Posted on 11/03/2012 6:26:28 AM PDT by Renfield
Australian scientists are expressing grave concerns over a new type of genetically engineered wheat that may cause major health problems for people that consume it.
University of Canterbury Professor Jack Heinemann announced the results of his genetic research into the wheat, a type developed by Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), at a press conference last month.
"What we found is that the molecules created in this wheat, intended to silence wheat genes, can match human genes, and through ingestion, these molecules can enter human beings and potentially silence our genes," Heinemann stated. "The findings are absolutely assured. There is no doubt that these matches exist."
Flinders University Professor Judy Carman and Safe Food Foundation Director Scott Kinnear concurred with Heinemann's analysis.
"If this silences the same gene in us that it silences in the wheat -- well, children who are born with this enzyme not working tend to die by the age of about five," Carman said.
Digital Journal contacted Heniemann and Kinnear for more information on their research and future actions they may take regarding this issue.
"To date we have not heard from CSIRO, nor are we aware that CSIRO has released any safety studies into the GM wheat," Kinnear said in an email response. "We are in the final stages of drafting a formal letter to CSIRO which will be requesting further information and asking for them to undertake the studies that are recommended in our reports."
According to the researchers, extended testing should be performed before the wheat is put on store shelves. "We firmly believe that long term chronic toxicological feeding studies are required in addition to the detailed requests made by Heinemann for the DNA sequences used," Kinnear stated.
"The industry routinely does feeding studies anyway, so it should not be too much more difficult to do long term (lifetime) studies and include inhalation studies," Heinemann added. "These should be tuned to the way people would be exposed to the product."
The researchers also cautioned consumers against eating the wheat if it is approved prematurely. "I would advise citizens to request that these tests be done and the evidence meet with their standards of scientific rigour if in the end it is approved for use," said Heinemann.
If the concerns surrounding CSIRO's GM wheat are not resolved, the issue could end up in court, according to Kinnear: "If CSIRO was to consider moving towards human feeding trials without conducting these studies, we would be looking at what legal avenues are available to stop them."
Not freaking, just being careful. For example, with Monsanto's genetically modified "Bt" corn, the corn's DNA is equipped with a gene from soil bacteria called Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) that produces the Bt-toxin. It's a pesticide that breaks open the stomach of certain insects and kills them. Monsanto and (EPA) assured us it was only insects that would be hurt, and the Bt-toxin would be completely destroyed in the human digestive system, and not have any impact on all of us.
Oops.
Doctors found the corn's Bt-toxin in the blood of pregnant women and their babies, as well as in non-pregnant women.i The study has been accepted for publication in the peer reviewed journal Reproductive Toxicology.
We are being experimented on. I choose not to play as best I can. This is different that selective breeding of plants.
Just curious - why do you bother coming to Free Republic?
Exactly.
If we were all able to go back in a time machine to 200+ years ago, what would we find? First of all, we’d find produce much smaller and often full of bugs. Prime cuts of beef would be a luxury for most people. Comparatively speaking and in today’s values, items like four and sugar and even salt would be very expensive in today’s dollars.
We’d not be able to get fresh fruits and vegetables during the winter months, we’d see and would be accustomed to shortages in some foods due to local crop failures because of crop pests and diseases. We’d be total dependent on local crops as absent refrigeration and crops that are modified, either from selective breeding or through its much more efficient close cousin and really no different - genetic engineered, to withstand shipping over long distances; we’d be limited to what was grown locally. If you were dependent on what you or your close neighbors grew yourselves and your crops failed, you might well starve to death or come very close to it. And people would die or suffer lifelong disabilities from diseases unknown to us now like scurvy. That’s not to say that everyone didn’t survive and eat fairly well, but it took a lot more personal energy and resources and planning and dollars to do so compared to today.
If we went back in time, we’d also be accustomed to having large families but also with the fact that many of our children would never live to adulthood because they succumbed to now preventable diseases like measles or the flu or simple bacterial infections due to a cut or an abscessed tooth. While a few of us would live to a very ripe old age; that would be the exception as a great many of us would die before the age of 50. Many women would die during child birth.
