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Web version issued on 7th February 2003 by SGR
Sir Peter Lacham
Re: Your Radio 4 Interview on 31 January 2003
Dear Sir Peter,
On the Today programme on Radio 4 on Friday, 31 January, you said that GM foods are safe. It was also stated on the programme that the BMA was undertaking a new review of GM foods. A press release on the BMA web site states that:
“The BMA’s report from 1999 was an interim report reflecting the early stage of scientific evidence reviewed. A round table meeting with scientists with knowledge of the developments in research and other parts of the evidence base is planned for later this year.
“That meeting might lead to a new report from the BMA - a second Interim statement - if the Board agrees there is sufficient new evidence to merit such a report. Obviously we cannot predict what any such report would say. To do so would make the concept of gathering and considering the evidence nonsense.”
Would you please clarify the apparent contradiction between the last two sentences above and your broadcast statement that GM foods are safe?
You also said that foods are not medicines and therefore do not need the special testing required of drugs. Yet foods that contain genes introduced by genetic engineering are potentially as harmful as drugs. For example, if experiments on mice are applicable to human beings, not only the individual will be harmed (with damage to blood cells, liver and spleen cells) but also the foetus.1
Another point you made in your interview is that genetic engineering is not really very different from traditional breeding. Yet there are two very clear differences: (1) in nature, the species must be closely related; in the laboratory, even kingdoms are crossed; (2) in nature, gene insertion obeys rules that have evolved over billions of years; in the laboratory, gene insertion is entirely random - and the position of a gene, not only its identity, is important. As Dr Vyvyan Howard explained at the Chardon LL Hearing,
“…when you introduce a new gene into a species, with current technology, they [the experimenters] do not usually know where in the genome it has been deposited. They often do not know how many copies there are. If …it is inserted in the middle of one gene, then it can affect expressions of genes on either side of it. We know that genes do not act singularly but often in groups of different chromosomes. This is something that is just beginning to be understood.”2
Therefore we believe that mankind's forceful introduction of genes (together with promoters, etc.) from wholly unrelated species into the blueprint that governs the physical characteristics and development of a plant (or animal) is very different from the finely-tuned natural process of cross-breeding between closely related species.
Finally, we would like to be reassured that the evidence given to the Chardon LL Hearing will be included in the BMA review. Expert witnesses at that Hearing testified, for example, that the animal-feeding studies presented in the application of Aventis in support of its Chardon LL maize were seriously flawed; and that, in fact, those studies indicate that the health of the animals had been impaired by the consumption of a GM diet. We have ourselves re-analysed a portion of those studies and came to the same conclusion.3
We hope that you will re-examine the evidence and reconsider your views.
Yours sincerely,
(Dr) Eva Novotny
Co-ordinator for GM Issues
1 ‘Viral DNA fed to mice is found to reach white blood cells, spleen and liver cells via the intestinal wall, to become incorporated into the mouse cell genome [Ref. in note (a) below]. When fed to pregnant mice, the viral DNA ends up in cells of the fetuses and the new born animals, suggesting that it has gone through the placenta as well [note (b)]. The authors remark that “The consequences of foreign DNA uptake for mutagenesis and oncogenesis have not yet been investigated [note (b)].”’ (www.i-sis.org.uk, ‘Horizontal Gene Transfer - The Hidden Hazards of Genetic Engineering’)
(a) Schubbert, R., Rentz, D., Schmitz, B. and Doerfler, W. (1997). Foreign (M13 DNA ingested by mice reaches peripheral leukocytes, spleen and liver via the intestinal wall mucosa and can be covalently linked to mouse DNA. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA 94, 961-966.
(b) Doerfler, W. and Schubbert, R. (1998). Uptake of foreign DNA from the environment: the gastroinestinal tract and the placenta as portals of entry, Wien Klin Wochenschr. 110, 40-44.
2 Dr Vyvyan Howard, Senior Lecturer and Head of the Foetal and Infant Toxico-pathology Group at the University of Liverpool, and Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists, speaking on 18 October 2000 [transcript page 23] at the public hearing on the forage maize ‘Chardon LL’; available by visiting http://www.defra.gov.uk and searching for 'Chardon'. This will take you to the listing of all the transcripts.)
3 Chardon LL Hearing; documents available by visiting http://www.defra.gov.uk and searching for 'Chardon'. This will take you to the listing of all the transcripts. Please refer especially to the hearings of 18 October 2000, 24 October 2000 and 23 May 2002.
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