by Moindreffor » 12/12/18, 20:25
not quite the same subject but it gives sobering, we are victim of the only information that we want to give us
GMO-poisons? The true end of the Séralini affair
Do you remember ? These spectacular images of rats with invasive cancers, so big that they see the balls under the hair. Exhibited on television. Broadcast in film, book, resounding articles. And this wonderful press campaign launched by the shock of the Obs: "Yes, GMOs are poisons."
Yes, you remember. But do you know that the December 10, the journal Toxicology Sciences published one of the research articles showing that it was an infox? Certainly not.
Let's go back to September 2012. The weekly then publishes a thick file in support of its title. But a strange file: his only sources of information are the team of Professor Gilles-Eric Séralini, lead author of an experiment published the same day and activists opposed to the use of transgenic plants. As if the team of journalists of the Nouvel Observateur mobilized for this shot of the press did not need anyone, in particular other experts of the subject, to judge the solidity of the thesis presented by the team of the biologist. Strange because this thesis opposes frontally many studies already published. By claiming that rats fed genetically engineered corn to tolerate glyphosate - the active ingredient in the world's most widely used herbicides by farmers, including the famous Round Up invented by Monsanto - suffer until death.
Radios and TVs go on without further critical investigation - but it's difficult at this rate - to the point that the government, through the voice of its Minister of Agriculture, Stéphane Le Foll, announces the same evening that he will request an amendment to European procedures to assess the risks of transgenic plants before they are placed on the market.
Raw data
A few months later, the two public agencies concerned - ANSES and HCB - published a complete analysis of the article by Gilles-Eric Séralini et al. and both concluded that he was unable to prove anything. The raw data from the experiment show that its poor performance, in particular by the small size of the control groups, made it impossible to draw any conclusion from the observations made on the health of the rats after two years of modified genetically modified maize ( 1).
However, ANSES recommended conducting a "whole life" experiment - two years for rats - in order to answer the question asked by Séralini: "to eat this transgenic maize makes it sick in the long term, in particular it causes there cancers? ". For its part, the HCB Scientific Committee did not really recommend it, but said in essence: if it can make citizens and consumers trust, why not?
Was this done? Yes. At the price of about 15 million euros spent by the European Commission and France and thousands of laboratory rats. By three different and independent experiences. Much better prepared and conducted than that of Gilles-Eric Séralini. And for what result? Let's get straight to the goal, as at the Olympique de Marseille: RAS. Nothing to report about the health of the rats whether they are fed 90 days, a year or two years, with transgenic maize (for both glyphosate-tolerant maize and the one producing its own insecticide). There are certainly some signals in the French experience, but more related to differences between grain varieties used, not really between transgenic and non-transgenic maize.
Let's dream a little
Before coming to these experiences and their results, let's dream a little. Let us dream that the newspapers, radios, televisions, journalists and NGOs or political leaders who have assured their audiences, readers, voters and activists that Gilles-Eric Séralini had "proved" that "GMOs" are deadly "poisons", will devote as much effort, time of words, length of articles and public statements to announce this now well established news.
This dream has no chance of being realized. These actions are not likely to yield any votes in an election, no support of a public opinion to candidates for elected positions more motivated by their conquests than the quality of the public debate. Press side either: this type of normal information, we learned in journalism schools, "does not sell." The man who bites a dog is an info, but if it's a dog that bites a man, it's only an info if he dies. A transgenic plant that kills is information; she is content to feed, it is not one. And the nearly 98% of the journalists who have written about this affair without reading the original article by GE Séralini will not read the results of these experiments any more or be encouraged to present them by editors who will not see not the reason for a bleeding title.
So, let's stop dreaming. And inform.
Four experiments were conducted. Three European and one French.
Marlon who studied the state of health of farm animals fed transgenic plants compared with that of animals not consuming them.
