Frankenfoods for YOU

They have big guns-monSATAN...and they fight DIRTY-creeping around in farmers fields stealing soil samples...regardless of how it gets into the farmers field-by wind, by insect, by other animals...contamination occurs ruining the farmers crops and soil and monSATAN comes in and steals the land-this is the truth-the farmers rarely win...

Dead microbiologists the world over-many of them renowned...specialists in blood disorders, WMD, biologicals/pathogens...and so onweapons experts, astrophysicists-world class in their field


all kinds dying...


because the truth would of stopped them long ago


Declaration of Philip J. Regal, Ph.D.

United States District Court for the District of Columbia
Alliance for Bio-Integrity, et al. Plaintiffs
v. Donna Shalala, et al. Defendants.
Civil Action No. 98-1300 (CKK)

I, Philip J. Regal, state:

l. I am a biologist in the College of Biological Sciences and am Professor of Ecology, Behavior and Evolution at the University of Minnesota (St. Paul), where I have been on the faculty since 1970.

2. I have made several important contributions to the study of plant biology, particularly in the area of how genetics relates to adaptability and organization of organisms. I have nine publications on this particular topic among my contributions to the peer reviewed scientific literature. (A list of my publications and key presentations is attached.)

3. Since 1983, I have closely studied various safety issues concerning the use of recombinant DNA technology (RDNA technology; genetic engineering) to develop new plant varieties. My involvement has been both intensive and extensive. I have attended and sometimes organized scientific biosafety workshops for government agencies and scientific societies, presented at conferences, and published articles on agricultural genetic engineering in the scientific literature. I have consulted for and worked closely with government regulatory agencies, Congressional staff, scientific organizations, private corporations, and public interest groups.

4. It is my professional opinion that utilizing RDNA technology in production of food-producing organisms can be very powerful biologically and very different biologically from conventional forms of breeding. It entails a set of risks to human health that are not ordinarily associated with the latter. Such use of RDNA technology has the well-recognized potential to interfere with the normal activities of the engineered organism, for example so as to generate unexpected and unknown toxins, carcinogens, allergens and other anti-nutritive substances.

5. My own analyses, as well as a substantial body of published research, clearly establish that these types of unintended side effects are risks that cannot be lightly discounted. Moreover, although I have kept abreast of developments in biotechnology and have regularly read the relevant scientific literature, I am not aware of any reliable study published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature which demonstrates that these risks are categorically either (1) negligible or (2) no greater than in the case of conventionally produced organisms. Nor am I aware of even one such peer-reviewed, professionally published study which has detailed scientific criteria for testing and evaluation and gone on to demonstrate that even one particular genetically engineered food is reasonably certain to produce no harm when eaten by a human being.

6. Rather, it is my considered judgment that the evidence to date, in its entirety, indicates there are scientifically justified concerns about the safety of genetically engineered foods and that some of them could be quite dangerous. Further, in the absence of reliable toxicological tests, it is not possible to determine which of these new foods are dangerous and which are not.

7. It is also my observation that there is not general recognition of the safety of genetically engineered foods among those members of the scientific community qualified to make such a judgment. In fact, it has been my personal experience over numerous years that many of those experts who publicly subscribe to the position that these foods are as safe as their natural counterparts privately admit they have serious doubts. For instance, when I attended a conference on biotechnology in Annapolis, Maryland in 1988, at which many officials from federal regulatory agencies (including the FDA) were present, I was shocked to learn the extent of uncertainty. In informal discussions at meals and on walks, government scientist after scientist acknowledged there was no way to assure the safety of genetically engineered foods. Several expressed the idea that, in order to take this important step of progress, society was going to have to bear an unavoidable measure of risk.

8. Consequently, I am deeply troubled by the FDA's decision to permit the widespread marketing of untested genetically food products based on a stated presumption they are, in the general case, equivalent to, and thus are as safe as, their natural counterparts. As I have pointed out, there is no sound scientific basis for such a presumption and the weight of the evidence is against it. It is my considered opinion that such a presumption can only be made by systematically ignoring a large body of solid and relevant evidence.

9. To support its policy, the FDA appears to claim that if a gene from one species is forcibly and with only variable precision implanted into the DNA of a distant and dissimilar species, we can reliably assess the safety of the new organisms merely by analyzing the known characteristics of the two species and of the specific substance(s) that it was intended the foreign gene would produce. One prop of this argument is the notion that (1) if the substance produced by the foreign gene is substantially similar to a substance that is generally recognized as safe and (2) if the organisms of the target species are already generally recognized as safe to eat, then the genetically engineered organisms will also be safe -- assuming we observe no obvious change in key constituents or superficial qualities of taste or texture.

10. This notion is grossly at odds with biological reality. It is well known that science cannot reliably predict how a given substance will act within a genetic and cellular environment that is quite foreign to it. Not only could the chemical attributes or behavior of the foreign substance markedly change, but its very presence could alter important behaviors of the host cells. Moreover, the process of implanting the foreign gene that produces that substance could in itself disrupt cellular metabolism in numerous ways. Genetic vectors, markers, and regulatory bits of code are also commonly added along with the foreign gene, to further complicate uncertainties. To ignore the fact that the living systems involved have complex biochemical and developmental dynamics and that unusual high-technology genetic interventions have the real potential for unpredicted deleterious side effects is, at best, biologically naive.

11. However, while it might be no more than naive for a layperson to make such simplistic assumptions, it is otherwise in the case of a government regulatory agency that has been repeatedly informed of the facts. When such an agency persists in ignoring these facts, even though the safety of the food supply is at stake, its behavior is not merely scientifically unsound but morally irresponsible.

12. It is because I view the FDA's policy and practices regarding genetically engineered food to be irresponsible -- and because I regard the consequent risk posed for public health to be substantial -- that I have taken the step of joining the above-named lawsuit as a plaintiff. By standing as a plaintiff rather than merely participating as an expert witness, I hope to make clear to the public and the Court not only the extent to which I disagree with the agency's assumptions as a purely intellectual matter, but the degree to which I deplore its behavior on ethical grounds. Ultimately, I was compelled by my conscience to become a plaintiff, and I am proud to stand with so many other scientific experts who have similarly acted on the basis of ethical as well as strictly scientific principles.

13. In accordance with 28 U.S.C. sec. 1746, I declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct.

Executed on: May 28, 1999

[Signed]________________
Philip Regal, Ph.D.




:2manysheep:

Last Edited by ShadowDancer on 08/02/2009 12:06 AM

::kungkick::


The Virus Hazard

by Jaan Suurküla, MD

Summary

Viruses are packages of hereditary material, DNA or RNA. They can get into the cells and take over the command over the cells activities and make it produce new copies of viruses. This commonly kills the infected cells. Dangerous viruses have a great ability to penetrate into cells and to spread and multiply so that extensive damage is caused. While many viruses are species-specific, some viruses may cross species borders.

Practically all genetically engineered crops contain genetic material from viruses. Research has shown that these virus genes may combine with genes from infecting viruses. The serious thing is that experimental evidence indicates the new viruses created in this way may be more infectious, may cause more serious diseases, and may have a tendency to cross species borders.

There is not enough knowledge to assess the risk for the emergence of new virus diseases from genetically engineered crops.

There is no scientific basis for excluding the possiblility that the risk for creation of dangerous viruses in GE crops (and related weeds) is large enough to represent a significant threat when large numbers of crop plants are cultivated.

Introduction

A virus can be described as a package of hereditary material, DNA of RNA encapsulated by a protein coating. This coating has special properties that makes it stick on to cell walls. When attached, the virus DNA or RNA is transferred into the cell. Viral DNA and RNA has an ability to force the invaded cell to switch over from normal activity to producing large numbers of copies of the whole virus. The infected cell is commonly killed due to the infection, and if the number of infected cells is large enough, the whole organism will die. Some viruses may insert its DNA or RNA into a chromosome and remain silent for a long time (it is this kind of virus that are used in genetic engineering).

Virus genes are used very widely in genetic engineering. Experiments have shown that the artificial insertion of virus genes through genetic engineering make them prone to combine with genes from infecting viruses (so called recombination). Thereby viruses with new properties can be created. Some scientific observations indicate that such viruses tend to be more harmful than the natural viruses.

It is notable that even the largest biotech company does not deny the possibility that new viruses may be generated. For example, Roy Fuchs, Monsanto's director of regulatory science acknowledged that "some of the virus can recombine" in an article by Stan Grossfeld in The Boston Globe (09/23/98), published on line , Roy Fuchs, Monsanto's director of regulatory science acknowledged that "some of the virus can recombine."

Cauliflower Mosaic Virus (CaMV)

The most common virus DNA used in genetic engineering is the promoter of the Cauliflower Mosaic Virus (CaMV) used in plant genetic engineering. It is used in almost every case, including the presently most culitvated GE crops, the RoundupReady (RR) Soy of Monsanto, the Bt-Maize of Novartis, GE cotton and various varieties of GE Canola, a rapeseed variety widely cultivated today especially in Canada. Experiments have shown that the CaMV promoter may recombine with infecting genes yielding new viruses that may be more infectious than the natural viruses. For more details, see also "The Cauliflower Mosaic Virus promoter - a hazard in GE plants")

Recent research confirms these findings and indicates that the risks for combination with unrelated viruses is even greater than formerly understood. Studies have demonstrated that CAMV has a so called "recombination hotspot" which makes it prone to break up other DNA chains and join them at that point.

Mae-Wan Ho, biologist, Angela Ryan molecular biologist and Joseph Cummins, geneticist, have recently published a paper warning for the use of CaMV in crops.

This virus gene, they write, has the potential to reactivate dormant viruses or create new viruses in all species to which it is transferred. The development of cancer is another potential consequence.

The scientists "strongly recommend that all transgenic crops containing CaMV 35S or similar promoters should be immediately withdrawn from commercial production or open field trials. All products derived from such crops containing transgenic DNA should also be immediately withdrawn from sale and from use for human consumption or animal feed". Full text press release here. [ML] Full text here. [AL]

Also the US Department of Agriculture has expressed concern about such high-risk sequences that may trigger the process of viral replication":

Concerns at USDA about viral high-risk sequences

"..... At a meeting in Washington DC last week [Aug 1997], the US Department of Agriculture outlined possible restrictions aimed at reducing the risk of creating harmful new plant viruses .....These include a possible limit on the length of genetic sequences introduced into crop plants and the banning of genes that make functional proteins. The department is also worried about particularly high-risk sequences, such as those that trigger the process of viral replication."

[The CaMV DNA in GE crops is such a high risk sequence. It is still widely used in GE crops covering a large part of American fields. /The editor.]

[The suggested restrictions have not since been implemented to the best of our knowledge. /The editor]

Source: New Scientist magazine, 16 August 1997: "Field of genes: They have the biotechnology, but it may be running out of control, and the US is starting to worry"

Virus genes used for increasing disease resistance

Another possibly dangerous practice is the use of virus parts to make plants resistant to infecting viruses. Certain virus genes, coding for the virus protein capsule , are used for this purpose. These so called "capside genes" are combined with the CaMV promoter to ensure that they will be active in the host. Also the capsied genes have a propensity to recombine with invading viruses to create new pathogens that tend to be more aggressive than the original virus.

