Study: GM corn causes organ failure in mice | Hacker News Reader

Study: GM corn causes organ failure in mice

biolsci.org

73 pointsgeorgecmu46 comments

Even if this is true, the way it's written qualifies it as (not necessarily deliberate) scaremongering, as it identifies the commonality between the experimental varieties of corn as being that they were genetically modified, rather than that they were genetically modified to produce pesticides. The latter could plausibly have such a uniform effect, whereas the former could not. They need to be precise and say what they mean.

The real results are the meta-results: that such a small and narrow study is all we have in the way of research into the possible effects of GM foods.

This is far from the only study that's been done on the matter:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_food_contr...

"However, an article in 2007 by Vain found 692 research studies focusing on GM crop and food safety and identified a strong increase in the publication of such articles in recent years"

Though the veracity (and funding sources) of said studies is a different matter entirely.

Agreed, I hate GM scaremongers as well.

The suspect species of corn (and soy, for that matter) with genes to produce pesticides, however, might cross-pollinate. In that case, it's not only GM corn that's suspect, but all corn.

edit... I still don't think it's clear whether the problem is with the gene producing pesticide, or excessive external pesticide/herbicide use.

This probably has to be one of the least-controlled experiments I've ever seen published! It did the experiments at different labs with different non-GM feeds with what was likely different strains of mice. Also, sample sizes were rather small...

There's a chance that there are effects. However, this study proves nothing.

Hey Monsanto rep, how's it hanging? Glad you could create your new account an hour ago and post a single time using it.

Wow, at least try to argue the points he puts forward, or go back to Youtube to post comment.

I agree that the comment wasn't helpful but it is somewhat suspicious that an account was created just to refute this study.

This study has been debunked. It was paid for by an environmentalist group and the people behind the study used a faulty methodology to get the results that they wanted.

Citation?

Here is Monsanto's response to a more recent paper by the same authors:

"The authors present no new information, raise no new issues, and reiterate theoretical concerns that already have been dismissed by experts and regulatory authorities around the world."

http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/Pages/IJBS-GMO-health-risk...

That is what you'd expect from the company who produces GM corn. Any third-party non-partial analyses of papers by those same authors?

There was some interesting discussion over at Discover magazine:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2010/01/15/gm-corn...

They mainly channel Karl Haro von Mogel, who notes on his blog "the authors have a little history of making mistakes with statistics with this same data set" and points to further information:

http://www.biofortified.org/2010/01/organ-failure-organ-dama...

Sorry, accidental downvote (big thumb, small screen).

I'd like to add that, partiality aside, the Monsanto's argument is fallatious and unconvincing (appeal to authority). Give me data from independent, properly designed studies, not the mere opinion of experts.

Consider a set of politicized disciplines, S1, S2, .. Sn (e.g. climate science, GM foods research). Let P1, P2.. Pn be proponents of prevailing theory in respective discipline, and D1, D2, ...Dn be their detractors.

Define coherence K as cardinality of (P1 & P2 &... &Pn) | (D1 & D2 &...&Dn).

Varjag's conjecture: as n approaches infinity, K asymptotically approaches zero. Therefore if true, the argument from authority is rendered relevant.

(the proof is left as an exercise to a reader)

I'm not sure I follow you.

P_i and D_i are sets of proponenents/detractors for discipline S_i, right?

I so, I assume that the & and | boolean operators you use are substitutes for set union and intersection, respectively.

Assuming that the opinions on the various topics are independent, I would rather see K tend to

    \sum |P_i| == \sum |D_i|

What am I missing?

___

Also, for my previous post:

    s/(appeal to authority)/(appeal to potentially corrupt authority)/

The point was: people are incoherent in their dismissal of argument from authority. E.g. many (most?) in anti-GM movement also acknowledge anthropogenic global warming as true, obviously having no issue with IPCC authority on it.

Given enough controversial subjects people care for, no one is going to be knowledgeable in all of them. But people invoke "arguing from authority is a fallacy" only when they are not sided with the said authority.

In fact, you are correct; argument from authority is not a fallacy. Those who think it is do not understand argument from authority. When the authority is relevant to the subject at hand the argument is relevant. It is appeal to misleading authority which is a fallacy (http://www.fallacyfiles.org/authorit.html).

>The point was: people are incoherent in their dismissal of argument from authority. E.g. many (most?) in anti-GM movement also acknowledge anthropogenic global warming as true, obviously having no issue with IPCC authority on it.

This is just using an ad hominem to attack people who cite the argument from authority fallacy. Science is also based on careful examination of empirical evidence, not unsubstantiated pronouncements by authority figures.

Oh, if only it was that easy!

Consider how long it took to get rid of phlogiston theory in physics, even when falsified by experiments. The physicists of the day were careful and rigorous, honest scientists, and their opponents did not have (initially) any alternative theory to replace it with.

