexities of how the genome works, individual processes are precisely orchestrated and finely tuned by the organism as a whole, in a highly coordinated molecular ‘dance of life’ that’s necessary for survival.
In contrast, genetic engineering in the laboratory is crude, imprecise and invasive. The rogue genes inserted into a genome to make a GMO could land anywhere; typically in a rearranged or defective form, scrambling and mutating the host genome, and tend to move or rearrange further once inserted. Transgene instability is a big problem, and has been so right from the beginning. There is fresh evidence that GM crops grown commercially for years have rearranged [15, 16] (MON810 Genome Rearranged Again. Transgenic Lines Unstable hence Illegal and Ineligible for Protection, SiS 38). This is a real opportunity to challenge the validity of all biotech patents. Another key issue is safety. Transgene instability means that the original transgenic line has turned into something else, and even if it had been assessed as ‘safe’, this is no longer the case.
The genetically modified genes are a big hazard because they do not know the intricate dance of life that has been perfected in billions of years of evolution. That’s ultimately why genetic modification is both dangerous and futile.
Thirty years of GM are more than enough
We’d had 30 years of GM and more than enough damage done, as detailed in the ISP Report The Case for A GM-Free Sustainable World [17] and the dossier GM Science Expose : Hazards Ignored, Fraud, Regulatory Sham, Violation of Farmers Rights [18] we compiled for the European Parliament in June 2007. And more evidence has been piling up since. Why has this been allowed to go on? W documented how national and international regulators and advisory bodies such as the European Food Safety Authority not only routinely ignore the precautionary principle, but also actively abuse science, sidestep the law, and helping to promote GM technology in the face of evidence piling up against the safety of GM food and feed [19] (GM Food Nightmare Unfolding in the Regulatory Sham, ISIS scientific publication).
Let me summarize the evidence stacked up against GMOs.
* No increase in yields
Successive reports [17, 18, 20] confirm that the yields of all major GM crops varieties cultivated are lower than, or at best, equal to yields from non-GM varieties. Studies from 1999 to 2007 consistently show that GM soya decreased yields by 4 to 12 percent compared to non-GM soya, while Bt maize yields from 0 to 12 percent less than conventional isolines. Up to 100 percent failures of Bt cotton crops have been recorded in India [18] (and amply confirmed by the farmer witnesses who are here today). New research from the University of Kansas found a 10 percent average yield drag for Roundup Ready soya [21], and extra manganese is needed for the soil Scientists from the USDA and the University of Georgia found growing GM cotton in the US could result in a drop in income by up to 40 percent [22, 23] (Transgenic Cotton Offers No Advantage, SiS 38)
* No reduction in pesticides use
USDA data showed that GM crops increase pesticide use by 50 million pounds from 1996 to 2003 in the United States [17]. New data paint an even grimmer picture: the use of glyphosate on major crops went up more than 15-fold between 1994 and 2005, along with increases in other herbicides [24] in order to cope with rising glyphosate resistant superweeds [6]. Palmer 3pigweed is a major concern in Georgia, with farmer there having to mow cotton down in fields with glyphosate-resistant Palmer amaranth [25]. And following close on the health of that is glyphosate resistant giant ragweed [26]. Roundup tolerant canola volunteers are top among the worries of Canadian farmers [27, 28] (Study Based on Farmers’ Experience Exposes Risks of GM Crops, SiS 38)
* Roundup lethal to frogs and toxic to human placental and embryonic cells [18].
Roundup is more toxic than glyphosate, and it is used in more than 80 percent of all GM crops planted in the world.
* GM crops harm wildlife
UK’s farm scale evaluations have found that GM crops harm wildlife [18]; more recently a study led by Loyola University, Chicago, Illinois in the United Stated, found that wastes from Bt corn impaired the growth of a common aquatic insect [29, 30] (Bt Crops Threaten Aquatic Ecosystems, SiS 36). This is just the tip of the iceberg. There is evidence that GM crops, especially Bt crops contribute to the demise of the honeybee worldwide because it compromises their immune system and make them exra-susceptible to attacks by parasitic fungus (31) (Parasitic Fungi and Pesticides Act Synergistically to Kill Honeybees? SiS 35).
* Bt resistance pests and Roundup tolerant superweeds render the two major GM crop traits practically useless [18].
A recent review concluded that [32] “evolved glyphosate-resistant weeds are a major risk for the continued success of glyphosate and transgenic glyphosate-resistant crops.†And the evolution of Bt resistant bollworms worldwide have now been confirmed and documented in more than a dozen fields in Mississippi and Arkansas between 2003 and 2006 [33]. Worse yet, secondary pests now plague the fields and spread to other crops in India [34] (Deadly gift from Monsanto to India, SiS 38).
