Science Media Centre experts' disinformation tactics over dsRNA risks

1. Science Media Centre experts on regulatory bodies' approach to GM products
2. New paper on dsRNA type GMOs - Q&A with the authors

NOTE: The Science Media Centre of New Zealand has surpassed even the usual dire standards of SMCs around the world with its latest attempt at defending the indefensible with antiscientific doublespeak. 

Predictably the SMC of New Zealand has issued a couple of quotes from "experts" attacking Prof Jack Heinemann and colleagues' paper, released on 21 March, about the risks of a type of GMO designed to make new RNA interference (RNAi) molecules. 

Heinemann and colleagues had argued that the risks of these substances are far-reaching but have not been assessed by any regulatory body in the world. They put forward a possible risk assessment system that could fairly easily be implemented to fill the regulatory gap.

The SMC's main criticism of the paper - that RNA is, and always has been, a part of the foods we eat - is all too predictable, as well as being misleading. In fact, the authors had already answered it by the time the SMC got round to issuing their "spoiler" quotes! See below.

As for GM fan David Tribe's claim that "Any GM crop can be scrutinised using modern bioinformatics methods to ensure any issues about ds RNA or RNA silencing are addressed and avoided in the early stages of crop development" -- that is exactly the point that Heinemann and colleagues make in their paper. Their concern is that while any GM crop CAN be scrutinised in this way, it is not happening.

We hope the media treat the SMC's comments with the contempt they deserve.

Incidentally, the SMC "expert" Langridge also makes the following comment about one of the authors of the dsRNA paper, Dr Judy Carman: "In Australia, Dr Carman used her lawyers to try and silence scientific criticism of one of her recent press releases". 

This is untrue. Langridge made defamatory comments about Dr Carman that in no way constituted "scientific criticism" -- which is why the SMC had to remove the comments from its website following a letter from the lawyers!
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1. Experts on regulatory bodies' approach to GM products
SMC New Zealand, 26 Mar 2013
 http://www.sciencemediacentre.co.nz/2013/03/26/experts-on-regulatory-bodies-approach-to-gm-products/

Professor Peter Langridge,  chief executive of the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics, University of Adelaide comments:

"It is typical of the scare tactics used by these ideological opponents of GM technology, to totally ignore the fact that dsRNA is present in most food we consume and is therefore intrinsically harmless."

Dr David Tribe, Senior Lecturer in Food Biotechnology and Microbiology, Agriculture and Food Systems at University of Melbourne, comments:

"My main response is quite simple: the ds RNAs that are discussed in [the paper] are in every bit of food we eat, and in perhaps every plant and animal on the planet, and have been for millennia.

"Why GM food is singled out for special risk attention by this paper is rather puzzling. All plants pose the same questions, perhaps more so than GM crops because they are not scrutinised to the same extent as GM crops by safety authorities like FSANZ. Any GM crop can be scrutinised using modern bioinformatics methods to ensure any issues about ds RNA or RNA silencing are addressed and avoided in the early stages of crop development."
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2. New paper on dsRNA type GMOs - Q&A with the authors
GMWatch, 22 Mar 2013
 http://gmwatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=14718
[Excerpt]

GMW: But surely, RNA is, and always has been, a part of the foods we eat.

Authors: In this and a previous paper (Heinemann and others 2011), we have shown that there is no basis for extrapolating the safety of novel dsRNA molecules from the history of safe use of dsRNA molecules in the cells of plants, animals, fungi and microorganisms that we eat. This is the key distinction: the adverse effects that might arise from dsRNA are determined by the actual sequence of nucleotides in the molecule (sequence-determined risks) and not the chemical nature of RNA. While there are also sequence-independent risks that should not be ignored, there is a difference between the sequence of novel dsRNA molecules in GM crops and those in nature, and that is why arguments about all dsRNAs being safe are dangerously flawed.

An example that provides proof is corn engineered to resist the corn rootworm pest. Corn rootworm has always eaten maize roots and maize roots contain RNA (including forms of dsRNA). However, when Monsanto introduces a novel dsRNA of a specific sequence into the cells of the plant, the corn rootworm eating that RNA dies (Baum and others 2007; Gordon and Waterhouse 2007).