#Fact-Checking #GMO Foods

In the last few decades many Americans have been suffering from different chronic diseases. Many factors could be contributing in the increase in chronic diseases but the most important one is indeed our diet, even more so than our lifestyle.

Many of us are so busy to hold on to our jobs, pay our monthly bills and take care of our families that we hardly even notice that we might be shopping and feeding our families with foods that don’t give us nutrients and/or arenutrition-deficient foods. While these foods give our bodies little energy to maintain its health, the even worrying prospect is when we are given toxic foods without our knowledge and foods that are genetically engineered and altered from its natural state into a DNA modified and potentially hazardous compounds.

In genetic engineering scientists take the gene of one specie and insert it into the DNA of another specie. For example cow genes have been inserted into Pig’s DNA in order to increase the milk production.

There are two major GMO crops, the herbicide tolerant crops and the pesticide producing crops. The herbicide tolerant crops are sprayed with pesticides that won’t kill plants but kill pests and insects. However the pesticide producing crops produce their own toxic insecticides that kill pests by breaking their stomach.

It took million years of evolution to do things in a certain way and not to mix and match different DNA and genes. Over these millions of years, scientists agree that even slight variation or slight mishaps could have resulted in the humans not existing on the planet. Our evolution has been a very precise and calculated phenomenon without any room for error.

Now scientists and large corporations are playing god with people’s lives and that of other specie, in particular our food chain. None of these genetically modified genes and new organisms were a part of evolution and therefore we cannot predict how they will evolve and change our habitat and the food chain that we so much depend on.

There are even more alarming hazards. While inserting genes into DNA of a plant or an animal for its modification, a virus or bacteria is also inserted which is tasked to to turn on the gene. This process in creating a foreign DNA through bacteria insertion could result in mutation and changes at the cellular level which could cause many side effects that would take years to discover past its point of no return.

It took million of  years of evolution for our bodies to digest foods with certain DNA sequence. When our body is exposed to food with a new DNA sequence, our immune system will attack it and treats it as a foreign invader. This is precisely why allergies are a common place now in US, and younger children are more prone to have allergies than 30 years ago.

Should we assume that the biotech companies will protect us from such mutations? Will they know themselves if a mutation has gone wrong before it is too late? Have safety procedures been put in place in order to make absolutely certain that precautions are taken to protect the public?

I myself am not convinced that we can rely on large corporations that have to increase their profitability ever quarter. Every few months there is an outbreak of salmonella and E. Coli bacteria in lettuce, or tomatoes, or sprouts, or chicken, or turkey or some other food product depending on where you live in the country. We have all seen and heard about these outbreaks. What is concerning to proponents of GE labeling and safety regulations and testing before human consumption is that the biotech companies have the power to manipulate the whole creating and evolution of these new GE products and make new genes without acknowledging that the new products can put the health of you and your family at risk.

We’ve been told by these multi-billion dollar biotech companies that GMO is the best technology to feed the world hunger and that isn’t simply TRUE. But, really, do you want to believe what a large “for-profit company or bank” tells you without safeguards to protect your family?

How did we live all these years without GMOs? How come all of a sudden the world can’t feed itself without GMOs? Nature does a much better job than laboratory genetic engineering; it has proven to be safe over millions of years, it’s less expensive, it is sustainable, it does not radically change mutation and make people sick or deformed or damage their organs or cause cancer.

This whole hypocrisy initiated by biotech companies that GMO is the BEST and the ONLY way to feed the world hunger is just preposterous since there are many long term side effects, dangerous toxins, and potentially serioushealth hazards associated with GMOs.

Inflammation causes many chronic diseases. The rates of chronic diseases have been increasing drastically since GMOs were introduced to public.

The figures below show increase ininflammation rate, the rate of chronic diseases such as constipation, gastroesophageal reflux, Crohn’s disease and  diabetes.

Here is Mike Taylor the deputy commissioner of FDA talking about the importance of food safety and nutrition. The original policies of FDA in 1992 points out that GMOs aren’t any different than normal foods so no further studies are required. However a lawsuit againstFDA in 1998 resulted in release of 44,000 secretive memos about GMO harms and danger.

It is self-evident that these memos are indeed a total scandal on how the FDA was dishonest about GMO safety. In fact the memos showed an overwhelming concern in the scientific community about GMOs.  Even FDA SCIENTISTS metioned in their memos how GMOs were DANGEROUS. The memos describe how GMOs could result in allergy increase, malnutrition, new diseases and pathogens.

Additionally, repeated requests by FDA scientists for a full set of long term studies on GMO side effects were ignored and the ongoing studies were stopped or banned.

What people want to know is, why would FDA stop or ban studies by the scientific community to research the safety of GMOs in our food supply?

The fact is that, Mike Taylor the deputy Commissioner of FDA is Monsanto’s former attorney and its current VP. However right now there are no regulations about GMO foods from FDA so Monsanto has the main authority to insure that GM foods aren’t hazardous. So Monsanto is making and regulating GM foods and calls them safe. This is the company that was the producer of DDT, PCBs and Agent Orange and called them safe too at the time.

Most studies and research done on GMOs side effects have been dependent on Monsanto’s funding. However independent studies performed by concerned scientists shows the alarming side effects of GMOs.

For example the American academy of environmental medicine performed independent studies on how GM foodscause immune system disorder, infertility, allergies, accelerated aging, adverse cholesterol level and many other problems like changes in kidneys, damage to liver and gastrointestinal diseases.