The editor of Food and Chemical Toxicology, A. Wallace Hayes, has confirmed he will not retract a Chinese study that found GMO safe, even though it's inconclusive, showing that he must have retracted the Séralini study for other undisclosed reasons.
Recently a Chinese team of researchers conducted a 90-day rat feeding study with glyphosate-tolerant GM maize and published the results in Food and Chemical Toxicology (FCT).
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278691512006813
FCT is the same journal that in November 2013 retracted the study by Prof GE Séralini, for the claimed reason of the inconclusiveness of some of its findings. Seralini's study was also on a glyphosate-tolerant GM maize but found serious toxic effects in the treated rats.
The main difference between these two studies was that Séralini's ran for two years, whereas the Chinese study, like most industry feeding studies on GMOs, only lasted for 90 days (about 7 years in human terms; not long enough to see diseases with long latency periods, like cancer and severe organ damage).
Not surprisingly, after just 90 days, the Chinese authors concluded:
"No adverse effects related to the consumption of GM maize were detected in the subchronic feeding study. These results indicated that the GM glyphosate-tolerant maize was as safe and nutritious as conventional maize."
In December 2013 the International Transdisciplinary Studies Group (GIET), chaired by Dr Frédéric Jacquemart (also President of Inf'OGM), wrote to A. Wallace Hayes, the editor of FCT, saying that the findings of the Chinese study were not justified by the analyses conducted.
GIET highlighted the lack of information on the statistical power of the study, meaning it was impossible to know whether the study was designed in a manner that would enable any effects to been seen or not. GIET concluded that "the assertion of the safety of the GM corn is thus scientifically unfounded".
http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php/news/archive/2014/15261
GIET also emphasized that the conclusion of the article establishes an equivalence between GM corn and conventional corn, although no analysis of equivalence, which is necessary to justify such a conclusion, was performed.
Thus, GIET concluded, if the study of GE Séralini must be retracted, then the same applies to the study of Zhu and colleagues.
GIET did not receive a reply from Hayes, so Dr Jacquemart wrote again (item 1 below). This time, Hayes replied (item 2 below), stating that he had no intention of retracting the study of Zhu and colleagues.
GMWatch concludes from this exchange that inconclusiveness was not the real reason that Hayes retracted the Séralini study.
So what can the real reason be, we wonder?
Surely it couldn't have been the inconvenient nature of Séralini's findings?
But if that were so, it would mean Hayes was using unscientific double standards in evaluating a study that found harm (Séralini's) as compared with a study that concluded safety (Zhu).
And that would be a crime against science.
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1. Email from Dr Frederic Jacquemart to A. Wallace Hayes, editor of Food and Chemical Toxicology
2. Reply from Dr A. Wallace Hayes to Dr Frederic Jacquemart
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1. Email from Dr Frederic Jacquemart to A. Wallace Hayes, editor of Food and Chemical Toxicology
Subject: Retraction of Zhu et al
Dear Mr Hayes,
I wrote you on December 13, asking you to retract the publication from Zhu et al.:
"A 90-day feeding study of glyphosate-tolerant maize with the G2-aroA gene in Sprague-Dawley rats" by Zhu Y., He X., Luo Y., Zou S., Zhou X, Huang K. and Xu W. (Food and Chemical Toxicology 51 (2013) 280-287).
As this paper is obviously non-conclusive, there is no reason, according to your recent editorials, that you don't retract it.
I received no answer from you about this demand.
My organization is a private institution and not a university, but Monsanto is also a private one, and you took in[to] account letters from members of this corporation. In fact, you even publish studies from private institutions as Monsanto or ILSI. Therefore, there is no reason not to take into account my demand.
I am physician, specialised in medical biology, PhD in science (immunology) former researcher in neuro-chemistry and immunology at Pasteur Institute in France and I think I know enough the principles of science to criticize a publication such as this one.
Friendly yours
Dr Frederic Jacquemart
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2. Reply from Dr A. Wallace Hayes to Dr Frederic Jacquemart
Dear Dr Jacquemart,
Thanks you for your December 13, 2013 and January 22, 2014 emails. After careful review of your request, no action will be taken.
Best wishes.
A. Wallace Hayes, PhD, DABT, FATS, FIBiol, FACFE, ERT
Registered Toxicologist (France and EUROTOX registries)
Distinguished Fellow (American College of Toxicology)
Harvard School of Public Health
Editor-in-Chief, Food and Chemical Toxicology