GENETICALLY ENGINEERED CORN PRODUCING HERBICIDES IN YOUR GUT?

[lindisfarne]

GENETICALLY ENGINEERED CORN PRODUCING HERBICIDES IN YOUR GUT?
A widely cultivated variety of genetically engineered corn may be slowly poisoning American consumers. Dupont's Pioneer Liberty Link corn was bioengineered to withstand high levels of the toxic herbicide glufosinate. Enzymes in the plant actually break down the herbicide, making it less toxic to the plant, thereby allowing farmers to apply higher levels of herbicides to the plant and surrounding weeds. Scientists are now finding that enzymes in the human gut are likely "reactivating" the herbicide within our bodies. A recent study on rats found that 10% of the chemicals were reconverted back to the toxic herbicide within the digestive tract of the animal. Another study on goats found a full 30% of the herbicide was rebuilt in the gut. Glufosinate is known to cause nerve damage and is a likely endocrine disruptor. Scientists are also concerned that by reactivating the toxic chemical in the digestive tract, it is likely killing off beneficial bacteria necessary for healthy digestion.
Learn more: http://www.organicconsumers.org/2006/article_637.cfm

From the link:
"There are no required safety tests for HT crops in the US-if the biotech companies declare them fit for human consumption, the FDA has no further questions. But many scientists and consumers remain concerned, and the Liberty Link varieties pose unique risks."


==============
More detail from the link

It is believed that gut bacteria, primarily found in the colon or rectum, are responsible for this re-toxification. Although these parts of the gut do not absorb as many nutrients as other sections, rats fed NAG did show toxic effects. This indicates that the herbicide had been regenerated, was biologically active, and had been assimilated by the rats. A goat study also confirmed that some of the herbicide regenerated from NAG ended up in the kidneys, liver, muscle, fat and milk.

More information about the impact of this conversion is presumably found in "Toxicology and Metabolism Studies" on NAG, submitted to European regulators by AgrEvo (now Bayer CropScience). These unpublished studies were part of the application seeking approval of herbicide-tolerant canola. When the UK government's Pesticide Safety Directorate attempted to provide some of this information to an independent researcher, they were blocked by the company's threats of legal action. The studies remained private.

Toxicity of the herbicide

Glufosinate ammonium is structurally similar to a natural amino acid called glutamic acid, which can stimulate the central nervous system and, in excess levels, cause the death of nerve cells in the brain. The common reactions to glufosinate poisoning in humans include unconsciousness, respiratory distress and convulsions. One study also linked the herbicide with a kidney disorder. These reactions typically involve large amounts of the herbicide. It is unclear if the amount converted from GM crops would accumulate to promote such responses or if there are low dose chronic effects.

Perhaps a more critical question may be whether infants or fetuses are impacted with smaller doses. A January 2006 report issued by the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Office of Inspector General said that studies demonstrate that certain pesticides easily enter the brain of young children and fetuses, and can destroy cells. That same report, however, stated that the EPA lacks standard evaluation protocols for measuring the toxicity of pesticides on developing nervous systems. Scientists at the agency also charged that "risk assessments cannot state with confidence the degree to which any exposure of a fetus, infant or child to a pesticide will or will not adversely affect their neurological development." Furthermore, three trade unions representing 9,000 EPA workers claimed that the evaluation techniques used at the agency were highly politicized. According to a May 24, 2006 letter to the EPA's administrator, the unions cited "political pressure exerted by Agency officials perceived to be too closely aligned with the pesticide industry and former EPA officials now representing the pesticide and agricultural community."

Although the EPA may be hampered in its evaluations, research has nonetheless accumulated which suggests that glufosinate carries significant risks for the next generation. According to Yoichiro Kuroda, the principal investigator in the Japanese project entitled "Effects of Endocrine Disrupters on the Developing Brain," glufosinate is like a "mock neurotransmitter." Exposure of a baby or embryo can affect behavior, because the chemical disturbs gene functions that regulate brain development.

[eleny]

1. Health food store corn for us from now on

And hope for the best!

