1. Epidemic rise in lymphatic cancer and Monsanto's rBGH - Robert Cohen
2. Farms brim with GE plants but scientists not sure of effects (Christian Science Monitor)
3. GE human insulin problems
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1. Date: Fri, 08 Sep 2000
To: Jean Hudon This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
From: "Dave Rietz (DORway.com)" <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
This has everything to do with Monsanto, rBGH, cancer and the FDA. I pass this to you.. in case you would like to post it to your lists. with luck... this will catch some attention!
LYMPHATIC PLAGUE
An epidemic rise in one under-publicized category of cancers should sound an alarm for all Americans. There is a powerful link to the dramatic surge in lymphatic cancer: the 1994 approval of the genetically engineered bovine growth hormone (rbGH). Before 1995, lymphatic cancers were comparatively rare.
Today, if one adds up the total number of cancer deaths from breast, prostate, lung, pancreatic, and genital cancers, they do not cumulatively equal the number of deaths from lymphatic cancers. Do I have your attention?
This year Americans will consume nearly 180 billion pounds of milk and dairy products in various forms. That will average out to 666 pounds per American, nearly 40% of the average American diet. Cheese eaters, ice cream slurpers, and milk drinkers of both sexes and every age group will be ingesting dairy products from hormonally-treated cows.
Most Americans are unaware that laboratory animals treated with rbGH experienced enormous changes in their lymphatic systems. The spleens of these animals grew dramatically.
The controversial genetically modified cow hormone was approved for human consumption in February of 1994. Cancer statistics have recently been published by the U.S. Census Bureau comparing death rates from cancer by sex and age groups in 1980, 1990, and 1995. These data support evidence of a runaway plague. All of America became a laboratory study for rbGH, which is now in America's ice cream, cheese, and pizza.
There are small increases and decreases in lymphatic cancer rates from 1980 to 1990 depending upon sex and age group. What happened in 1995 represents the most dramatic short-term increase of any single cancer in the history of epidemiological discovery and analyses.
DEATH RATES FROM LYMPHATIC CANCER BY SEX AND AGE (1980 - 1995)
(Deaths per 100,000 population in specified age group)
MALE FEMALE
% %
1980 1990 1995 increase 1980 1990 1995 increase
AGE GROUPS
35-44 4.3 4.5 36.5 811% 2.4 2.1 44.0 2095%
45-54 10.2 10.9 143.7 1318% 6.6 6.0 140.7 2345%
55-64 24.4 27.2 480.5 1767% 16.8 16.7 357.5 2141%
65-74 48.1 56.8 1089.9 1919% 34.4 39.5 690.7 1749%
75-84 80.0 104.5 1842.3 1763% 57.6 71.2 1061.5 1495%
85+ 93.2 140.5 2837.3 2019% 63.0 90.0 1249.1 1588%
The approval process for rbGH was the most controversial drug application in the history of the Food & Drug Administration (FDA). In order to address that controversy, the FDA published an article in the journal SCIENCE (August 24, 1990).
Data in that paper reveal that the average male rat receiving rbGH developed a spleen 39.6 percent larger than the spleen of the control animals after just 90 days of treatment. The spleens from rbGH-treated females increased in size by a factor of 46 percent. These are not normal reactions and portray animals in distress. These animals were "under attack" by the genetically engineered hormone. The spleen is the first line of defense in a mammal's lymphatic system.
Lab animals treated with rbGH developed lymphatic abnormalities. This same hormone causing changes in lab animals was introduced into America's food supply in 1994. As Americans continue to ingest genetically engineered milk and dairy products, lymphatic cancer rates soar. Americans have become laboratory subjects in genetic engineering's experiment, and the resulting data indicates extreme cause for concern.
Robert Cohen
http://www.notmilk.com
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The test Mr. Cohen references is: Richard, Odaglia & Deslex, 1989
This key MONSANTO report that shows that rBST was responsible for causing CANCER in laboratory animals. Mr. Cohen had partial data from a study authored by Richard, Odaglia and Deslex hinting at a horrible threat to all Americans. Mr. Cohen sued the FDA and Monsanto but a federal judge would not review or release the entire study, despite the fact that FDA should have. FDA did not review the contents of this important study.
This key Monsanto study was reviewed by Canada. During the course of the review, safes were mysteriously broken into and files stolen. This key 90-day study was actually a 180-day study. Canada will not learn this until the stolen files are replaced. However, what happened to 300 laboratory animals during the first 90 days was so horrendous that a group of five courageous Canadian scientists jeopardized their jobs and careers by holding a press conference to reveal the truth (1999). So outraged were they about the cancers and actions of this genetically engineered drug, that they went public with their report.
President Clinton, who is lactose intolerant, signed a law that provides very harsh penalties for obtaining "trade secrets", under which the above documentation now falls. The world public will never know the truth... just suffer from the horrible consequences.
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2. Farms brim with altered plants, even though scientists aren't yet sure of the crops' effects on the environment
By Peter N. Spotts, Staff writer of the Christian Science Monitor
In the highly charged debate over biotech crops, critics and supporters can agree on one thing: New strains are sold and planted before much is known about their ecological effects, and too little is being done to find out about them.
Genetically engineered corn, soybeans, and cotton already are staples on millions of acres of farmland in North America. Yet studies of potential risks often are conducted after a new strain of gene-spliced seeds has taken root on farms - too late for the environment or the approval process.
