Friday 21 November 2014

GMO IS GLOBAL EXTERMINATOR!



GMOs will Unleash Global Killer 'Ecocide' across the Planet, warns Prominent Scientist.
A top scientist and "risk engineering" expert is now publicly warning that GMOs pose a dire, genuine threat to the continuation of life on Earth.
Nassim Taleb, author of The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness, says that, GMOs have the potential to cause:
 "An irreversible termination of life at some scale, which could be the planet."

His full explanation is presented in
his public paper which describes how even a small risk per crop species can still result in global ecocide if pursued with abandon.
And Taleb explains further that, "The risk of ruin is not sustainable, like a resource that gets depleted in the long term (even in the short term)”.
He continues by saying, “By the ruin theorems, if you incur a tiny probability of ruin, as a "one-off" risk, survive it, then repeat the exposure, you will eventually go bust with probability = 1."  (Where "probability 1" means a 100% chance.)

Rational thinking automatically leads to skepticism of GMO safety:

This sober, scientific conclusion is of course entirely rational and founded in clear thinking.
The self-deluded GMO zealots and paid Monsanto trolls predictably try to gloss over these risks in their quest for ego, profits and power, but that does not mean such risks do not exist.

In fact, as Taleb convincingly argues, Genetically Engineered crops are specifically designed to have a survival advantage over conventional crops, allowing them to better resist droughts or infestations of pests or weeds.
This survival advantage - if it is as real as seed manipulators claim - means genetically engineered plants can out-compete non-GMO crops in open fields.
The genetic pollution which is already underway across North America will only get worse, therefore; and there's no reversing it because all living systems - even genetically engineered ones - have a natural drive to spread, multiply and survive.

The result is that GMO crops will out-compete and thereby displace non-GMO crops over time.
Does this matter? Indeed it does because the rise of GMOs is nearly synonymous with the collapse of genetic diversity in seeds and food crops.

You don't have to go back very far in history to find examples of mono-cultured food crops failing due to lack of genetic diversity:
  • The Irish Potato Famine of 1845-1852 was caused by over-reliance on a genetically narrow food crop.  Shockingly, one-third of the Irish population relied on a single crop, and when potato blight (a fungal microorganism) successfully attacked the crop, over one million people died from starvation.
  • The current crisis in world banana productions is caused because nearly all commercial banana trees are genetically identical clones.
  • The near-collapse of Florida citrus due to disease is also caused by a striking lack of genetic diversity across citrus orchards.


A loss of genetic diversity is a pathway to global disease and starvation!: 
Any legitimate scientist in the fields of anthropology, genetics or agriculture will warn you that low genetic diversity is the first step towards crisis and collapse of any given population.
When genetic diversity is lost, the entire species becomes vulnerable to being wiped out by epidemic disease.

This principle is irrefutable and widely recognized as truth among nearly all objective and genuine scientifically-literate thinkers... except those pushing GMOs, of course.
Those denialists selectively edit "scientific truth" to exclude any concerns that might question the wisdom of displacing the world's treasure of seed diversity with corporate-patented seeds.
The Precautionary Principle is gladly thrown out the window when corporate profits are to be realised from doing so.

Transgenic GMOs could cause catastrophic ecocide:
Beyond the loss of genetic diversity, Taleb is also concerned about the possibility of catastrophic transgenic effects which could somehow weaken the world's food crops in ways human scientists never intended or anticipated. This will inevitably lead to a high level of Toxicity and Deficiency humanity.
Murphy's Law - which states that:..anything that can go wrong will go wrong - is widely recognized as a frustrating truth across physics, medicine, computer science and space exploration.
However, bizarrely, magically and irrationally, it is declared null and void only for GMOs, where the roll of the dice quite literally threatens the sustainability of future life on our planet.

Taleb explains further that, even if the chance of any single genetically engineered crop going wild and unleashing global crop failures is very small, the fact that companies like Monsanto and DuPont seek to dominate the global seed supply by perpetually releasing more and more genetically engineered crops means that sooner or later, a genetic catastrophe is all but inevitable.