GRACE (GMO risk assessment and communication of evidence) in a regulatory toxicological framework with corn MON 810 (corn modified to produce insecticide toxin Bt) with studies at 90 days and at one year in order to verify if the protocols to 90 days do not miss slower processes.
G-TwYST (GM plants two years safety testing) which carries out the whole life experiment with glyphosate tolerant corn and aimed at the appearance of long-term cancers that GE Séralini claimed to do ... but with rats better chosen for this type study and in sufficient numbers (50 in each of the groups tested and control groups against the ten of Séralini) to obtain significant statistics.
GMO 90 + is the French experience, proposed by Bernard Salles, the last author of the article Toxicological Sciences. It was intended to study whether one can extract from a six-month experiment information on biological "precursors" that could indicate future health problems in the tested rats. The experiment is conducted with both transgenic corn types (glyphosate tolerant and Bt). It uses so-called "omics" technologies (proteomics, etc.) to track weak signals in the metabolism that may be precursors of diseases occurring in the longer term. It was funded by the Ministry of Ecological and Solidarity Transition.
These experiments are completed, the results published or in the course of publication (but already known to the specialists because exposed in seminars). The GMO90 + experiment has just been published in Toxicological Sciences. They must be fully cross-referenced and fully transparent on the raw data of each. The information available all goes in the same direction: for a rat, swallowing maize made tolerant to glyphosate, or producer of the toxin Bt (from a common bacterium) or a corn standard, it is kif kif for his health. The study GMO90 +, very thorough, concludes the absence of effects (clinical, physiopathological, in urine tests ...) of a food with genetically modified corn. The two-year study shows no particular effect on the occurrence of cancers.
A few comments :
► To say that these experiments prove that "GMOs are not poisons" would be a nonsense of the same caliber as the opposite statement of Nouvel Observateur in September 2012. They only show that the transgenic plants tested, and only those, are not poisons.
► These experiments give reason once again to biologists who consider that it is necessary "a reason" (biochemical, biological) to ask if this or that transgenic plant poses a problem of health or not and not to assume a priori that the Introduction of a gene (or its manipulation using new techniques available as CRISPR) represents a higher health risk than, for example, an artificial cross used in traditional seed selection. In this case, there was no "reason" to believe that the glyphosate tolerance gene or the gene for the production of Bt toxin and the proteins they encode constituted a health risk for human consumption.
► Genetic manipulation technologies are progressing, notably with CRISPR. The prospect of seeing plants modified for crops is growing. The militant response of wanting to force a priori suspicion of these modified plants and wanting to ban these techniques in a generic way could well end in a generalized defeat and the decline in vigilance. The results of these three experiments are thus agitated by seed companies using transgenesis and their supporters to claim ... that one does not do any more toxicological studies at 90 days on transgenic plants. It was the backlash that had to be feared, a backlash all the more dangerous with the new techniques of editing the genome. Regulatory framework decisions were indeed made on the basis of "spasms of public opinion", notes a sociologist, and not on scientific analyzes showing the need to take precautions with the products of a new technology.
► While these experiments demonstrate the sanitary safety of these two transgenic plants, they do not say anything about their (in) utility or their social, economic, agronomic and environmental effects.
► Since it is very unlikely that the conclusive results of these experiments carried out with a great deal of care will be disseminated to citizens and consumers, as well as to "decision-makers" (elected in particular), it is regrettable that the affair Seralini is that of a false alarm launcher, since any false alarm occupies a part of the citizenship and public expertise available for a real health or environmental alert. Certainly, it is better to be wrong from time to time and treat a false alarm that to miss a real but not drowning in false alerts is essential. Otherwise, it's the story of the little boy who was still shouting at the wolf and who was not believed when the real wolf arrived that may occur.
