Genetically Modified (GM) Corn is Toxic To Humans

Monsanto's GM corn MON863 shows kidney, liver toxicity in animal studies

SOURCE

The corn in question, MON863, is made by the Monsanto Company and approved for use in Australia, Canada, China, the European Union, Japan, Mexico, the Philippines, and the United States. It has had a gene inserted from the bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), which causes the plant's cells to produce a pesticide.

• Researchers fed rats either unmodified corn or diets containing 11 or 30 percent MON863 for 90 days. The rats who ate modified corn were found to exhibit signs of liver and kidney toxicity, as well as signs of hormonal changes.

• Male rats lost an average of 3.3 percent of their body weight, and their excretion of phosphorus and sodium decreased. Female rats gained an average of 3.7 percent of their body weight, while their triglyceride levels increased by 24 to 40 percent.

Question I have is how do we know what food stuffs are made with Genetically Modified (GM) products?

From my u nderstanding foods will only be labeled 'organic'. You wont see a tomatoe in the store that has a genetically engineered stamp on it, but you will ee one that say organic....I think

Bt is natural and commonly found in soils throughout the world. You have been breathing and ingesting Bt since you were born.

Bt is allowed under USDA guidelines to be sprayed on organic crops, as it is a natural pesticide. Much, if not most, of the organically grown produce at your local organic store has been sprayed with Bt -- probably in higher concentrations than the amount in Monsanto's corn.

Much ado about nothing.

Originally posted by dave_54
Bt is natural and commonly found in soils throughout the world. You have been breathing and ingesting Bt since you were born.

Bt is allowed under USDA guidelines to be sprayed on organic crops, as it is a natural pesticide. Much, if not most, of the organically grown produce at your local organic store has been sprayed with Bt -- probably in higher concentrations than the amount in Monsanto's corn.

You may have selectively read and comprehended the news story link.
It isn't the Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) that was responsible, it is a GENE that comes from the bacteria.

Here's the critical piece of information that you missed:

It has had a gene inserted from the bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), which causes the plant's cells to produce a pesticide.

THE GENE FROM Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) creates a pesticide in the plant itself. We humans may have been exposed to Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) since birth as you say, I don't think however that we have been exposed to this new form of plant pesticide, hence the lab rat study.


[edit on 16-4-2007 by greatlakes]

Originally posted by dave_54
Bt is natural and commonly found in soils throughout the world. You have been breathing and ingesting Bt since you were born.

--
Much ado about nothing.

may i gently direct you to several threads on the matter:


www.abovetopsecret.com...

www.abovetopsecret.com...

www.abovetopsecret.com...


Mystery DNA found in GM soybeans

the last one is especially telling because the process is apparently unreliable to a certain extent and the end product is unpredictable.

btw, externally applying a pesticide is never the same as building it into the plant, even if this particular toxin was actually natural, which it isn't (see this post for reasons). furthermore, it decays slowly in soil and therefore accumulates because of toxin producing roots. spray, otoh, if applied properly will never seep deeply into soil, will it?


nothing to see, move along, right? maybe we should relabel 'toxin' as 'nutrient' and never imagine how much of it is being produced by thousands of sq miles of Bt. GM crops.

I am not an expert on this matter but . . . when I read build genetically a pesticide into a plant . . . that later will be consume by humans or animals doesn't make you wonder that it will treat the humans and animals as the same as the insects that it's trying to kill

How does the gene knows who is who.

This isn't natural no matter how the product is marketed.

Which gene did they take out of the bacteria and did they alter this gene in anyway at all.

see

Naturally, Bt. toxin needs to be spliced by digestion, ie. it's only effective when ingested.


Bt. GM crops, otoh, produce an active variant, which is toxic on contact.

Source

Active Bt toxin leaks from plant roots into the soil where it is not biodegradable and accumulates over time. This will have major impacts on soil health, with knock-on effects on all other trophic levels of the ecosystem. The recent report that a GM gene has transferred from GM pollen to microbes in the gut of bee larvae underlines the fact that Bt toxin genes, like all other GM genes, will spread out of control

empahsis mine, article is from 2000

whatever they did the end result was not the same. genes interact with one another, that's why tests are needed, the problem is that mutations occur in plants, see my last post about unexpected DNA sequences appearing out of the blue.

if you are interested, the following site will give you plenty of data: www.psrast.org...

At the risk of incurring the wrath of the organic lobby can I point out the significant inconsistency between the title of this thread...

"Genetically Modified (GM) Corn is Toxic To Humans"

and the title of the article...

"Monsanto's GM corn MON863 shows kidney, liver toxicity in animal studies"

The article makes no mention of any studies which show toxicity in humans, just rats. Now that may in its own right be worrying and significant but such an obvious distortion just gives those who argue in favour of GM crops a stick to beat you with.