If you play Russian Roulette every weekend, in other words, and there really is a live round in one of the gun's chambers, sooner or later you are bound to blow your brains out.  
This is true even if the revolver has 1000 chambers (with 999 of them empty); so that the odds of losing seem incredibly small each time you play. (Interestingly, Taleb uses this exact same illustration in his paper...)

Taleb continues by saying that, the cost of losing is so great that even tiny odds of failure may not be acceptable.  After all, we're talking about the entire future of life on our planet.

GMOs may unleash mass global crop failures followed by starvation and disease:
Mike Adams also did warn precisely about this issue around 2012 in his "Murdered by Science" series of articles  in which he opined that the careless application of science – in fact, quack-science – could be putting the entire existence of the human cosmogony at risk. 
In fact, this goes beyond medical quackery; because these scientists know perfectly well beyond any reasonable doubt what they are doing and why they are doing it.
And he did point out that GMOs are in the most extreme class of pollutants because they are self-replicating.
Hence, it is imperative that those articles, which have been widely derided by corporate-paid prostitute-scientists to troll the web to attack reason, should become a must read and researched even today.
Note: For the records, Mike Adams is not anti-science; this he has loudly made abundantly clear over the years; and, neither is any one of us in the pursuit to preserving humanity; so long as the Precautionary Principle is adhered to.
While chemical spills can eventually be cleaned up, and even heavy metals can be remediated over time, genetically engineered DNA that escapes into the wild can never be put back into a box.

Self-replicating pollution is the worst class of pollution, far exceeding even the risk of nuclear accidents wiping out humankind.
And as Taleb says, "As humans, we are ill equipped to understand the mathematics behind such risks."
And guess what! He is correct: the human brains are not hard-wired to fully grasp the long-term implications of self-replicating pollution.
In the same way, most people are utterly incapable of accurately imagining the long-term outcomes of compounded interest - a phenomenon which eerily reflects the spread of self-replicating pollution.

How Dishonest Science Fools the Uneducated Masses:
Since humans are not hard-wired to grasp the long-term risks of self-replicating pollution - as posed by genetically engineered crops - it is all too easy for corporate-paid prostitute-scientists to pull the wool over the eyes of the public and falsely claim GMOs present no risks whatsoever.
This is why every single scientist who is currently promoting GMOs is, in fact, a threat to the continuation of human life on our planet.
By deceiving the public with sleek advertising and; backed by megabucks corporate media promotions; and in so doing glossing over the very real threats to life posed by GMOs, these so-called scientists are directly contributing to the spread of GMO genetic pollution which may end up in genuine catastrophe and massive loss of life; which indeed in my opinion is their main agenda: Global Depopulation!

Imagine the global collapse of all GM corn crops.  Or imagine the collapse of global soy production. Every crop which is GMO has some risk of being wiped out in a catastrophic manner caused by the un-natural manipulation of the crop's genetic code.

The history of scientific advancement, of course, is rife with huge failures to foresee unintended consequences:
Perhaps the most important example of that is found in the current rise of superbugs across modern hospitals.
Utterly unforeseen by the world's top scientists and pharmacological researchers, superbugs have now risen to such prominence in our health care system that even the CDC has warned that the age of antibiotics is over.

Superbugs, in fact, were a Product of Antibiotics. As drug companies churned out the drugs to "beat disease" - and doctors prescribed those drugs to hundreds of millions of patients worldwide - the perfect environment was created for the nurture and spread of antibiotic-resistant superbugs, many of which are fatal to patients.

As Mike says, he personally knew three people who were killed in U.S. hospitals by superbug infections.
In August 2010, experts have warned of a new superbug that is resistant to even the most powerful antibiotics entering UK hospitals.  It is estimated that hospital superbugs kill about 5000 people in the UK alone each year and costs the NHS about £1 billion.
Superbugs are also the new death pandemic in America, and they are currently killing 48,000 Americans each year.
Similar death rates have also been reported in other parts of the world including, Canada and Australia.
Indeed, they were inadvertently unleashed by scientists with no intention of causing death and destruction.
Rather, those scientists working on antibiotics genuinely believed they were saving lives with no downside. 
At first, it all seemed true - antibiotics inarguably saved many lives early on.  But now, antibiotics are in fact the reason why deadly superbugs have escaped the reach of modern medicine and genuinely threaten the human race with incurable infections.