* Vast areas of forests, pampas and cerrados lost to GM soya in Latin America
Argentina alone has lot 15 m hectares [18]; and this has worsened considerably with the demand for biofuels (see later)
* Epidemic of suicides in the cotton belt of India
An estimated 100 000 farmers have killed themselves between 1993-2003, and a further 16 000 farmers a year have died since Bt cotton was introduced [18]
* GM food and feed linked to deaths and sicknesses
Evidence of serious health impacts in lab tests and from farmers’ fields around the world (more below)
GM food and feed inherently hazardous to health [19]
Here are some highlights from our GM Science dossier [18] on the hazards of GM food and feed. Dr. Irina Ermakova of the Russian Academy of Sciences showed how GM soya made female rats give birth to severely stunted and abnormal litters, with more than half dying in three weeks, and those remaining are sterile. Hundreds of villagers and cotton handlers in India suffer allergy-like symptoms, thousands of sheep died after grazing on the Bt cotton residues, goat and cows as well were reported in 2007 and 2008 [35] (Mass Protests against GM Crops in India , SiS 38). (As reported by farmer witnesses as this conference, the problem is continuing and sterility in offspring of exposed animals has also been observed.) A harmless bean protein transferred to pea when tested on mice cause severe inflammation in the lungs and provoked generalised food sensitivities. Dozens of villagers in the south of the Philippines fell ill when neighbouring GM maize fields came into flower in 2003, at least five have died and some remain ill to this day. A dozen cows died having eaten GM maize in Hesse Germany and more in the herd had to be slaughtered from mysterious illnesses. Arpad Pusztai and his colleagues in the UK found GM potatoes with snowdrop lectin damaged every organ system of young rats; the stomach lining grew twice as thick as controls. Chickens fed GM maize Chardon LL were twice as likely to die as controls. And finally, GM maize Mon 863 was claimed to be as safe as non-GM maize by the company, and accepted as such by European Food Safety Authority. But independent scientists of CriiGen in France re-analysed the data and found signs of liver and kidney toxicity.
Different animals and human beings exposed to a variety of transgenic crops with different traits either fall ill or die. The evidence compels us to consider the possibility that the hazards of GMOs may be inherent to the technology, as I suggested more than ten years ago [2].
Table 1. Summary of Exposure of Animals and Human Beings to GMOs
Species GM species Transgene trait Effect
Rat Soya Roundup Ready Stunting, death, sterility
Humans Cotton Cry1Ac/Cry1Ab Allergy symptoms
Sheep “ “ Death, liver toxicity
Cows “ “ “
Goats “ “ “
Mice Pea Alpha-amylase Inhibitor Lung Inflammation, General food sensitivity
Mice Soya Roundup Ready Liver, pancreas and testis Affected
Humans Maize Cry1Ab Illnesses and death
Rats Maize Cry3Bb liver and kidney toxicity
Cows Maize Cry1Ab/Cry1Ac Death and illnesses
Rats Potato Snowdrop lectin Damage in every organ system. Stomach lining twice as thick as controls
Mice Potato Cry1A Gut lining thickened
Rats Tomato Delay ripening Holes in the stomach
Chickens Maize Glufosinate tolerance Deaths
An epidemic of Morgellons Disease has hit the US and other countries that had been involved in genetic modification technology [36] (Agrobacterium & Morgellons Disease, A GM Connection?. SiS 38). The pathogen is suspected to be Agrobacterium, which has been widely used in smuggling genes into cells to make GMOs. Is this a disease created by GM? There have been close calls before.
US courts rule GM crop field-tests and releases illegal
The message that GM crops are unsafe appears to have got through to the judiciary system in the United States. There have been three court rulings against the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) for failing to carry out proper environmental impact assessment, making the original releases illegal [37] (Approval of GM Crops Illegal, US Federal Courts Rule, SiS 34). These are the first rulings against GMOs in the top producing country in the world, which has been also promoting GMOs aggressively.
The first case was on drug-producing GM crops in Hawaii. The court said that the USDA violated the Endangered Species Act as well as the National Environmental Policy Act.
The second court case not only ruled GM herbicide-tolerant creeping bentgrass illegal, but also that the USDA must halt approval of all new field trials until more rigorous environmental reviews are conducted.
The third decision was passed on Monsanto’s Roundup Ready alfalfa for having been commercial released illegally without an Environment Impact Statement.
An avalanche of bans and rulings strikes GM crops worldwide
There have been numerous bans and restrictions imposed on GM crops in recent years, which say a lot about the inadequacies of regulatory regimes worldwide (see Box 1).