[bananas]

9. You can freeze corn on the cob and microwave them later.

So you can buy a lot of corn at the health food store or farmers market.
(Some people here have said they don't have nearby health food stores)

[Rainscents]

2. This is fucking scary!

Animals been dying from eating this shit!

[HysteryDiagnosis]

10. My corns been

killin' me big time......

[Rainscents]

21. LOL...

:rofl:

[HereSince1628]

3. The misery of unintended consequences.

Are we there yet?

[lindisfarne]

4. Or folly of trusting corporations to deem that their product is "safe".n/t

[HereSince1628]

6. Yep, I think those are both limbs on the same tree.

[file83]

5. Time to go organic!

[Dead_Parrot]

7. Jeez, that's pretty fucked up. nt

[Mythsaje]

8. We should limit our intake of corn anyway...

We don't metabolize it well.

And never, NEVER, feed it to your dogs. A lot of dogfood uses corn as filler. Great, something they can't really digest.

[arikara]

11. Corn products are in practically everything now

People don't realize that most sodas and candy products are now sweetened with corn sugar. Corn oil is used in prepared foods. But its in even more that you wouldn't even think of.

The following sugars and additives are now made at least partially from corn. There are probably a lot more.

baking powder, caramel, confectioner's sugar, dextrin, maltodextrin, dextrose (glucose), fructose, excipients (which are substances used to bind the contents of a pill or tablet), golden syrup, glucona delta lactone (a new additive in cured meats), invert sugar or invert syrup, malt, malt syrup, malt extract, mono- and di-glycerides, monosodium glutamate or MSG, sorbitol, starch, food starch, modified food starch, treacle, vanilla extract, xanthan gum, vegetable-anything unless you know exactly what the vegetables are, you should be suspicious of any ingredient with vegetable in the name, including vegetable oil, vegetable broth, vegetable protein, vegetable shortening, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, and vegetable mono- and di-glycerides; zein (the usual encapsulant for time-release medications)

Its pretty hard to avoid corn products in your diet.

[Hoping4Change]

27. Thanks for this info. I do avoid corn based additives but never knew

that references to vegetable indicate corn.

[NNadir]

12. There are a lot of inferences in this report that are poorly evoked.

Here is how I look at articles like this one.

The article states:

Thus, when we eat these GM crops, we consume NAG. Once the NAG is inside our digestive system, some of it may be re-transformed back into the toxic herbicide. In rats fed NAG, for example, 10% of it was converted back to glufosinate by the time it was excreted in the feces. Another rat study found a 1% conversion. And with goats, more than one-third of what was excreted had turned into glufosinate.

The critical thinking questions to ask here are: What is the concentration of the herbicide? If 10% is reconverted to the toxic form, how does this correspond to the toxic dose of the compound? Since, by definition, the herbicide is being "excreted in the feces" and since the compound is alleged to be a neurotoxin where is the evidence that it 1) is absorbed into the bloodstream, 2) passes through the blood brain barrier.

There is some evocation of the matter, in the evocation of goats but specifically neurological toxicity is not shown. The limits of detection of many molecules is well below the toxicity level. For instance, carbon monoxide is a known toxic compound that can result in neurologically toxic effects. It is detectable in almost every human being on earth. Ditto mercury. However the number of instances in which the effects have physiological meaning are relatively small compared to the population in which these toxins can be shown to have detectable concentrations.

Next we have this grammatically questionable statement, which may or may not have a misplaced modifier.

Glufosinate ammonium is structurally similar to a natural amino acid called glutamic acid, which can stimulate the central nervous system and, in excess levels, cause the death of nerve cells in the brain.

Is the implication here that the amino acid glutamic acid can stimulate the nervous system and can cause the death of nerve cells identical to the implication that glufosinate does the same thing? Glutamic acid is an essential compound in all living things, being one of the 20 basic amino acids. What exactly is this "excess" level?