Scientists are not immune to making catastrophic mistakes that cause massive death:
The Superbugs lesson desperately needs to be understood by the self-deluded corporate-paid prostitute-scientists currently pushing GMOs.  
Importantly, they need to swallow their arrogance for just long enough to understand that their INTENTION does not control the long-term effects of their ACTIONS.

Just because they wish for GMOs to "feed the world" does not mean they will.  In fact, positive intentions can and do frequently blind scientists to the downsides of their own innovations.
In examples after examples, scientists who believed they were pursuing technology for the betterment of humankind ended up inadvertently contributing to mass death and destruction.

The Manhattan Project, Anyone?:
The dropping of atomic bombs – weapons of mass destruction - on civilian populations in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a catastrophe that was eventually contained.
The damage, although immense, was “limited” and could not mysteriously replicate itself over time.
GMOs, on the other hand, are like seeds of mass destruction because they can replicate, spread, conquer and annihilate!

Consequently, controlling and containing their trail of destruction may not be possible once they are unleashed.
Alas! They have already been unleashed.
Genetic pollution is now widespread across our agricultural landscape, and the vast majority of organic farms in many parts of the world have experienced some level of contamination from genetically engineered crops.

Why so few people are capable of rationally discussing the ecological risks of GMOs:
In a very real sense, most human beings are cognitively incapable of participating in any rational discussion of these issues.  Indeed rational issues that task our critical thinking capacity.
This includes most scientists, by the way, who are themselves just as vulnerable to peer influences and false mythologies as anyone else.
In the name of "science," far too many scientists today merely embarrass themselves by pushing obscenely silly arguments in defense of GMOs, claiming utterly stupid things like, "humans have tinkered with the genetic code of plants for thousands of years. Genetic engineering is no different."

Although this is the most frequently-invoked argument by GMO denialists, it is blatantly idiotic and grossly deceptive from the start.
Selective breeding of various phenotypes within the genetic pool of a given species in no way equates to cross-species DNA manipulation which combines insect or soil genes with plant genes.
Any person who even attempts to equate these two concepts does nothing more than affix a giant "DUNCE" sticker to their own foreheads. (And yes, numerous scientists invoke this silly argument every single day, across the mainstream media.)

Taleb also addresses this same issue head-on in his public paper, explaining:

Top-down modifications to the system (through GMOs) are categorically and statistically different from bottom up ones (regular farming, progressive tinkering with crops, etc.) There is no comparison between the tinkering of selective breeding and the top-down engineering of taking a gene from an organism and putting it into another. Saying that such a product is natural misses the statistical process by which things become "natural."

The Abandonment of Caution in the Quest for Profits:
The next idiotic argument put forth by desperate corporate-paid prostitute-scientists is that GMOs aren't dangerous because there's no evidence they are dangerous.
As stupid as this sound, it is also the faith-based argument of the chemical industry which insists "all chemicals are safe until such time as they are proven dangerous."

If this bass-awkward logic sounds familiar, it's because it is also invoked by the processed food industry in claiming that all food additives, preservatives and chemicals are inherently safe unless and until they are proven dangerous.
The question however is this: have they ever allowed any independent researches to challenge their postulations?
And as a reminder, let us go back up to the current lessons of the cause of Superbugs; with the warning that it is a “ticking time bomb”! With some claiming, it “ranks alongside terrorism”. 
Are there any lessons to be learnt from history?  If indeed there are, then we must not be seen to be creating another “ticking time bomb”!

