Toxin from GM crops found in human blood: Study [View All]

[BanzaiBonnie]

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/site/story/toxin-from-gm-crops-found-in-human-blood/1/137728.html

Till now, scientists and multinational corporations promoting GM crops have maintained that Bt toxin poses no danger to human health as the protein breaks down in the human gut. But the presence of this toxin in human blood shows that this does not happen.

Scientists from the University of Sherbrooke, Canada, have detected the insecticidal protein, Cry1Ab, circulating in the blood of pregnant as well as non-pregnant women.

They have also detected the toxin in fetal blood, implying it could pass on to the next generation. The research paper has been peer-reviewed and accepted for publication in the journal Reproductive Toxicology. The study covered 30 pregnant women and 39 women who had come for tubectomy at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Sherbrooke (CHUS) in Quebec.

None of them had worked or lived with a spouse working in contact with pesticides.

The abstract of the study is here:

http://www.gmfreecymru.org.uk/pivotal_papers/crucial24.htm


Along with additional thoughts on the subject:

This Bt protein is not present in sweet corn (which can be eaten with minimum processing), it is only in certain varieties of GM maize such as MON810 and triple stack corn. Maize is usually strongly heated and/ or processed into corn chips, tacos, starch, high fructose corn syrup etc before it enters the human diet. Therefore, this paper shows that this GM protein can survive extensive food processing to enter the diet. It can then survive human digestion to enter the blood of the person eating it and then cross the placenta to enter the fetus.

The authors are suggesting that these women may have been exposed by eating meat contaminated with this protein. Therefore, they appear to be suggesting that GM corn, when fed to cattle, may survive digestion in the animal to enter the meat of that animal. (There is already evidence that GM DNA can survive digestion in cows to enter their milk.) The GM protein in the meat then survives cooking, then survives the woman's digestive system to enter her blood, where it then crosses the placenta to enter the fetus.