How Do GM Foods Affect Your Health?

The American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) is asking physicians to prescribe diets without GM foods to ALL patients, stating: “Several animal studies indicate serious health risks associated with GM food, including infertility, immune problems, accelerated aging, insulin regulation, and changes in major organs and the gastrointestinal system”.

Overwhelming GMO Evidence and Cover-ups   

The following is an article by Jeffrey Smith, renowned author and a knowledgeable resource on GMOs:  This Supermarket “Health Food” Killed These Baby Rats in Three Weeks 

GM Foods cause Reproductive problems

In the U.S., incidence of low birth-weight babies, infertility and infant mortality are escalating, and may possibly be associated with increasing GMO’s.  Whilst the majority of the statistics stated in this manual pertain to the USA and Canada, you can be assured that if the USA, Canada and other European countries are experiencing problems with GMO foods and their devastating effects on plant, insect and humans alike, so will the rest of the world.

Here is an interesting link to follow – Independent science News – “How Extreme Levels of Roundup in Food Became the Industry Norm” …

The Following Animal Studies Should Raise Concern

Russian scientists find 3rd generation hamsters are sterilized by GM soy! – This study was conducted by the Russian equivalent of the US National Association for Gene Security. This study confirms earlier problems related to fertility, birth weight of offspring, and infant mortality.  

The following PDF is taken from an interview with Jeffrey M Smith, author of the bestseller Seeds of Deception, at mercola.com.  In this feeding study, they used hamsters – an animal not previously featured in GM safety studies. 

Hamster Study Groups	Foods Eaten
Group 1 (Control)	Normal diet without any soy whatsoever
Group 2	Non-GMO soy
Group 3	GM soy
Group 4	Higher amount of GM soy than Group 3

Using the same genetically modified (GM) soy that is produced on over 90 % of the soy acreage in the US, the hamsters and their offspring were fed their respective diets over a period of two years, during which time the researchers evaluated three generations of hamsters.

First, they took five pairs of hamsters from each group, each of which produced about seven to eight litters each, totalling about 140 animals.

All went well at the start, but serious problems became apparent when they selected new pairs from the offspring.

1ST PROBLEM

• The second generation had a slower growth rate and reached their sexual maturity later than normal.  However, this second generation eventually generated another 39 litters;
  • The no-soy control group had 52 pups
  • the non-GM soy had 78
  • The GM soy had only 40, of which 25% died

2ND PROBLEM

• The second generation GM soy-fed hamsters had a five-fold higher infant mortality rate, compared to the 5% normal death rate of the controls.

3RD PROBLEM

• Nearly all of the third generation GMO lost the ability to have babies altogether!  Only a single third-generation female hamster gave birth to 16 pups, and of those, one fifth died.

4TH PROBLEM

• In the GM soy-fed groups they also found an unusally high prevalence of an otherwise extremely rare phenomenon – hair growin inside the animals’ mouths.  Says Jeffrey Smith, “…it’s a very rare phenomenon but he [study author, Dr. Surov] had never in his life seen more hair in mouths of hamsters than with these GM soy-fed, thrid generation hamsters.”

 GM crops weren’t released until 1996, starting with GM soy, corn and cotton. Modified canola came about a year later.  Thus, since humans have a much longer life span than hamsters, in comparison, we are only 15 years into the first generation since GMO introduction, but if we experience similar effects to the hamsters, we could be looking at sterility on a grand scale as our great-grandchildren grow up and try to procreate…

50% of babies of mother rats fed GM soy flour died within 3 weeks – compared to 10% death rate of those fed natural soy flour. Again, that’s a death rate five times higher than normal– identical to the findings in the hamster study above; Also similarly, surviving GM-fed babies had lower birth weights, grew more slowly, and again, when the rats’ offspring tried to reproduce, they too were found to be mostly sterile, but it happened sooner, with infertility striking the second generation of rats, as opposed to the third generation of hamsters.

Litter from female rat fed GM soy (bottom) compared with control (from Dr. Erina Ermakova)

Ermakova, Irena,

• “Genetically modified soy leads to the decrease of weight and high mortality of rat pups of the first generation. Preliminary studies,” Ecosinform 1, 2006);
• “Experimental Evidence of GMO Hazards,” Presentation at Scientists for a GM Free Europe, EU Parliament, Brussels, June 12, 2007

 Ermakova wanted to perform further studies to analyse the organs she’d collected from the study, but she never got the chance.

