This week a team of French researchers released the results of a gmo feeding study that ran well beyond the traditional 90 days that have been done in the past.  The results can be seen in the pictures; rats developed tumors, cancers, vital organ failures and a host of adverse health effects. 

Not surprisingly this blow to the profit model for Monsanto, the world's leader in gmo crop patents and acres planted, brought supporters out in droves to offset the terrible picture painted by the longer term feeding study.

More interesting than the predictable blow back, from those who have a financial stake defending the hands that feed them, is that in the process of using business and technology hacks to argue a scientific defense.  

The time honored method perfected by big tobacco in the face of cancer evidence is to simply deploy their own science to create doubt.

In the face of the evidence that extending the testing period to allow negative health effects to be borne out, Forbes Business writer in his ignorance has actually opened a Pandora's box of risk and liability by confirming details of previously unreported variables affecting all feeding studies done in America.

What the aptly named Worstall notes is a point that has been a concern of mine for many years, the food given to the laboratory animals is assumed by the research community to be a constant and in fact it is highly variable. 

Tim Worstall...A point that I keep bringing up, that nobody seems to connect with, is that every research animal in the US has been eating GMOs for well over a decade. These animals are closely monitored in animal colonies by trained professionals that include veterinarians and pathologists and biomedical researchers.

If there were problems in their food, that would be obvious. Not only would it be obvious, it would be shouted from the rooftops.

If you think there are horrible consequences for them eating GMOs, you’d also have to assume the last 10+ years of biomedical research was awry because of the food. And that’s absurd.

When there are tests done for new drug development it should make a great deal of difference to the researchers whether some of their rats are consuming an expressed pesticidal protein from a Bt corn variety while others are eating herbicide tolerant forms with an entirely different genetic makeup.

The fact that we have so little awareness of Monsanto's genetic manipulation of our food supply that researchers would have no clue to question unexpected results are tied to their assumed constant of food as a variable is not a basis of proof but cause for real panic.

Worstall has failed to grasp the most basic principle of feeding experiments and that is to have a constant and a variable to compare.  If in fact the genetic composition of all the feed is unknown and highly variable it renders the results useless.

Worstall's argument is that going beyond 90 days to see tumors is insignificant because other researchers would have noticed problems by now.  That's insipid since most feeding studies last 90 days and the specific researchers involved would attribute results of any particular study to the subject of the test they are making.

Furthermore this nit wit argues the industry standard talking point that Americans have been eating gmo for more than a decade and we have seen no evidence of harm.

Considering we have a don't look, don't find policy that does not test for affects nor do post market followup, we need to view the entire Nation as a Roundup Ready feeding experiment.

What we have seen Nationwide is a spike in food allergies that concentrate in the gmo crops of corn and soy as well as its associated glyphosate soaked starter crops like peanuts. 

We have seen dramatic increases in auto-immune illness including diabetes and arthritis and psorasis to name a few whose soaring drug treatment sales reflect the boom in occurance.

America has also seen an explosion in obesity, especially among the very young in numbers nerer before affected in the history of mankind and while Worstall may like to use tumors as his sole measure of adverse affects, people are not identical to rats nor to one another.

Medical doctors do not understand why each one of us responds to external factors in a given way, why it is that every smoker does not get lung cancer nor every Agent Orange veteran have children with diabetes. 

We can't guess who will have auto-immune failures from breast implants or which cancer patients will recover from what chemotherapy or radiation regimen.  What they are learning is that the individual's unique genetic makeup changes the expected outcome for any particular combination.

What Worstall and the bevy of Monsanto defenders have in common is either stupidity or greed or both in sufficient quantities to put their names on claims far beyond their area of expertise and make medically significant proclamations to protect a corporate profit model. 

Last week I wrote about TIME magazine jumping in to sell hope for Monsanto's future pipeline of drought tolerant crops, which again is generated by a business and technology writer who totally ignores any question of human health effects.

When there are "science based" defenders of Roundup Ready or gmo food as safe they don't come from the medical community but plant PhDs who like to put doctor in their title and industry funds in their bank accounts.

The "science" arguments against Seralini are almost as lame, though not quite as damaging as Worstall's contortions calling the variability of all the feed in US trials into question. 

Like the Monsanto funded UC Davis crew attacking Prop37 label gmo ballot initiative in California traced to the biotech funded career advancement of Julian Aiston rebutted so beautifully by AppetiteForProfit, what we are faced with is the very real threat of a corporate media that puts public safety behind private profits.

There are endless examples of industry tools to manipulate public opinion and spread misinformation and doubt to support toxic policies, but unlike the ravages of economic destruction that the wealthiest can shelter themselves from, there is no bias from Mother Nature in sharing the effects of misapproved drugs or carcinogenic chemicals once they are released into the environment. 

It becomes a process of time released genocide and it is luck of the draw based on heredity, not bank balance that determines who gets cancer or diabetes, who lives with psoriasis or dies slowly with chronic ailments.  Mother Nature is infinitely democratic in her process of selection and that is the QED the shills ought to consider when evaluating the real benefit of promoting toxic policy for bankable income!

As a footnote and update the CRIGEN Team and Prof Seralini's team have posted an FAQ reply to the criticisms of their study.

http://www.criigen.org/SiteEn/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=368&Itemid=1

Tim Worstall Forbes "Proof Perfect GMO Study is Rubbish"

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/09/21/proof-perfect-that-the-seralini-paper-on-gm-corn-and-cancer-in-rats-is-rubbish/

FDA Notification ~ http://www.fda.gov/Food/Biotechnology/Submissions/ucm161130.htm