Since GM inception into the food of England, there has been a double fold of allergies. This sort of research needs to be looked at. Don’t you agree?

Other allergic reactions to GM: http://news.webindia123.com/news/showdetails.asp?id=170692&cat=Health says “Bhopal | November 23, 2005 Genetically-modified Bt Cotton, used for farming in Madhya Pradesh's Nimad region, is causing allergic ailments among people even as cattle have reportedly perished after consuming its seeds.

The disturbing fact surfaced recently at a public hearing organised by Dhar district's Krishi Upaj Mandi. As per a scientist's report, presented during the hearing, at least 14 milch animals perished and several cultivators fell ill. It was alleged that use of the seeds led to a rise in cases of skin diseases”.

Of course natural gene rearrangements occur in nature as they are the main source of evolutionary change. The problem is thinking that scientists know better than nature.

Read your post on 25/2 and tell me that you were not insinuating that I was obnoxious.

Why are you against independent health testing? What have you got to hide?

GM soy increases allergies comes from an article in the Daily Express in the UK (see http://www.soyinfo.com/haz/allergy.shtml). An allergy testing laboratory observed an increase in soy allergies in 1998 and people were quick to blame GM soy. However, the amount of GM soy in the UK would have been miniscule in 1998 compared to now. Given this alert came out in 1999, surely it would have been followed up and if the connection held even more allergies would have been noticed? The testing laboratory does not even see fit to mention this information on their website (http://www.yorktest.com/). There have been 7 years to see additional effects and nobody in the medical health area is interested. There is probably nothing in it.

Bt allergies. Bt cotton has been grown in the US and Australia since 1996 and in South Africa since 1998. In none of those countries, despite millions of acres grown in the US, has any hint of an allergy to Bt come to light. Yet here we have an activist with no medical training claiming large numbers of farmers in India are affected. Surely if the allergy involved Bt, it would have been noticed in the US where the area of Bt cotton is much larger?

Bt cotton kills cattle. “Cattle have reportedly perished after eating its seeds” This is simply hearsay. Again this comes from an activist with no veterinary training. There is no evidence provided. Given that cottonseed is part of the diet of dairy cattle in both the US and Australia and they have been eating Bt cottonseed for some time, what are the chances of such deaths going unnoticed in Australia and the US, but being seen in India, where a much lower proportion of the cotton grown is Bt? You may not be aware that cottonseed contains gossypol, a natural product, which can cause toxicity in cattle at high concentrations.

If I were to suddenly claim with no evidence that Atrazine-resistant canola seed was killing cattle, NonGMFarmer would quickly accuse me of lying. Yet you and NonGMFarmer repeat these reports like they are true.

Recently scientific tests are coming out against GM and I want these test results given to the public so they can make up their own mind. You are so quick to debunk any finding against GM and attack consumers that are concerned giving them a myriad of useless information that they can’t understand. I want to see reports that are easily understood with correct testing that shows that GM is safe. To me it is still a biohazard and should not be let into Australia.

http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/lemonde021706.cfm “In Norway, Terje Traavik, scientific director of the University of Tromsso's Institute of Genetic Ecology, just published a study in European Food Research and Technology (January 2006, p. 185): he demonstrates that an element of the genetic structures used to modify a plant, the catalyst 35S CaMV, can provoke gene expression in cultured human cells. Now, according to GMO promoters, that catalyst normally only operates that way in plants.

The increase in these experiments led the FAO (the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization) to organize a seminar on the safety of transgenic food in October 2005, bringing together the best specialists on the question. "What came out of it was that we have to pay attention to this type of study," said FAO seminar coordinator Ezzedine Boutrif. "In several cases, GMOs have been put on the market when the safety issues were not very clear."

The researchers involved in these recent studies declare their neutrality. "I had no preconceived idea about GMOs when I began my research in 2000," says Manuela Malatesta. "I thought they weren't dangerous because we had been eating them for a long time. But there was virtually no scientific literature on the subject. Consequently, we thought it was useful to undertake some studies." For Terje Traavik, the initial motivation was different: "I was doing cancer research using transgenesis. My colleagues and I knew that it would pose a problem if it left the laboratory. That concern convinced us that we needed to study this type of risk."

