Scientist takes on the GMO industry.

Originally published November 28, 2009
Written by Paul Louis.

The Organic and Non-GMO Report recently interviewed a California scientist and college professor who has published a paper critical of GMO science. The interview was published on The Organic Consumers Association website.

Ph.D Agro-ecologist Don Lotter's 2009 paper titled "The Genetic Engineering of Food and the Failure of Science" was published in the International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food.

In the interview, Don Lotter expressed concern over the politics and business of University funded research as well as the bad science. He pointed out that the politics and business of funding is largely responsible for the lack of critical thinking and proper research on GM foods.

When biotechnology was rushing to industry eminence with less federal regulation and more funding in the 1980's, the The Bayh-Dole Act was passed. This act gives universities intellectual property control of their research results, making them virtual industry partners. Third party scientific objectivity gets buried by vested interests.

According to Lotter, the basic scientific premise that spawned the biotechnology industry is flawed. That premise was based on the doctrine of one gene for one protein. But the Human Genome Project discovered humans have fewer genes than many simple organisms, while having one to two million proteins.

This simplified view of genes monitoring protein production was the entire basis for advancing genetic engineering technology. " [However] the process of splicing genes into plant genomes, transgenics, causes serious genetic damage-mutations, multiple copies of the transgenic DNA, gene silencing," Lotter said.

"The cauliflower mosaic virus promoter (CaMV 35S) is used in most transgenic crops to activate foreign genes which have been artificially inserted into the host plant. It is potentially dangerous." (Natural Law Party - Wessex, source below)

Lotter explains it was originally thought the CaMV 35s virus would simply be neutralized in the human digestive system. It turns out the virus is not neutralized. Lotter reveals, "It has been shown to promote the transfer of transgenes from GM foods to the bacteria within our digestive system, which are responsible for 80% of our immune system function; they are enormously important".

Don Lotter is not tenured. He expects his outspoken paper to be "career destroying" within the public university circuit. But he feels getting at the truth is more important, and he is hopeful that others will soon be inspired to question GMO's.

Sources for this article include:
www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_19468.cfm

www.btinternet.com/~nlpWESSEX/Documents/camv.htm

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