What all this non-logic has in common is an illogical presumption of safety.
This has always been the argument of the mass poisoners called scientists of our world.
Regardless of the poison being discussed - BPA, mercury fillings, pesticide chemicals, DDT, toxic heavy metals, triclosan, MSG and several other - its corporate backers have consistently and predictably hired swaths of prostitute-scientists to declare the substance to be "safe until proven otherwise."

The Tragic Kesson of Lead Arsenate Pesticides:
This presumption of safety sooner or later ends very badly.
For over a hundred years, the heavy metals pesticide lead arsenate was "presumed safe."
Made primarily of lead and arsenic, it was indeed very effective at killing pests that threatened food crops.
Consequently, farmers across North America and around the world sprayed it on their food crops, producing amazing quantities of food... at first, anyway.

But before long, what have we seen: the lead and arsenic bio-accumulated in agricultural soils; poisoning the trees that produced the food as well as the consumers.
To this day, soils across the world remain heavily poisoned by these deadly heavy metals, which is one of the reasons why so many Superfood products sold today contain such high levels of heavy metals.
Lead arsenate - just like GMOs - was "presumed safe" because it didn't cause immediate death to anyone.
And according to corporate-sponsored prostitute-scientists, anything that doesn't kill you within seconds is automatically presumed to be safe!
 And by implication, the chemical or technology consequences are wilfully swept under the rug and ignored.
Corporations do lean on government regulators until the cover-up becomes a policy.  At that point, both government and industry become active collaborators in the mass poisoning of the human race.
In this regards therefore, Mike Adams breakthrough article, The Battle For Humanity is Nearly Lost, which covers the conclusions below in details, is a must read.
In conclusion:
No self-replicating technology can be presumed safe if we hope to survive:
Mike Adams, has as a result of the foregoing opined that the human civilization may not survive the next 100 years. 

He further states that our species is too shortsighted, too much driven by insatiable greed and too easily manipulated to survive its own corporate-led destruction. 

He continues by saying that the quest for short-term profits maximization by the corporate industry blinds nearly everyone to the long-term implications; and that the fact that the masses are already heavily poisoned by this very process makes it nearly impossible for the public consciousness to achieve sufficient lucidity to halt the quickening pace of self-destruction.

He does add comically that, “I only write this out of a fondness for galactic amusement, not out of any real hope that humanity can save itself from destruction via heavy metals, synthetic chemicals, pharmaceuticals and GMOs”.
He again adds that, if on the off chance that he was wrong in his prediction of humanity's demise, if we are to survive as a species, such survival will necessitate the global embracing of the Precautionary Principle across all realms of science and technology.

In the light of this he warns that, even if we halt Monsanto and agree to have all the criminal biotechnology scientists halted from committing ecocide, we are all very likely going to be overrun by artificial intelligence before the year 2050, regardless of what else happens in agriculture or synthetic chemicals. 

Just as with GMOs, today's most brilliant computer scientists are wholly incapable of understanding the long-term implications of the race for conscious machines and advanced AI tech.

The result will almost certainly be that humans will invent the technologies that destroy humanity, and we will all go down in history as the race of sentient beings who were smart enough to invent amazing technologies but too stupid to restrain them.

Source: 


  1. http://www.naturalnews.com/044261_GMOs_ecocide_environmental_collapse.html#ixzz2vo2BQSeN
  2. http://www.naturalnews.com/044261_GMOs_ecocide_environmental_collapse.html#ixzz2vo1omMvU
  3. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-10925411. Accessed: 21st. November 2014.
  4. http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/impactcampaign/campaignpriorities/healthandwell-being/hospitalsuperbugs/hospitalsuperbugs.aspx. Accessed: 21st. November 2014.

Note: This article was originally written by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger at Natural New earlier this year.

Monday 17 November 2014

Ten Research Facts About GM Corn

Research Facts About GM Corn
Ten things the mainstream media didn't tell you about the Seralini GM corn study
It has been two years now since French researcher and scientist Gilles-Eric Seralini published his ground breaking study on the deleterious effects of eating Monsanto's genetically-modified (GM) corn.