New viral pathogens could have an enormous impact on economically important crops, requiring considerable control costs. Source: Rissler, J. and M. Mellon. 1996. The Ecological Risks of Engineered Crops. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Sattelite RNA's

Another method to achieve increased virus resistance has been to insert so called viral "satellite RNA's". These genes are known to reduce the damage from a virus infection. But recent research found that such genes, when inserted into cucumbers, very often mutated into harmful variants (ref. Paulikaits P. And Rossinck MJ (1996). "Spontaneus change of a benign satellite RNA of cucumber mosaic virus to a pathogenic variant. Nature Biotechnology 14: 1264-1268).

Epidemics of new viruses might appear

Dr Joe Cummins, Professor Emeritus of Genetics at University of Western Ontario, Canada fears that the insertion of viruses may give rise to new plant disorders that may wipe out whole harvests. One plant only contains hundreds of millions of cells, each containing a CaMV virus gene. Anyone of these genes may combine with an infecting virus, generating a new virus.

It is not possible to estimate the size of the risk for the appearance of new virus diseases from genetically engineered virus parts in crops beacuse there is not enough research data available. Some researchers believe the risk is very small and others believe it is large enough to justify a prohibition of the use of virus parts in genetic engineering. But in the absence of sufficient research data, this is nothing but guesses. Considering the experimental evidence we can only say today that there is definitely a risk but of unknown size.

The serious thing is that it has been repeatedly shown experimentally that the new viruses may be more contagious and damaging and may also cross species borders. So viruses specialized on just one plant species might become infectious to other species. It is enough that one very malignant virus appears in only one cell for a new dangerous virus epidemic to appear.

Risk for harmful "GE viruses" spreading in USA and Canada?

About 30 percent (27 million acres) of the crop in USA of 1998 is calculated to be RR Soy. Also a large crop of GE Maize has been planted (19,6 million acres). In Canada, large crops of Canola are cultivated (about 7 million acres). Every cell in the present GE crops in USA and Canada contains virus genes. One plant only contains hundreds of millions of cells. The number of plants in the GE crops in North America is altogether thousands of billions.

Even if the scientists would be right who guess that the statistical risk is very small, the appearance of new hazardous viruses might be more likely than they may have realized. This is because they may have forgotten to consider the enormous large numbers of possible recombination events in one annual crop in USA + Canada. A corn plant, for example, contains about 1 billion cells and there is one CaMV promoter in each cell. There are about 50.000 plants in an average field, which means 50.000 billion recombination prone promoters per field. The gigantic acreage of of US GE crops therefore can be seen as a huge "experimental ground" for generation of new viruses with unpredictable and potentially hazardous outcomes. Even if the probability of a new dangerous virus to be generated would be extremely small, such an event may still occur due to the very large number of recombination opportunities present. Here is an analogy for you who are not so used to thinking in these terms:

Suppose there is a lottery with a million tickets. Then the chance of winning with one ticket is one on a million. But if you buy all the tickets, your chance will transform to 100% probability of winning. Every cell in the huge GE crop in North America is a "ticket" in the virus lottery. And there are zillions of cell "tickets" in the crop. Therefore, even if the chance for "winning" - for a new virus to turn up - would be extremely small, it may be likely to occur. Scientific laboratory experiments indicate that this probability may not be very small.

Even a single new very contagious virus strain might cause important damage, as it would rapidly multiply and might spread to a significant part of the crop. As it has been shown that GE-genes can readily be transferred to related weeds, these will become an uncontrollable reservoir of such virus genes even when cultivation of GE crops would cease. A highly contagious virus with low species specificity could in the worst case cause extensive damage to the crops and the ecology.

Conclusion

It has been scientifically established that new viruses may result from recombination with virus parts existing in GE organisms. Some studies indicate that these new viruses may become more harmful and less species specific that "natural" viruses. The size of this risk is unknown. Even if the statistical risk for the emergence of dangerous new viruses would be very small, they may still appear in North America as the number of GE virus genes in the crops is now extremely large.

One single new and highly contagious virus generated in this way might spread to a signficant part of the crops and cause extensive damage. There is presently no scientific basis for denying this possibility or even for saying that it is very unlikely as the size of the risk has not been investigated.

This is one of the reasons why we find it necessary to have a moratorium on the release of genetically engineered organisms. In addition, all presently cultivated GE crops should be withdrawn from the market.

Related articles

"Cauliflower Mosaic Viral Promoter - A recipe for Disaster?" a scientific article by Mae-Wan Ho, Angela Ryan, Joe Cummins

a) Press release about the article in non-technical language. [EL]

b) The article [AL]. This article summarizes recent research showing that the CaMV promoter has an unstable region a "recombination hotspot" that greatly increases the risk for generation of new viruses. It is maintained that the promoter may also increase the risk for cancer.

Rebuttals by the authors of critisism of the article:
Rebuttal 1. [AL]
Rebuttal 2. [AL]
"New corn viruses of unclear origin" Two new corn viruses have been discovered in the US. Their origin has not been elucidated. It is discussed whether they may have been generated in GE crops.

Published in May 1998. Last modified April 10, 2001

[link to www.psrast.org]




Last Edited by ShadowDancer on 08/02/2009 12:08 AM

Notice the date-see how effective monSATAN has been keeping the truth buried...

GM Expert Warns Of Cancer Risk From Crops

By Rob Edwards, Environment editor
Sunday Herald
December 08, 2002

Demand for Executive to ban crop trials until effects of GM food on health are studied

Eating genetically modified (GM) food could give you cancer. That is the stark warning today from one of Scotland's leading experts in tissue diseases.

Dr Stanley Ewen, a consultant histopathologist at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, says that a cauliflower virus used in GM foods could increase the risk of stomach and colon cancers.

He is calling for the health of people who live near the farm-scale GM crop trials in Aberdeenshire, Ross-shire and Fife to be monitored. Their food and water will be contaminated by GM material, he said, which could hasten the growth of malignant tumours.

'I don't want to be scare-mongering, I want to be understated,' Ewen told the Sunday Herald. 'But I'm very concerned that people who rely on local produce might be endangering themselves.'

The government, backed by its scientific advisors, has always insisted the GM trials pose no risk to human health or the environment. Never theless, the trials have provoked widespread opposition, with dozens of protesters arrested for damaging GM crops.

Ewen's warning, which has been delivered to the Scottish Parliament's Health and Community Care Committee, is bound to be seized on by critics . The committee is just completing an investigation into the safety of GM food and is hoping to report its findings this week.

Ewen, who has 29 years' experience as a histopathologist, is currently leading a pilot project in Grampian to screen people for colon cancer. In 1999, along with Dr Arpad Pusztai, a former researcher at Aberdeen's Rowett Institute, he published a study suggesting that GM potatoes harm rats.

In his submission to the health committee, Ewen expressed 'great concern' about the use of the cauliflower mosaic virus as a 'promoter' in GM foods. The virus is used like a tiny engine to drive implanted genes to express themselves.

But Ewen pointed out that the virus is infectious, and could act as a 'growth factor' in the stomach or colon, encouraging the growth of polyps. The faster and bigger polyps grow, the more likely they are to be malignant, he added.

There are also risks in feeding GM products like maize to cattle, he cautioned.

'It is possible cows' milk will contain GM derivatives that can be directly ingested by humans as milk or cheese. Even a lightly cooked, thick fillet steak could contain active GM material.'

GM material can be destroyed by cooking or boiling for 10 minutes, and it can be broken down by the acids and enzymes in the stomach. But Ewen is worried that genes in uncooked GM fruit and vegetables could survive common stomach infections.

'It is possible GM DNA could affect stomach and colonic lining by causing a growth factor effect with the unproven possibility of hastening cancer formation in those organs,' he stated.

Ewen stressed that he is not opposed to all GM technology, which he believes could have real benefits, particularly in medicine. But he is sufficiently alarmed by the current use of the technology to urge the health committee to call for a ban on GM crop trials while their safety is tested on animals.

Doctors from the British Medical Association have also suggested a GM ban to the committee because of the unknown effects on health. The committee's investigation was prompted by a petition of 6000 signatures gathered by protesters who maintained a vigil at a GM trial site at Munlochy in Ross-shire.

'What is most worrying about Dr Ewen's evidence is that while his concerns are disease-specific, the risks extend to a wide range of GM food crops,' said Jo Hunt, director of the lobby group Highlands and Islands GM Concern.

'The effects are caused not by just one 'bad' DNA fragment, but are a result of the reaction of plant cells to genetic engineering itself. All the major GM food plants currently produced could have the same effect when eaten.'

Hunt argued that long-term research was needed to establish whether GM food was safe. 'But instead of looking at the impact of GM food on people's health, the Scottish Executive has spent over £5 million on farm-scale trials to see how growing GM crops on Scottish farms will affect butterflies and weeds. The Executive has already released GM at 11 sites and is considering allowing GM to be released anywhere in the country from 2004, before it knows whether GM food is safe to eat.'

The Executive also came under fire from the Scottish National Party's shadow environment minister, Bruce Crawford, who demanded a freeze on GM crops trials. 'We cannot allow GM material to enter the food chain until there are absolute guarantees that there are no risks,' he said.

He pointed out that, in a recent letter, the environment minister, Ross Finnie, had admitted to him that plants around GM crops could become contaminated . Finnie added, however, that the government's advice was 'unanimous in its conclusion that GM crops that have approval do not pose a safety threat.'

Ewen's evidence to the health committee is backed up by a separate submission from Arpad Pusztai, who now works as an independent consultant. He warned that GM contamination could jeopardise human health and cause irreversible environmental damage.

'We need to rethink the whole strategy of genetic engineering,' Pusztai said. 'Because of its potential importance for, and effect on, mankind, it should not be left to the decision of a few multinational companies.'

[link to www.sundayherald.com]

Soul and Conscience Witness Statement
Royal Commission NZ

by Stanley William Barclay Ewen M.B.Ch.B., Ph.D., F.R.C.Path.,
Department of Pathology,
University of Aberdeen, Foresterhill, Aberdeen. AB25 2ZD

Human health

Human health issues are difficult to quantify but will usually relate to the 6th decade upwards in a "Western - type" society. Food related changes may thus be extremely difficult to detect as degenerative changes become dominant and life style indiscretions, occurring 20 years previously, easily forgotten or overlooked. BSE may have little to do with human GMO ingestion but lessons can be learned from the catastrophe that has all but destroyed British farming.

The possibility of transmission of an apparent species specific pathogen to cattle or humans was completely ridiculed initially and television pictures of a government minister feeding his baby daughter a pie potentially containing tainted meat was dramatic although reprehensible. BSE is, as the name indicates, a spongiform condition of the brain that was rare in humans and always recognised in the elderly. It was only after neurologists and neuropathologists recognised that some young people developed a clinical syndrome closely analogous to Creuzfeld Jacob disease that a new disease was perceived (NVCJD). The unwillingness of government agencies to recognise the remote possibility of a new food related disease in young adults was incomprehensible. The lesson revealed by this disaster seems clear; a new disease will only be recognised when it has unusual pathology, occurs in an unusual age group and has overt recognisable clinical features. The demonstrated proclivity for food related disease to affect the young should not be understated. Several diseases seem to affect growing children rather than fully developed adults with static body parameters. It must also be stated that no current test considered to be sufficient evidence of safety would or could have detected NVCJD. It follows that all new foods, in particular GM food, must be tested in animals, especially young animals, as the human guinea pig approach seems to be global anathema.

