Date: 10/16/2012 5:19:55 AM ( 12 y ) ... viewed 17597 times
Grow A Healthier Pizza Chapter
4: YES on Prop 37 is not going Away
America! America!
May thy Gold Refine.
Till all success be nobeleness
and every gain divine!
O Beautiful for patriot dream
That ses beyond the years,
Thine Alabaster cities gleam,
Undimmed by human tears!
--from the latter stanzas of
America the Beautiful
Putting this LA Times Copyright article October 14 here for safekeeping.
I need to comment later.
Please Listen to Professor Serilini's Bio at the beginning of this 25 Minute interview. This is from the Seeds of Doubt Conference, Oct 6 2012, LA. There is reasonable Doubt about the Safety of GM Foods. We Need to Vote YES on 37 and gives moms the Right to Know what they are feeding their kids.
The NO Side has Amazing Marketing Mavens who study the Label arguments and then turn them around. It is amazing what $37 Million of PR can buy. Will the side with the Real Junk Science Please Stand Up? Clearly, it is questionable how safe GMO foods are. Prop 37 will not go away Nov 6. This is merely the beginning of what will become an Honest Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Food. The Facts will come out. The Public when given all the Facts will reject GM Foods. This is the fear of an industry that is banking on keeping the public in the dark about GMO's and GMO safety. The days of GM Foods in America are numbered, one way or another, but meanwhile GMO seeds are growing in our fields.
I have looked at this for many years. GMO Seeds are dangerous and this technology definitely brings up many doubts. GMO seeds infiltrate organic fields and we lose our biodiversity. Thousands of Indian Farmers, who have bought this GMO Technology are now protesting. Many others have committed suicide. More than 140 US Farmers have been intimated by the Monsanto No side who will eventually lose out.
We need to Vote YES on 37 because we have a right to know, and mothers have a right to decide.
Please go to this Plant Your Dream Blog for to Study and reasonable points of view.
Manifestly shoddy research is being used to promote Proposition 37, the ballot measure mandating the labeling of genetically modified food.
Daisy, a genetically-modified cow. A team of New Zealand scientists claim to be a step closer to producing allergy-free milk using Daisy for their medical breakthrough. (AFP/GettyImages / October 14, 2012)
By Michael Hiltzik
October 14, 2012
Proposition 37, the ballot measure mandating the labeling of genetically modified food that is also known as the "right to know" initiative, is narrowly running ahead of the opposition, according to the latest opinion polls.
But even if the measure goes down — and it's the target of a $35-million publicity attack by agricultural and food industry interests — the campaign behind it will mark an important milestone in politics: the deployment of weapons-grade junk science.
Of course, ignorance and anti-intellectualism are not new phenomena in our elections, nor in the political processes of other lands, dictatorships and democracies alike. Pseudoscience is part and parcel of corporate advertising in every medium. ("I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV.")
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But where science is at the heart of a campaign, as it is for Proposition 37, the promotion of manifestly shoddy research is especially shameful. That goes double where multibillion-dollar industries, tens of thousands of jobs, and the health and well-being of millions of consumers are at stake.
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The research in question is a paper published a few weeks ago by a team led by French biologist Gilles-Eric Seralini. Its findings were explosive: Laboratory rats fed for up to two years on genetically modified corn of a type widely used in the U.S. developed huge, grotesque tumors.
The paper claimed to be "the first detailed documentation of long-term deleterious effects arising from the consumption" of the corn. Seralini found very similar effects in rats fed high dosages of Roundup, a widely used pesticide that the corn had been engineered to tolerate, and in rats fed a combination of the corn and Roundup. (Both products are marketed by Monsanto, which has contributed at least $7.1 million to the No on 37 campaign.)
The Proposition 37 campaign pounced on the evidence. "Massive Tumors in Rats Fed Monsanto's Genetically Engineered Corn in First Long Term Study," declared the campaign's blog. The campaign's spokeswoman, Stacy Malkan, asserted in a radio interview that "the researchers reported finding very serious health effects in a peer-reviewed study in a well-respected journal." She called it "the first long-term health study — animal study — on genetically engineered foods that have been in the American diet for more than 15 years."
On the surface, it sounds pretty damning. What about beneath the surface?