This publication is supposed to have put paid to any confusions about GMO and why they are bad for our existence as human beings; and generally lead to an honest debate on the question of GMOs!

However, there are still millions of people out there who are still confused as ever before, about the facts; and indeed, about who controls the information we need to know about GMO food within our ecosystem.

To help sort things out, here are ten (10) facts about the study that you probably heard nothing about from the mainstream media:

1): 

Seralini's study was a Chronic Toxicity                  Study, not a Cancer study.

Not long after being published, Seralini's study was maliciously ripped apart by "skeptics," the media and many industry-backed institutions that claimed it was a badly-designed cancer study.
But the truth is that Seralini's study was actually a chronic toxicity study, and one that met or exceeded all accepted scientific standards.

2): 

No other long-term studies have ever been      conducted on NK603 GM corn.

The chorus of whining that ensued about how Seralini's study allegedly contradicted all other similar studies is also invalid, as no other similar studies have ever been conducted -- Seralini's study is the only long-term study involving Monsanto's NK603 GM corn that has ever been conducted.

3): 

There was Nothing Wrong with the Types of    Rats Seralini used.

Another popular criticism involves the Sprague-Dawley (SD) variety of rat used by Seralini in his study. This same variety has been used by Monsanto on many occasions in its 90-day "safety" studies on GMOs.

4): 
SD Rats and Humans are almost equal Prone        to Developing Cancer.
Contrary to what you may have heard, SD rats are not inherently more prone to cancer than humans, and in fact have almost an equal risk with humans.
This makes them a perfect choice for a long-term safety study on GMOs, vindicating Seralini in his use of them.

5): 

Seralini's study far more in-depth than any     'safety' study ever conducted by Monsanto.

It is hypocritical for the mainstream scientific community to criticize Seralini's study methodologies, especially considering the fact that they were far more rigorous than those used by Monsanto to gain GMO approval.

Seralini's sample sizes, testing protocols and other methods all exceed those routinely used by the biotechnology industry.

6): 

Rejecting Seralini's study means rejecting         all industry-backed safety studies.

Logically speaking, there is no way to reject Seralini's findings about the dangers of GM corn without also rejecting the findings of industry-backed studies that claim GM corn is safe.

Using the same arguments of the vested scientists and media outlets that have attacked Seralini, the bulk of published data on GMOs is thus false, which means GMOs have no place on the consumer market.

7): 

Seralini's study proves industry studies to          be fraudulent.

The only one of its kind conducted for longer than 90 days, Seralini's study also shows that the dangers of GMOs, which are often denied, are actually real.

They just show up past the time threshold used in all industry-backed studies -- the first tumours appeared no earlier than four months into Seralini's study.

8): 

Toxicity observed in Monsanto studies              confirmed by Seralini's study.

Though it often goes unreported, Monsanto's own GMO safety studies have observed toxicity from exposure and consumption.
However, this toxicity is routinely written off as being "not biologically meaningful." But Seralini's study confirms that, if Monsanto's studies were performed for longer than 90 days, these same markers of toxicity would develop into the diseases observed by Seralini.

9): 

Governments do not require the types of           long-term studies conducted by Seralini.

The reason why Seralini's study was accused of being out in left field is that, no other similar long term studies are ever conducted, due to the fact that governments around the world simply don't require them.

If they did, the world would have a much different understanding about the alleged safety of GMOs.

10): 

Even short-term studies have observed             Toxicity from GMOs.

Despite a lack of proper long-term safety testing, a number of independent, short-term laboratory and farm studies have, indeed, observed toxicity due to GMO exposure.

Any claim to the contrary is simply a lie, and Seralini's study helps affirm this other research.

Sources for this article include:

http://gmoseralini.org

http://www.naturalnews.com

http://www.naturalnews.com

Note: This article was originally written by Natural News staff writer, Ethan Huff about a year ago.

Sunday 16 November 2014

Scientific Journal Retracts Study Exposing GM Cancer Risk




The Journal of Food and Chemical Toxicology appears to have violated scientific standards by withdrawing a study which found that rats fed on a Monsanto GM corn were more likely to develop cancer than controls,  William Engdahl investigates.