Jeffrey Smith relates:

“She told me as we were sitting at the EU Parliament after giving a presentation there, that her boss had been pressured by his boss. So, she was told to do no more GM food study on animals. Her documents were burned on her desk; samples were stolen from her laboratory.”

Inadvertently, however, she stumbled upon further proof that GM soy wreaks havoc with reproductive health, when she discovered that the food being fed to all rats in the facility had been switched, so that all of it contained GM soy. Two months later she asked her colleagues whether or not they’d discovered any surprising changes in the infant mortality of their various studies, and find out that inexplicably, infant mortality in the animal studies performed at the National Academy of Scientific Laboratory in Moscow had skyrocketed to over 55%, sometimes higher!

GM soy-fed male rats’ testicles changed from normal pink to dark blue.  In an interview with Dr. Mercola, Jeffrey Smith explains: 

“When Ermakova, senior researcher at the Russian National Academy fed GM soy to male rats, it changed the colour of their testicles from pink to blue, and that the structure of the cells in the testicle was different; a completely different blood flow”.

In Italy, when they fed mice GM soy, the mice had changes in their testicles, including damage to the young sperm cells  – which could cause infertility, or problems with the offspring. It appears that they may have had both – they removed the embryos from the pregnant mothers and found that the DNA functioned differently in those who were born to GM soy-fed parents vs. those who were fed non-GM soy.

 Most buffalo fed GM cottonseed had reproductive complication – including premature deliveries, abortions, infertility; many calves died.  [Haryana, India];

Pigs of two dozen U.S. farmers became sterile when fed certain GM corn varieties – some had false pregnancies, others delivered bags of water; cows and bulls became infertile.

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.” December 17, 2002; 

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.

 Genes Inserted into GM Soy Transfer into Bacteria Inside Your Intestines

….and continue to function.

The only published human feeding study revealed that harmful GM proteins (toxins) may be produced continuously inside of you – even after you stop eating GMOs: Netherwood et al, “Assessing the survival of transgenic plant DNA in the human gastrointestinal tract, “Nature Biotechnology 22, 2004

If Bt genes also transfer into GM plants – this can only occur where processing methods keep the DNA intact E.g. corn on the cob, corn chips, corn tortillas, corn flour, which undergo a normal wet-mill process involving just cooking and texturizing, as opposed to more intense processing involving the addition of enzymes to breakdown proteins. Thus, eating corn chips might transform your intestinal bacteria into a living pesticide factory.

Animals die after eating GM plants 

• Thousands of sheep grazing on GM cotton plants died – in India, animals typically graze on cotton plants after harvest, but when shepherds allowed sheep to graze on Bt-cotton plants, thousands died. Investigators said preliminary evidence “strongly suggests that the sheep mortality was due to a toxin. . .. most probably Bt-toxin.”  In one small study, all sheep fed Bt cotton plants died; those fed natural plants remained healthy.
• “Mortality in Sheep Flocks after Grazing on Bt Cotton Fields—Warangal District, Andhra Pradesh” Report of the Preliminary Assessment, April 2006 
• All of a group of buffalo grazing on Bt-cotton plants for first time died within 3 days -In the village of Andhra Pradesh, buffalo had grazed on cotton plants for eight years without incident. On January 3rd, 2008, 13 buffalo grazed on Bt-cotton plants for the first time and all died within three days.  Personal conversation of Jeffrey Smith
• Bt-corn is implicated in the deaths of:
• Cows in Germany
• Horses, water buffaloes, and chickens in the Philippines – Jeffrey M. Smith, Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods, Yes! Books, Fairfield, IA USA 2007
• Chickens in lab studies – twice the number of chickens fed Liberty Link corn died;
• Rats eating a GM tomato – 7 of 40 rats died within two weeks – Arpad Pusztai, “Can Science Give Us the Tools for Recognizing Possible Health Risks for GM Food? “Nutrition and Health 16, 2002
• Almost EVERY species of animal that is offered a GMO food versus a non-GMO food will avoid the GMO one –  a convincing clue as to the dangers of GM foods . . . Many times they will do this to the point of starvation, as they have an intuitive sense of the danger of this food.

  For more information on GMO and cancer go to: You Should Know: Cancer page