Pesticide Dipel is inherently hazardous

Prof Tony Shelton, a busy promoter of GMOs and in particular of GM Bt brinjal (eggplant) in Bangladesh, fed the pesticide Dipel to his students in a public seminar.

Dr Jonathan Latham, in an article for Independent Science News, comments that this stunt "creates an impressive list of problematic issues: safety concerns, ethics concerns, questionable science, and, not least, by eating a pesticide and encouraging his students to do the same, both the professor and his students broke the law."

Dipel is a preparation derived from fermenting the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), which is used as an insecticide spray and is engineered into GM Bt crops, including Bt brinjal. As Dr Latham points out, Bt is very far from safe for mammals, including humans, to ingest, according to scientific research findings.

The stunt of eating pesticides is not new, writes Dr Latham. Entomologists as far back as the 1940s were filmed "demonstrating" that DDT is “so-safe-you-can-eat-it“. Patrick Moore, the self-proclaimed Greenpeace founder turned glyphosate promoter, has made a career claiming that drinking glyphosate was safe. At least until he was confronted with the opportunity to do so by a journalist at French TV station Canal+.

The GMO- and pesticide-promoting scientist Kevin Folta has also claimed to publicly drink glyphosate to supposedly show it is safe.

Read the full article and watch the video of the stunt here.