FWIW, I went shopping at a Wegman’s yesterday – love that store BTW. But as I was shopping for some produce, in particular for some fresh cauliflower, the first thing I noticed was there were two types: conventional and “organic”. The organic heads of cauliflower were half the size and twice the cost of the non-organic. So which do you think I bought?
You guys are killing all the ‘we’re gonna die from eating’ fun.
Dollars to donuts his patients lost weight. Eliminate all bread, pasta cakes, cookies, donuts, etc. from your diet and you will most likely lose plenty of weight. Lose weight and your heart condition improves.
It's not rocket surgery.
“Why mess with God’s natural production?”
You're way too late to the dinner table, there is no food, NO FOOD, you eat that is “natural”.
And the article is an example of misdirection.
You have hit the nail on the head. This is all about monopoly control of the food supply by the One World Government/New World Order/United Nations crowd. SUBMIT TO US, OR YOU WILL NOT EAT.
I’ve stopped eating wheat (I can’t digest it anyway). Occasionally I eat corn chips but they are the non-GMO blue corn type. Havent’ eaten any soy stuff in years. I have two large gardens and an orchard, and raise nearly all of my fruits and vegetables (I still buy bananas at the store). I raise only open-pollinated heirloom varieties. We eat mostly venison and local, grass-fed lamb for our meat. I will not submit to the NWO villains.
At some time in the future there will be basically two kinds of people. Those that eat GM foods and those that starve. — Captain Compassion
CC
Indeed!
Good grief, man. You need to look up fumonisins and how dangerous those can be to humans if consumed. Then you need to look up the source for this type of fungi (it's corn) and how Monsanto's product protects us from them. Lots of people have died from consuming fumonisins found in corn. Maybe you could link us to a source that proves someone has died from Bt corn. I won't hold my breath.
Again, everything you eat has been genetically modified in some way. To me, being careful is not synonymous with starving. But then, I prefer eating to starving. To each his own.
People who rant about GM foods should take a few minutes to learn about a guy named Norman Borlaug. Every American should know who he is. Unfortunately, more people know the Kardashians than Borlaug. It's a sad commentary on our society and the sad state of our system of public education.
The anti-science presence on this forum is unfortunate. Nothing like a junk science article on GM foods to bring out the Luddites. Not quite as bad as vaccines, but still unfortunate.
I wish it could silence the stupid gene.
But what would panic mongers do then?
I’m glad to hear you’re learning. I’m doing the same - as best I can.
The trouble is that much of science has sold out to ideology. You write as though finding the truth these days involved little more that doing an internet search.
Even among those scientists whose integrity has not been compromised, there remains so much ignorance - simply because there’s so much left to discover. So, as someone pointed out above, yesterday coffee was bad for us, but today it’s good for us.
Perhaps its premature, then, to claim that GMO (modified artificially, as opposed to, say, crossbreeding - a distinction some would obscure) is harmful. To claim it’s harmless, on the other hand, is clearly reckless.
Your eagerness to dig for the truth is a rarity, and so it seems unlikely the GMO experiment will be halted. We’ll probably know within a few decades whether or not it was a mistake.
Food companies and the FDA are conducting a huge experiment on Americans. I choose not to participate.
Humans are very complex, God made us that way. Each of us in very unique right down to our fingerprints. Our response to certain factors is also unique to each one of us.
CSIRO, a Communist organization. I wouldn’t trust anything from them as being nothing but bias along the same lines as our liberals.
I buy non-GMO kamut from www.waltonfeed.com and then make my own flour with a hand mill.
Kamut is the ancient wheat grown in Egypt. The seeds were found in a tomb and sprouted after over 2000 years.
Dear Fool, algore provides and excellent example for the dangers of never having studied science of any kind, and then pretending that you have a clue. I’ve found that many offering their opinion as fact on this forum have had the least amount of training in any scientific discipline. They find something on the internet that fits with, and supports, their belief(s) and then run with it. They do this because they never took the time to obtain the knowledge necessary for differentiating legitimate science from junk. As a result, junk marches on.
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