With these factors in mind, the present oft reiterated banal statement by regulatory authorities that many billions have eaten GM food with no reported ill effect seems misleading. As I commented at the recent WHO/FAO expert consultation in Geneva, diseases with a biological history measured in decades, such as cancer, would not be observed to be significantly increasing in the elderly or occurring in the young until several years of careful analysis of records had been compared. The specific reason for highlighting cancer is based on my meticulous measurement of changes within the gut lining in young rats fed GM potatoes for 10 days (Lancet 354, 1353-1354 16th October 1999). Despite all manner of attack, the peer reviewed published histological observations are unassailable and reveal a clear growth factor effect visualised as microscopic lengthening of the proliferative compartment of the lining of stomach and intestines. This effect may not be permanently harmful and is probably reversible after a few days of GM withdrawal but increased chronic inflammatory cells were also evident consistent with involvement of the immune system. Proliferative effects have been previously recorded following GM food ingestion viz. proliferation of stomach lining following 'Flavr Savr' tomatoes and proliferation of small intestinal lining following ingestion of transgenic potatoes by mice (Nat. Toxins (1998) 6,219-233).

Unfortunately food scientists seem oblivious of the fact that the population is not all adult and that approximately half of all adults have disease of either stomach or large intestine. The stomach disease I refer to is H.pylori infection that has been shown to be closely associated with gastric cancer. H.pylori is a micro organism that causes chronic inflammation accompanied by proliferation of the lining of the stomach and is present in 40% of the population by age 40 years. It is reasonable to suggest that additional dietary growth factors in GM food could further increase proliferative effect hastening the development of gastric carcinoma; similarly polyps in the colon could be accelerated to become invasive cancer. After several years of chronic inflammation, the stomach will change its lining to resemble the small intestine and, later still, lose the ability to produce acid and enzymes if the infection is not eradicated by powerful triple antibiotic therapy.

Ewen and Pusztai's histological results clearly indicate that the growth factor effect is not caused by the newly expressed transgenic protein but appears to be due to the gene construct inserted into the recipient DNA. The construct includes, not only the transgene, but also marker genes and a powerful promoter. Endogenous plant promoters seem unable to cause transgene expression and most success can be expected by using a viral promoter to drive foreign gene expression for example, (-carotene was not expressed in rice using endogenous promoters and a viral promoter was required to produce "golden rice". The use of a viral promoter, the infectious part of the virus, seems to be alien to food safety as the usual viral promoter is almost identical to human hepatitis B virus. Hepatitis B is endemic in African and Far Eastern populations and any possibility of intact promoter reaching liver might have unexpected effects. The possibility of gene transfer, either to resident gut commensal micro organisms or gut lining cells, is considered all but impossible. Most molecular biologists do not accept the possibility and assess the chance at 1 in 1027 although many experts suggest that 1 in 1015-18 is the reality. On the other hand, the infectious part of a virus might not be degraded in the stomach and could gain access to gut bacteria or lining cells similar to sporadic viral infection of the stomach or intestines.

The essential problem hinges on complete degradation of food proteins during digestion. Current testing of completeness of digestion relies on recombinant proteins exposed to stomach enzymes (non human source) and acid in vitro. This artificial system demonstrates that simple recombinant proteins are indeed destroyed but I do not consider this approach to be representative. Recently, a sample sent to the Pathology Department, University of Aberdeen was submitted as a possible gall stone found at the end of the small intestine during an operation. Histology revealed that the object was recognisable as a seed despite having been exposed to gastric juices , pancreatic enzymes and small intestinal enzymes during transit. The undigested seed contained identifiable DNA (confirmed by specific tests) that could have leaked from the seed during passage along the small intestine. Thus the plant cell walls prevented digestion in the upper gastrointestinal tract and horizontal gene transfer was a possibility throughout stomach and small intestine at least. Our histological experiments, referred to above, do reveal that cooking reduces the growth factor effect of GM potatoes consistent with the observation that 950C or higher, is required to degrade DNA beyond the point of genetic information transmission (Chiter et al). It could be argued that the presently available heavily processed GM products may not be capable of genetic information transmission and oil from rape seed contains almost no GM DNA. I believe that the real problem that we face is with fruits and vegetables that are usually eaten raw (the normal diet contains about 30% raw plant produce whereas the vegetarian diet will be at least twice this amount). GM fruits and vegetables have not been released as yet but have certainly been successfully produced.

Unfortunately human food is not suitable for testing in a standard toxicological experiment. In a classical toxicological investigation a single substance of defined chemical composition can be administered in identical dose to a group of laboratory animals. Even a single foodstuff is considered to be too complex to dissect out a single undesirable effect that can be acceptable as unsafe. For this reason, GM food safety relies on simple identity, by chemical analysis (substantial equivalence), compared to the parent - nutritional and metabolic effects are not considered. Unfortunately, substantial equivalence is imprecise and the degree of acceptable variation has never been stated. Undoubtedly, adequate nutritional and metabolic GM evaluation would require laboratory animal testing that would greatly increase the approval costs of GM products.

Postscript

At the time of writing (19.10.00) the local press contains a report from Prof. R. Orskov (formerly of Rowett Research Institute) who states that he will not drink milk from cows fed with GM maize until further testing is performed.

Impressions of operation of Joint FAO/WHO Expert Consultation on foods derived from Biotechnology. I was asked to submit my curriculum vitae to WHO by Consumers International and, to my surprise, I was invited to attend the above consultation meeting in Geneva on May 29 this year. I was completely unfamiliar with proceedings but most of the others present were "old hands" and immediately subverted the meeting by proposing and seconding the chairman (Kuiper). Then Mariansky was proposed and seconded as reporter and, despite protestation, was accepted as the American influence was dominant. The WHO staff seemed powerless to prevent this take over despite trying to infuse transparency by inviting others, such as myself, new to the meeting. My enduring impression was that North American, English, Dutch and Scandinavian interests were well represented although other European, Asian, South American and African interests were not. The experts, apart from one nutritionist, one epidemiologist, one economist and one pathologist, were food scientists usually from national regulatory bodies. With amazing alacrity, they stamped their dominance on the meeting and comments from the minority groups were given rather short shrift and were not incorporated into the final version of the report. The meeting was unrepresentative and financial, industrial and government interests were not fully disclosed. Food safety was in the hands of plant molecular biologists with unknown allegiance and medical aspects were simply a nuisance that impeded dominance of big industrial companies.

One subject that did receive attention - Allergenicity of GM Foods - will be the main topic for discussion at the next meeting (Rome January 2001). Allergenicity is of concern because there is no animal model available and all testing has to be done in human volunteers, preferably allergic human subjects. Several GM foods express a bacterial toxin or lectin and these proteins are resistant to cooking and digestion and will bind to, and enter, the lining cells of the intestines (usually considered a prerequisite to allergenicity). The proposal, presented at the Geneva meeting, is to use post market surveillance to detect GM food allergy despite the fact that, for some, the allergy will be fatal.

Environmental matters

There can be little doubt that reduction of biodiversity is deprecable and once GM seeds are broadcast the ensuing contamination is permanent. Thus, should any adverse effect be traced to GM plants at some point in the future then eradication will be well nigh impossible. The difficulty is that many companies have persuaded the authorities to believe that genetic engineering resembles traditional plant breeding methods. This viewpoint negates the fact that foreign DNA has been inserted into the recipient plant in a way that is completely at odds with natural breeding. Once the foreign gene has been successfully inserted a powerful promoter, usually viral, is required and most people would prefer not to eat living virus. It is possible that the promoter may not be broken down in the mammalian gut and thus the environmental contamination would include all sea life. It does appear foolhardy to promote planetary pollution unless some other motive, such as patenting with exclusive rights and substantial profits, is at stake. Unfortunately many of those on government advisory committees have clandestine financial interests and thus plant molecular biologists determine policy best suited to profit rather than complete safety evaluation. The old refrain that GM technology is required to feed the burgeoning world population is promotion by guilt. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) recently concluded that the world could be fed without GM food (Agriculture: Towards 2015-30, FAO April 2000). In Europe, current non GM agriculture is so productive that 10% of cereal land has to be kept out of production and it appears that civil strife and corrupt government is responsible for malnourishment in the Third World. Deliberate environmental pollution, in the form of US food aid sent to cyclone victims in Orissa, India, occurred last October and consisted of GM soy beans and maize rejected by traditional markets in Europe and Japan. It is claimed that the US government used the opportunity to create a market entry for GM products. This type of approach pays little heed to traditional agriculture and will severely limit future biodiversity.


so the current virus mayhem could be somehow resultant from this GMO crap


:extre99: in food production that has been created will lead to world wide famine

many will suffer death and disease-some possibly mutating in their DNA


Laughing is unwise regarding this-research would serve one well

:devface:

A Geneticist's Opinion about Genetic Engineering in Agriculture

R. H. (Dick) Richardson, Ph.D., Professor of Integrative Biology, Univ. of Texas at Austin


NOTE: REVISIONS PENDING


Is genetic engineering a good idea? In my opinion this technology is the most powerful yet invented by humankind, and our enthusiasm overwhelms good judgment and respectful caution.

I am euphoric about the new insights I can teach in my genetics classes. Examples of different genetic interactions arrive with each new journal issue. Identifying similar genes in vastly different organisms and determining their effects has been beyond the capabilities of traditional genetic analysis. With our new technology, even the genetic differences between viruses, bacteria and higher forms can be compared in their DNAs. I am astounded at how extremely different organisms are surprisingly similar in their genetic organization, yet how they can accomplish similar functions differently. Remarkably, we can identify genes in ourselves that appear to once have been in viruses that infected our ancestors, but are now transmitted along with normal genes from parents to offspring . Using genetic engineering, we have extended our range of moving genes from closely related species to the entire span of the diversity of life.

The fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) has been the principle animal of genetic experimentation for a century. Its genetic system is as well understood as any higher organism. Only this year has the complete DNA sequence of its genome been published. But, we do not know how many proteins are coded by the approximately 13,600 genes! An antibody gene can produce more than 10 million different proteins, while other genes may produce only one protein. Different DNA architectures of protein synthesis are related to modes of development and cell specialization. The genetic blueprint of an organism does not explain how it lives - this blueprint no more describes a life than a dictionary can sing a song.

In a discussion of the Drosophila genome publication, Brenner emphatically states, But there is one important piece of information that is almost totally missing: the sequence information that specifies when and where and for how long a gene is turned on or off. This switching information ... cannot be deduced from the sequence.

