Good crop, bad crop: French scientists round up on Monsanto ‘cancer corn’ study

October 23rd, 2012

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

Six leading French academies have condemned last month’s controversial study that linked genetically-modified corn and weedkiller produced by agri-giant Monsanto with cancer. The verdict was backed by two government-commissioned scientific reviews.

The national academies of agriculture, medicine, pharmacy, sciences, technology and veterinary studies put out an unprecedented joint statement condemning the findings on NK603 corn published last month by molecular biologist Gilles-Eric Séralini, from the University of Caen.

“Given the numerous gaps in methods and interpretation, the data presented in this article cannot challenge previous studies which have concluded that NK603 corn is harmless from the health point of view,” said the statement, “as are, more generally, genetically modified plants that have been authorised for consumption by animals and humans.”

Séralini, a long-time vocal opponent of genetically-modified crops, gave several groups of rats Monsanto’s NK603 corn, which had been modified to develop resistance to Roundup, a popular pesticide also sold by the US company. The study lasted for two years and allegedly showed rats given NK603, both untreated and treated with Roundup, developing a higher rate of cancer than a control group.

NK603 has been approved in the EU since 2003, but not grown on a commercial scale (while France does not permit GM crops to be cultivated at all). Most of the modified corn reaches the food chain as livestock feed imported from major producers abroad.

The study – whose findings contradicted dozens of previous safety reviews – made its way to the front pages and resulted in calls for a ban on GM foods in Europe, which are already subject to severe restrictions.

In their statement, the academies appeared to question Séralini’s integrity. His study, co-authored with Dr Spiroux, a homeopathy and acupuncture specialist, was largely financed by anti-GM activists and organic food supermarkets (though this is not in itself an exceptional practice). Its findings were disseminated through a group of handpicked sympathetic journalists, who signed a confidentiality clause forbidding them to show the paper to other scientists prior to the deadline of publication. The journalists then unleashed a massive campaign, whose alarmist tone was soon picked up by media outlets throughout the world.

With just a few articles, these journalists set off a media firestorm that renewed concerns about GM foods and forced the mainstream scientific establishment onto the defensive.

“Hyping the reputation of a scientist or a team is a serious misdemeanor when it helps to spread fear among the public that is not based on any firm conclusion,” said the academies’ statement.

A statement from the French National Centre for Scientific Research criticized Séralini’s media onslaught on ethical grounds last week, claiming it confused the public on major and sensitive issues.

The censure was supported by the simultaneous verdicts of the Higher Biotechnologies Council (HCB) and the National Agency for Food Safety (ANSES), two leading government agencies charged with reviewing the concerns raised in the study. Both bodies dismissed it, and said that it did not give enough ground for a wholesale review of GM crop suitability.

“The data is insufficient to establish scientifically a causal link… or to support the conclusions or pathways suggested by the authors,” declared ANSES.

Widespread methodological criticism of the paper appeared upon publication, with Tom Sanders, head of the nutritional sciences research division at King’s College London, saying the study was a “statistical fishing trip” – manipulated from the start to achieve a specific result.

Séralini used Sprague-Dawley rates for the study. The sub-species are susceptible to developing tumors, with two-thirds of the males and more than half of the females expected to die from them during the course of a two-year experiment regardless of what they ingested. The ubiquity of tumors makes them an unusual choice for a study about carcinogenic effects of a certain food, as it is difficult to make out the impact from the already astronomically high cancer rate. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) recommends that only rats with a survival rate of more than 50 percent (which are easily available) are used for two-year studies.

The second problem appears to be the small sample size. The OECD recommends that 50 rats of each sex are used for any test group. Séralini used test groups of ten, meaning the control group for two years was only twenty rats in total. So the difference between the groups fed NK603 corn and the control for the experiment was one or two dead rats over a period of two years. In some cases, the results were in direct contrast with the study’s claims: some rats subjected to a diet of Roundup on its own actually survived the two years in greater quantities than ones fed an organic diet. Rather than believing that drinking water contaminated with pesticides helps to decrease cancer, critics say that in such a small sample size noticeable differences in results can be explained by chance.

In response to the questions, Séralini, who has caused several similar controversies with his consistently anti-GM studies since 2004, says that he stands by his conclusions, but that he will not share the detailed observation records that formed the foundation of his paper with any establishment bodies until they introduce a ban on genetically-modified foods.

Despite the dismissal of the study by authorities not only in France, but in Germany, Australia and by the European Food Safety Authority in recent days, its impact upon release has raised Europeans’ apprehension about so-called ‘Frankenfoods’.

The latest 2010 Eurobarometer survey on the issue showed that 59 percent of all Europeans believe that genetically-modified food is unsafe.

Ten percent of the world’s agricultural land is used for GM crops, though the figure is only 0.06 percent in Europe.

Following the latest crisis of confidence sparked by only a single paper, HCB and ANSES have called for yet more widespread follow-up studies into the safety of GM crops.

Igor Ogorodnev, RT