I am 1000% against gm. There's been a march going on here in Germany against gm starting in Berlin I believe, to cover all of Germany. When it gets close to my area, I will join. We are playing with such fire with gm products. Organisms take thousands of yrs to evolve and here we are idiotically playing with nature with such abandon when it affects so many species. You're right DavidT, we are a danerous species, dangerous because we are particularly smart.
It was in a bbc podcast last yr that some gm crops don't produce seeds, meaning poor farmers in 3rd world have to keep buying the seeds every year. Surely gm is not in the interests of solving food shortages, it's just another business. I don't buy into gm saving the world from hunger.
from a site called permaculture.org.au, an article was written about GMO soy and how it affects hamsters. Sterility after 3rd generation, and, in some cases, HAIR GROWING IN THE MOUTH!
this sounds unbelievable, but a scientific research was done leading to these discoveries.
“This study was just routine,” said Russian biologist Alexey V. Surov, in what could end up as the understatement of this century. Surov and his colleagues set out to discover if Monsanto’s genetically modified (GM) soy, grown on 91% of US soybean fields, leads to problems in growth or reproduction. What he discovered may uproot a multi-billion dollar industry.
After feeding hamsters for two years over three generations, those on the GM diet, and especially the group on the maximum GM soy diet, showed devastating results. By the third generation, most GM soy-fed hamsters lost the ability to have babies. They also suffered slower growth, and a high mortality rate among the pups.
And if this isn’t shocking enough, some in the third generation even had hair growing inside their mouths—a phenomenon rarely seen, but apparently more prevalent among hamsters eating GM soy.
The study, jointly conducted by Surov’s Institute of Ecology and Evolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the National Association for Gene Security, is expected to be published in three months (July 2010)—so the technical details will have to wait. But Surov sketched out the basic set up for me in an email.
He used Campbell hamsters, with a fast reproduction rate, divided into 4 groups. All were fed a normal diet, but one was without any soy, another had non-GM soy, a third used GM soy, and a fourth contained higher amounts of GM soy. They used 5 pairs of hamsters per group, each of which produced 7-8 litters, totally 140 animals.
Surov told The Voice of Russia,“Originally, everything went smoothly. However, we noticed quite a serious effect when we selected new pairs from their cubs and continued to feed them as before. These pairs’ growth rate was slower and reached their sexual maturity slowly.”
He selected new pairs from each group, which generated another 39 litters. There were 52 pups born to the control group and 78 to the non-GM soy group. In the GM soy group, however, only 40 pups were born. And of these, 25% died. This was a fivefold higher death rate than the 5% seen among the controls. Of the hamsters that ate high GM soy content, only a single female hamster gave birth. She had 16 pups; about 20% died.
Surov said “The low numbers in F2 [third generation] showed that many animals were sterile.”
The published paper will also include measurements of organ size for the third generation animals, including testes, spleen, uterus, etc. And if the team can raise sufficient funds, they will also analyze hormone levels in collected blood samples.
Hair Growing in the Mouth
Earlier this year, Surov co-authored a paper in Doklady Biological Sciences showing that in rare instances, hair grows inside recessed pouches in the mouths of hamsters.
“Some of these pouches contained single hairs; others, thick bundles of colorless or pigmented hairs reaching as high as the chewing surface of the teeth. Sometimes, the tooth row was surrounded with a regular brush of hair bundles on both sides. The hairs grew vertically and had sharp ends, often covered with lumps of a mucous.”
(The photos of these hair bundles are truly disgusting. Trust me, or look for yourself.)
At the conclusion of the study, the authors surmise that such an astounding defect may be due to the diet of hamsters raised in the laboratory. They write, “This pathology may be exacerbated by elements of the food that are absent in natural food, such as genetically modified (GM) ingredients (GM soybean or maize meal) or contaminants (pesticides, mycotoxins, heavy metals, etc.).” Indeed, the number of hairy mouthed hamsters was much higher among the third generation of GM soy fed animals than anywhere Surov had seen before.
Do you have a reference for the published study, please? It says above that it would be published in July 2010 but I couldn't find anything when I searched (apart from the earlier Doklady Biological Sciences one which is about a different study).
I am not keen on GMOs for a number of reasons but wouldn't take stuff from a blog etc at face value as anyone can post anything. (Of course independent peer-reviewed science journals aren't the last word in quality assurance either but there is some attempt at it.)
Genetically modified wheat that repels aphids grown by British scientists
The crop has been manipulated to give off chemicals which aphids naturally release to warn one another of imminent danger, with the aim of tricking them into keeping their distance.
It is believed to be the world's first GM crop which repels insects instead of killing them, reducing the chances of the pests developing immunity to it, experts said.
Re: Genetically modified wheat that repels aphids grown by British scientists
Aw, I was enjoying reading that until I came to this bit "The pheromone is too mild to be smelled by humans and has the added benefit of attracting a tiny breed of parasitic wasp which reduces the aphid population by laying its eggs inside their bodies, the scientists said."
Re: Genetically modified wheat that repels aphids grown by British scientists
The pheromone is too mild to be smelled by humans and has the added benefit of attracting a tiny breed of parasitic wasp which reduces the aphid population by laying its eggs inside their bodies, the scientists said."
I wonder if they'll test to see if that tiny breed of parasitic wasps will be attracted to humans who eat their gmo wheat. Naw I'm sure its perfectly safe....
The pheromone that repels aphids and attracts predators is produced by a gene that has been taken from peppermint and inserted into the GM wheat.
..The same effect could have been achieved by growing some peppermint plants among the wheat! This is called companion planting and has been used for centuries. Of course,using this would not boost the careers of those working at Rothampstead..
Other genes used in this trial include antibiotic 'marker' genes (which are likely to lead to even more antibiotic resistance in bacteria.)
For us, even more disgusting and immoral is that another gene being used in this trial was taken from cows!
Re: Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO)
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DavidT
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