There is something very wrong when the editor of Elsevier Journal of Food and Chemical Toxicology, Dr A. Wallace Hayes, caved to political pressure and retracted a long-term PEER-REVIEWED study on the toxic effects of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in 2013. You can read a pfd of the paper here: http://people.csail.mit.edu/seneff/glyphosate/NancySwanson.pdf The lead author on the paper, Dr. Nancy L. Swanson (she is a physicist, not a biologist, but she knows her methodology), and other scientists like her are refusing to shut up and sit down despite Monsanto’s concerted economic and political attacks. Good.
Other American scientists who are daring to point out some issues with GMOs and/or glyphosate are also getting called “quacks” – regardless of their academic and research credentials — because how DARE they point out issues when the paradigm is that GMOs are both a monolith and 100% safe? Meanwhile, the EU has put severe limits on the kinds of GMOs that can be sold or fed to humans “based on the precautionary principle enshrined in EU and international legislation” and because they believe the research of their peer-reviewed scientists:
“The lack of scientific consensus on the safety of GM foods and crops is underlined by the recent research calls of the European Union and the French government to investigate the long-term health impacts of GM food consumption in the light of uncertainties raised by animal feeding studies. These official calls imply recognition of the inadequacy of the relevant existing scientific research protocols. They call into question the claim that existing research can be deemed conclusive and the scientific debate on biosafety closed.”
One day, it may turn out that GMOs have no effect on gut microbiota. Until that day, I want to right to eschew GMO foods. Gut microbiota is too important to human health and functionality and mental health to be taken lightly.
It is also really, really hard to believe Monsanto’s assurances on the safety of GMOs when they are repeatedly busted lying.