Is this part of an attempt by Monsanto and the life science industry to seize control of science?

Stringent criteria exist for a serious scientific journal to accept a peer-reviewed paper and to publish it. Strict criteria are also defined according to which an article can be withdrawn after publication.

The Journal of Food and Chemical Toxicology has apparently decided to violate those procedures, announcing that it is retracting a long-term study, published a year ago, on the toxic effects of NK603 - a genetically modified (GM) variety of maize owned by the biotechnology and agrochemical giant Monsanto.

Some background Information:

In its November 2012 issue, the Journal of Food and Chemical Toxicology published a paper titled 'Long term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize' by Gilles-Eric Séralini and his team of researchers at France's Caen University.

It was a highly important study as it was the first and, astonishingly, still the only long-term study under controlled conditions of possible effects of a diet of GM maize treated with Monsanto's Roundup herbicide.

Séralini submitted his study results to the respected Journal following a rigorous four-month review by scientific peers regarding methodology, experimental design and other criteria. 

Seralini's group tested more than 200 rats of a diet of GMO corn over a period of a full two years, at a cost of €3 million. The study was done in absolute secrecy to avoid industry pressure.

The publication created an atomic blast rocking the entire edifice of the GMO industry. Pictures of test rats with grotesque cancer tumours appeared in newspapers around the world.

Séralini's group studied the effect of a Monsanto GM maize diet on the rats for much longer than Monsanto had done in their study submitted to the EU European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) for approval. 

The group conducted its study for the full two-year average lifetime instead of just 90 days, as in the Monsanto study.

The long-term span proved critical

The first tumours only appeared four to seven months into the study. 

In the industry's earlier 90-day study on the same GMO maize Monsanto NK603, signs of toxicity were seen, but were dismissed as "not biologically meaningful" by industry and EFSA alike. 

It now appears that those results were very biologically meaningful indeed.

Séralini's later study was carried out with the highest number of rats ever measured in a standard GMO diet study. 

The team also tested "for the first time three doses (rather than two in the usual 90 day long protocols) of the Roundup-tolerant NK603 GMO maize alone, the GMO maize treated with Roundup, and Roundup alone at very low environmentally relevant doses starting below the range of levels permitted by regulatory authorities in drinking water and in GM feed."

Their findings were more than alarming. 

The Seralini study concluded:

·       1): In females, all treated groups died two to three times more than controls, and more rapidly. This difference was visible in three male groups fed GMOs.

·       2):  All results were hormone and sex dependent, and the pathological profiles were comparable.


·       3):  Females developed large mammary tumours almost always more often than and before controls.

·       4):  The pituitary was the second-most disabled organ.

·       5):  The sex hormonal balance was modified by GMO and Roundup treatments.

·       6):  In treated males, liver congestions and necrosis were 2.5 - 5.5 times higher.

·       7):This pathology was confirmed by optic and transmission electron microscopy.

·       8):  Marked and severe kidney nephropathies were also generally 1.3 - 2.3 greater.


·       9):  Males presented 4 times more large palpable tumours than controls.


Monsanto on the defensive!

Monsanto and the related GMO industry immediately went on a war footing to control the potentially fatal damage from the Séralini study.

Suddenly, with worldwide attention on the Séralini results, the EU Commission and its EFSA were under fire as never before in their history.

Their reaction was worthy of a bad Agatha Christie murder novel. They piously announced that they had passed the Séralini study on to their EFSA scientific panel for evaluation.

The Brussels-based EU scientific food regulatory organization, EFSA, was under fire following the damning results of the long-term Séralini study. 

EFSA had recommended approval of Monsanto's NK603 Roundup-tolerant maize in 2009 without first conducting any independent testing. 

It admitted it had relied on "information supplied by the applicant [Monsanto]."

