Suppressed Report Shows Cancer Link to GM Potatoes

Doc Ruby writes "After an 8-year-long court battle, Welsh activists have finally been allowed to released a Russian study showing an increased cancer risk linked to eating genetically modified potatoes. While the victory of the Welsh Greenpeace members in the courtroom would seem to vindicate the work of the Russian scientists that did the original research, there are still serious questions to be answered. The trials involved rats being fed several types of potatoes as feed. The rats who were fed GM potatoes suffered much more extensive damage to their organs than with any other type; just the same, serious questions remain about the validity of the findings. The Welsh group wants to use this information to stop the testing of GM crops in the UK, tests currently slated for the spring of this year."

So...all potatoes are bad?

[bwd234 (806660)]

"Those in the "control groups" that were fed non-GM potatoes suffered ill-effects"

Maybe pototoes are bad for rats. Doesn't mean they will be harmfull to humans.

Re:So...all potatoes are bad?

[DrifterX79 (824302)]

Well I guess that most potatoes manufactured by General Motors may contain used motor oil, proven to cause cancer in humans. I say hold off for Honda potatoes...maybe even Lexus Legumes.

Re:So...all potatoes are bad?

[bitt3n (941736)]

GM Potatoes: Unsafe at Any Spud.

Re:So...all potatoes are bad?

[picob (1025968)]

I confirm, potatoes are bad for rats. Potatoes contain glycoalkaloids a toxic compound, which can affect the digestive, nervous, and urinary systems. Cooking degrades this protein in some extent, but a small percentage will remain in the potato. While humans do not suffer effects because of their large body volume - you would have to eat many (green) potatoes - smaller animals often suffer from this. That's also why you shouldn't feed your dog potatoes.

Re:So...all potatoes are bad?

[by Anonymous Coward]

People such as yourself, who don't have much of a biology background, have a hard time accepting this.

What we have a hard time accepting is that 99.5% similarity means jack, when we have something like 90% DNA similarity with sunflowers. If we are only .5% different from rats, that means that .5% represents a hell of a lot of difference, not the other way around. It's relative just like any other amount. Would you want to eat something that was .5% cyanide, just because .5 is a really small number? Without a point of reference the number tells you nothing.

Re:So...all potatoes are bad?

[by Anonymous Coward]

What we have a hard time accepting is that 99.5% similarity means jack, when we have something like 90% DNA similarity with sunflowers.

Wrong. You can't compare humans/animals and plants in terms of DNA similarity (or lack thereof). The basic structure is too different to make any comparisons worthwhile.

If we are only .5% different from rats, that means that .5% represents a hell of a lot of difference, not the other way around.

Wrong. Most of the 0.5% difference between mice and humans involves genes that are currently classified as inactive. Thus they basically have no identifiable effect, even after decades of study. The amount of DNA that actually causes the differences between humans and mice is remarkably small. While 0.5% of the total DNA is different, approximately 98.5% of that 0.5% is considered inactive.

And like I said in my earlier post, decades of studies have shown that mice are a very accurate representation of humans, when it comes to testing chemicals. The organs are proportioned almost exactly the same, and comparable responses to humans have been observed again and again and again. Doubt it if you wish. The fact remains that if something is harmful to mice, we can be sure that a relative proportion of that chemical is harmful to humans.

Re:So...all potatoes are bad?

[Danny Rathjens (8471)]

Uhm, why are you guys pulling these ridiculous percentages out of thin air? They are woefully incorrect. Ever heard of the various gnome projects that have completely sequenced the dna of certain animals and plants? There is still a large margin of error based on the precise definition of "similarity", but based on the genome projects that have sequenced a human and a rat, the number was much closer to 80% for rats. And the estimates were around 40% similarity to humans for chickens(gallus domesticus). Our common ancestor with rodents was around 85 Million years ago, and we've diverged quite a bit more than .5% since then. Heck, just look at the number of chromosomes of rats and humans, humans have 3 more haploid chromosomes, that's around a 13% difference alone, so obviously the 99.5% number is completely bogus. erm, well he said mice, but mice and rats are pretty close, and both used for lab experiments. ah, here is a pretty picture that shows structural differences within the chromosomes as well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimpanzee_Genome_Pro ject [wikipedia.org]

Killer potatoes

[Zouden (232738)]

It showed that the potatoes did considerable damage to the rats' organs. Those in the "control groups" that were fed non-GM potatoes suffered ill-effects, but those fed GM potatoes suffered more serious organ and tissue damage.