Next we have this statement:

Perhaps a more critical question may be whether infants or fetuses are impacted with smaller doses. A January 2006 report issued by the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Office of Inspector General said that studies demonstrate that certain pesticides easily enter the brain of young children and fetuses, and can destroy cells. That same report, however, stated that the EPA lacks standard evaluation protocols for measuring the toxicity of pesticides on developing nervous systems. Scientists at the agency also charged that "risk assessments cannot state with confidence the degree to which any exposure of a fetus, infant or child to a pesticide will or will not adversely affect their neurological development."

This is my favorite kind of scientifically misleading statement, the one that attempts to imply that a lack of information suggests that something is in fact pernicious, even though the absence of information implies that nothing, good or bad, is known. If you read this statement, it is clearly intended to evoke the impression that glufosinate is toxic to (gasp) fetuses and babies! In fact no such causative effect is shown. The reference is to "some pesticides" and in any case the information is at best third hand. The Office of the (unidentified) Inspector General says that "studies" (no references to the studies themselves, such as a reference to the published scientific literature) "demonstrate" that "some pesticides" (the relation to glufosinate unstated) easily enter the brains of infants and can kill some cells. One needs to know right up which pesticides and the conditions under which they can kill cells, and under what conditions the conditional word can is substituted by the word "does" and whether such cell death has any clinical significance. By implication however, no substance that cannot be proved to never cause such effects can be acceptable, since the author wishes to imply that the negative result can only be proved by testing all compounds on babies, something which clearly will not happen for ethical reasons for all compounds.

Then there is this statement:

If the herbicide is regenerated inside our gut, since it is an antibiotic, it will likely kill gut bacteria. Gut microorganisms are crucial for health. They not only provide essential metabolites like certain vitamins and short fatty acids, but also help the break down and absorption of food and protect against pathogens. Disrupting the balance of gut bacteria can cause a wide range of problems. According to molecular geneticist Ricarda Steinbrecher, "the data obtained strongly suggest that the balance of gut bacteria will be affected" by the conversion of NAG to glufosinate.

By logical implication here penicillin and amoxicillin are deadly toxic compounds that should be banned. This of course would create situations like that my own mother experienced, being orphaned at 11 when her mother, my grandmother, died from a common strep infection. This is a classic in poor risk/benefit analysis.

I have only selected a few samples from this article that use these types of highly questionable associations.

This article is typical of the type that is used to evoke knee jerk luddite reactions to imply that technology must be uniformly rejected. Do I know that glufosinate is a good thing or a bad thing? No, I don't. Is there some risk here? Maybe. Is a nefarious effect proved? No. Far from it. This article should pass for a high school level quiz in the exercise of precisely what is no longer taught in schools: Critical thinking.

Speaking only for myself, I live on a planet that is dangerously over-populated and which hovers at the brisk of catastrophe of unimaginable proportions. I am decidedly unhappy that this state of affairs has been obtained, but I somehow cling to the hope that the matter can be resolved without resort to mass starvation through the immediate collapse of agriculture, which in these times is necessarily industrial, at least for the 95th percentile poorest part of the population. In recognizing this, I do not seek some kind of nebulous zero-risk nirvana in which all inhabitants are acutely aware of the "naturalness" of every detectable molecule in their bodies. This does not mean I endorse a cowboy approach to pesticides in particular or chemicals in general, but on the other hand, I do not endorse rote paranoia either. The health food store fantasy for my money is, under the circumstances, a bourgeois conceit that is entirely too self-absorbed for my tastes. I certainly do not approve of the inferential mode of specious thinking with which this article oozes.

The matter of this compound is, in my view, not earth shaking. I'm not going to lose any sleep whatsoever worrying about the potential toxicity of glufosinate in my canola oil or my corn oil. In any case, I am routinely informed on this forum, that all of my canola and corn oil will ultimately end up fueling diesel powered Volkswagen Jettas. Almost all of my corn will end up as ethanol for fueling flex fuel Buick Le Sabres. The combustion, I hope, will detoxify any residual glufosinate.

[lindisfarne]

15. The *real* issue is making the corporations *prove* the safety of their

genetically modified products, which isn't currently the case.

Indeed, the corporations threatened legal action in Great Britain over sharing with an independent researcher some of the information submitted to gain approval of herbicide-resistant canola.

