GENETIC ENGINEERING AND THE MAN-MADE DESTRUCTION OF THE EVOLUTIONARY WISDOM OF THE AGES
by
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Jeffrey M. Smith. Seeds of Deception: Exposing Industry and Government Lies About the Safety of the Genetically Engineered Foods You’re Eating, Fairfield IO: Yes! Books 2003.
Denise Caruso. Intervention: Confronting the Real Risks of Genetic Engineering and Life on a Biotech Planet, San Francisco: The Hybrid Vigor Press 2006.
Jeffrey M. Smith. Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods, Fairfield IO: Yes! Books 2007.
When the structure of DNA was discovered and the existence of genes established, a group of adult children pounced on this discovery as a whole new game of Leggo. Genes code for proteins, and it was assumed that one gene = one protein = one trait or result, and so if you switched genes early enough in the development of an embryo, you’d get a new kind of organism with different traits. Better traits, of course, as human intellect so clearly can improve over the development of organisms that simply evolved through the natural order.
Immediately, the new technology was brought to bear on the food industry. The advantage of the food industry as a testing ground for genetic engineering of foods is that its products are consumed by all human beings, that supplies need to be replenished regularly, and that once a product is consumed one would have great difficulty proving what happened as a result of its ingestion. Under the guise of solving world hunger, the biotechnology industry set out to change the genes of the food supply. Interestingly, the first thing they did was not to make sure certain foods grew more abundantly to help feed people; no, the first thing was the development of a strain of soybeans that would not die when sprayed with Monsanto’s herbicide “Roundup.” This strain of soybeans is called “Roundup Ready,” and it means it could be sprayed morning, noon and night with herbicides and it wouldn’t die, while all plants around the soybeans (weeds, the lot) would wither and disappear.
In Europe, the new technology did not go over so well. Farmers and consumers rebelled; there were riots and the genetically modified (GMO) plants were ripped out of the ground. In the US, which once had been called “A Nation of Sheep,” (Lederer, 1962) nothing much happened except for the few who complained and were labeled as health nuts and ignored by the media. Fortunately, the official Organic Standards preclude the use of GMO foods in products labeled “organic,” so for those of us who don’t want them, there is still a way to find GMO-free foods. Otherwise, one is not allowed to say anything is “GMO-free” because the position of the authorities is that GMO foods are substantially equivalent to non-GMO, which is patently untrue.
There are lots of politics, chicanery, money-motives, and falsehoods in the biotech industry. To really get a good view of its machinations, I recommend Jeffrey M. Smith’s first book, Seeds of Deception. This book is an extensively researched and exhaustive review of the way the public has been misled by the government, the biotech corporations, (among which Monsanto is the undisputed commander general), and the various regulatory agencies that are entrusted with keeping the food supply safe. Read it and weep.
What is most astonishing is that genetically modified plants are patented! They are treated like software. If you want to plant them in your garden you need to pay a license fee. And this fee is to be paid every year! This means that small farms worldwide need to buy new seeds every year, instead of saving seeds from one season for the next. And this is supposed to ameliorate world hunger!
Smith’s latest book, Genetic Roulette, further documents the astonishing glacier of lies, adulterated safety reports, and intimidation that the biotech industry engages in consistently. Genetic engineering has nothing to do with saving the planet, ameliorating hunger, or supporting health. As one Monsanto official said to a new recruit about their company’s real goal, “What (CEO) Robert Shapiro says is one thing. But what we do is something else. We are here to make money. He is the front man who tells a story.” (Smith, p. 1)
The book is divided into several sections describing the effects, now documented, of genetically modified foods on humans and animals. The sections are:
· “Evidence of reactions in animals and humans,” including chickens dying from GM corn, sheep dying from grazing in GM cotton fields, and sudden marked increases in the numbers of soy allergies from GM soy in humans;
· “Gene insertion disrupts the DNA”;
· “The protein produced by the inserted gene may create problems,” including new allergies, kidney damage, and growth retardation;
· “The foreign protein may be different than what is intended,” obvious when one factors in the fact that environment changes DNA, so that it is really not known how DNA expresses itself into proteins;
· “Transfer of genes to gut bacteria, internal organs, or viruses,” which may create internal toxins and wreak havoc with the delicate balance of the immune system;
· “GM crops may increase environmental toxins and accumulate in the food chain,” especially those foods engineered to contain a herbicide or pesticide; and
· “Risks are greater for children and newborns” – so those people in biotech corporations who so blithely play with the earth’s genetic heritage are also endangering their own descendants. This is really bad karma.
And what if all of the theories and practices on which the biotech industry is based are completely wrong?
In a brilliant article, published in the NY Times Sunday Business section on 7/1/07, Denise Caruso shows precisely that. She points out that the principle that gave rise to the biotech industry is known as the Central Dogma of molecular biology, which states that each gene in a living organisms is needed to construct only one protein. She goes on to say,
“In the 1960s, scientists discovered that a gene that produces one type of protein in one organism would produce a remarkably similar protein in another. The similarity between the insulin produced by humans and by pigs is what once made pig insulin a life-saving treatment for diabetics. The scientists who invented recombinant DNA in 1973 built their innovation on this mechanistic, ‘one gene, one protein’ principle.
Because donor genes could be associated with specific functions, with discrete properties and clear boundaries, scientists then believed that a gene from any organism could fit neatly and predictably into a larger design — one that products and companies could be built around, and that could be protected by intellectual-property laws.”
Apparently that does not turn out to be the case. Caruso quotes a large study undertaken by the United States National Human Genome Research Institute and carried out by 35 groups from 80 organizations around the world, published in June 2007, it turns out that “genes appear to operate in a complex network, and interact and overlap with one another and with other components in ways not yet fully understood.” According to the institute, these findings will challenge scientists ‘to rethink some long-held views about what genes are and what they do.’” If it is discovered that there are real dangers in unleashing GMO’s – will it be too late to contain the many GM organisms already let loose in the world, which we have scant hope of controlling?
Of course, the answer is already in: genetically modified foods engage in what is known as “horizontal gene transfer,” the mechanism that bacteria use to become resistant to antibiotics. Horizontal gene transfer is the movement of genetic material between organisms other than by descent in which information travels through the generations as the cell divides.Modified genes appear in plants they were not supposed to be in them to begin with. Money Magazine (2007) reports on similar issues with wheat.
Caruso’s book, Intervention, shows from the outset that scientists really don’t know all the risks associated with the genetic engineering technology. She quotes Craig Ventner, former president of a major biotech company: “My view of biology is, We don’t know sh*t.” The industrialists who are capitalizing on this “science” don’t know the risks either, and they don’t seem to want to know them just in case their business disintegrates. Both Smith and Caruso give numerous examples of scientists who keep warning of the adverse effects and are regularly overridden, prohibited from talking about their findings, stripped of their funding, and have had their conclusions about the dangers censored and ignored.
Genetic engineering is dangerous business. It is based on flawed science, and promoted by willfully uncaring, totally callous and greedy corporations, politicians, and regulators. The earth and our children will suffer from it.
References:
Lederer, William J. A Nation of Sheep New York: W W Norton 1961.
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