Hi All,
Apparently the business world is pulling out all the stops to squash a European study that claims there is a significant connection between a type of GMO corn engineered to be roundup tolerant and tumors in rats. One journal (
Food and Chemical Toxicology) that had published the study retracted it. The authors have now published it in
Environmental Sciences Europe. The question is whether the paper was retracted for legitimate reasons or because pressure was brought by the corporate world. The Web site "Retraction Watch" has an interesting piece about it here:
http://retractionwatch.com/2014/06/24/retracted-seralini-gmo-rat-study-republished/, and the open source article itself is available here:
http://www.enveurope.com/content/26/1/14.
Basically, Monsanto did a 90-day study in rats of their genetically modified corn that was tolerant to roundup and (apparently) very few rats died, so they and the FDA declared it safe. The European scientists then came along and did a very similar study in rats for two years and found that a good many rats died and a number of them got tumors. Also, there is apparently a lot of controversy in the industry about how the study was conducted and the fact that the scientists were also publishing a book with some of the results and stood to make some money if they sold a lot of
books. Though, one has to wonder how much money they'd really make off of really scientific books. Those don't exactly
sell like hot cakes.
Anyway, I wanted to bring it to everyone's attention so they would know what was going on and would have a chance to see the article and the Retraction Watch piece. Also, check out the reaction to the original retraction, also on Retraction Watch, here:
http://retractionwatch.com/2014/01/16/journal-editor-defends-retraction-of-gmo-rats-study-while-authors-reveal-some-of-papers-history/, there was a lot of reaction, I might point out.
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