Gene regulation is the process that primarily distinguishes species, and lies at the root of genetic diseases and abnormal development. Mules and hinneys are sterile, but a hybrid between species less related than a horse and a donkey would die in early development. A hybrid between a fish and a tomato is unthinkable. Moving genes among species is easy with molecular technology that avoids the behavioral and developmental necessities for making hybrids. When such partial hybrids are made with molecular techniques, identifying the effects at the various scales in processes of living organisms, populations, communities, ecosystems, biosphere is overwhelming since the normal biological filtering is bypassed. The detrimental effects may be delayed, waiting for biological or environmental signals to create a cascade of responses otherwise impossible.

Even in medicine, at an individual organism scale, the revolutionary benefits promised by proponents of gene therapy have not yet been realized. And we have not resolved serious ethical questions of right to die and right to live, informed consent, social and economic justice, and humane treatment of non-human animals increased enforcement and canceled research projects.

Use of genetic technology in medicine has been regulated by the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee (RAC) for 25 years! Before implementation of any medical application using genetic technology, researchers must evaluate potential harm as well as benefit. Each experiment must be reviewed, and unexpected harmful results must be reported. In the past few months there have been serious repercussions when investigators neglected timely reporting of many experimental failures. The RAC is an imperfect restraint, but it is the best we have. It was formed in more cautious times.

For agriculture, which functions at larger scales of life, there is no equivalent of the RAC. However, Secretary of Agriculture Glickman convened on March 29, 2000, a new USDA Advisory Committee on Agricultural Biotechnology. This action came only after tens of millions of acres of genetically engineered crops had been planted globally within the decade after the first was created. The complexities were well known, presented by the FDA in the Federal Register, and summarily dismissed.

The potential for environmental and population effects from agricultural uses of genetic engineering is vastly greater than for medical uses that are assumed to be restricted to the individual treated (although that can change in the future). Agricultural genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are distributed globally and grown in gargantuan (1017 more or less) populations. This greatly increases the opportunity to disrupt habitats and food security of humans directly and indirectly throughout our food web, to genetically alter other species, and to disrupt natural genetic variation of wild relatives of our crops. These conditions create serious limitations for future crop improvement, potentially jeopardize essential ecosystem services and degrade our evolutionary and ecological resources for future study of living systems. Relative to the risks and long-term consequences of mistakes, a rational position suggests even greater caution for agricultural applications of genetic engineering than for medical applications.

Sound science is a misnomer being used by politicians and corporations to direct attention toward predictions within a scientific model that are considered favorable to their agenda and to discount those that are deemed unfavorable. Any results that suggest unfavorable predictions are attacked and disputed, often by attempting to discredit the integrity of the scientist. This substitutes rhetoric for investigation. Good science is conservative, methodical, searches for understanding, and is self-correcting by refuting predictions through testing. Instead of encouraging good science, the regulations and policies of sound science were designed to deflect attention away from the potential environmental effects of GMOs. FDA memos (1991-93 internal discussions of hazards and administrative flaws) note that no risk analysis was done, and that appropriate specialists were excluded from the review process.

In 1998 in Scotland, a peer reviewed research journal paper was published. It reported evidence of toxicity in test animals after feeding trials using genetically modified potatoes. The researcher was suspended, and his results were publicly attacked by corporate connected scientists.

A key feature of such attacks is their focus on the investigators with rhetoric about the interpretation. Scientifically, the focus needs to be on experiments and on the relevance of the data presented. If the models or the data are to be refuted, new experiments are necessary. The knee-jerk reaction of the research institutions, scientists, politicians and corporate public relations staff demonstrates motives and values that are the antithesis of good science. They are disrespectful of the need for discussion of the models and available data, and of the critical need for continuing investigation. The very nature of scientific dialog is being undermined by the shift away from public funding and by the lack of accountability to both the pubic and scientific community. It is being replaced by increasing corporate manipulation of both results and interpretation.

Scientists around the world, including supporters of GMO foods, have expressed strong concerns about long-term effects . These concerns should spur extensive research. Instead, our traditional public research and regulatory institutions - FDA, EPA and USDA - have given low priority to serious research regarding the environmental effects of genetically engineered crops.

These changes have been discussed in Science, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science . The psychology of scientists conducting DNA research has changed since the beginning of the gene manipulation period in life sciences. Marcia Barinaga's report comparing the recent 25th anniversary meeting of molecular biologists, Symposium of Science, Ethics, and Society to the original Asilomar Conference is particularly poignant. Twenty-five years ago, leading scientists of the new discipline in biology that was to produce genetic engineering technology considered the implications to humankind and beyond. There was a sense of urgency. After much haggling, the group settled on a set of safety guidelines that involved working with disabled bacteria that could not survive outside the lab. They convinced Congress that they could govern themselves and the RAC serves in this capacity - for medicine. Even their concerns were understatements about the potential for different bacteria to share through recombination of their genomes. Now we know that even inactive bacteria can contribute their DNA to others! Furthermore, similar jumping genes (transposons) are widely found in nature, but typically lack an active enzyme to achieve transfer. However, in a recent laboratory test where an inactive salmon transposon system was activated it functioned in salmon, mouse and human tissue cells.

The recent meeting, involving several of the original members, was strikingly different. There was less urgency, safety was of little concern in spite of greater known danger, and the objectivity of the scientists was dramatically compromised. She continues, Those who gathered at Asilomar in 1975 represented a research community that was purely academic in its interests. As genetic engineering has gone commercial, academics have followed, and today most senior academic researchers have ties to biotechnology companies that would complicate any attempts at self-scrutiny. Good science judged by consensus and self correcting features of peer review are being compromised. In Great Britain, the Royal Society has gone even further to quell dissension about scientific matters, as evidenced by Parliament. News editors have been reminded that they should quote only certain scientists, whose names will be on a list supplied by the Society.

Leading scientists in many fields see monumental ethical and environmental problems posed by agricultural genetic engineering because of the self-replication capability of GMOs and ease of creating potentially dangerous organisms. They are beginning to emphatically express these concerns in the popular press in an effort to offset the corporate infomercials.

There is miniscule funding going toward research directed at finding side effects of GMOs due to the insertion of DNA, minimally containing the desired gene, a selected promoter (usually from a virus), markers (that will indicate whether the piece has inserted), flanking sequences for enzymatic insertion and attached segments of unknown function. Multiple effects (pleiotropy - each gene has multiple effects, and epistasis - all genes interact with others) occur in complex biological systems. The uniqueness of GMOs was pointed out, and disregarded in order to regulate them under the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, where generally regarded as safe (GRAS) criteria would omit requirements for testing. The FDA in the Federal Register explicitly recognized these illogical connections but accepted the conclusions. Why? Testing is expensive and takes time. With the rush to market engineered crops, the profit incentive in the globalized market marginalized a scientifically rational exploration of concurrent effects. The public and the ecosystem are placed at risk due to narrowly conceived and minimally tested releases of living materials. It takes only one serious mistake to create an irreversible disaster.

An example with a fortunate ending illustrates the counterpoint. In the Oregon valley between the Coast Ranges and the Cascade Range of mountains lies a fertile agricultural plain where most of the ryegrass seed for the US is grown. The straw is a nuisance because it decays slowly in the field. Rather than burning the straw, researchers thought this would be a good source for biofuel if a bacterium were engineered to form alcohol in a digester of straw and water. The alcohol could be collected and the residue then could be returned to the fields as compost. The organism was created. The investigators realized that before the first field trials the effects of the residue on the following crop should first be tested in the lab. Potted plants were inoculated. The alcohol-forming bacteria grew around the roots, formed alcohol as designed, and the plants died. What would have been the ecological and agronomic consequences if these organisms had been field tested? What would have happened when the soil with the organisms was transported to nearby fields by wind, water, wildlife and humans. Once released, engineered organisms that survive on their own cannot be recovered, unlike many environmental pollutants that at least stay in superfund sites until decontaminated. This was a fortunate laboratory test. The scientist recognized the potential hazard before the GMO was released into the ecosystem and reported the results.

Universally well-established principles of genetics and ecology give reasons to be very cautious with GMOs. Unpredictable effects of hybridization, when possible by normal crossing, is indisputable. Drastic yet unpredictable effects of mobile genetic elements (transposons) are well established. Genetic engineering employing synthetic transposons is undeniable. Development of insecticide, herbicide and antibiotic resistance is common knowledge. That biological systems are optimized, not maximized, is elementary biology. There were many examples of complexity in genetic mechanisms that were discovered by geneticists in the first 50 years of Mendelian genetics before Watson and Crick showed that DNA could code the genetic information. Now we understand molecular mechanisms for many of these interactions. These genetic processes have profound scientific and social implications, revealed by the same molecular tools that are used in genetic engineering. We have learned not only that all genes interact with many other genes, but that they also function with intimate coordination -achieved in different ways in different organisms. The FDA discounted this knowledge. However, we know that at molecular and developmental levels a single character actually results from the action of many genes, and every gene tested is expressed multiple times in specific cells to form many characters. From theoretical studies, we know that a gene that has desirable features can also cause extinction of a species. The FDA and EPA discounted this knowledge. We have learned that a gene often affects the function of its neighbors on a chromosome, and that similar clusters of genes are responsible for determining morphological features of appendages in such diverse animals as mammals, birds and insects. We know that inserting a foreign gene can disrupt the dynamics of these coordinated systems of genes, and that the technology of inserting genes has no control of where the insertion occurs, or how many insertions occur in a cell. The FDA discounted this knowledge. The malfunctions sometimes have surfaced as cancer or distortions of normal development. We do not even know to look for malfunctions that are more subtle, or that have long delays before manifestation. They would not be recognized in any of our test conditions. We can with certainty predict from what we do know that there are serious possibilities for unwanted effects. These issues were dismissed as irrelevant by the FDA. They have been ignored by the USDA and EPA. And they are ridiculed by the infomercials.

Barbara McClintock received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1983 for identifying natural mutations that result from natural DNA insertions, which are structurally and functionally similar to engineered insertions. We know many examples where the controlling regions of a virus or bacterial gene have spontaneously replaced the controlling regions of a normal gene. These changes are a common mechanism of mutation. Several of these examples illustrate the conversion of a proto-oncogene, which controls normal cell cycles, into an oncogene, so named because it can produce cancer . These possibilities are improbable individually. But where many possibilities have astronomically large opportunities to occur, they become almost a certainty. (A one in a million chance of a detrimental occurrence is 10-6 but when the opportunities to occur are 1017, simplistically the chances of it occurring are 1-10-11 or 0.99999999999, give or take a few decimal places.) The FDA discounted this knowledge, and set the stage for the essentially numerous inevitable detrimental outcomes year after year ñ until we recognize how detrimental they are. Of course, recognizing them may take a few years since few people are looking for them and there is no system to track an undesirable outcome to it's source until it's seen in large numbers. (It took decades to identify asbestos as a carcinogen, for example, or pesticides that act as endocrine disrupters.) Nevertheless, I'm optimistic that many potential benefits to agriculture and medicine are hiding in the unknowns of our genetic and ecological systems. Systems is a key word. Scientific differences of opinion are rooted in perspectives of how living systems work since experiments are in greatly simplified conditions. Reaggregating the parts into the essential whole takes time and cross disciplinary understanding. The recent formation of the USDA's Advisory Committee on Agricultural Biotechnology is an opening to begin correcting our priorities. However, the committee is over representative of industry interests, in my opinion, and its charges are restricted to modest scope. For a rational use of the technology, we need to proceed with open minds, aggressive research, and reasonable caution, being ever alert for the unexpected. Full exercise of the Precautionary Principle is scientifically supported common sense, but its use is unlikely to prevail in the present situation unless there is a strong public demand.

