is the end of monsanto near? prop 37 succeeding as nations ban GMO

[proverbialwisdom]

33. Absolutely not. See 'Scientists Under Attack' (German documentary on INDEPENDENT biotech research).

From the website:

http://www.scientistsunderattack.com/

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Dr. Árpád Pusztai

In 1996 and 1997, Dr. Pusztai and his co-worker and wife Dr. Susan Bardócz carried out the first carefully designed and highly sensitive nutrition and toxicologiocal feeding study testing a genetically modified food, potatoes engineered to express the snowdrop lectin gene. When he discussed their findings in an interview broadcast on January 13, 1998 as part of the evening BBC news, a series of events was triggered that have profoundly impacted scientific and public attitudes about GM foods.

Just days after the interview, Dr. Pusztai was relieved of his duties by the director of the Rowett Research Institute, had his laboratory notes confiscated, and was in effect banned from any further interaction with his colleagues at Rowett, where the experiment had been conducted. His wife was then the manager of the division of the Rowett Institute within which the work was carried out. She, too, lost her job over the controversy triggered by the article.

In its October 16, 1999 issue, the respected British medical journal The Lancet published the Pusztai study results, in an article co-authored with Dr. Stanley Ewen. The research was subjected to an unprecedented two-year campaign of criticism carried out by proponents of GM technology. The U.K. Royal Society played an active role in organizing and publicizing criticisms of the Pusztai-Ewen experiment. The Lancet subsequently published a series of letters raising various questions and criticisms, to which Pusztai and Ewen responded fully. The validity of their study and its findings remain intact. To this day, the Pusztai-Ewen experiment remains the most sensitive and rigorous GM food feeding trial ever conducted.

Pusztai, Ewen and Bardócz knew very little about GM technology when they successfully competed for the $1.2 million grant from the Scottish government that supported their GM potato feeding study. They discussed the results of this research in much the same way as they had discussed the results of dozens of earlier studies. They did not anticipate the events that would be triggered by their work and a brief report on the evening BBC news program.

Account written by Dr. Charles Benbrook, director of the Northwest Science and Environmental Policy Center and manager of the AgBiotech InfoNet, based in Sandpoint, Idaho.

The Lancet coverage of the controversy:

May 29, 1999: An editorial raises the importance of growing debate over GM food safety and mentions basic findings of Pusztai research, quoting Pusztai's comment in an interview that he would not eat the GM potatoes himself, and that it is "very, very unfair to use our fellow citizens as guineapigs." This ediorial appears over five months before the publication by "The Lancet" of the Ewen-Pusztai paper on the GM potato experiment.

Born in Hungary, he received his degree in chemistry in Budapest and his B.Sc. in physiology and Ph.D. in biochemistry at the University of London. His career spans 50 years and work at universities and research institutes in Budapest, London, Chicago and Aberdeen (Rowett Research Institute). He has published nearly 300 peer-reviewed papers and wrote or edited 12 scientific books.

During the past 30 years, Dr. Pusztai he has pioneered research into the effects of dietary lectins (carbohydrate-reactive proteins), including those transgenically expressed in GM crop plants, on the gastrointestinal tract. His laboratory research on the nutritional and developmental impacts of a transgenic potato with increased natural pest protection has raised public and scientific inquiry in Europe. His October 16, 1999 study results, co-authored with Dr. Stanley Ewen and published in the respected British medical Journal The Lancet, remains the most sensitive and rigorous GM food feeding trial ever conducted.

Since 1998, Dr. Pusztai has been lecturing and acting as a consultant to groups exploring research in the area of health effects of GM foods. He is currently serving as a consultant to the Norwegian Food Sciences Institute.

His seminal article on the impacts of GM potatoes on rats appeared in The Lancet, Oct. 16, 1999, Vol. 354, No. 9187, pages 1353-1354.

Pusztai has co-authored a chapter in the book, Food Safety: Contaminants and Toxins [April 2003, edited by J.P.F. D'Mello, Scottish Agricultural College, Edinburgh, UK; ISBN: 0851996078], Chapter 16, Genetically Modified Foods: Potential Human Health Effects. [Note: This is a read-only PDF; contact the Center for a copy of the document.]