Box 1
Rulings and bans on GMOs between May 2007 and May 2008
* US GM alfalfa ban made permanent [38]
* US Federal Court of Appeals ruled against GM bentgrass again [39]
* Four counties in California have bans or moratorium on GM crops and the first state bill to protect Californian farmers against lawsuits that intimate and harass them when their field are contaminated passed through the Agriculture committee in January 2008 [40]
* Montville USA became the first town outside California to ban GM crops [41]
* South Australia extended its GM ban [42]
* Romania joined EU members in banning GM crop Mon 810 [43], the others are France, Hungary, Italy, Austria, Greece, and Poland
* 13 out of 20 counties in Croatia have declared themselves GM-Free [44]
* Greece renewed its ban on GM maize seeds [44]
* Germany imposed much stricter regulations on GM maize [46]
* Scotland backs GM ban in Europe [47]
* France banned GM maize Mon 810 in February 2008 and passed GMO law in April to guard against contamination by GMO, making it compulsory for farmers to “respect agricultural structures, local ecosystems and non-GMO commercial and production industries†[48, 49]
* Wales is set to ban GM crops [50]
* Switzerland bans crops until 2012 [51]
* More than 230 regions, over 4 000 municipalities and other local entities and tens of thousands of farmers and food producers in Europe have declared themselves GMO-free so far [52]
EU Commissioner for the Environment Stavros Dimas has expressed serious reservations concerning GMOs [53] (GM-Free Europe Beginning?, SiS 36), which is unprecedented in the history of the European Commission. On 7 May 2008, the European Commission delayed a decision on allowing farmers to grow more GM crops, and asked European Food Safety Authority to reconsider its previous review, which it had admitted was inadequate, as it was unable to take indirect and long term impacts into account [54].
No case for GM crops, small scale organic farming is the way ahead
Meanwhile, on 15 April 2008, 400 scientists of the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) released its 2 500-page report [55, 56] (GM-Free Organic Agriculture to Feed the Worldâ€, SiS 38) that took 4 years to complete. It is a thorough examination of global agriculture on a scale comparable to the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change.
The IAASTD calls for a fundamental change in farming practice to counteract soaring food prices, hunger, poverty and environmental disasters, it says GM crops are controversial with respect to safety for health and the environment, and will not play a substantial role in addressing climate change, loss of biodiversity, hunger and poverty. Small scale farmers and agro-ecological methods are the way forward, and indigenous and local knowledge are as important as formal scientific knowledge. It warns that growing crops for biofuels could worsen food shortages and price rises.
The conclusions of the IAASTD are remarkably similar to our own report Food Futures Now *Organic *Sustainable *Fossil Fuel Free [57] launched in UK Parliament a week later.
Our Food Futures Now report goes a step further. We argue that only organic agriculture can truly feed the world. More than that, organic agriculture and localised food and energy systems can potentially compensate for all greenhouse emissions due to human activities and free us from fossil fuels, and we need to implement this urgently.
The UN has declared 2008 the year of the Global Food Crisis, and it has been the top news story everyday for months now as the crisis deepens. Food prices increased by an average of 40 percent last year; a string of food riots and protests spread around the world including the UK, and more than 25 000 farmers killed themselves in India.
Most commentators agree that the immediate cause of the food crisis is the divestment of food grains into producing biofuels. BusinessWeek identified Monsanto as a “prime beneficiaryâ€. Its stock correlated closely with the price of oil (better than ExxonMobile), and hardly correlated with the price of corn, basically because no one will eat its GM corn. Nevertheless the pro-GM lobby are out in force, using the food crisis to promote GM crops.
GM crops are one big failed experiment based on an obsolete scientific theory, and this failure has been evident since 2004 if not before [58] (Puncturing the GM Myths, SiS 22). Apart from yielding less and requiring more pesticides, anecdotal evidence since 2005 from farmers around the world indicates that GM crops also require more water [59]. Industrial Green Revolution agriculture is now generally acknowledged to be a major driver of climate change as well as being vulnerable to climate change because of its heavy dependence on fossil energies and water, and its susceptibility to pests, diseases and climate extremes [56, 60, 61] (Beware the New “Doubly Green Revolution”, SiS 37)..GM crops have all the worst features of industrial Green Revolution varieties exaggerated, and not least, there are outstanding safety concerns as I mentioned. Growing GM crops for biofuels does not make them safe, as they will contaminate our food crops all the same.
Any further indulgence in GMOs will surely damage our chances of surviving global warming. We must get on with the urgent business of building organic, sustainable food and energy systems right now.
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