Genetics are being MANIPULATED-why were those Geneticists killed for-the ones whose laptop was stolen...they were going to make an extremely important announcement...and then nothing-one stabbed 160+ times...HMMMMM

:QE2lizard:

uh........WOW. Dang SD, you've been busy. Talk about crazy stuff. Not sure how you keep up with it all.

Unraveling the DNA Myth:
The Spurious Foundation of Genetic Engineering

Barry Commoner
Harper's Magazine
February 2002

Biology once was regarded as a languid, largely descriptive discipline, a passive science that was content, for much of its history, merely to observe the natural world rather than change it. No longer. Today biology, armed with the power of genetics, has replaced physics as the activist Science of the Century and it stands poised to assume godlike powers of creation, calling forth artificial forms of life rather than undiscovered elements and sub-atomic particles. The initial steps toward this new Genesis have been widely touted in the press. It wasn't so long ago that Scottish scientists stunned the world with Dolly, the fatherless sheep cloned directly from her mother's cells: these techniques have now been applied, unsuccessfully, to human cells. ANDi, a photogenic rhesus monkey, recently was born carrying the gene of a luminescent jellyfish. Pigs now carry a gene for bovine growth hormone and show significant improvement in weight gain, feed efficiency, and reduced fat. Most soybean plants grown in the United States have been genetically engineered to survive the application of powerful herbicides. Corn plants now contain a bacterial gene that produces an insecticidal protein rendering them poisonous to earworms.



So what kills larvae of insects/pests/bees/butterflies/etc...are not going to affect you? Think again-IT WILL


:bb: :matrix mod:

Well, you are right-few venture in it is just too real-I figure I am getting close to saturation and then they are on their own-

:cherrylove: wow surprise surprise
Excuse me though, I am rather cynical tonight...I have a few threads out there-a eugenics 101 that is packed with all kinds of yuck-but real important info...some should hold onto some of it...later it will help others...and then the one on Harmonics and Healing-seems many just want to moan and play keyboard captain...


if you can check them out- Thread: Eugenics 101 (Page 5)
eugenics 101
and then the other Thread: Harmonics and Healing (Page 6)

good links and so on-some vids with embed


Soon I will not be around as much here-getting rather busy...always working on something eh!like drilling for oil...

:peace to E: :funcat:

You have been MIA girl...

Last Edited by ShadowDancer on 08/02/2009 12:32 AM

cwhorporations


selling all souls into the abyss

Corporate Cash and Campus Labs

The Christian Science Monitor
Tuesday, June 19, 2001
Mark Clayton ([email protected])
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

The credibility of university research is on the line as industry steps up its funding

It was to be a landmark university-corporate research partnership: Novartis, a Swiss-based pharmaceutical conglomerate, would pay $25 million over five years to the University of California at Berkeley. But what the company was to get in return shocked faculty, students, and outsiders alike.

In exchange for funding, Novartis would be allowed to sift through the research of the department of plant and microbial biology at Berkeley's College of Natural Resources - licensing up to about one-third of the researchers' output.

Students declared it a sellout. Legislators scheduled hearings. Professors protested the secrecy of the negotiations. One professor decried the deal for creating an "apartheid" of have and have-not faculty. Outside observers were no less impassioned.

"What if the [Novartis-Berkeley] experiment were to succeed?" wrote Robert Rosenzweig, former president of the Association of American Universities, in response to the deal. "What would be the next part of the university to be sold to a corporation?"

Portending the turmoil to come, company and university officials announcing the November 1998 deal at a press conference had to duck to avoid being hit by a pie. Despite protests, the deal went through, and administrators report that it is working.

Yet misgivings persist. "This is a public university that is supposed to work for all sectors of society," says Miguel Altieri, associate professor at Berkeley. "Obviously the sectors we're going to be working for in the future are the ones that bring in the money."

Such comments only hint at the vortexes created by university-corporate partnerships. Critics cite fears over limits on academic freedom, conflicts of interest among researchers, and bias creeping into scientific research.

Over the long run, observers also worry that research priorities might shift away from breaking scientific ground to more short-term, product-related efforts. And there is the possibility, too, that the public will lose confidence in higher-education research.

Nelson Kiang, professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has watched the changes during his long career. What's different today is that "the sheer number of corporations involved in sponsoring research has exploded," he says. "The ethos of the university is the free exchange of ideas. Now we're running into two sets of ideas from two cultures. When they start to interact intimately, accommodations have to be made. At the moment, there's no agreed upon way to do that."

Acknowledging a deep divide between corporate America and American universities, a two-year study issued last week by the Business-Higher Education Forum - a partnership between the American Council on Education and the National Alliance of Business - outlined problems and recommendations for smoothing the rocky road between the two worlds.

"Some research collaborations have experienced serious, high-profile difficulties," stated Hank McKinell, chairman of the board of the New York-based pharmaceutical company Pfizer and co-chair of the report task force. "The report is intended to help clarify the issues."





Bullies in the lab?

One such issue is academic freedom. Corporate and academic priorities clash when scientists want to share research discoveries, but contracts often require secrecy for 30 to 90 days or longer while patents are weighed.

Betty Dong at the University of California, San Francisco, discovered data that led her to question the effectiveness of a medication being used daily by millions of people. But when she went to report it, she was blocked for seven years by the company that paid for the study.

David Kahn, another researcher at the same school, was sued last November for $10 million by the company that sponsored his study, after he published a report that the AIDS drug he was testing was ineffective.
cartoon commentary

"They're like bullies in a sandbox who take away their toys when you don't agree with them," Dr. Kahn told The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Few foresaw these clashes two decades ago. Such research partnerships had long been a staple of American higher education, going all the way back to the 1862 federal legislation that created the land-grant university.

But university research started melding with the business world at a much faster pace with the 1980 passage of the Bayh-Dole Act. Bayh-Dole sped up the patenting process for university research, supercharging university-corporate partnerships with profits and competition.

In the 1970s, just a few hundred patents resulted from university research each year. But in fiscal 1999, more than 120 US research universities filed a total of 7,612 patent applications, according to the Association of University Technology Managers. Licenses to industry generated $641 million in gross income for the universities - and about $40 billion in economic activity overall.

"You used to have big corporations with labs that would do their own basic research," Mr. Kiang says. "But ... it's much more effective to turn the universities into R & D labs for them. By sprinkling money around ... they don't have to compete for the best brains in the academic world, they simply buy them at low cost."

The federal government is still by far the dominant funding source for university research. In 1998, corporations were responsible for less than 8 percent of the funding.

That may not sound like much, but it represents a seven-fold growth since 1970. According to the new report, the flood of patents has been a big boost to America's increasingly knowledge-based economy.

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told governors last year: "The payoffs, in terms of the flow of expertise, new products, and startup companies ... have been impressive."

Indeed, for every challenged program like the Novartis-Berkeley union, the Business-Higher Education Forum report documents other collaborations that are working well. At Washington University in St. Louis, for instance, a funding deal with Monsanto (now Pharmacia) has been harmoniously in place for two decades.

Smaller companies have prospered, too. Ribozyme Pharmaceuticals gave the University of Colorado a five-year, $500,000 unrestricted research grant. In return, the university shared research that helped the company grow.

Despite this robust productivity, some fear that a key product of universities - unbiased research - is at risk.

In some fields, especially medical research, scientists complain that corporate cash appears to be undermining the credibility of research results.

In 1996, Tufts researcher Sheldon Krimsky studied nearly 800 scientific papers published in prominent biology and medical journals. In 1 out of 3 cases, he found that a chief author of the paper had a financial interest in the company for which research was being done. In most cases, the connections were not disclosed to readers.

Mildred Cho, a senior research scholar at the Center for Biomedical Ethics at Stanford University, took a different tack. Her 1996 study found that 98 percent of university studies of new drug therapies funded by the pharmaceutical industry reported that those new therapies were more effective than standard drugs. By comparison, just 79 percent of studies without industry financing found the new drugs to be more effective.

Other researchers are disquieted, too.

"There has been in some fields a substantial, industrial-commercial influence," says David Blumenthal, director of Massachusetts General Hospital's Institute for Health Policy and a professor at Harvard Medical School. In a 1998 study, he and colleagues found that 43 percent of scientists - many of them at university medical centers or schools - had received at least one research-related gift. About two-thirds said the gift had been important to their research.

Such conflicts are hardly confined to the medical field. In his 1997 book, "The Heat Is On," Ross Gelbspan cites professors for not disclosing that coal and oil companies had funded their studies, which were used to undercut arguments in favor of reducing greenhouse gases.

Meanwhile, back at Berkeley, the Novartis funding is winning converts. Despite what one university official described as "lingering resentment," only two of 31 faculty members in the Berkeley department have declined to seek grants ranging from $60,000 to $200,000 to fund their research, according to the just issued report.

A need for more disclosure

Will the scientists who do accept corporate funding disclose that information when they publish their research?

Pressure has been building at the federal level for tough new disclosure requirements since the 1999 death of Jesse Gelsinger, a teenage volunteer in the clinical trial of a gene-therapy drug at the University of Pennsylvania. In that case, a researcher had a financial interest in the drug's success. (The death this month of a volunteer in a Johns Hopkins University asthma study is being investigated, but no information has surfaced suggesting any conflict of interest in that federally funded study).

At a meeting last fall, scientists debated whether and how much to disclose about such interests to potential patient volunteers, but could not agree. Researchers receiving federal grants must disclose any income greater than $10,000 from a corporation. But that rule does not apply when companies do all the funding. And even when scientists do report, it is usually only to the university itself, which often does not disclose such financial ties. One ray of hope: The New England Journal of Medicine recently admitted that it had failed to disclose 19 authors' conflicts of interest - and toughened its disclosure policy.



:darkangel:


More disclosure at all levels is needed, Dr. Blumenthal argues. The long-term risk, he says, is nothing less than a loss of public confidence that could permanently undermine support for universities.

"There is a need for guidelines and protections to assure the public that commercial motives are not excessive," he says. "It won't be hard to do that if we could get the universities to take the long view.... But in the heat of battle, it's hard to do."

NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Feel free to distribute widely but PLEASE acknowledge the original source.

In (Seed) Bed Together

By Stephen Jones, Washington State Univeristy
Published: Feb 13 2002
[link to www.tompaine.com]

Are Agro-Giants Taking Over University Research?

Biotech companies are threatening our food supply. These agro-giants are plundering our public research programs and the nation's land-grant universities, which were established to promote science in the public interest. All of this in the name of short-term profit.

The U.S. Supreme Court appears to be backing this trend, with its recent decision to protect the patent rights of agriculture giants like Monsanto and Dupont over new varieties of seed the companies develop. The decision weakened farmers' rights to save seeds from their own harvest for future crops, forcing farmers to buy new seeds from the companies each year.

