ViroBlogy

I’m going to share a slightly disturbing exchange I just had with a dietician – because it shows that even well-educated people out there are buying into the anti-GMO frenzy.

And I will thank +Mary Mangan for pointing out some of the sites mentioned!

“Dear xxxx;

In answer to your statements and questions:

“For a while, I have had the suspicion that GMO foods might be related to the epidemic increase in allergies, worldwide”

Ummmm…there is no good evidence of a worldwide epidemic of allergies – like autism, there is better recognition of the state, rather than an increase in incidence.

“my two boys clinically react to GMO varients,”

WHICH variants?  Of what?  How do you know?  This is a dangerous path, and I have trod it with immunologists involved in this sort of research – the ONLY way you can say “it is due to a GM food” is if you have the EXACT equivalent that is NOT GM – and by that, I don’t mean “GM vs non-GM maize” – because that is not biologically equivalent unless you have the same exact variety.  The other way would be to isolate the proteins involved, and test them – which is not that difficult, and is something I have thought of doing, if only to settle this issue for once and for all.
…
I would strongly urge you…to look at the links I will list below: most people, and medics and non-plant scientists as well, really don’t understand what actually happens with modern GM.  What happens is that one or a very few genes are introduced into a plant, to make one or possibly two proteins – against the 40 000+ the plant already makes. The genetic modification is minimal compared to conventional or advanced breeding, which moves around whole chromosomes, and MUCH easier to track than use of irradiation, which is also used to change traits – and very often changes things you can’t see and therefore ignore, unlike GM techniques.

What is more, all of the changes induced in plants can be followed these days by techniques like whole genome sequencing and proteomics, so that we can genuinely put hand on heart and say “this is exactly equivalent to that, except for one protein”.  Seriously: the question of equivalence is no longer really up for discussion; it is subject to evidence – and I will point out that the standards expected for GM plants are FAR more stringent than for conventionally-bred plants, which may have far bigger changes in protein composition than any GM variety.

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/touch/story.html?id=8738060

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/antivaccine-versus-anti-gmo-different-goals-same-methods/

http://www.scoop.it/t/virology-news/curate?q=GMOhttp://www.scoop.it/t/virology-news/curate?q=GMO

http://gmopundit.blogspot.com/2011/09/convetional-corn-is-genetically.html

http://www.healthnewsdigest.com/news/Food_and_Nutrition_690/What-You-Need-to-Know-About-GMOs-GM-Crops-and-the-Techniques-of-Modern-Biotechnology.shtml

http://www.forbes.com/sites/henrymiller/2015/07/16/the-dumbest-most-pretentious-article-ever-about-genetic-engineering/

I hope this is helpful!

Sincerely,

Ed”