Roundup Tolerant GM Maize Linked To Tumor Development 356
New submitter spirito writes with this snippet about rats fed Roundup laced water: "The first animal feeding trial studying the lifetime effects of exposure to Roundup tolerant GM maize, and Roundup, the world's best-selling weedkiller, shows that levels currently considered safe can cause tumors and multiple organ damage and lead to premature death in laboratory rats, according to research published online today by the scientific journal Food and Chemical Toxicology. ... Three groups were given Roundup in their drinking water, at three different levels consistent with exposure through the food chain from crops sprayed with the weedkiller: the mid level corresponded to the maximum level permitted in the US in some GM feed; the lowest corresponded to contamination found in some tap waters. Three groups were fed diets which contained different proportions of NK603 – 11%, 22% and 33%. Three groups were given both Roundup and NK603 at the same three dosages. The final control group was fed an equivalent diet with no Roundup or NK603 but containing 33% of equivalent non-GM maize."
The Chicago Tribune reports that not everyone's convinced of the results: "Experts not involved in the study were highly skeptical about its methods and findings, with some accusing the French scientists of going on a 'statistical fishing trip.'"
Re:Did they study the health effects of starving? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually the economically advantaged are the ones buying the organic everything.
FTFY.
Re:Did they study the health effects of starving? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Awful headline. (Score:5, Insightful)
(emphasis mine)
So even without spraying Roundup on it, the GM crop increases the occurences of cancers.
Re:Awful headline. (Score:4, Insightful)
No, the interaction of genes to the proteins that are expressed in the field is not an exact science. Fiddling with genes can and will produce unexpected changes in crops with some small number of those being potentially dangerous.
And that is not even counting the GM foods that have been intentionally modified to naturally contain pesticides.
Re:How to Attribute a Newspaper (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Awful headline. (Score:4, Insightful)
I've been saying for years that there is nothing particularly risky about GM foods - it's dumping horrendous of herbicide on things that's risky... this is obvious to me, but not to the ignorant masses.
Strictly speaking, we don't know whether GM food is risky; historically, there has been a long list of substances that were regarded as "obviously harmless" or even "beneficial", which none the less turned out to be harmful.
However, there is a more subtle danger: genes will eventually escape into wild plants. If, say, wheat is given this RoundUp gene, there is a large risk that this gene will spread to closely related grasses one day, and suddenly we have a wild and potetially undesirable, wild plant with resistence to RoundUp. The truth is, we know far too little about how genes transfer between species to rule out any scenario.
Or, just imagine if pharming takes off as an industry - what will happen if the genes that produce some powerful medicine somehow escape into the wild? And perhaps combine with other genes to produce effects that are completely unexpected? It would be nice if we, as a species, would sometimes look before we jump.
Re:Awful headline. (Score:4, Insightful)
You know, as I was RingTFA, I was trying to figure out how the reporter didn't mention Monsanto at all. Seriously, your quote is modded funny, but not including the fact that Monsanto owns (and TIGHTLY controls) both in the article seems to be a significant oversight on the part of the press.
-SM
Re:Did they study the health effects of starving? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Did they study the health effects of starving? (Score:4, Insightful)
False dichotomy. No one is saying we must ban everything that gives you cancer.
I don't think anyone said it had to be banned, but labeling products that are genetically modified to be round-up resistant (and subsequently sprayed with round-up) is important in allowing consumers to make their own decisions. Currently that is not required by law and is not being done voluntarily. When you go to the store and buy products based on corn, soybeans etc you have no way to know if it's been modified or sprayed with roundup today. Unless you buy the highly expensive "organic" products. If the products were properly labeled, there could likely be some middle ground between the two.
Re:Get it right (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you might be wrong. Took me a few readings as the wording was a tad wonky. I believe there were four test groups:
* Round up and GM corn at three levels.
* Just round up and normal corn at three levels.
* Normal water and GM corn at three levels.
* Control - Tap and normal corn.
The article claims only the control group was healthy.
Re:Did they study the health effects of starving? (Score:5, Insightful)
Calling Mr. Burns!
Re:Did they study the health effects of starving? (Score:4, Insightful)
Ever watched someone die of cancer?
Ever watched someone starve to death?