Hold on... the non-GM potatoes still caused ill-effects? How much potato were they feeding these rats? Did they even cook them first?
It seems like the only conclusion one can draw from this study is that "if you're eating so much potato that you get sick, GM potatoes will get you even sicker!"

Re:Killer potatoes

[dreamchaser (49529)]

Actually it was the equivalent of an adult human drinking 800 cans of diet soda a day, so while you are correct that it wasn't 1000 times the 'normal' dosage, you are still rather far off base about the saccharine studies of the 70's. I would suggest that you do some mor research before commenting any further on the subject.

Here is one interesting piece [hilbert.edu] for starters. I'm sure a smart AC like yourself can find more if you actually pull your head out of your ivory tower and look.

The good Dr.'s site

[Bananatree3 (872975)]

http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/a.pusztai/ [freenetpages.co.uk] is the site of the paper's author.

**and his paper**

[Bananatree3 (872975)]

The paper being described in TFA can be found Here [colorado.edu]. Also, there are almost a dozen different citations of the paper on Google Scholar [google.com]

Stop testing? Bury heads in sand?

[Anomolous Cowturd (190524)]

Given the suggestion that GM foods might be more harmful than old-school foods, wouldn't the sane thing be to *increase* testing? What's wrong with these idiots?

Re:Stop testing? Bury heads in sand?

[edwdig (47888)]

Given the suggestion that GM foods might be more harmful than old-school foods, wouldn't the sane thing be to *increase* testing? What's wrong with these idiots?

There weren't any details in the story, but it depends on what type of testing is being planned. You don't want to do human testing if the early testing on lab rats doesn't look good.

As always, this shows

[caseih (160668)]

that research causes cancer in rats.

Just bad science...

[by Anonymous Coward]

From the article - "Greenpeace said the Russian trials were also badly flawed. Half of the rats in the trial died, and results were taken from those that survived, in breach of normal scientific practice."

Go sensationalism. These "findings" were probably "suppressed" because they weren't very valid and obtained under shifty premises.

You need a good case study for GM crops? GM crops have been in American markets for years now starting with the Flavr-savr tomato. It's not like the FDA hadn't done independent testing on their own before approving them. But a sample size like the entire US, a pattern would probably emerge.

Re:Just bad science...

[ColdWetDog (752185)]

I wouldn't necessarily make any statements about the general safety of Genetically Modified crops from this (or any other) single study or even experience with a single product. According to TFA, the potatoes in question were modified to produce (I assume additional) lectins [wikipedia.org]. This is a broad class of potentially biologically active molecules that could be helpful or harmful at either "usual" dosages or the typically higher dosages found in these sorts of experiments.

I haven't poured through the literature to see how good or bad this particular study is, but it's concerning that 1) someone's making GM crops with this molecule amplified (can't figure out why) 2) even a poorly done preliminary study seems to have suppressed instead of repeated and expanded.

It's not nice to fool with mother nature...

[STDOUBT (913577)]

I'm all in favor of scientific progress. In fact, I'm a big fan.

But until the science of genetic manipulation is (close to)perfected, all they are doing is 'fooling' with it. Coupled with todays climate of unbridled corporate power, this stuff is very dangerous IMO. Please bear in mind, it's not the scientists who get to push 'products' to market. And, corporations will *always* be able to buy a scientist who supports claims of safety.

I file GM under "not worth the risks". (And _do not_ give me that old "it'll help starving people" crap. No. What will help starving people are governments that aren't run by evil shits).

Re:It's not nice to fool with mother nature...

[93 Escort Wagon (326346)]

"And _do not_ give me that old "it'll help starving people" crap."

