*Scientists suspect health threat from GM maize
*Dismay over GM licence
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Scientists suspect health threat from GM maize
John Vidal, environment editor
Friday February 27, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/gmdebate/Story/0,2763,1157222,00.html
Scientists investigating a spate of illnesses among people living close to GM maize fields in the Philippines believe that the crop may have triggered fevers, respiratory illnesses and skin reactions.
If preliminary results are confirmed, it would be one of the first recorded cases of serious health problems associated with GM crops, and could damage the reputation of the biotech agriculture industry, which is rapidly expanding in developing countries.
The scientists' findings were immediately challenged by Monsanto, the world's leading GM company, and by the Philippine government.
The concern surrounds an unnamed village in northern Mindanao, where 39 people living near a field of Bt maize - which contains a pesticide in the gene - started suffering last autumn when the crop was producing pollen.
Doctors thought they had an infectious disease, but when four families left the village and recovered, and then showed the same symptoms on return, an environmental cause was suspected.
Terje Traavik, scientific director of the Norwegian Institute of Gene Ecology, was asked to investigate. Blood tests showed the villagers had developed antibodies to the maize's inbuilt pesticide.
Professor Traavik, who issued a summary of his results yesterday, said more tests were needed, but felt his preliminary findings were reliable.
His studies suggest that a virus promoter - which is like a motor driving the production of the genetic message - was unexpectedly found intact in human cells.
His team also said it had found that genetically engineered viruses used in the GM process recombined with natural viruses to create new hybrid viruses with unpredictable characteristics. If confirmed, this could suggest that they could cause new diseases.
Prof Traavik said tests so far showed evidence of an immune reaction. He will return to the Philippines this week to continue the research before publishing full results in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.
But he rejected accusations that he was trying to scare people with data not yet reviewed by other scientists. "Publication of results typically requires a waiting period of up to one year or more," he said in Kuala Lumpur.
"With such evidence of possible human health impacts of foods already on the market, we believed that waiting to report our findings through publication would not be in the public's interest."
Monsanto said it was "extremely unlikely" that the limited production of the GM crop in the Philippines would have produced such results.
"There have been no documented cases of allergic reactions to Bt maize after seven years of broad commercial use on millions of hectares in the US, Canada, Argentina, Spain and South Africa, starting in 1996," a spokesman said.
The company was backed by the government in Manila, which approved GM cultivation last year. "It's absurd - no biology student will believe it," said Artemio Salazar, the director of the maize programme of the Philippine department of agriculture.
"The implication of the study is that the resistant gene got inserted into the human gene, which is impossible."
Greenpeace called for more research. "There is such a huge amount of uncertainty around these crops," a spokesman said.
But Willy de Greef, a biotech law consultant formerly employed by the Swiss agrochemicals company Syngenta, expressed surprise at Prof Traavik's findings, saying research showed Bt maize pollen did not carry the toxin so no reaction should occur. "One would want a scientific panel to look at Traavik's results," he told Reuters .
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Dismay over GM licence
Wednesday February 25, 2004
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/gmdebate/Story/0,2763,1155356,00.html
Letter, Prof Ben Mepham
As a former member of the Biotechnology Commission set up by the government to advise on strategy for GM use in agriculture, I am dismayed by its apparently cavalier attitude to the licensing of GM herbicide-tolerant maize. It was emphasised in our report, Crops on Trial, that we certainly did not consider the results of the farm-scale evaluations (FSE) were "the final piece of the jigsaw" in deciding on the whether GM crops should be grown commercially in the UK. Far more is at stake, as is patently evident from the widespread apprehensions expressed in the GM nation debate held last year.
Yet, if the leaked Cabinet Office minutes (Leader, February 20) are aanything to go by, it seems that by treating the FSE results as the sole criterion, the government is totally ignoring the advice of its own advisers.
Moreover, the deficiencies of the FSEs themselves - in comparing management of GM maize with that employing a herbicide (atrazine) soon to be banned in the EU - are inexplicably discounted. Given the recommendation of the advisory committee on releases to the environment that "further work be conducted to investigate the implications of the impending withdrawal of atrazine", a decision to licence would smack of irresponsibility. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the government's decision has far more to do with striking a political bargain with the US government than with a belief in the oft-cited "sound science".
Prof Ben Mepham
Southwell, Notts