Oh no, of course you haven't. Because, thanks to GM crops and pesticides and the vastly improved crop yields they've provided, food today is plentiful in the developed world.
Not that it didn't happen, but can you cite a reference to a time when food was not plentiful in the developed world. I'm honestly curious. I know there are plenty of places in the world where folks are starving, but I've never heard of there being a food shortage in my country (USA) during my lifetime.
Re:Did they study the health effects of starving? (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, before well into the 20th century, people did routinely starve in the western world--particularly in rural and isolated areas like in the U.S. and Australia. But, either way, the point is that our food yields have kept up with our explosive population growth. That wouldn't have been possible without the much-decried advances in pesticides and GM that everyone seems to be so upset about today. A world of organic-only farming is going to be a world where a LOT of people are going to be starving.
Re:Did they study the health effects of starving? (Score:2, Insightful)
If by "didn't get the tumors" you mean "30% got the tumors," then you are correct. Seriously, it sounds like a terrible study done by below average scientists. If I was an anti-GMO advocate, I would think twice about hanging my hat on a quacks coatrack. The short term gain isn't worth the loss of credibility long term.
Re:Did they study the health effects of starving? (Score:2, Insightful)
I only went through the two links provided in the summary, but it does not sound like quantities were accounted for.
Also, the number of test groups doesn't add up. I'm sure that's just an oversight in the article.
And yes, the control groups did get tumors. They claim they were smaller tumors and occurred later, so a lesser percentage of "large tumors" gets tallied for the control group.
Still, 13 variations and a control group, somehow tested with 10 groups of 10 rats with predispositions for tumors, not controlling for the primary cause of tumors in those rats... something doesn't smell right. All I'm willing to say is it's the article. People in the field are saying it's the research itself.
Re:Awful headline. (Score:4, Insightful)
The grant for the study was from CRIIGEN [criigen.org], a European nonprofit that exists to discredit genetically modified food: the research was certainly conceived with a conclusion already in mind. To be sure, Monsanto and others fund motivated studies of their own; this is a highly fraught and politicized area of research.
Considering the obvious bias of the researchers, I think their inability to point to any legitimate statistically significant effect of roundup or the corn is...significant. There were 9 experimental groups of 10 of each gender for a single control group, and while the food and water intake were "measured," the results of the measurements are not mentioned in the paper at all or correlated to the mortality. Instead of looking at the actual lifespan of the rats, the more dramatic binary condition of "mortality before mean life expectancy" was measured.
The vast majority of male rats died on their own, and majority of female rats were eventually euthanized due to massive tumors, something that can far more substantially be explained by the line of rat they used than by the experimental variables: they could have done a different study and as accurately declared that 80% of female rats fed only standard rat chow developed cancer. Among the 100 male rats, there was no even moderately significant result for mortality or tumors between the control and the experimental groups. Among the females, the Roundup groups showed the most tumors, but the GMO Corn + Roundup groups didn't vary significantly from the control! I don't think there is any consistent hypothesis that can adequately explain all of their results except for random variation, possibly modulated by food intake, but the researchers don't even try.
They devote a whole page to pictures of the most gross-looking rat tumors in the GM groups, and then a page to graphs of high-variation metabolic test results for the single experimental group female 33% GMO Corn v. the control. On the next page you see a table of selected blood tests between all 10 female groups, with the "significant" results highlighted. Unfortunately for the researchers, the variation is often "significant" both above and below the control group's numbers, and with no apparent correlation to the concentration of GM corn or roundup. Judging by the amount of apparent random variation between the experimental groups, there is no reason to believe that the control group's numbers represent anything like the real "mean" at all, so you would expect just what they got: a lot of variation from the control group in both directions, with some measures where it was the control group that was the outlier and thus the experimental groups are normally distributed on one side only. Just as with tumor count, the GMO+Roundup groups ironically had "better" numbers than either the groups on either GM Corn or Roundup alone.
I think that the paper can be summed up best by this rather apropos xkcd [xkcd.com], with the difference that in this case it was the researchers themselves who made the headline. Their statistics, when even present, are crap, and they bring further discredit to the already-disreputable European anti-GM food movement. At the beginning of the paper, they claim that while glyphosate itself has been tested (negatively) for health effects, the total formulation of roundup has not, and its effects, if any, are unknown. Apparently, that condition still obtains.