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Announcing Science in Society #21
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Spring 2004

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From the Editor
***************

Cows ate GM maize and died – Public enquiry needed Could
this be the "three mile island" or the "thalidomide" of GM:
the clinching evidence that there is something seriously
wrong with most if not all GM food and feed? Twelve dairy
cows died in Hesse, Germany after being fed Syngenta’s Bt176
GM maize; and other cows had to be slaughtered due to
mysterious illnesses. Protestors in front of the Robert Koch
Institute suspect a cover-up. But is there a news blackout
as well?

There has been no coverage in the mainstream media; not even
after ISIS circulated a detail report, showing how Bt176 has
the worst of features common to practically all commercially
approved GM crops. Not only is Bt176 unstable like all GM
varieties analysed so far, it is also non-uniform, so that
different samples of the variety gave different results.
Either of those features would make the GM variety illegal
under European law.

The dead cows in Hesse are not an isolated case. In 1999,
Pusztai and colleagues reported that GM potato engineered
with the snowdrop lectin adversely affected every organ
system of young rats, in particular, it made their stomach
lining twice as thick. Scientists in Egypt found similar
effects in mice fed a Bt potato. Several years earlier, the
US Food and Drug Administration already had data showing
that rats fed a GM tomato with an antisense gene to delay
ripening developed holes in their stomach. Add to that the
report from Aventis (now Bayer) which showed that
glufosinate-tolerant T25 GM maize (about to be approved for
growing by the Blair government) killed twice as many
broiler chickens compared to non-GM maize, and a host of
anecdotal evidence that livestock, wildlife and lab animals
avoid GM feed when given the choice, and failed to thrive or
died when forced to eat it.

There must now be a public enquiry, not only into the safety
of GM food and feed, but especially on why this and other
evidence have been systematically misrepresented,
suppressed, ignored and denied in the rush to commercialise
GM crops and GM food and feed. It amounts to a serious abuse
of science and scientific evidence, and our governments’
scientific advisors must be called into proper account.

Britain’s pro-GM scientific establishment appears to have
entered into an elicit relationship, willingly or otherwise,
with a gang of biotech corporate warriors – remarkably
metamorphosed from their previous Marxist tendencies - who
promote their agenda by infiltrating the establishment and
using smear tactics borrowed from America’s far-right to
discredit critics.

Read the evidence and judge for yourselves. There’s plenty
more: US Department of Agriculture’s own data showing that
GM crops increased pesticide and herbicide use by more than
50 million pounds between 1996 and 2003; Roundup Ready
herbicide linked to sudden death of GM soya and fusarium
head blight in wheat; and the regulatory sham surrounding Bt
crops that’s allowing synthetic, altered toxins of both
known and unknown toxicities to enter our ecosystems and
food web.

Send a copy of this issue to your government representatives
demanding a public enquiry. (Contact sam@... for
bulk purchase at cost.)

Nanotech & nanotox Another area where science and technology
have gone way ahead of safety considerations is
nanotechnology, in particular, nanoparticles and nanotubes.

The science is fascinating, and the possibilities enormous,
but that’s precisely why it raises a host of new safety
concerns. It seems that all kinds of substances acquire
entirely new properties when shrunk to the nanoscale (about
a billionth of a metre). They become super-efficient
catalysts, they concentrate light energy enormously, acquire
new electrical properties, and so on.

But the first evidence of the hazards has already emerged.
Nanotubes could be worse than asbestos, and both nanotube
and other nanoparticles can accumulate in organs and
tissues.

Fortunately, at least some scientists involved in developing
the technology are much more willing to consider and discuss
the safety concerns openly and engage in real dialogue with
the public; in contrast to those scientists involved in
exploiting GM.

Biology’s theory of everything and the obesity epidemic When
the "Living energies" series was circulated, we received an
unprecedented number of positive responses from people who
know too well that the secret of life is not to be found in
genomes and genes or other molecular nuts and bolts.

I think it may well be in how organisms capture, store and
transform energy.

Indeed, a universal metabolism appears to lie at the basis
of all life, which can explain its patterns of biodiversity
and many other biological phenomena. This brings together
diverse fields that have hitherto developed independently,
such as bioenergetics, ecology, physiology and yes, even the
new field of food quality research, where it is found that
animals do tend to prefer organically produced food!

And, it could also enable us to better understand a range of
fundamental problems from sustainable systems to the obesity
epidemic, and what to do about it.

Biology is groping its way towards a theory of everything.
Thank goodness not all biology has been swallowed up by
genomics and related research.

There are signs that the National Institutes of Health in
the United States, at least, have read the writing on the
wall with regard to genomics; and are actively inviting
generous grant applications from scientists (US citizens
only) that can "change the current paradigms of medical
research."

All other governments should take heed.

Contents
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From the Editor

GM Food Safe? Cows Ate GM Maize & Died Bt Toxin Binds to
Mouse Intestine Liver of Mice Fed GM Soya Works Overtime
Syngenta’s Spanish GM Trojan Horse Animals Avoid GM Food,
for Good Reasons Transgenic DNA & Bt Toxin Survive Digestion

Good Food Food Quality? What’s That? Do Animals Like Good
Food? Assessing Food Quality by Its After-Glow

Rethinking Health The Obesity Epidemic How Carbohydrates
Make Fats How to Survive 40 Days Starvation

ISP News Approving GM Crops is Abusing Science

Biosafety GM Crops Increase Pesticide Use Unstable
Transgenic Lines Illegal Roundup Ready Sudden Death Syndrome
New GM Toxin Looms over Our Food Transgenic Fish Coming
Keeping Europe GM-Free Regulatory Sham on Bt Crops

Corrupt Science Rotten to the Corp Biotech Critic Denied
Tenure

Pollution Watch Mercury A Growing Scourge Methyl Bromide Ban

Nanotech & Nanotox Nanotox Metal Nanoshells, Cure or Curse?
Nanotubes Highly Toxic

Rethinking Agriculture GM Crops Threaten Cultural &
Ecological Integrity Organic Outperforms Conventional in
Climate Extremes "The Answer Lies in the Soil"

Living Energies No System in Systems Biology Biology’s
Theory of Everything? Energy, Productivity & Biodiversity
Why Are Organisms So Complex?
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