Taking power away from farmers and giving it to corporations is dangerous. Industry experts claim biotechnology will save the world, that it will end starvation and cure malnutrition. They say it will save the environment by reducing the chemicals required to grow our food. But that's not really what biotech is about.

Biotech is about ownership. It's about who has the rights to profit from the ideas and techniques that emerge from a shared public scientific heritage. It's also about profiting from the genes and genetic makeup of living beings. And these corporations are using our public universities to do their research, to increase their profits, and to diminish farmer and consumer rights.

Land-grant universities were established more than a century ago, with federal funds, to promote research in agriculture, engineering and other areas. Crop and livestock breeding programs flourished under these research programs. The purpose was to develop varieties of plants and animals that would benefit farmers and consumers both financially and nutritionally, and ultimately benefit society at large.

But in recent decades, the public-interest mission has almost disappeared, replaced by service to corporate interests. This is especially true in corn and soybean research. The bulk of remaining public programs until recently were in wheat breeding. Today essentially all public wheat breeding programs nationwide have partnerships with transnational chemical company BASF. And the University of Idaho, North Dakota State University, the University of Minnesota and Oregon State University have gone public with their agreements with Monsanto to produce herbicide resistant wheat.

Wheat, the world's principle calorie source, is one of the few major crop plants still in the control of farmers. Unlike corn and soybean farmers, the majority of wheat farmers still plant the seed they harvested the previous season. They also trade seed and even select types from the fields that do best in their particular geographical area. Most of the 60 million acres of wheat in the United States are still planted with varieties that were provided by land-grant universities with few or no legal strings attached. This means that a farmer who is happy with the type of wheat he is growing has every right to save the seed and plant it back the following year or sell some to a neighbor.

The biotech seed industry stands to make hundreds of millions of dollars annually if it can gain control of the wheat seed.

How can biotech corporations force wheat farmers to buy seed from them every year? First they need proprietary genes, then a plant to put the genes into. Then they need laws that protect their investment. All of these items are in place.

Corporations have quietly and increasingly established partner relationships with land-grant institutions.

The most common proprietary genes in crop plants are for herbicide, or weed killer, resistance. What is the value of a gene that protects a plant from your patented herbicide? Nothing -- until you put it into a crop plant that suffers from weed infestations. Once the gene is in a crop plant, it is worth an additional $5 to $50 per bag of seed. In addition, the farmer is required to sign a contract saying he will not save or plant back any seed the following year. As a bonus, the company with the herbicide resistance gene also holds the patent on the herbicide that the farmer uses.

Where does a company get a wheat plant in which its scientists can put their gene? The obvious answer is the universities; they hold tried and true wheat varieties, each specifically adapted to particular local conditions. In a state like Washington, over 95 percent of the 2.5 million acres of wheat is planted with university bred varieties. Breeding a single new variety of wheat takes up to 15 years and existing varieties are constantly being updated and replaced. To start a breeding program from scratch is not only expensive but time-prohibitive.

Corporations have quietly and increasingly established partner relationships with land grant institutions. This way they capitalize on a university's infrastructure, its equipment, the material in its breeding programs, the expertise of its students and professors, and the tradition of trust established with the farmers. Now, nearly all of the land grant universities have flung open their doors to corporate control of their wheat breeding programs, signing confidential agreements with chemical companies Monsanto and BASF to put their genes into public varieties.

The outcome will be wheat varieties sold by universities in partnership with corporations. Farmers will pay extra for what used to be free, and the public will be buying wheat products that have been genetically modified for the specific purpose of gaining ownership. Farmers who grow genetically modified varieties cannot replant or trade them without paying royalties. It is a classic tale of corporate welfare. Publicly developed and supported universities are now, for a piece of the action, signing away to private entities material and intellectual property, paid for with tax dollars, that should be part of the public domain.

What is wrong with universities working hand in glove with corporations to develop our food crops and getting a return on investment? One of the main issues is the ownership itself. Who owns wheat, for example? The food grain was first domesticated over 10,000 years ago in the Middle East. It is not native to this country and we would not be growing it here if we did not receive the help and genetic materials from farmers and public breeders worldwide.

Private control of genetic materials is jeopardizing our food security.

A second issue is the restricted flow of information. Because of developing ownership issues, most international breeders are no longer willing to share material. This is hurting research. Now, many of the products researched by publicly-funded scientists in public labs are being developed under confidentiality agreements and with strict limitations on publication. Some 50 percent of public breeders said they had been hindered in seeking exchanges of genetic material, according to a 1999 University of Wisconsin poll. Twenty-five percent reported having difficulty in graduate student training and research because of this limited access.

New sources of genetic material are essential for agriculture, but private control of these materials is jeopardizing our food security. This is typical short-term gain over long-term investment. It is taking the value that is inherent in a university -- decades or centuries of continual research -- draining its value by exploiting current crop varieties, and moving on. One of the gravest dangers brought about by this approach is the abandonment of science that addresses true needs in favor of solving only problems that have proprietary or profit-driven answers.

The government has pushed the academic-corporate partnership by not making grants available for research that could be privately funded.

Meanwhile, university researchers proclaim genetically-modified crops are safe. These scientists, many of whom are openly earning extra money for their corporate work, are encouraged by their administrations. It's in the universities' financial interest to forge partnerships with corporations: thanks to a law passed by Congress, the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, individuals and institutions are allowed to patent and profit personally from their publicly-funded research.

Public breeders must be accessible and accountable to public scrutiny. In these times of vigorous debate on how our food is being developed and produced, we need programs that remain unbiased and responsive to the public's concerns. These programs are currently threatened by the rush to buy and sell genes, techniques, varieties and ideas. Return on investment is fine in the corporate world, but it is not a motto that should drive our public science.

Stephen Jones teaches graduate courses in genetics at Washington State University, and has worked in wheat breeding for more than 20 years.









All your seed belong to us...


we own all food all animals all variations and hybrids...


Aimin' at the Public's Stomach

By Stan Cox
The Land Institute

"I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach"
Upton Sinclair, referring to his novel The Jungle (1906)
and the subsequent passage of meat inspection laws.

(April 23, 2002 - CropChoice guest commentary) – Opponents of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), unlike Sinclair, often aim squarely at the public's stomach by highlighting biotechnology's threat to public health. This has helped turn the tide against GMOs in North America and has routed them in Europe. But we should be making even more of an uproar about biotechnology's power to turn the code of life into a commodity.

So far, GMOs have proven to be a much better tool for enforcing genetic property rights than for saving the family farm or producing more food. From the moment when biotechnologists insert a single gene from, say, a bacterium into the genetic code of a crop plant to produce a GMO, or "transgenic" variety, they have staked their claim on the plant and all of its descendants.

A farmer who buys a bag of Monsanto’s transgenic seed signs a contract that prohibits the saving of any seed harvested from the resulting crop. And if a plant breeder makes a cross with that variety to produce a new one - transgenic or not - Monsanto has a claim on it. It is as if an author compiled a thick novel entirely from the writings of other authors, added one original word, copyrighted the book, and then claimed ownership of each sentence individually.

I am picking on Monsanto because of its iron-fisted, often ham-handed, pursuit of farmers whom it suspects of saving "its" seed. Its lawsuits against family farms in Saskatchewan, North Dakota, and Indiana send a clear message to farmers across the continent: It's a lot easier and cheaper to buy Monsanto's seed than it is to prove that you didn't pilfer it and don't even want it. (The company has dropped its suits in North Dakota and Indiana but has filed a new one against a New Jersey farmer.)

Monsanto is not unique; it’s just the worst. All biotech companies, and now most research universities, are claiming genes as intellectual property. The German company BASF is at least giving a nod to the importance of gene exchange while protecting its patented genes. It allows wheat varieties carrying its Clearfield ® herbicide-resistance gene to be entered in some U.S. government-organized yield trials, implicitly allowing competing companies or public breeders who have entered the same trials to use the varieties as parent lines (if they eliminate the herbicide resistance gene in selecting offspring).

But farmers who buy Clearfield wheat or rice seed must sign a "Stewardship Agreement". The agreement is supposed to help farmers behave responsibly and prevent the evolution of herbicide-resistant weeds. But, conveniently for BASF, the measures it requires - no seed-saving, no use in crop breeding, and no use of any imidazolinone herbicide other than a BASF-branded one - all result in a bigger profit for the company.

In fact - and here's the dark secret - no company would bother developing genetically engineered crops if the only results were improved field performance, better weed control, or high crop quality. Biotech companies invest in grain crops because they want economic control of all seed planted by the farmer, and of succeeding generations of seed.

Before the biotech era, companies or universities could protect their self-pollinating crop varieties (e.g, wheat, rice, soybeans) by obtaining Plant Variety Protection certificates. In doing so, they claimed ownership only of a specific variety - not of the genes in its pollen or egg cells. Likewise, corn genes could be obtained freely through cross-pollination, even though corn hybrids would not breed true or yield as much if re-seeded.

In those days, public or private breeders who did the best job of utilizing a free and open gene pool saw more farmers grow their varieties. But corporate capital hates to see anything go unowned, and in the 1980s, the privatizers found a lock that fit the gates of the gene pool: biotechnology.

The widespread patenting of GMOs that followed was bad enough, but by legitimizing the vision of genes as property, biotechnology has fostered the patenting of non-transgenic varieties as well. Go look at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) website. You'll find claims on naturally occurring DNA sequences that act as bookmarks on the plant's chromosomes, as well as the sections they mark. You'll find natural mutations that confer herbicide resistance like that of Clearfield varieties. You'll find dozens of non-transgenic soybean varieties and corn hybrids.

Worst of all, varieties developed by the world's farmers through centuries of selection have been patented by American corporations or public institutions: yellow beans from Mexico, blue-fiber cotton from Central America, quinoa from South America, basmati rice from India, and many others. Andean farmers shamed Colorado State University into dropping the quinoa patent. The basmati patent, issued to a Texas company called RiceTec, was eventually overturned; however, RiceTec has since obtained patents on individual basmati varieties.

All crop varieties - transgenic or not - owe their existence to plant breeders and farmers who were able to glean genes from a global pool of crop varieties, breeding populations, and wild species. By using patents to gain control of nature's genetic code, corporations and even publicly funded universities are attempting to dominate the market by shutting other plant breeders out of the gene pool, not by breeding a better product.

The gene hijackers got a legal boost when, in December 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a patent on 17 of Pioneer Hi-Bred International's non-transgenic corn hybrids. Justice Clarence Thomas, brushing aside legal and genetic logic, wrote the majority opinion. Presumably, Justice Thomas would also support patent number 6,368,227, granted by the USPTO on April 9 to a Minnesota child for "a method of swinging on a swing." [Robert – the "swing" link is [link to uk.news.yahoo.com] ]

With the Supreme Court decision, the gene rush is expected to accelerate. Those of us who want to keep the genes of plants and animals (including those of our own species) in the public domain have been in sore need of a rallying point, and now we have one. Organizations from more than 50 nations are advocating a Treaty Initiative to Share the Genetic Commons. The document, unveiled at the World Social Forum in February, states:

"The nations of the world declare the Earth's gene pool, in all of its biological forms and manifestations, to be a global commons, to be protected and nurtured by all peoples and further declare that genes and the products they code for, in their natural, purified or synthesized form as well as chromosomes, cells, tissue, organs and organisms, including cloned, transgenic and chimeric organisms, will not be allowed to be claimed as commercially negotiable genetic information or intellectual property by governments, commercial enterprises, other institutions or individuals."