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Dr. Ignacio Chapela

In the spring of 2001 NATURE does something that it had never done before. For the first time in 137 years, the world's most important science magazine actually retracts a published article. This is very strange and very worrying - a scientist is under attack for doing his job.

The renowned biologist Dr Ignacio Chapela has submitted this article a few months earlier. It is about cross-pollination of Mexico's indigenous maize by GM varieties, but the magazine issue has not even finished being distributed when the editors are inundated with a flood of angry e-mails. Ignacio's research scientific qualifications and integrity are called into question. Why has a seemingly normal scientific paper caused such a fuss?

Then GUARDIAN journalists George Monbiot and Claire Robinson discover that all of the letters behind this calumny campaign trace back to one single source: the BIVINGS GROUP, an advertising agency.

They also find out that the agency is paid by MONSANTO, the giant multi-national chemicals and seed corporation. Monsanto has commissioned the BIVINGS GROUP to carry out a viral marketing campaign proudly lauded on their homepage as an effective and modern advertising strategy to "Infect the world!” Fictitious opinions and letters from non-existent persons are computer-generated and flood the addressee's inbox. The next question is obvious: Why is the Monsanto corporation so bent on discrediting Dr Chapela's research?

In 2001 Mexican-born Ignacio Chapela has found out that the indigenous maize of Oaxaca province, despite official protection by the Mexican government, has been significantly mixed with genetically manipulated maize. This is a significant discovery, for Oaxaca is not just a spot on the map. This is the genetic reservoir of different varieties of indigenous maize for the whole world, and it was from here that maize set out to conquer the world 5,000 years ago. Ignacio's discovery is highly alarming and Monsanto's response shows that he has hit the weak spot of companies involved in genetic engineering. He undermines the idea of co-existence, the belief propagated by the genetic engineering industry that natural plants can grow next to genetically manipulated plants without any cross-pollination.

However Monsanto aren't content with forcing Nature to bow to imaginary pressure and retract the article - they go after Ignacio himself. Because of his remarkable international career Chapela is expected to be granted professorship and tenure at the University of Berkeley. But he is rejected "for financial reasons" at the end of 2004 and suddenly finds himself in a situation where both his position as a scientist and his livelihood are in jeopardy.

So is Monsanto's suppression of the uncomfortable facts about cross-pollination between GM and normal crops a one off storm in a scientific teacup? Definitely not. What Ignacio found is a great danger to everybody's good in threatening the biodiversity of our plants, the safety of our food and the environment.

Already once before, Chapela waged a fight for freedom in doing research that uncomfortably got in the way of the genetic engineering industry.

Chapela objected to an agreement in which the department and faculty of Plant and Microbial Biology at UC Berkeley took money from Novartis in exchange for a degree of publication scrutiny and trade secrecy, taking a strong position on the issue.

Chapela was initially denied tenure at UC Berkeley in 2003. Supporters claim that this stems from opposition to Chapela's anti-Novartis activism from Molecular and Cell Biology faculty member Jasper Rine, who was both a member of the tenure committee and in a research relationship with the company. However, Chapela was ultimately awarded tenure in 2005.

Chapela has also spoken out against the deal between UC Berkeley, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and British Petroleum to research the development of biofuels, which may involve genetically engineering microorganisms and plants. The grant went into effect in 2007.

Chapela founded The Mycological Facility in Oaxaca state, a facility dealing with questions of natural resources and indigenous rights, and collaborates with indigenous communities in Mexico, Costa Rica, and Ecuador on issues of rights to genetic resources. He is also an advisory board member for The Sunshine Project, an organization promoting citizens' concerns with biosafety and biowarfare.

He has appeared in several films on genetically modified organism and food systems issues, „The World According to Monsanto“, „The Future of Food“ and „Scientists under Attack – Genetic engineering in the magnetic field of money“ (2010), produced and directed by Bertram Verhaag, Denkmal-Film.