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GMO Foods - Detrimental to immune and reproductive systems
How do GM Foods Affect you health?
How do GM Foods Affect your health? GMOs provoke Immune Reactions
Immune status changes consistently feature in all
animal studies - according to GMO safety expert Arpad Pusztai;
Monsanto's own research to government-funded trials revealed that rodents fed Bt
corn had significant immune reactions .
Burns
JM, "13-Week Dietary Subchronic Comparison Study with MON 863 Corn in Rats
Preceded by a 1-Week Baseline Food Consumption Determination with PMI Certified
Rodent Diet #5002.
Finamore A, et al, "Intestinal and
Peripheral Immune Response to MON810 Maize Ingestion in Weaning and Old Mice,"
J. Agric. Food Chem. , Nov
2008;
GM soy and corn contain new proteins with allergenic properties
Damaged soy DNA creates new (or
more) allergens
- The usual understanding is that genetic
engineering imports genes that produce new proteins
that may provoke allergies by triggering reactions.
Creating a GM crop can cause native genes to be mutated, deleted,
permanently turned on or off, and
hundreds may change their levels of protein expression, which can increase
existing allergens, or produce new, unknown allergens, both of which seems to
have happened in GM soy.
E.g. In the
mid 1990s soybeans were outfitted with a gene from the Brazil nut, but the
attempt to produce a healthier soybean ended up with a potentially deadly one.
Blood tests showed that people allergic to Brazil nuts reacted to the beans and
it was never marketed.
GM soy has up to seven times more of a known soy
allergen -
Levels of the soy allergen, trypsin
inhibitor, were up to seven times higher in cooked GM soy compared to cooked
non-GM soy.
Zolla L et al, "Proteomics as a complementary tool for identifying unintended
side effects occurring in transgenic maize seeds as a result of genetic
modifications," J Proteome Res. May 2008;
Hye-Yung Yum et al, "Genetically Modified and Wild Soybeans: An immunologic
comparison," Allergy and Asthma Proceedings 26, May-June 2005;
Gendel, "The use of amino acid sequence alignments to assess potential
allergenicity of proteins used in genetically modified foods," Advances in
Food and Nutrition Research 42, 1998;
Pusztai A et al, "GMO in animal
nutrition: potential benefits and risks," Chapter 17, Biology of Nutrition in
Growing Animals , Elsevier, Oct. 2005;
One study discovered a unique, unexpected protein
in GM soy - likely to trigger allergies.
Soy allergies soared soon after GM soy was
introduced to the UK - skyrocketing by 50%.
Safety precautions ignored -
GM soy (91% of US soy acres) is called Roundup Ready, designed to survive
otherwise deadly applications of Monsanto's Roundup herbicide. The plants
contain genes from bacteria, which produce a protein that has never been part of
the human food supply. As a precaution, scientists compare this new protein with
a database of proteins known to cause allergies. According to criteria
recommended by WHO and others, if the new GM protein contains amino acid
sequences that have been shown to trigger immune responses in other proteins,
the GM crop should not be commercialized without additional testing. However,
sections of the protein produced in GM soy are identical to shrimp and dust mite
allergens, and the soybean got marketed anyway.