► The European Union having limited to 5 the current authorization of glyphosate, three years for France, it is likely that this herbicide will see its use decline and then disappear in Europe. This solves the problem of transgenic plants that are tolerant to this molecule and will therefore have no interest. But what will be the consequence of this decision followed anywhere else in the world? If a coherent policy of lesser use, or even a large-scale non-use, of herbicides for crops ensues, that would be a great benefit. However, we must not be mistaken: agronomic changes (complex rotations, mechanical weeding that involves hours of tractors, de-specialization of territories, etc.) and support for farmers (fluctuations in yields) necessary to achieve this are very important ( see here a report published in Libération on INRA studies for the slightest or no use of herbicides in field crops). In the absence of such a policy, which we do not see coming, it is feared that there is increased use of other herbicides whose environmental risks are worse than those of glyphosate.
► The assessment of immoderate use of glyphosate herbicides, boosted or not by transgenic plants tolerant to glyphosate, is also the rise of resistance, a general phenomenon treated in the delivery of the May 18 Science magazine by a series articles. The review asks: "Can we deal with the sociobiological dilemma of pesticide resistance," a vocabulary showing that the problem is as much economic and social as techno-scientific. One of the most iconic examples is that of glyphosate herbicides (Monsanto's round-up is the most famous but far from the only one). The excessive use of these herbicides in countries that grow transgenic plants resistant to glyphosate has resulted in more than 40 weed species ("weeds" in learned language) developing resistance to this molecule. A Darwinian process inherent in any chemical control of this kind against a plant and which supposes a long-term strategy other than its repetitive use at increased doses in the face of the resistance that emerges if sustainable agricultural practices are to be desired.
But there are also more 550 species of arthropods that have developed resistance to at least one insecticide. Conversely, the balance of transgenic plants modified to produce the insecticidal toxin of Bt (used in organic farming) is much better: as long as we respect the refuge areas and we are in a landscape of moderate size fields and various crops, the result is an improvement of the environment and the better health of agricultural insects (spiders, ladybugs, etc.) as has been demonstrated in China on areas where Bt transgenic cotton is grown.
► However, we can not say that we must continue a policy that favors the use of chemicals without stronger precautions. Signals show it, like this recent study of a team from INRA that has demonstrated the famous "cocktail effect" for pesticides at very low doses ingested by mice. The study was published here. For an easier reading see the press release from INRA here. It should be noted that among the 6 pesticides (2) studied, we find the fungicide based on boscalid. However, it is part of the SDHI (succinate dehydrogenase inhibitors), widely used fungicides which a group of scientists believes should be investigated the health risk file. Mechanisms of molecular action likely to impact human health have been discovered. The first rather negative reaction of the ANSES (3) to this request does not seem encouraging whereas if the demonstration of a risk justifying their prohibition remains to be made, the scientific arguments in support of a serious instruction are much more stronger than what was advanced by the Séralini team in the glyphosate case. It is tempting to wonder if the effect "child crying wolf" is not already in action ...
► final note: it is useful to read in extenso the report of a seminar of the RisKOGM program, which financed the study GMO90 +, which reads this remark by Armin Spök from the University of Klagenfurt: do not overestimate what open science really is capable of doing, especially with respect to highly polarizing areas and controversial regulatory issues such as the topic of GMOs, because open science can not solve or mitigate controversies about the underlying contextual factors. "
To translate this language into clearer terms: some participants in these dialogues are not willing to give up their original affirmations, even though normal science shows that they are wrong, because their belief is actually rooted in other points, economic, social or even moral, for which the compromise is not envisaged. This is why, for example, Gilles-Eric Séralini and many of his supporters have never accepted the scientific verdict yet firmly established on their original experience and that it is very unlikely that they will admit that the three experiments conducted for to answer the question they had badly handled are conclusive.
The difficulty of organizing a debate when the participants have a vision of battle with winners and losers also explains the doldrums of the High Council of Biotechnologies with serial resignations and blockages.
Sylvestre Huet
1 x
"Those with the biggest ears are not the ones who hear the best"
(of me)
from where :