Originally posted by timeless test

The article makes no mention of any studies which show toxicity in humans, just rats. Now that may in its own right be worrying and significant but such an obvious distortion just gives those who argue in favour of GM crops a stick to beat you with.

then the only alternative is to embrace GM crops, because you will never attain approval for testing in humans and then the pro-GMers will beat you with that stick, obviously.


if other mammals exhibit damage from GMOs, well, what makes you think human consumption will be that different? maybe differing severity but our organisms are similar enough to arrive at such conclusions, imho of course. btw, 'Starlink Corn' was banned because it resulted in severe symptoms when 'accidentially' served as food, do you believe these people will make the same mistake twice?



more on toxicity:

The Hungarian team found the following for MON810 maize:

1. "The Bt maize produces 1500-2000 times as much Bt-toxin as is released through a single treatment in conventional crop protection, with the chemical called DIPEL, which contains Bt toxin." 2. "Other experiments have found that the residues of Bt plants are slower to decompose than their isogenic lines. Some 8% of the toxin produced by the plant remained in the field after harvesting. Indeed, a substantial share of this active toxin quantity could be identified in the soil 11 months later." 3. "In the soil of the field under the transgenic plant, the entire biological activity was lower than in the control field." 4. "The caterpillars thriving on herbs in and on the edges of maize fields, hatching during the pollination period, are the most substantially affected by the Bt toxin produced by MON 810."

[edit on 18.4.2007 by Long Lance]

Originally posted by Long Lance
then the only alternative is to embrace GM crops, because you will never attain approval for testing in humans and then the pro-GMers will beat you with that stick, obviously

The stick I had in mind was the apparently wilful distortion of facts to make a story more dramatic and potentially headline grabbing rather than the unavailability of human testing...

Originally posted by timeless test
The stick I had in mind was the apparently wilful distortion of facts to make a story more dramatic and potentially headline grabbing rather than the unavailability of human testing...

The image above is of swetnlow sugar substitute pack. The disclaimer on the back reads: USE OF THIS PRODUCT MAY BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH. THIS PRODUCT CONTAINS SACCHARIN WHICH HAS BEEN DETERMINED TO CAUSE CANCER IN LABORATORY ANIMALS.

Do you think this large company owning sweet n low, who have a vested iinterest in keeping such bad information off of the package, would add the disclaimer out of good faith to the consumer? No they have to by FDA laws (which I'm sure they fought).

In their Nature paper, the researchers reported that, at approximately 2.75 billion base pairs, the rat genome is smaller than the human genome, which is 2.9 billion base pairs, and slightly larger than mouse genome, which is 2.6 billion base pairs. However, they also found that the rat genome contains about the same number of genes as the human and mouse genomes. Furthermore, almost all human genes known to be associated with diseases have counterparts in the rat genome and appear highly conserved through mammalian evolution, confirming that the rat is an excellent model for many areas of medical research.

www.scienceblog.com..." target="_blank" class="postlink" rel="nofollow"> www.scienceblog.com...

THE RAT: Rat (Rattus norvegicus) - particularly useful as a toxicology model; also particularly useful as a neurological model and source of primary cell cultures, owing to the larger size of organs and suborganellar structures relative to the mouse. (Molecular evolution, Genomics)

Cmon Now Timeless Test , if a particular substance in food was shown to be toxic in lab rats, would you go on eating that food yourself? If so then may I direct you to: www.sweetnlow.com...


[edit on 18-4-2007 by greatlakes]

Originally posted by greatlakesCmon Now Timeless Test

, if a particular substance in food was shown to be toxic in lab rats, would you go on eating that food yourself?

greatlakes, you're missing the point I'm afraid. As I said in my original reply, the fact that a GM food may be shown to have some toxic effects in rats IS a serious and worrying issue. Please be under no illusions, I am absolutely no fan of GM crops at all.

The point is that you you made a statement which was a significant distortion of what the research showed, (by referring to toxicity in humans), in order, I assume, to make it sound more dramatic which makes it very easy to label your point as an over reaction or scare tactic or some such.

Sadly, this is the case in so many areas of conspiracy theory or non-mainstream thinking generally. It sometimes appears to be irresistibly tempting to over state the case for extra effect but that just gives your opponent the perfect opportunity to discredit you.

i understand what you mean, it's up to everyone to determine whether they want to bend facts in order to gain more attention or remain as neutral as possible to retain full credibility. thiking about it, i personally would not have brought humans into this thread, 'Toxic' alone is good enough, imho.

the reason i post was that i forgot to insert my source:

www.gmwatch.org...

timeless, you quoted my question to you but never did answer it.

Yes or no would you be gobbling up the GM corn that has been preliminarily found to be toxic in rats?

This is what I do when I am not posting somewhere or playing with the kids, I GROW NONGMO NON Hybridized healthy nutritious foods. It is very scarey to think that my crops and heritage seeds are in danger of extinction because companies like monsanto and others want to grow seeds not fit for human consumption but for ethanol, they want to take up precious agricultural land for this and they need not to worry, with all of their pestisides they can kill any insect friendly or not that would eat some of their plants. The wild animals won't even touch it. It contaminates our precious seed that is the big problem, the wind blows and so do the contaminated genetically mod.franken food seed. We fought against the human gene spliced rice in our state as did several others because of the cross contamination.Damn this subject just p.m.o. OH and also ORGANIC and USDA organic are not the same , if you are interested there are so many sites dedicated to this subject.

Originally posted by greatlakes
Yes or no would you be gobbling up the GM corn that has been preliminarily found to be toxic in rats?

Certainly not, in fact I do, wherever possible, avoid all GM foods.

[edit on 19-4-2007 by timeless test]

Baker creek heirloom seed company is where I buy all my seed. Once you purchase seed here you just eat all you want and save some seed for next year. It is what is normal, the hybridized seed you buy in wally and such are gene altered and hybridized so you are dependent and have to buy new each year.