This is a straightforward declaration of principle that should be firmly planted in international law - and soon. This morning, some of the DNA that landed in our stomachs at breakfast belongs to Monsanto. I don't know about you, but it's giving me indigestion.

Biotech and the Watchdog Role of Universities

By Fred L. Bookstein
Washington Post
Monday, July 30, 2001

My university, like many others, is establishing a Life Sciences Institute to speed applications of new biotech research. The current academic understanding of how genes and proteins work together promises to lead soon to combinations of drugs that are customized patient by patient and to new therapies for inherited metabolic disorders.

But getting these insights from the laboratory to the marketplace is apparently going to require universities to step up their collaboration with corporations, especially multinational pharmaceutical firms. This will represent an enormous structural change in academia, one whose supposed benefits ought to be studied with the same cultivated skepticism that is applied to scientific work.

The century-old core of the academic life sciences consists of comparative anatomy, physiology and development of organisms, evolutionary history, environmental biology and systematics (the classification of living beings). It covers the patterns in living systems, from molecules through ecosystems, on time scales from microseconds to a billion years of evolution. The universities' primary job has been to organize this knowledge (in disciplines) and to preserve it (in libraries) so that details of any living creature -- past, present or to come -- might be embedded in the broadest possible explanatory framework. By building these theories, life scientists made genomics possible.

But genomics deals with what works or doesn't work -- with machines and mechanisms. In the absence of theories wrestling with data -- the challenge that developed evolutionary biology itself -- genomic studies amount to mere technological puzzle-solving. They give back nothing to the intellectual world that spawned them -- nothing except market profit.

In place of the collective search for ever-more powerful explanations, the new view of the life sciences would change the focus to proprietary craft knowledge -- knowledge that can be owned and held confidentially. This kind of knowledge has no proper role within the academy, an institution centered on the permanent curriculum of arts and sciences and traditionally unconcerned with secrecy -- or with capital gains.

The mission of life science institutes emphasizes manipulation and control. Academic sciences, by contrast, are about understanding. For example, engineering colleges don't market civil engineering or automotive designs. They develop and strengthen theories about these things as they teach or criticize current practice. Similarly, universities are unlikely to be competent in generating and spreading market-oriented molecular knowledge. Their appropriate function is different.

Within the domain of what the university knows well -- the enduring concerns of the growth, development and diversity of organisms -- we have one most critical assignment (after teaching). It is to determine and set forth what the consequences of current understanding will be for future scientific and social developments.

In considering the areas where the life sciences institutes will concentrate their work, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that they will only heighten the contradictions at the root of contemporary Western medicine, with possibly disastrous consequences. For example, improving models of surgery, or new acute interventions for chronic diseases -- two domains of such institutes -- cannot deal with diseases of age, poverty, lifestyle, environment, overpopulation or evolution. The cost of "therapy" for one extremely premature baby would cover 10,000 pediatric immunizations. The cost of bringing forth yet another drug for springtime allergies could cover advances in tropical medicine that would prevent millions of premature deaths.

Bodies vary one from another, and they fail and die. But the life sciences institutes arise from a "medicalization" of health that would deny this. They would perpetuate our overinvestment in an unending, unproductive extension of severely damaged lives. And they would exacerbate our appalling stratification by income and education and lead to an ever-increasing gap in quality of lives across the world.

Whether they succeed or fail in their marketing efforts, life sciences institutes cannot help fostering the obsessions at the root of designer genes and pharmaceuticals. Concerns about a good life and a good death are replaced by unworthy fears for one's own body or one's own progeny. Encouraging this unhealthy philosophy of hazard-free perfection, with its implications of fetal selection, cannot be an appropriate academic activity.

The cost of sacrificing familiar norms of scientific openness and disinterest to the "commodification of knowledge" -- to letting the market decide what is honorable scholarship -- hugely outweighs any scholarly benefit that life sciences institutes could provide to the academic sciences.

The proper role for universities at a time of intellectual stampede such as the impending rush to the applied genomic sciences should be uncompromisingly skeptical. Centuries from now, one hopes, there will still be academics, who, when looking back on our time, likely will find our genomic data bases to be so many 21st century pyramids, wonderful in their meaninglessness.

Now, more than ever in the history of biology, the role of the university must be to warn. The goals of today's life science institutes are economically, intellectually and academically incoherent. Universities need to return to their accustomed distance from economic fashions in the pursuit of knowledge and speak out against these developments, not embrace them in complicity. America's great universities should have nothing to do with the building of pyramids instead of life sciences.

The writer is distinguished senior research scientist at the University of Michigan's Institute of Gerontology.



:lizpeel:

FRANKEN science




If cows are only fed vegetarian diet-there is no mad cow...but that costs too much, cheaper to keep people ignorant

memory failing many







3rd big wake up call...last call folks

Cloning of meat...and also unsafe dietary practices are leaving a host of infectious agents in our food chain.

The manipulations of our food is purposefully for the CONtrol of all folks still living as the food shortages continue and worsen(it is contrived, then produced by sterile seeds and seeds with Round UP in the actual plant DNA-supposedly harmful to bugs or pests but is not affecting us...FANTASY... and the masses believe the spin or are so ignorant as to not understand the long term consequences of this.)




WTO placed corporations over nations

The WTO has put the mechanisms in place to override any national law that interferes with multinational corporate profits in international trade. That is one of the reasons why Congressman Ron Paul tried to remove us from the WTO in 2000 via House Joint Resolution 90. Congress failed to enact his proposal.



U.S. Codex Office

The U.S. Codex Office is found within the FDA, which, in turn, is an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. This Office works very closely with Codex in Europe. If you go to its website, you will see this...

"The Codex Alimentarius Commission was created in 1963 by FAO and WHO to develop food standards, guidelines and related texts such as codes of practice under the Joint FAO/WHO Food Standards Programme. The main purposes of this Programme are protecting health of the consumers, ensuring fair trade practices in the food trade, and promoting coordination of all food standards work undertaken by international governmental and non-governmental organizations."



The U.S. Submits to WTO

Codex standards and guidelines were originally intended to be voluntary, i.e., each nation could obey or disobey them. But that began to change when the various nations signed new treaties at the Uruguay Round of General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), at which time the World Trade Organization (WTO) came into existence. According to the treaty the United States signed at Uruguay, we are required to obey the rulings of the WTO. The WTO has enforcement power through a new international court, the Dispute Settlement Body, which does not follow our rules of evidence and wherein our interests are represented by unelected government bureaucrats.



The controlled media and press... (bought and paid-off)

This Codex crisis is the clearest proof this writer has ever seen that we have a "controlled press" in America! There is absolutely no mention by ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, BBC, or the newspapers and news magazines that America is hurtling toward the total loss of effective vitamin-and-herbal supplementation! This is largely due to a conflict of interest: the drug companies provide them with millions of dollars in drug-ad revenues, and it is my belief that the media have been threatened with the loss of this revenue if they tell the public the truth about Codex.

This includes generous "contributions" to the White House and Congress, as well as immense bribes to EU and UN officials. Now you can understand why the newspapers, newsmagazines, and news broadcasts do not say a word about the nutritional crisis we are facing. In 2004, pharmaceutical companies spent over $4 billion on direct consumer advertising. This includes media advertising. In that same year, $785 million was spent on Congressional lobbying.



Here is what we have to look forward to...

According to John Hammell, a legislative advocate and the founder of International Advocates for Health Freedom (IAHF)...

"If Codex Alimentarius has its way, then herbs, vitamins, minerals, homeopathic remedies, amino acids and other natural remedies you have taken for granted most of your life will be gone. The name of the game for Codex Alimentarius is to shift all remedies into the prescription category so they can be controlled exclusively by the medical monopoly and its bosses, the major pharmaceutical firms. Predictably, this scenario has been denied by both the Canadian Health Food Association and the Health Protection Branch of Canada (HPB).

The Codex Alimentarius proposals already exist as law in Norway and Germany where the entire health food industry has literally been taken over by the drug companies. In these countries, vitamin C above 200 mg is illegal as is vitamin E above 45 IU, vitamin B1 over 2.4 mg and so on. Shering-Plough, the Norway pharmaceutical giant, now controls an Echinacea tincture, which is being sold there as an over the counter drug at grossly inflated prices. The same is true of ginkgo and many other herbs, and only one government controlled pharmacy has the right to import supplements as medicines which they can sell to health food stores, convenience stores or pharmacies."

It is now a criminal offence in parts of Europe to sell herbs as foods. An agreement called EEC6565 equates selling herbs as foods to selling other illegal drugs. Action is being taken to accelerate other European countries into 'harmonization' as well.



Food control = people control = population control!

Is this beginning to sound like world government and one-world order? Could this be the real goal behind Codex Alimentarius?

The United States, Canada, the Europeans, Japan, most of Asia, and South America have already signed agreements pledging total harmonization of their laws including food and drug laws to these international standards in the future.


[link to www.knowthelies.com]


WHAT CODEX WILL BRING...

What can we expect under Codex? To give you an idea, here are some important points:

* Dietary supplements could not be sold for preventive (prophylactic) or therapeutic use.
* Potencies would be limited to extremely low dosages. Only the drug companies and the big phytopharmaceutical companies would have the right to produce and sell the higher potency products (at inflated prices).
* Prescriptions would be required for anything above the extremely low doses allowed (such as 35 mg. on niacin).
* Common foods such as garlic and peppermint would be classified as drugs or a third category (neither food nor drugs) that only big pharmaceutical companies could regulate and sell. Any food with any therapeutic effect can be considered a drug, even benign everyday substances like water.
* Codex regulations for dietary supplements would become binding (escape clauses would be eliminated).
* All new dietary supplements would be banned unless they go through Codex testing and approval.
* Genetically altered food would be sold worldwide without labeling.



Paul Hellyer in his book, "The Evil Empire," states...

"Codex Alimentarius is supported by international banks and multinational corporations including some in Canada, and is in reality a bill of rights for these banks and the corporations they control. It will hand over our sovereign rights concerning who may or may not invest in our countries to an unelected world organization run by big business. The treaty would make it impossible for Canadian legislators either federal or provincial to alter or improve environmental standards for fear of being sued by multinational corporations whether operating in Canada or not.



Can Codex be stopped?

There is no certainty about this. You should contact your Congressmen and Senators, and tell them how you think they should vote. It is imperative that concerned natural health consumers become organized and fully activated to stop Codex from being enacted in the United States.



FDA is making it clear...

Small supplement companies will have to go out of business! According to news sources, the big vitamin and supplement companies that are set to stay in business (Vitamin Shoppe, GNC, etc.) have strong pharmaceutical company backing.