EFSA also admitted that the Monsanto tests on rats were for only 90 days.
Séralini's group noted that the massive toxic effects and deaths of GMO-fed rats took place well after 90 days, one reason longer-term studied were obviously warranted.

EFSA concluded at the time of its initial Monsanto NK603 approval in 2009 that, "data provided [by Monsanto] are sufficient and do not raise a safety concern."
 The Brussels-based body added:

"The EFSA GMO Panel is of the opinion that maize NK603 is as safe as conventional maize. Maize NK603 and derived products are unlikely to have any adverse effect on human and animal health in the context of the intended uses."
But now, the Séralini study suddenly called into question the safety of Monsanto's NK603 maize - and in the process cast grave doubt over the EFSA, and the entire regulatory control process for GMO foods.

The EU Commission was already on record stating that no independent non-GMO industry long-term studies were needed on animals to test their safety.

The EU guidelines for testing stated:

"Toxicological assessments on test animals are not explicitly required for the approval of a new food in the EU or the US. Independent experts have decided that in some cases, chemical analyses of the food's make-up are enough to indicate that the new GMO is substantially equivalent to its traditional counterpart...

"In recent years, biotech companies have tested their transgenic products (maize, soy, tomato) before introducing them to the market on several different animals over the course of up to 90 days. Negative effects have not yet been observed."

Note the key words are: "up to 90 days".
Séralini's study only observed serious tumours and other effects after 120 days in their two-year study.

EFSA cover-up

On November 28, 2012, only a few weeks after the study was published, EFSA in Brussels issued a press release with the following conclusion:

"Serious defects in the design and methodology of a paper by Séralini et al mean it does not meet acceptable scientific standards and there is no need to re-examine previous safety evaluations of genetically modified maize NK603."

Per Bergman who led EFSA's work on NK603, argued that Séralini had:
  •  used the wrong kind of rats; 
  • used not enough rats; and that 
  • the statistical analysis was inadequate. 
He said:

"EFSA's analysis has shown that deficiencies in the Séralini et al. paper means it is of insufficient scientific quality for risk assessment. We believe the completion of this evaluation process has brought clarity to the issue."

But judged by Bergman's standards, all toxicity studies on glyphosate and GMOs should be retracted - because they used the same type and approximate number of rats as those in the Séralini study.

At the very least, the 'precautionary principle' that applies where there is a potential for severe health damage to the human population would mandate that the EU Commission and its EFSA should order immediate further serious, independent long-term studies to prove or disprove the results of the Séralini tests.

The EFSA's refusal to re-examine its earlier decision to approve Monsanto GMO maize - no matter what flaws might or might not have been in the Séralini study - suggested that the regulator was trying to cover up for the GMO agrochemical lobby.

Many members of the EFSA GMO review panel had documented ties to Monsanto and the GMO industry, apparently creating serious conflicts of interest. 

Corporate Europe Observer, an independent EU corporate watchdog group, noted about the EFSA Response:

"EFSA failed to properly and transparently appoint a panel of scientists beyond any suspicion of conflicts of interest; and it failed to appreciate that meeting with Europe's largest biotech industry lobby group to discuss GMO risk assessment guidelines in the very middle of a EU review undermines its credibility." 

New blood at Elsevier

The official EFSA statement seemed to take the pressure off Monsanto. But so long as the Séralini study remained in the Elsevier Journal, it would maintain its scientific credibility - and continue to circulate and be cited by other scientists around the world.

Then out of the blue, in May 2013, six months after the Séralini study release, Elsevier announced that it had created a new position, that of 'Associate Editor for Biotechnology'

Conflict of interest:
The person they hired to fill it was Richard E. Goodman.  A former Monsanto employee?
 
Goodman was also employed by the industry-funded (including by Monsanto) pro-GMO lobby organization, the International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI).

Anti-GM campaigners say that ILSI's main role is to develop industry-friendly risk assessment methods for GM foods and chemical food contaminants, and work in regulation-making bodies to insert them into government and transnational regulations. 