The Seralini paper attracted almost instantaneous derision from the research establishment, on multiple counts. Many of the criticisms have been widely disseminated, and just last week they were bolstered by the European Food Safety Authority, which is not known as an industry-friendly agency. The agency found the paper to be "of insufficient scientific quality to be considered as valid for risk assessment."
Seralini dismissed most of the criticism as the product not of the "scientific community" but of "representatives of the biotech industry."
If his study is right, he told me in an interview, demand for stricter testing of genetically modified crops "would provoke a crisis in the biotech industry, so they have to move my study out of the way."
By the way, Seralini's paper isn't the first long-term study of genetically modified foods in the American diet, by a long shot. The same journal that published Seralini's paper (Food and Chemical Toxicology) published a survey of 12 studies of genetically modified corn, soybeans and rice tested on rats, cows, salmon or monkeys for up to two years, and in general found no evidence of any health hazards.
Before getting into the details of the critique of Seralini's paper, here's some perspective. It's well established that where big money or politics is involved, scientific rigor is a prime casualty.
The eminent physicist Alvin Weinberg presciently forecast this phenomenon a half-century ago. "Issues of scientific or technical merit," he wrote in 1961, "tend to get argued in the popular, not the scientific press, or in the congressional committee room rather than the technical-society lecture hall; the spectacular rather than the perceptive becomes the scientific standard."
The more recondite the science, the greater the opportunity for mischief — witness the continuing political campaign against evidence of human-induced climate change, and the persistence of creationism in educational curricula.
"The real danger," says UC Berkeley biologist Michael B. Eisen, a crusader against junk science, "is the erosion of the idea that where public policy intersects with science, people have a responsibility to understand the science."
Public ignorance can be a powerful weapon in the hands of people brandishing research carrying the veneer of credibility. Yes, Seralini's paper was published in a "peer-reviewed" journal, but that doesn't make it indisputable. Peer reviews are known to fail, and it's not uncommon — and becoming less uncommon — for published papers to be retracted when their data are shown to be unreliable.
Now, back to Seralini. The chief overall criticism of his experiment is that it seemed designed to prove a specific conclusion, rather than objectively test a hypothesis. Although Seralini claimed no conflicts of interest in his work, he's known as a campaigner against genetically modified foods; the release of his anti-genetic modification book and film, "Tous Cobayes" (loosely translated: "We Are All Guinea Pigs"), coincided with the publication of the paper.
Among the most common critiques of the experiment is that Seralini used an insufficient number of control rats — 180 test rats were fed genetically modified corn, Roundup or both, but only 20 control rats were fed a purportedly normal diet. Critics say that's too small a control group to be statistically valid.
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Comments (259)Add / View comments | Discussion FAQ
Donna Wolf at 2:12 AM October 16, 2012
There is plenty of evidence, as well as good science screaming the dangers and risks of GMO's in the food supply. It is also no coincidence that GMO's have been in our food suppy for at least the last 15 years, and during that same timeframe we have seen epidemic rise in diseases of lifesyle, exposure and toxic diet/ environment. I am speaking of obesity, diabetes, auto-immune, allergies, food sensitivities, asthma, autism, thyroid, and cancers, especially of the colon, breast and prostrate. 20 years ago you had never heard of half of these. Now they are commonplace. 64% of the US population is obese, and cannot loose weight despite a variety of attempts.
We need a drastic shift in paradeim, back to clean, healthy, organic, REAL food and we need to clean the chemicals & toxins out of our air & soil. It is time for the likes of Monsanto and Dow Chemical-AgroSciences, ADM, and the rest, to be run off of the planet. Let them spend their millions trying to establish a chemical war zone on the moon, or better yet, Pluto.
Donna Wolf RD, CLT
LiberalReason at 11:07 PM October 15, 2012
Whatever. Name one reason not to label that actually makes sense? Hello? Crickets?
The campaign against 37 is real junk. Makes no sense. At least it's $35 million into our economy. I hope people aren't actually that stupid and 37 passes. But then, most people are pretty stupid.
Cindy Fuchser at 9:04 PM October 15, 2012
whats all the fuss about..just label it and let consumers choose what they want to feed their families!
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