Say No To GMOs! - June 2003b - The Diigo Meta page

• 28 Oct 11
  

  Griffin Cronk
  • consistent
  • surveys since 1999 is that GM crops have failed to deliver the promised benefits of significantly increasing yields or reducing herbicide and pesticide us
  • GM crops have cost the United States an estimated $12 billion in farm subsidies, lost sales and product recalls due to transgenic contamination
  • Zambia refused GM maize in food aid despite the threat of famine.
  • The instability of transgenic lines has plagued the industry from the beginning, and this may be responsible for a string of major crop failures.
  • exceptions to the rule
  • Similar multiple herbicide-tolerant volunteers and weeds have emerged in the United States. In the United States, glyphosate-tolerant weeds are plaguing GM cotton and soya fields
  • superweeds and Bt- resistant pests
  • test of 33 certified seed stocks, 32 were found contaminated.
  • GM crops have not been proven safe
  • egulatory framework was fatally flawed from the start
  • growth factor-like' effects were found in the stomach and small intestine of young rats that were not fully accounted for by the transgene product, and were hence attributable to the transgenic process or the transgenic construct, and may hence be general to all GM food. There have been at least two other, more limited, studies that also raised serious safety concerns.
  • Bt proteins, incorporated into 25% of all transgenic crops worldwide
  • Food crops are increasingly used to produce pharmaceuticals and drugs, including cytokines known to suppress the immune system, induce sickness and central nervous system toxicity; interferon alpha, reported to cause dementia, neurotoxicity and mood and cognitive side effects; vaccines; and viral sequences such as the 'spike' protein gene of the pig coronavirus, in the same family as the SARS virus linked to the current epidemic
  • nterfere with the immune system and recombine with viruses and bacteria to generate new and unpredictable pathogens.
  • Glufosinate ammonium is linked to neurological, respiratory, gastrointestinal and haematological toxicities, and birth defects in humans and mammals. It is toxic to butterflies and a number of beneficial insects, also to the larvae of clams and oysters, Daphnia and some freshwater fish, especially the rainbow trout. It inhibits beneficial soil bacteria and fungi, especially those that fix nitrogen.
  • children born to users of glyphosate had elevated neurobehavioral defects. Glyphosate caused retarded development of the foetal skeleton in laboratory rats. Glyphosate inhibits the synthesis of steroids, and is genotoxic in mammals, fish and frogs. Field dose exposure of earthworms caused at least 50 percent mortality and significant intestinal damage among surviving worms. Roundup caused cell division dysfunction that may be linked to human cancers.
  • Newer techniques, such as DNA shuffling are allowing geneticists to create in a matter of minutes in the laboratory millions of recombinant viruses that have never existed in billions of years of evolution. Disease-causing viruses and bacteria and their genetic material are the predominant materials and tools for genetic engineering, as much as for the intentional creation of bio-weapons.
  • There is already experimental evidence that transgenic DNA from plants has been taken up by bacteria in the soil and in the gut of human volunteers. Antibiotic resistance marker genes can spread from transgenic food to pathogenic bacteria, making infections very difficult to treat.
  • raising the possibility for triggering cancer

  • • The possibility cannot be excluded that feeding GM products such as maize to animals also carries risks, not just for the animals but also for human beings consuming the animal products.

       
      
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  • CaMV 35S promoter might be especially unstable and prone to horizontal gene transfer and recombination, with all the attendant hazards: gene mutations due to random insertion, cancer, reactivation of dormant viruses and generation of new viruses. This promoter is present in most GM crops being grown commercially today.
  • history of misrepresentation and suppression of scientific evidence,
  • GM crops have failed to deliver the promised benefits and are posing escalating problems on the farm
  • widely acknowledged
  • GM crops have not been proven safe.
  • sufficient evidence has emerged to raise serious safety concerns

  • GM crops should be firmly rejected now.

      
  • ignored could result in irreversible damage to health and the environment.

  27 more annotations...

• 23 Mar 07
  

  Shaun Fletcher

  DNA GMO cells science science6 science8 varietyoflife

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