One critical scientific website posed the obvious ethical sham of hiring Monsanto people to control GMO publications: 

"Does Monsanto now effectively decide which papers on biotechnology are published in FCT? 

And is this part of an attempt by Monsanto and the life science industry to seize control of science?"


Séralini paper retracted

Then on November 24, 2013, six months after Goodman took control of GMO issues at the Journal, Dr. A. Wallace Hayes, the editor of the Journal of Food and Chemical Toxicology, retracted the study by the team of Professor Séralini.
In his statement announcing the retraction he wrote:

"Unequivocally, the Editor-in-Chief found no evidence of fraud or intentional misrepresentation of the data. However, there is legitimate cause for concern regarding both the number of animals in each study group and the particular strain selected.

"The low number of animals had been identified as a cause for concern during the initial review process, but the peer-review decision ultimately weighed that the work still had merit despite this limitation.

 A more in-depth look at the raw data revealed that no definitive conclusions can be reached with this small sample size regarding the role of either NK603 or glyphosate in regards to overall mortality or tumour incidence.

"Given the known high incidence of tumours in the Sprague-Dawley rat, normal variability cannot be excluded as the cause of the higher mortality and incidence observed in the treated groups.

"Ultimately, the results presented (while not incorrect) are inconclusive, and therefore do not reach the threshold of publication for Food and Chemical Toxicology."

However these reasons for the extraordinary retraction a full year after publishing, violates the guidelines for retractions in scientific publishing set out by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), of which FCT is a member. 

According to the guidelines, the only grounds for a Journal to retract a paper are:
  • Clear evidence that the findings are unreliable due to misconduct (e.g. data fabrication) or honest error;
  • Plagiarism or redundant publication;
  • Unethical research.
Séralini's paper meets none of these criteria and Hayes admits as much. 

In his letter informing the professor of his decision, Hayes concedes that examination of Séralini's raw data showed no evidence of fraud or intentional misrepresentation of the data.

 As Claire Robinson of GM Watch points out:

"Inconclusiveness of findings is not a valid ground for retraction. Numerous published scientific papers contain inconclusive findings, which are often mixed in with findings that can be presented with more certainty.
It is for future researchers to build on the findings and refine scientific understanding of any uncertainties."

Elsevier's Fake Journals

Elsevier, the publisher of the Journal of Food and Chemical Toxicology, is one of the giants in worldwide scientific publications.  And they are apparently not so rigorous over scientific principle when it comes to making money.

In 2009, Elsevier invented an entire medical journal, the 'Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine', complete with editorial board, in order to publish papers promoting the products of the pharmaceutical manufacturer Merck.

Merck provided the papers, Elsevier published them, and doctors read them, unaware that the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine was simply a PR vehicle for the drug giant Merck. 

It later emerged that the AJBJM was just one of six such industry-sponsored Elsevier publications masquerading as peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Science Itself At Risk From Corporate Influence

In his statement on the Séralini retraction, Wallace Hayes expressed his thoughts over the peer-review process: 

"The peer-review process is not perfect, but it does work. The journal is committed to a fair, thorough, and timely peer-review process; sometimes expediency might be sacrificed in order to be as thorough as possible. The time-consuming nature is, at times, required in fairness to both the authors and readers."

But the real question here is the independence and scientific impartiality of the peer-reviewed journals, with their crucial role at the heart of the scientific process. 

The Séralini’s case suggests that they, and the publishing companies that own them, may be susceptible to undue influence from corporate behemoths. 

Human health - and the integrity of the scientific process itself - is under serious threat!

There currently well over 150 scientists who have pledge to boycott Elsevier over the Séralini retraction.



The original author of this article is William F Engdahl an award-winning geopolitical analyst and strategic risk consultant whose internationally best-selling books have been translated into thirteen foreign languages.

He is author of Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation.

This article is an extended version of an original article published on RT.com at rt.com/op-edge/monsanto-gmo-studies-reports-588/ . It is re-published here by kind permission of the author.

Source:
http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2185442/scientific_journal_retracts_study_exposing_gm_cancer_risk.html