Senator Ted Kennedy's FDA "revitalization" bill S. 1082 is another blow to DSHEA: it allows for its dismantling by the FDA and Congress. Dr. Ron Paul is trying to counteract this with some new bills such as his H.R.2117. We'll see if he is successful.

Codex is happening, although they are implementing it in small stages so that the public hardly notices. If we call Congress to complain, they'll say, "Oh no, that's not happening." We must read between the lines and look at all the evidence—it's as plain as day!

When we see powerful players forcing our leaders to act in ways that threaten the rights that Americans have historically died to preserve, we must remind them of their duty to safeguard our way of life. If we do not raise our voices above the clamor of multinational commercial interests, we may be silenced forever.



Codex Alimentarius...

The Global Takeover of Food and Health Freedoms

**Codex Alimentarius!** The FOOD POLICE!... HR 875 - S 425... No Organic Farming or Backyard Gardening Will Be Allowed!
Submitted by SadInAmerica on Sun, 03/08/2009 - 4:44pm.

This bill is sitting in committee and I am not sure when it is going to hit the floor. One thing I do know is that very few of the Representatives have read it. As usual they will vote on this based on what someone else is saying. ~ Lydia Scott

Urge your members to read the legislation and ask for opposition to this devastating legislation. Devastating for everyday folks but great for factory farming ops like Monsanto, ADM, Sodexo and Tyson to name a few.

I have no doubt that this legislation was heavily influenced by lobbyists from huge food producers. This legislation is so broad based that technically someone with a little backyard garden could get fined and have their property siezed. It will effect anyone who produces food even if they do not sell but only consume it. It will literally put all independent farmers and food producers out of business due to the huge amounts of money it will take to conform to factory farming methods. If people choose to farm without industry standards such as chemical pesticides and fertilizers they will be subject to a variety of harassment from this completely new agency that has never before existed. That's right, a whole new government agency is being created just to police food, for our own protection of course.

DO NOT TAKE MY WORD FOR IT, READ THIS LEGISLATION FOR YOURSELF. The more people who read this legislation the more insight we are going to get and be able to share. Post your observations and insights below. Urge your members to read this legislation and to oppose the passage of this legislation.

Pay special attention to

* Section 3 which is the definitions portion of the bill-read in it's entirety.
* section 103, 206 and 207- read in it's entirety.

Red flags I found and I am sure there are more...........

* Legally binds state agriculture depts to enforcing federal guidelines effectively taking away the states power to do anything other than being food police for the federal dept.
* Effectively criminalizes organic farming but doesn't actually use the word organic.
* Effects anyone growing food even if they are not selling it but consuming it.
* Effects anyone producing meat of any kind including wild game.
* Legislation is so broad based that every aspect of growing or producing food can be made illegal. There are no specifics which is bizarre considering how long the legislation is.
* Section 103 is almost entirely about the administrative aspect of the legislation. It will allow the appointing of officials from the factory farming corporations and lobbyists and classify them as experts and allow them to determine and interpret the legislation. Who do you think they are going to side with?
* Section 206 defines what will be considered a food production facility and what will be enforced up all food production facilities. The wording is so broad based that a backyard gardener could be fined and more.
* Section 207 requires that the state's agriculture dept act as the food police and enforce the federal requirements. This takes away the states power and is in violation of the 10th amendment.
* There are many more but by the time I got this far in the legislation I was so alarmed that I wanted to bring someone's attention to it. (to the one person who reads my blog)

Didn't Stalin nationalize farming methods that enabled his administration to gain control over the food supply? Didn't Stalin use the food to control the people?

Last word... Legislate religion and enforce gag orders on ministers on what can and can't be said in the pulpit, instituting regulations forcing people to rely soley on the government, control the money and the food. What is that called? It is on the tip of my tongue...

I haven't read any of the Senate's version of the bill as I have been poring thru the House's version. Here is the link and I hope some of you can take a look and post your observations and insights below. One thing I am pretty sure of is that very few if any Senator's have actually read the legislation and when it comes up for a vote they will more than likely take someone else's word on how they should vote. The other thing I am pretty sure about is that the legislation was probably written by lobbyists and industry experts.

S 425 [link to thomas.loc.gov]

Things you can do

1. Contact your members at 202-224-3121 and ask them to oppose HR 875 and S 425. While you are at it ask them if they personally have read the legislation and what their position is? If they have not read the legislation ask them to read it and politely let them know that just because other representitives are not reading the legislation and voting on it does not mean they can do the same.
2. Get in touch with local farmers and food producers by attending a local farmers market and asking them how business is.
3. Attend a local WAPF meeting, this is a good start to learning about what is going on in farming and local & state initiatives . The website is [link to www.westonaprice.org]
4. Check out the Farmers Legal Defense Fund at [link to www.ftcldf.org]
5. Find out who sits on your states agriculture and farming committee and contact them with your concerns.
6. Continue to contact your elected officials and let them know your position on legislation and why.
7. Get active at the local and state levels, this is the quickest way to initiate change.



HR 875 [link to thomas.loc.gov]

S 425 [link to thomas.loc.gov]



Take action -- click here to contact your local newspaper or congress people:
Stop HR 875, HR 814, SR 425, and soon, HR 759

Lydia Scott - March 7, 2009 - source CampaignForLibery

Ringleader of Monsanto
CEO Hugh Grant
800 N Lindbergh Blvd
Saint Louis, MO 63167
(314) 694-1000

Cheryl P Morley
7 Ladue Ln
Saint Louis, MO 63124
(314) 997-8879

Janet M Holloway
23 Conway Ln
Saint Louis, MO
(314) 567-7738



monSATAN is very powerful and love to sell "round up" In St Louis...It's difficult to win against them in St Louis Fed court since many of the judges are former Monsanto lawyers. SupremeCourt nitwit Clarence Thomas was a former Monsanto lawyer. They've polluted the legal system with criminal lawyers who WHORE for Monsanto.

Political Friendster(.com) is a good site to cross check as they go round and round like a merry go round or an incestuous family.




WHO WOULD OF THOUGHT???

Read Jeff Smith's book " Seeds of Deception" and "Genetic Roulette". Great sources for the history of this menace and what steps you can take to try to protect yourself. If indeed, that is at all possible.


research
Arpad Pusztai, a scientist in Britain did....he was fired after revealing specific info damaging to terminator frankenfreaks. A 30 something year career went kaput due to his honesty.

Pandora's box has been opened and wrath follows

Declaring a sugar cane shortage...so GM sugar beets can be grown. These not only contaminate other beets but the organic Chard as well. This is a real serious problem....there's simply NO WAY to put the genie back in the bottle.

Stop Codex alimentarius as it is being forced onto the world population to our demise and nutricide

monSATAN has been buying up seed banks and seed companies for about 30-40 yrs-so most ALL SEED COMPANIES are owned by them

Just like what happened to media-now all owned by a few in collusion...controlling all media

soon all food will be owned solely by monSATAN


too few get it but you will when the hunger pangs tear at the stomach

Figure it out before your death will be desired by more than the controllers, the powers and principalities

This is their plan and most seem unaware of how close this really is-

Remember that the *technology* is not the problem..it's the way it's used that is the problem.
As it is used in this false matrix as the greed and the evil many of them in control display is nefarious.

GMO may be able to feed the world, BUT should be done free of intellectual property. We are being strangled by a few sociopaths

Zbig said "...it is easier to kill a million than control a million..."

No doubt and if many that think like him rich or poor died it would be far less than a million but many more would likely eat.

Packaged fresh


what the hell is it really


HUman DNA in rice

swine DNA in a tomato-who cares if one is a vegetarian...cWHOREporate farming is farm from healthy.



Dr. Mercola:
"Food, Inc. is a horror movie for the socially conscious, the nutritionally curious and the hungry. Robert Kenner's documentary does for the supermarket what "Jaws" did for the beach. The film marches straight into the dark side of cutthroat agri-business, corporatized meat and the greedy manipulation of both genetics and the law."

If you want real tasting fruits and vegetables have to grow them yourself. Heritage seeds are disappearing. Food is grown for shelf life , appearance, and disease resistance..

A tomato used to be good for only a few days before it began to soften and become only good for soup.

Now a tomato can sit on a shelf for a week. Refrigerated it will last a month or longer.

The next trick is plasticize meat so that shelf life will increase exponentially. Like a twinkle good for 2 years in vending machine.


As they arrest the obese kids or the ones whose parents might make poor choices in diet; forcing injections of gardasil and some mutant vaccine with fetal cells from humans, swine, and birds...and who knows what else...as the foist their transgenic cauliflower on many-if it is not organic it will exchange DNA with your DNA in your gut-and this is suppose to be safe??? To whom???(surely not me)


So this is how nanny world plans to off most of the population-blaming the people and blaming this group or that for their beastly ways.

Pretty clear what is up...

Research Codex Alimentarius


Research NAIS, ties in with NAFTA...


Bio degradable Round Up eh...well they cannot state that anymore-as time goes on the lies they have spread and the DEATH they will CAUSE will be reaped by them-let the gates return their death seeds back to their origin-the doorstep of monSATAN.

Known liars

proven as liars in many countries

India is but one.




Terminator seeds destroy Native plants and only their slop survives

Round Up is in the DNA will kill pests but totally great for you and your kids-NOT


rat studies have shown DEATH from frankenfoods

MONSANTO IS EVIL!!!! I suggest we put all the Monsanto Board Members in a room and let them go to town on the poisoned food they are feeding the American people. They will not be allowed to leave until they finish every last yummy bite!! Does anyone second that?









:Monsanto6:

Their hormones are causing all kinds of problems from my POV


pus filled milk is poison


Also tumors are enhanced by these hormones-prostate and breast cancers...

banned in Canada and Europe...but here it was going gangbusters















agricultural terrorism...monSATAN is spawned in Tartarus


monSATAN is cursed, beyond human understanding and they shall reap their bitter harvest

making all the soil bitter and the waters-killing many, trying to usurp all

seconded and amended that they must repay all taken and then 100% more...all truth will be known by all-they can be exposed in all ways










:Monsanto6:


true pond slime is more nutritious than their filth

I fast to avoid it as much as I can-as all organic is very expensive and to grow for a group takes much more than many understand. seems very little sun and too much rain brings many funguses...as well as the decimation of the bees, butterflies, bats, and other pollinators


GMO, Nicotine based pesticides, and EMF is taking most food supply down to nil...Kissinger and Rockefeller had their food and water control plan-

I avoid their crap as much as I can-I will eat herbs and sprouts I sprout before I eat their crap..

They have been at it for decades-and it is bad...

Thx Wake Up I really appreciate the support to get the truth out

Codex will be foisted upon us in Dec 2009 if they are successful and as gw shrub sr said about success of nanny world..."and we will be..."

Gordon Brown loves nanny world


reminds me of vomit...

banksters and world bank and UN go hand in hand with nanny world...IMF, CFR...NWO....UN all go hand in hand

without food and water many will go along to survive as slaves...

even some who seem to be trying to help the people many may be psy ops so be aware...

is my favorite


totally real and if one researches they can find the best foods to eat and the ones to try and avoid


I C DNA changes in Humanity


that IS what I C



Last Edited by ShadowDancer on 10/27/2009 11:03 PM