Some Salient Facts On GMO's; Part II, The Human Gut and GMOs

We established in the last post on GMOs that every single cell of a GMO plant has the GMO trait - in other words, every single cell of a GMO plant includes GMO DNA.  When an organic gardener uses Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis don't worry, I can't say it either!) to combat pests, the solution is spayed on the plant in response to insect attacks.  The water soluble solution is washed off when irrigated or rained on and is washed off before consuming the food (you wash your veggies, right?).  The toxin is not in the cell - a very huge difference from a GMO plant where Bt is implanted in the cell making every single cell of the plant loaded with the toxin.  

Initially I actually thought Monsanto had used Bt in order to remove it from the organic gardeners' tool box, a safe and selective pesticide that only went after targeted species. If the GMOed Bt plants were planted throughout the nation enough, eventually (like we see with Round Up and so-called 'Super Weeds') insects will evolve and render Bt useless.  That will happen sooner or later, because insects do evolve and they do so quickly under enough pressure - like thousands of acres of Bt GMOed plants.  

The heinous use of Bt as a GMO trait hurts organic gardeners and farmers and will eventually ruin the use of Bt.  Bt used by the organic grower is not in any way harmful to the human consuming the broccoli or any vegetable sprayed with Bt.  In the organic case, the Bt is not introduced into your stomach.  In the GMO case, it becomes a part of what you eat.  And a part of you.

GMO scientists said from the beginning this was safe because the human body does not metabolize Bt like an insect - Bt eaten by an insect causes their stomachs to 'freeze' and the insect dies.  This does not happen in humans.

As Jeffry Smith's film Genetic Roulette points out, your stomach is not the only actor in digesting your food.  In every healthy human there are more cells of bacteria digesting your food than your own body's cells and those bacteria are affected by the Bt in a negative way, either killing them off or making your food digesting track environmentally unfriendly to the beneficial bacteria.  

Smith's film also documented the phenomena called "Leaky Gut Syndrome" and that's about as nasty as the name itself.  Doctors and scientists are now looking at a new condition, in the last decade or so,  where the stomach and intestines of humans are being perforated resulting in leaks inside the body of the partially digested food. The indications point to GMO food - although no specific research has pinned GMOs as the culprit.  There is plenty of circumstantial evidence that GMOs might very well be involved (anecdotal evidence from farmers is plenteous and damning); enough to make one think twice about a diet full of GMO food.

But just now, recent research from two different teams have come up with some startling results.  As reported recently by PLOS ONE, entire strands of DNA may pass from our stomachs into our blood streams, included in their notes (note #4 specifically:  Rizzi A, Raddadi N, Sorlini C, Nordgrd L, Nielsen KM, et al. (2012) The stability and degradation of dietary DNA in the gastrointestinal tract of mammals: implications for horizontal gene transfer and the biosafety of GMOs. Crit Rev Food Sci Nutr 52: 142–161. doi: 10.1080/10408398.2010.499480) i=) indicates that GMOs transfer in mammals from the gastrointestinal tract to the blood stream and organs.  This does not make a rock solid case for the transfer of GMOs to human organs and blood, but it does make a very serious dent in the theory that GMOs are perfectly safe!  

In fact, with both these studies on hand and nothing else, I think a person who continues to consume GMO food would have to be called extremly careless with their own health. This shows one of the biggest flaws in the GMO camp's contention that GMOs are proven safe.  They have never been proven safe! There have been so few non-industry financed studies that it would be laughable if it were not our food.

Furthermore the honest truth is that a study must be relevant to the conditions under which the item in question is going to be used.  A study that purports to study the food a human will eat over a lifetime must go on for a much more significant time than six months or less.  The average human will live much longer than six months.  I would be happy if they could show me a 20 year study that proved their safety - until then, all we have are 'indications' at best.  

The studies done by the purveyors of GMOs have all been very short (and Lord knows they need to have results swing their way with the millions of dollars they've dumped into duping the world about GMOs) - the Seralini study about which there was so much recent press, took the protocols used by Monsanto and replicated the study, the only change was to carry the study out for longer than the original. (If they want to blame Seralini with 'bad science' they have to allow Monsanto is culpable as well.)

Rats from the Seralini study.

In the greater time allowed, changes in the lab animals were grotesque and horrifying. Monsanto's study did not show that because their study was considerably shorter, perhaps specifically shorter to avoid the findings of the Seralini work.  We live longer than lab rats!  The study needs to be much longer and rigorous.  Right now, you  and your children are the lab rats in the long term study, but it's not a controlled experiment.  

Not only is this risky - even if nothing were wrong with GMOs - but it defies logic.  If GMOs were introduced in a sane government, the government would have asked for several independent studies before allowing GMOs to be fed to the public.

The way GMOs were foisted onto the American public will go down in history as one of biggest gambles with human lives EVER.  Right or wrong in the end, it is a ridiculously foolish way to introduce new products to the marketplace, especially one as freaky GMOs. 

Next up, GMOs in practice. 

david