I am, without
reservations, quite happy to be one of the hundreds of millions of people
around the world who eat GM food daily with absolutely no ill effects . .
.
The genetic modification of all living organisms made possible by in vitro
gene manipulation is set to become the major technological revolution of the
21st century. Ever since this technique became possible in the mid seventies,
the foundation has been set for unimaginable advances in medicine, agriculture
and every form of human endeavour. The intrinsic value of this technology
and the remarkable advances made with the genome project, human and animal
cloning, and stem cell research make genetic engineering unstoppable. Furthermore,
someone wrote in New Scientist that, at this point, GM is still in
its infancy; it’s at the Model T stage. What is about to happen in the
next few generations will transform society in ways few can imagine.
Consequently it is unfortunate that in his letter, “Modified crops”
(The Witness, April 24), Andrew Taynton perpetuates the same tired
old anti-GM sophistry and misinformation. Not all the misinformation is deliberate.
Often it is because people are not scientists and are ignorant of the facts.
For example, to scare people, he has repeatedly used the stories about the
toxicity of “GM”-tryptophan and also the perceived link between
cancer and bovine growth hormone (BGH). The tryptophan story, which has now
reached the text books, was easily shown to be nonsense. There is no such
thing as GM-tryptophan and BGH has nothing whatsoever to do with genes. Another
scare story, the threat of “super weeds”, has been debunked in
a recent issue of Nature.
In his letter Taynton once again uses the publication in the prestigious journal
The Lancet of Dr Pusztai’s negative findings on GM potatoes
to justify his anti-GM stance. Taynton knows that The Lancet’s
decision to publish Dr Puzstai’s work in no way vindicated his findings.
At the time an editorial in the New Scientist warned against such
misinformation! It said the decision by the journal to publish was not a vindication,
but more to do with getting the results in the open. And there was a problem
getting them published, because several of the experts asked to review the
results said they were too inconclusive to be published.
Typically anti-GM letters are crammed full of all sorts of studies using rats
and other animals to prove the dangers of GM, and this letter does not disappoint.
It includes nonsensical and meaningless gems such as, “Twelve cows fed
GM maize in Germany died mysteriously. And twice the number of chickens died
when fed GM maize compared to those fed natural maize”. And there is
always reference to “massive smear campaigns”. An epidemiologist
has recently shown that at least 50% of these types of studies are subsequently
proved wrong and most remind me of the study carried out in the pre-GM sixties
on rats fed cornflakes. The group fed the cardboard cornflakes container flourished;
those fed the cornflakes eventually died of malnutrition.
No GM bashing letter would be incomplete without the “scientific peer
review studies” to show the poor yields from GM crops. Cotton is a favourite.
I inadvertently attended an anti-GM strategy meeting, where we were told how
poor GM cotton yields were on the same day that Business Report announced
that cotton yields in SA were up 21% because of Bt cotton!
Finally, I find quite pathetic the statement by the SA maize expert Janet
Howard from Bristol (“Food aid for Africa”, The Witness,
April 27), that “some of her friends from the UK may well prefer to
visit New Zealand and Australia on holiday so that they don’t have to
eat the GM food this country has to offer”.
Unlike these timid creatures, I am, without reservations, quite happy to be
one of the hundreds of millions of people around the world who eat GM food
daily with absolutely no ill effects.
Source:
Dr C. B. Rogers. Genetic modification is unstoppable. The Witness
(5 May 2006) (http://www.witness.co.za/default.asp?myAction=detail&myRef=42987);
reproduced with permission
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