Letters for Oct. 12, 2015 Monsanto’s GMO safety studies didn’t go long enough Jane Riley in her article, “Genetically engineered foods (how we are the lab rats)” is correct. Editor in Chief Wallace Hayes of Food and Chemical Toxicology reported
Letters for Oct. 12, 2015
Monsanto’s GMO safety studies didn’t go long enough
Jane Riley in her article, “Genetically engineered foods (how we are the lab rats)” is correct.
Editor in Chief Wallace Hayes of Food and Chemical Toxicology reported in 2013 that studies that use only 10 rats per gender, like Monsanto’s GMO safety studies, are “inconclusive.” Ten is not enough to attain the required statistical power for determining food safety for the world.
Furthermore, Monsanto and biotech corporations generally use inadequate 90-day trials with rats.
Environmental Sciences Europe, in 2014, published a chronic toxicity pilot study which extended Monsanto’s original rat safety design of 90 days to two years. Rats eating Monsanto’s NK603 corn, with glyphosate, acquired massive tumors, and kidney and liver diseases, after 90 days. Such large tumors increased the effect size which increases the statistical power.
The New England Journal of Medicine reports in August 2015, that “the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has classified glyphosate, the herbicide most widely used on GM crops, as a ‘probable human carcinogen’ and herbicide, 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D), as a ‘possible human carcinogen.’”
Entropy reports in 2013, that glyphosate, by lowering human serotonin levels through a complex pathway, starting from the human gut, may be a co-variable for increased school violence in the United States since 1990.
The Pesticides in Paradise Report explains from 2007 to 2012, biotech chlorpyrifos were sprayed in Kauai. Chlorpyrifos stay in children’s brains for years from when they were exposed as a human fetus. Chlorpyrifos entering the human fetus cause structural anomalies in children’s brains associated with functions like attention, decision-making, language, impulse control and working memory, reports Scientific American, May 1, 2012.
Thus for many reasons, biotech food needs new government safety regulations, requiring testing on many rats, for at least two years, not on humans. Like a bee and a butterfly are happily attracted to a flower, hundreds of studies show non-GMO and organic are the best way for health, wealth and happiness.
Will M. Davis
Lihue
Friends of Gilman Apo, please visit – and don’t whisper
Written for Gilman Naupua Apo in Wilcox Hospital (and for all of those in similar condition who cannot speak for themselves):
“Don’t Speak in Whispers”
As you gather by my bedside, I remind you, I know you are here. I feel your presence. I hear your words.
And even if you sent a card from far away and cannot come to my bedside, I feel your thoughts and your prayers and though you may be physically far, you are near to me. Your spirits surround me and I will remember your presence.
Though my body may lie still, as I await eternal sleep, my ears still hear and my brain still listens to your words.
Don’t speak in whispers. Let me hear your voices during the time that I have left. Let me feel your hand in mine — your soft kisses on my face.
Tell your stories, “Share with me forgotten pasts, forget about the grieving.” I want to hear all of your stories about our lives together. The love, the laughter, the tears, the pain. The weddings, the birthdays, our kids, playing in the river, hunting, even painting/work stories. Let us remember the laughter and the pain for those who have gone before us. Now is our time to remember, to share our tears.
Everyone we touch in our lives has a memory. Tell me yours so I can take it with me. Tears are for tomorrow. Forget that I can’t answer. Talk to me.. Laugh loud so I can hear you. Don’t speak in whispers. Let me know — before I go — how much I meant to you.
NOTE: This was written for my brother-in-law Gilman Naupua Apo as he lies in his hospital bed at Wilcox Hospital. I wish I could be there. I’m just out of the hospital on the Mainland, unable to travel for another two weeks. If you know Gilman, go talk to him while he can still hear you. You won’t be able to see it but, I promise, your being there will make him smile — inside where it counts.
Sandra Makuaole
Waimea