As a result, some researchers say, the world's fields are becoming a laboratory for the largest unplanned ecological experiment in agricultural history.
"We look at genetically modified crops, and we know what the potential hazards may be," says Alan McHughen, a plant geneticist at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon. "But we want to know what the hazards really are before they go out" into the marketplace.
"The question of hazards is real, and it's not going to go away," he adds. Two recent studies highlight potential ecological risks of genetically engineered crops.
In the current issue of the journal Science, a pair of British scientists suggest that starling populations could drop by as much as 90 percent if farmers adopt a new strain of sugar beets tailored to tolerate herbicides. Using a computer model, the scientists found that the starlings' plight depended on how widely farmers adopted the sugar beets and how much herbicide they applied to their fields - depriving the birds of the weed seeds they eat.
Ironically, the threat to the birds didn't come from the plants themselves, but from farming practices that could result from the plants' introduction.
Corn and butterflies
Also, late last month, researchers from Iowa State University in Ames published the results of experiments studying genetically modified corn and butterflies. It suggests that monarch butterflies are threatened by pollen from corn that's engineered to produce a toxin fatal to a pest called the European corn borer.
The work, which appeared in the journal Oecologia, is the latest in a series of yes-it-does, no-it-doesn't results from various scientists trying to determine whether the pollen seriously threatens the butterflies.
On a scientific level, "there is nothing terrible about any of these studies," even when results appear contradictory, says Jane Rissler, a senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists. "No one study is really definitive; you need an accumulation of evidence over time."
But researchers say they face a number of hurdles in trying to build that body of knowledge.
First, the regulations governing tests can be counterproductive. Scientists must isolate test fields of key crops such as corn and canola because they produce copious amounts of pollen, which can be blown beyond the field and inadvertently mix with other plant species. Yet offsite effects are among the risks scientists want to quantify. Moreover, test plots are vulnerable to attacks from activists who oppose any use of genetically engineered crops.
On Aug. 25, a group called the Los Ninos del Maiz claimed responsibility for an attack that destroyed 1,500 to 2,000 corn plants and damaged a range of other plants in four greenhouses at the University of California at San Diego's biology field station. Only a small fraction of the plants the group destroyed were the result of genetic engineering, according to Maarten Chrispeels, director of the university's Center for Molecular Agriculture. In other cases, it can be difficult to repeat experiments. "The amount of transgenic material [genetic information that can be transferred] is limited," says John Obrycki, one of the Iowa State University scientists involved in the most recent corn-pollen study.
Needed: more time for research
Initially, it's possible to work with the seeds' developers to find out whether a plant is likely to pass a trait or toxin to another species. But here in the US, regulators require only a one-year trial before a seed strain is approved for sale. Once the seeds go on sale, Dr. Obrycki says, companies often are less willing to give them to researchers wanting to conduct further tests for potential risks. He argues that the approval process should require two years of testing instead of one.
Finally, funding remains tight for risk studies. In the US, for example, the Department of Agriculture spends about $1.7 million a year for risk assessment. "That's a tiny amount of money compared with what the biotech industry spends to develop and market new products," says Rebecca Goldburg, a senior scientist at Environmental Defense.
The result, critics say, is an approval process that lacks sufficient data to assess the risk of genetically engineered crops. That theme also emerges from a generally biotech-friendly report from the National Academy of Sciences. In the April study, the academy noted that, as the proportion of genetically engineered crops and the rate of their introduction increases, more research is needed to assess risks to human health and the environment.
Yet others say more money for risk studies is not the answer. They argue that scientists should mine data already accumulating on biotech crops. Such information can be incorporated into models that can help researchers predict possible environmental outcomes from planting genetically engineered crops.
Yet even data-mining proponents look longingly at a comprehensive research project under way in Britain to address risks from biotech crops. The government is spending £8 million ($11.7 million) over three years to look at the effects of modified corn, canola, and sugar beets. Says Frank Forcella, a plant geneticist with the University of Minnesota at Morris: "That level of funding for field experiments is fantastic even by Yankee standards."
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3.Genetically engineered human insulin
From: "Mary Hunt" <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Date: Mon, 4 Sep 2000
Hundreds of thousand of US insulin dependent diabetics have found that they cannot safely or effectively use the synthetic genetically engineered human insulins. All the beef based insulins have been removed from the US market and soon the pork insulins will be. Eli Lilly claims they have no plan to discontinue the pork insulins, but they are extremely difficult to find. Those of us that know there is another source of beef insulin are now importing it from the UK. The FDA is refusing to allow the foreign beef insulin to be distributed in the US. They say that it is due to the BSE risk. However, the FDA knows that the beef pancreas material used in the foreign insulin comes from US cattle.
I hold USDA import permits for both pork and beef insulin, but the FDA will not allow me to use the pork permit due to Lilly's claims that they are still making it. I do not believe they are because of the fact the last pork insulin I bought was over a year old and they expire at the end of two years. I have asked the FDA to physically inspect where they make pork insulin, but all they did was call Lilly and take their word for it.
We need your backing to get animal insulins back into the US. Please help us. For further information please check this web site or contact me. http://members.tripod.com/diabetics_world
Mary Hunt
mailto:This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
http://members.tripod.com/diabetics_world
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