"When the UK government's Pesticide Safety Directorate attempted to provide some of this information to an independent researcher, they were blocked by the company's threats of legal action. The studies remained private."

The lack of explicit published studies showing that genetically engineered corn (and any other genetically engineered product) is concerning. The failure of the corporation to provide the results of their own studies to private researchers who want to follow up on the specific concerns brought up regarding their product is concerning.
The corporation's resistance to private researchers seeing the results of their studies, as well as the corporation's refusal to publish their own studies, is concerning and suspicious.

You said "This is my favorite kind of scientifically misleading statement, the one that attempts to imply that a lack of information suggests that something is in fact pernicious, even though the absence of information implies that nothing, good or bad, is known"

LACK OF INFORMATION is itself pernicious. This is what needs to be changed. Until proven safe, genetically engineered products (and chemicals such as pesticides and herbicides) should be assumed to be dangerous.

Any time a corporation refuses to publish its own studies, it is suspicious, especially when public health is at stake.

Until thorough studies are done, there will be lots of unknowns. If there are a few studies which suggest concerns, that's all we have to go on, and the onus is on the corporation to prove their product is safe. When public health is at stake as the result of a corporate product, the best policy is to assume danger until safety is proven.

[NNadir]

16. Whatever.

Maybe if you say "corporations" enough and "studies" enough, you can make the matter serious.

I don't buy it. All of your statements are vague and unsupported and all of them are consistent with my original criticisms, which I am in no way inspired to withdraw.

I also don't buy the crap that everything can be known. You are representative of a type of personality that substitutes unsubstantiated fear, fear built on straw, for serious risk analysis. You seem to believe that some zero risk nirvana exists. It doesn't. Last time I looked, everybody still dies. It does happen that life expectancy has been greatly extended, at least in some parts of the world but it has yet to be made infinite anywhere. Since it is not infinite, risk has not been eliminated.

You are asserting the existence of a danger and trying to stir up fear. Prove your assertions, because lord knows, there really are serious issues that deserve attention and that's what you're competing for, attention. These dangers, the real ones, do not exist by implication, but they are obvious and require the time and effort of good people of high moral standing and intelligence and ability. Running around with chicken-little bullshit is basically under the circumstances, a distraction we can ill afford.

Personally I am sick of poor thinking. I hate it on the right, and, because I have dignity, I'm not going to defend it on the left either. I'm tired of the type of shorthand that uses words like "terrorist" or "corporations" to substitute for thoughtful analysis. Sloganeering is cheap and easy, while thinking on the other hand is difficult and taxing, but that is hardly a valid excuse.

[lindisfarne]

17. serious risk analysis. Would you say that this has been carried out

in the case of genetically modified products? It hasn't. How many chemicals, pesticides, herbicides, etc., which have been on the market, are we now finding to be dangerous? Although the corporations producing these dangerous have profited greatly, and in some cases, have had the research (kept secret) for decades showing the danger of the product, it has taken government sponsored or privately sponsored research to show the dangers - the corporations have not taken responsibility for the safety of their products.

The corporations are the ones who stand to profit, thus they are the ones who should be funding the studies - to be carried out by completely independent researchers (perhaps the government should charge fees to the corporations and then distribute the funds to independent researchers - that way the corporations can't use the influence to bias the results, as is often the case with drug research).

If the studies haven't been done, no one can provide the evidence you asked ME to provide.
================================
You said "Personally I am sick of poor thinking. I hate it on the right, and, because I have dignity, I'm not going to defend it on the left either."

You yourself are demonstrating poor thinking: you ask for evidence yet you know the corporations haven't done adequate studies to provide that evidence (or at the very least, they have done a few studies, probably not enough, and are refusing to make those studies public).

Exactly where do you expect the money for these studies to provide the evidence you ask for to come from? Exactly who do you expect to carry out these studies? Surely, it is the responsibility of the party which will profit from the product to fund these studies, using independent researchers, to ensure the integrity of the research.