It has certainly been interesting thrashing this debate out.
But lets recap:

GM farmers are expected to support GM crops but can't get independent details of comparitive performance as the companies are refusing independent performance trials. GM companies and are denying cost or contract details. Farmers are expected to believe in so called benefits relating to Canadian conditions that are not actually applicable to Australian conditions.

Non-GM farmers are expected to accept the liability for any economic loss caused by GM crops and expected to believe that there will be no economic loss when there is more than enough evidence to disprove this.

Consumers are expected to eat GM and accept the scientific sectors interpretation of the tests done by the GM companies and independent health testing is not acceptable by those pushing GM even if it could have the potential to allay consumer concerns. It is a shame there is noone with professional expertise debating the consumer angle on this site.

I find the debate for GM crops extremely weak.

Because I had no scientific know how on what the GM’ers have been saying of late, I asked for Arpad Pusztei (a world renowned scientist) his opinion of only the latest post from the GM’ers. And he replied, and I quote:-

“This is sophism. True, the chances of DNA survival in the gut is small but not negligible. In the only human clinical trial in Newcastle in six ileostomy patients out of seven (the seventh could not be evaluated for a technical mishap) measurable quantities of fully functional (I repeat fully functional) transgene construct survived and were taken up by the bacteria in the ileostomy bag. In most published animal feeding studies the survival of DNA (and its protein products) in various parts of the animal has been unquestionably established. True, we don't know what their effects will be in most instances (except with Bt toxin). Also consider: most pharmaceutical companies are developing plant (potatoes, bananas) based human and animal DNA oral vaccines. Do you think that they are all wasting their time and money? The calculations you refer to are ridiculous and have no proper scientific basis. Even the reference to Traavik's work is misquoted.

No, GM food is not safe because it has not been tested properly, independently and inclusively. With something as important as food we cannot take chances”.

I would like to know that all the scientific testing that has been given to me, how much of this testing has been filtered by Monsanto themselves because they funded it. Give me the full details and full reports so that I can see their disclaimers that they are not part of the Monsanto Corporation and their research is not hindered or altered by the GM companies at all. Give me evidence that their research is a truly scientific research not some cut and paste job with only the parts of the report that GM companies want, reproduced in their articles. Then the same research done through an independent company with no affiliations with Monsanto to show the results are true.

Sophistry is the creation of clever, but specious arguments. The word comes from the Sophists, a group of teachers of rhetoric in ancient Greece, who were often criticised for being able to support either side of the argument from the same factual material.

Let us review my argument. The absorption of intact DNA by stomach cells is likely to be an exceptionally rare event. Even if it did happen, you don’t just need any piece of DNA, but a piece large enough to contain the full promoter and gene. Again, for your argument about the danger of this, you would need not just any promoter and gene, but the CaMV 35S promoter and the Roundup Ready gene. Once this occurs, the protein needs to be expressed. For this to be dangerous, the protein itself needs to be dangerous.

In essence, Each of the events described above is likely to be rare. To satisfy them all has an extremely low probability. Even if they all did happen, the outcome is not dangerous.

What evidence did Arpad provide that convinced you the argument was specious?

The Roundup Ready protein is dangerous? We know that is not so.

The protein is expressed in all cells in which the DNA is taken up? The data from et al. shows that it is expressed in about 0.8% of cells compared to a mammalian promoter.

The CaMV 35S promoter and gene make up a much larger percentage of the soybean genome. The soybean genome is about 1,150,000,000 base pairs. The piece of DNA containing the promoter and gene is of the order of several thousand base pairs. Also what are your chances of randomly cutting up the soybean genome into pieces several thousand base pairs long and getting a whole gene and promoter? Pretty remote. What are the chances of a cell naturally taking up a piece of DNA more than a hundred thousand bp long (you would need this to significantly increase you chances of getting an intact gene and promoter)?

To Be Continued