And perhaps we are giving too much credit to most people involved in public debates for examination of empirical evidence. I can say honestly that I tried to read the whole IPCC report, but got barely 1/4th in (it is incredibly thick and dense with facts). Very few of my peers though even glanced as the cover, yet their opinions on it are not any less strong.

I wouldn't say I'm particularly convinced of the evils of GM food. I think it's generally harmless, at least from what I've seen.

Still, I would not put as much trust in a study/debunking coming directly from Monsato than I would a study coming from other sources.

This study is actually a statistical reanalysis of earlier studies that was found lacking. The same group also produced a 2007 Greenpeace funded study that was rejected. The 2009 reanalysis was also widely rejected (by the French High Council of Biotechnologies Scientific Committee, The European Food Safety Authority GMO Panel, and Food Standards Australia New Zealand).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MON_863

Who funded the debunking?

I find it disturbing when conversations about the validity of studies (or criticisms thereof) center around things like funding or ideology rather than methodology. It is another way of saying, "I don't take seriously anyone who disagrees with me," which is not good intellectual hygiene.

The problem is that science is being essentially undermined by funding battles. The lay person or even casual scientist can't make substantial fact based decisions and can't trust the summaries. Hence the doubt about any study.

I agree with your first statement (though your second takes it too far IMO). Still my question was relevant. Our judgments of these things are necessarily probabilistic and trust-based, at least in the absence of personally replicating a given result. Following the money is important in estimating the odds.

Money involves desire. Desire involves emotion. Emotion trumps intellect. That may be disturbing, but it's a bedrock fact about human nature.

We are doomed because big business is protected by politicians on both sides.

It's too late now and it will never be banned.

And why the heck does the USA continue to do welfare for the corn industry which is massively profitable.

Corn is an Iowa thing; Iowa has the first Presidential caucus in the nation: U.S. Presidents are beholden to corn.

Bear in mind, this is a gross over-simplification of the core problem (e.g. Archer-Daniels-Midland seems to have an amazingly powerful set of lobbyists), but it should still give you a sense of what's what.

Setting aside native sons (Tom Harkin 1992; plus, Clinton's 'bimbo eruptions' didn't help), you have to go all the way back to 1988 to find a Presidential candidate who won without carrying Iowa.

The wasteful corn ethanol subsidy is another example of American agri-corporatism.

There's a book about this. The Merchants of Grain. It's like the agribusiness Manufacturing Consent.

The Corn Republic? [0]

[0] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Banana_republ...

Actually the exact opposite of a banana republic.

A banana republic depends on bananas or some other cash crop. The US dos NOT depend on corn. Quite the opposite, it uses tax revenue from OTHER profitable sectors of the economy to subsidize corn.

big business is protected by politicians

One might also say that politicians are protected by big business. The problem isn't one particular group, but that the system has been perverted so that this symbiosis is profitable for both groups.

why the heck does the USA continue to do welfare for the corn industry

Read up on public choice economics: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Public_choice...

King Corn [PBS documentary] http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/kingcorn/

Extended clip Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDurZc5Yr6c

Study from 2009. I wonder why I haven't heard much about this.

Either because it was debunked or because corn farmers have a large lobby/subsidies/etc. Take your pick, though the first theory is probably easier to prove that the second one.

You can see studies which cite that study (which would include debunkings) by doing a google scholar search: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=3661119272352849363&...

One of the those studies has this to say about the study linked by the OP: "Weaknesses in the statistical methods used for reanalysis (see Doull et al. . .) " [1].

That paper also has a nice summary of other studies on GM foods.

[1] G. Flachowsky and C. Wenk, The role of animal feeding trials for the nutritionaland safety assessment of feeds from genetically modified plants – Present stage and future challenges, Journal of Animal and Feed Sciences, 19, 2010, 149–170

Corn farmers have children and eat corn too.

Either funding for repeat studies have been choked, or they had unsurprising results. At least they gave passably good instructions to duplicate their findings - beats many CS papers.

Regardless of what it says, my experience is that GE corn tastes bland. Maybe due to shipping.

Similar results described here: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/12/23/wikileaks_cables_reve... at 18:10

British scientist (GMO advocate) that was payed by gov to figure out how to test for safety at GMO foods. He discovered that generic process (not the insecticide) of GM was probably the reason for smaller brains, livers and testicles..

There is a clearer evidence of GM-soya hazardousness.

http://www.mindfully.org/GE/2005/Modified-Soya-Rats10oct05.h...

Similar to this case, it is also probably caused by RoundUp herbicide, rather that GM itself, but anyway numbers are dreadful.

"The scientists concluded that orally administering one kilogram of the corn into the mice was fatal in 100% of cases"

Still, this was nothing compared to the results from the alternate administration groups.

The paper itself says it can't separate out the effects of the pesticides on the corn (or produced by the corn) and the GMness of the corn itself - you think greenpeace would fake a paper this inconclusive?

(That said, I have no special knowledge of the concept or this field.)

How is that inconclusive?

Rats- not mice. Huge difference

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