Until there is adequate evidence pointing towards the safety of a product, the product should not be on the market. Yes, ongoing research needs to still be done, and all the costs for such research (carried out by independent researchers) should be borne by the party profiting.

[bananas]

23. If any serious risk analysis has been carried out,

they've fought like hell not to let anyone know about it.

[bettyellen]

25. your wasting your timw with an agro chemical apologist

spewing the same snide nonsense they always do.
the poster always finds these threads to express full faith these companies, and distain for the consumer. think about it.

[NNadir]

28. And your evidence that I am an apologist is...what?

How do I know that you are not a health food store apologist who wants to scam people out of extra money by charging extra for so called "organic" food?

You have not produced one iota of evidence that people have been harmed by this case. Not one. I suppose the failure to be able to produce such evidence would be addressed by suggesting that I am snide.

I suppose in many contexts, the insistence on clear thinking can be obscured by reference to something other than evidence, for instance "blaming the messenger."

I will continue to express my distain for weak thinking. It has nothing to do with "companies" and "consumers." That said, let me say that I am not fond of "consuming," which is a province of middle class brat thinking, the elevation of those who consume above those who merely survive, above those who will leap under the table for a scrap of nourishment covered in rat feces. "Consuming," is not my favorite activity. I rather like "conserving." However, with more than six billion people on the planet, most of them desperately poor, I am not about to claim that the solution is banning efficient production of foodstuffs because 1 in 2 billion people might actually be harmed by an agricultural practice. On the contrary, I recognize that we do need, until we can ethically reduce the population through attrition - and it's not clear that we can achieve this - industrial scale production of food. I am inclined to think that starvation is an unacceptable risk, not just for middle class brats, but for humanity as a whole, including poor people.

Let me add that one of my most despised people on the planet is the rich "consumer activist" Ralph Nader who has made an entire (well paid scam) career out of precisely this type of "thinking."

Now why don't you take your "anti-corporate" whole earth catalog mentality and make a list of people who will have to die while you fight "corporate" agriculture. Be sure to list all of the people who are eating food contaminated with rat feces and insects.

Once again, I repeat, sloganeering is not a substitute for thinking.

[bettyellen]

29. sloppy thinking to ask to see the test results the corporations are hiding

sloppy of you to dodge out of the conversation when someone asks you about that too.
there's been loads of evidence of shoddy work by the FDA not looking at results of he required field tests and following up on compliance. it adds up. the companies doing this work have a history of knowingly poisnoning, and damaging the nervous system of people in the past , KNOWINGLY DOING THIS and hiding the research. you have a history of making fun of people for having concerns instead of answering valid questions.
it's riduclous to ask people here to present research when you know it's the companies we are concerned about who are 1) doing their own research, which is like the fox guarding the henhouse and 2) hiding the research results. gosh, what happened with Teflon? what happen with countless other pesticides that they need to find a new delivery system?
the fda doesn't do half the job they used to, and yeah scientists sometimes make mistakes. the biggest mistake- lie actually- is that they can controll these spliced genes once they are out there in the form of pollen. what science IDIOT thinks he can control pollen? a goddamned liar, that's who. this is arrogance by people who have collected no evidence we can see that this is safe. you want to trust your colleagues, fine stick together, but spare the rest of us your BS condesending attitude.
history has proven the research should be looked at and peer reviewed, you offer no valid reason as to why it's being hidden. there's no paranoia here, just a very well earned distrust over companies that have helped dismantle the FDA so they can do as they please.

[NNadir]

31. I thought you were ignoring me. Given this rambling semi-coherent

response (and I'm feeling generous with the "semi-coherent" part) a response as usual, with no data, no references, and no insight to the nature of science, no proof of the existence of claimed "hidden research" (never mind any indication of what it supposedly says) I'll just assume you're running an organic foods scam somewhere or else burying the billions of people killed by Teflon.

Generally cheap marketeers are all the same. The shout loudly to try to keep you from thinking.

It's too bad that you can't take time from the burying of the Teflon dead to learn the basic use of language. Even if I always say, "language is thinking," I do understand that uncovering the secret deaths of millions of Teflon victims is a big job and certainly overwhelms any possibility of clarity.

