Study linking GM crops and cancer questioned.

[proverbialwisdom]

44. The Slate source brought up Mother Jones writer, Tom Philpott, and so does ThinkProgress.org below.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2012/09/are_gmo_foods_safe_opponents_are_skewing_the_science_to_scare_people_.html

...None of this seems to bother Tom Philpott, the popular food blogger for Mother Jones, who writes that Seralini's results "shine a harsh light on the ag-biotech industry's mantra that GMOs have indisputably proven safe to eat."

...I single out Philpott not to pick on him, but because he represents the most reasonable, level-headed voice of the anti-GMO brigade (whose most extreme adherents don white hazmat suits and destroy research plots). The same goes for Grist, which calls the French study "important" and says "it's worth paying attention to what Seralini has done.”

http://thinkprogress.org/election/2012/09/14/850321/romney-monsanto/?mobile=nc

Romney And Bain Boosted Agriculture Giant Monsanto In Spite Of Toxic Past
By Aviva Shen on Sep 14, 2012 at 11:37 am

Biotechnology firm Monsanto Company, which currently owns most of the patents for America’s staple crops, is already cozy with American lawmakers. A new Nation report, however, indicates that “a very old friend in a very high place” may usher in the corporation’s most prosperous years yet.

The Nation’s investigative report ( http://www.thenation.com/article/169885/mitt-romney-monsanto-man# ) has uncovered how Mitt Romney personally helped Monsanto shed its string of toxic chemical-related scandals and reinvent itself to dominate American agriculture. Monsanto, an early Bain & Company client, was so impressed with Romney that they started bypassing his superiors to deal with him directly. Romney’s close relationship with then CEO John Hanley prompted his boss to create Bain Capital to keep Romney from leaving and taking their largest consulting client with him.

From 1977 to 1985, Romney helped navigate Monsanto through very rocky waters. The agribusiness was flooded with lawsuits after Congress banned the toxic coolant PCBs, a Monsanto product that has been linked to cancer and neurological disorders. At the same time, Monsanto’s Agent Orange toxin, used to defoliate jungles in the Vietnam War, was linked to the contamination of millions of Vietnamese and American soldiers and had been dubbed “the largest chemical warfare operation” in human history.

Tom Philpott at Mother Jones dug up a 2002 article ( http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/09/romney-monsanto-bain ) describing Monsanto’s attempts to hide its toxic waste disposal even after managers discovered fish “spurting blood and shedding skin” within 10 seconds of the PCB dump:

Monsanto Co. routinely discharged toxic waste into a west Anniston [Alabama] creek and dumped millions of pounds of PCBs into oozing open-pit landfills. And thousands of pages of Monsanto documents—many emblazoned with warnings such as “CONFIDENTIAL: Read and Destroy”—show that for decades, the corporate giant concealed what it did and what it knew.

Faced with costly litigation, Monsanto relied on Romney to create their new public image — one that did not involve poisoning soldiers or dumping chemicals in rivers:

Dr. Earl Beaver, who was Monsanto’s waste director during the Bain period, says that Bain was certainly “aware” of the “PCB and dioxin scandals” because they created “a negative public perception that was costing the company money.” So Bain recommended focusing “on the businesses that didn’t have those perceptions,” Beaver recalls, starting with “life science products that were biologically based,” including genetically engineered crops, as well as Roundup, the hugely profitable weed-killer. “These were the products that Bain gave their go-ahead to,” Beaver contends, noting that Romney was a key player, “reviewing the data collected by other people and developing alternatives,” talking mostly to “the higher muckety-mucks.”

<...>

BTW, great discussion in the comments of the Slate article.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2012/09/are_gmo_foods_safe_opponents_are_skewing_the_science_to_scare_people_.single.html

COMMENTS:

Deconstructing Dinner
Keith Kloor's Full Comment titled "No, genetically modified corn won't give you cancer" falls victim to his own allegations.

Kloor lambastes media for reporting on the recent Seralini study and in doing so "legitimizing psuedoscience". Kloor even concludes that the work of Seralini is "scientific distortion". Yet Kloor fails to inquire into who "shredded" the study's credibility and who the "scores of scientists" were who very swiftly sought to discredit the controversial research.

It wouldn't take long to learn that the response to the Seralini study was well orchestrated and heavily funded. The Science Media Centre in particular was one of the key drivers of the anti-Seralini campaign - a 'charitable' organization who seeks to inform the media on important matters of scientific interest. But who funds the SMC? Funders include biotech trade association CropLife, multinational biotech seed giant Syngenta, and the industry's GMO communications arm - the Council for Biotechnology Information. SMC used quotes from ‘experts’ who are heavily invested in pushing GMOs into the food supply. Kloor failed to recognize that the BBC, CBS, Forbes, Discovery News, the Financial Times and The Guardian among others all fell victim to SMC's coordinated campaign to discredit Seralini. Slate is yet another victim having linked directly to the SMC release in the above article. As a journalist, Kloor failed to report on the almost 20 years of similar attacks which have also been well coordinated when any research questioning the safety of GMOs is published.

Kloor further insists that "anti-GMO campaigners have distorted the science on genetically modified foods" yet fails to question whether GMO advocates and industry have done the same?

Where all credit that might go to Kloor gets blown out the window is following his classic error made by GMO advocates when he quotes UC Davis geneticist Pamela Ronald who states, "no adverse health or environmental effects have resulted from commercialization of genetically engineered crops." As a long-time journalist covering this issue, I can confirm without a modicum of doubt, that had Keith Kloor asked Ronald... "Can you point me to the studies which have been tracking the long-term health effects of GMOs since they were first introduced?" There's only one answer she could have given... "no". Why? Because there have been no such studies.

Jon Steinman
Deconstructing Dinner