Most of the GM foods being pushed have nothing to do with starving people - it's all about increasing corporate profits, as usual. The "terminator gene" was being pushed to prevent poor third-world farmers from saving their own seed after buying grain crops once. Roundup-ready crops are developed to allow farmers to use increasing amounts of Glyphosate to control weeds, because of the inherent problems with how large-scale agriculture is "managed". Flavr-Savr tomatoes were designed to be picked at an even less ripe state so they survive shipping better. All of that runs counter to helping starving people - heck, even for the "first world" it means crops that are less nutritious than before.

The only GM crop I know of that was developed in an attempt to actually help the third world is golden rice - a rice that provides beta carotine. That was developed at a university, and while given lip service by the agro-giants it's not high on their agenda.

Terminator gene useful

[Lars512 (957723)]

Most of the GM foods being pushed have nothing to do with starving people - it's all about increasing corporate profits, as usual. The "terminator gene" was being pushed to prevent poor third-world farmers from saving their own seed after buying grain crops once.

There's two sides to the terminator gene, as I understand it, one of which you're overlooking. Suppose you engineer a crop which grows extremely well, much better than in its original form. This crop might spread wildly, and become a form of a weed, overcoming native plants and even other useful crops. The terminator gene is useful here because it prevents the crop from spreading into the wild. In this way it's a safeguard.

Suppose there is some series of studies confirming that a particular crop is statistically more correlated with the occurrence of some medical problem in humans who eat it. If that crop has already spread in the wild, and perhaps merged with non GM crops, then we'll still be eating it whether we like it or not. We need safeguards like the terminator gene.

Also, using it doesn't mean choosing the new business models it allows. They could sell seed to the same farmers at close to cost price for repeat customers, making it closer to the existing business models.

In Soviet Russia

[quokkapox (847798)]

Potatoes Modify YOU!

Garbage Science...

[RexRhino (769423)]

Genetic modification is the artificial changing of DNA... you can say that a specific DNA change is harmful, so that a specific type of engineered potato is bad... but that doesn't say anything about GM foods. The safety or danger of the foods would have to be evaluated on the specific genetic changes made. Even then, the GM products don't carry any more risk than plants created by mutation breeding (in fact, GM was concieved as a less risky version of mutation breeding).

That, of course, is totally ignoring the fact that the guy conducting the research was a hardcore anti-GM activist before the research. It is like asking activist creationists to do an impartial study on evolution.

As soon as they learn that rhetoric is valueless

[Schraegstrichpunkt (931443)]

Hopefully never, because "don't fuck with nature" is a self-defeating position for a human being to hold. We have flourished as a species because of our ability and motivation to manipulate nature to improve our conditions. Vaccines and antibiotics come to mind. Hell, we'll probably be extinct within the next 1000 years unless we learn more about how to better "fuck with nature".

Re:As soon as they learn that rhetoric is valueles

[SQL Error (16383)]

Unfortunately, our ability to cure diseases and stave off death has pretty much stopped the selection of the strong over the weak

Yes, it's terribly unfortunate that many gene-related disorders can now be treated and that people can live full lives rather than dying horribly at a young age.

Re:What are "GM potatoes"?

[Beryllium Sphere(tm) (193358)]

That's the right question, left neglected and alone by the story.

Poking around a bit, it turns out that the genetic engineers and the researchers were both looking at one particular lectin, introduced to make the potatoes resist insects and nematodes better. Which is important because "lectin" is a whole family of chemicals with different biological effects.

Now, the natural chemical defenses in plants are bad enough. Wild potatoes may need elaborate preparation to be safe to eat. Farmed ones are screened for solanine [wikipedia.org]. Potatoes, in case you didn't know, are in the nightshade family.

So the real question here is what other research was done and what results it had. Does other work confirm or contradict the Russian study?

Then there's the systems question, which is whether we're better off with the risks of the engineered potatoes or the risks of the pesticides needed to keep "natural" ones alive. The word "natural" is in quotes because they're quite different from their wild relatives.

Re:What are those "serious questions" with the stu

[anagama (611277)]

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that the particlar version of GM potato studied was more damaging than a certain type of unmodified potato. Your generalization of "GM potato" is just too broad. For example, would you say that all condensed tree sap is dangerous after watching mice die from ingesting concentrated hemlock sap? Obviously, that would be quite erroneous and our pancakes would be rather plain fare.