Of course I'm going to reject the notion that Teflon proves glufosinate proves that the word "corporate" is an obscenity. By the way, I don't think you know what the fuck you're talking about with respect to Teflon either.

Since we're using Teflon to prove that glufosinate is toxic, why not throw in some stuff about the use of perchloroethylene in dry cleaning? The existence of dry cleaning proves that Telfon is toxic which proves that glufosinate gene insertion is about to wipe out humanity. All of it is connected to the use of sodium benzoate in Triscuits, Triscuits being one of the greatest human tragedies in history.

[bettyellen]

32. as i said, an industry apologist...

thanks for proving my point.
keep asking us to provide the research studies the companies themselves are hiding- that's so absurd and biased it's completely rovian. you may know science, but your post is irrational and over the top BS., has very little to do with what i said.
what is it they say book smart... life ??

[bettyellen]

30. ***crickets****

apparently someone thinks it's up to you to break into corporate headquarters and steal the research.
or you can steal enough seed and experiment yourself! because if you don;t than you shouldn;t talk about this, you have no right or basis for concern without being disdained by the holier than thou scientific community .

[lindisfarne]

18. Dupont also brought us Teflon. It knew (and hid) for decades the dangers

of its finished products, as well as the dangers formed by its manufacturing process and waste.


Just one quick example:
Few people know it, but DuPont has a long history of exposing workers and customers to toxic substances, then denying that such substances harm their health. In the mid 20th century, for example, DuPont was one of the many industrial chemical producers involved in the production of lead products such as leaded gasoline. Lead was thought to be a "miracle" element with great potential for industrial use. But as DuPont workers started losing their minds to lead poisoning, the company denied everything and kept on pushing lead-based products to the market while releasing lead into the environment. (Click here to read a summary of this.) http://www.newstarget.com/001453.html

http://www.ewg.org/reports/toxicteflon/es.php has even more detailed information.

Of course, I'm sure you think the concerns about Teflon are fear-mongering as well. Even if Dupont kept the research secret for decades
=====================\
\For those who are concerned about teflon, a cared-for, seasoned cast iron pan is just as non-stick as teflon. Teflon is no better than the product it claimed to replace.

[Odin2005]

19. Exactly, EVERTHING has a element of risk to it.

Why single out GM foods? Oh, thats right, the technophobes need to have something to scare people with. These scaredy-cats are the same people banning chemistry sets.

[bettyellen]

26. the FDA is supposed to minimize the risk, not ignore it.

food clothing and shelter are basic necessities and the government has safety standards for all.
they have abandoned their responsibility because they are too cozy with these companies, not because they know better than the "scaredy- cats".

[cprise]

33. Howdy-do!

Nnadir, let me make a suggestion:

If you want people to accept the sincerity of your stated intentions about addressing issues like climate change, then you would be far better off refraining from that kind of 'personalized diatribe'. It hinges on the canard that science can't know or predict everything, a mainstay tactic of global warming-deniers.

Certainly not everything can be known but, as in the global warming debate, we can assess the risks according to what we DO know. Our level of precaution needs to be proportional to the stakes involved.


Speaking of which: Where is your libertarian sidekick treepig? :-)

[OnionPatch]

13. This is just sick!

I can't believe they don't even have to label the stuff. I've read that studies in the UK showed rats getting cancer from eating this kind of corn. We've been buying only organic corn products or those that say non-GMO, but they are hard to find sometimes. I've been known to drive across town just for taco shells.

[undergroundpanther]

14. Oh that's disgusting..

Like drinking round up. but it'sa facory inside me..is that what they are saying??

I dunno about you but It's time to quit pointing fingers at eacch other over health issues..We are all being poisoned. And poisioning has side effects.

[Jim Sagle]

20. These guys are cornholing us about as thoroughly as it could be done.

[skids]

22. So THAT's why I got really bad heartburn...

...after eating a whole bag of nachos in one sitting... :silly: :+

[enough]

24. k&r