| "Worst GM pollution incident" vanishes (9/8/2005) | |
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1.Modified corn didn't mix with native maize in Mexico, study says COMMENT Here comes the industry spin on the latest Mexican maize study. The press release for the study quoted one of the lead researchers as saying that "transgenes that were present in Oaxaca prior to this study simply may not have survived". But note how in an article authored out of Monsanto's home town paper (item 1) we're told something quite different: "Barbara Schaal, a Washington University plant biologist, said the study raised doubts as to whether there ever was gene flow in the first place." In the days prior to news of the publication of this study in PNAS - the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - we heard on the grapevine that an article along these lines had been "induced into the PNAS by Barbara Schaal". Schaal - as the Vice President of the National Academy of Sciences - would be in a perfect position to wave this paper through. And VP at NAS is not all Schaal is. Washington University, where she is based, is in St Louis, Missouri, Monsanto's home town. Schaal is also on the Scientific Organization Committee of the Danforth Plant Science Center launched with a $70-million pledge from Monsanto, which also donated the Center's 40-acre tract of land, valued at $11.4 million. The two other scientists quoted in the first article below are also key players in the Danforth Center - Roger Beachy is its President while Peter Raven is not just on its steering coimmittee but is said to have been the driving force behind this collaboration with Monsanto. Also on the Center's Scientific Organization Committee with Schaal is Willy Gruissem. In correspondence to Nature, Prof Richard Strohman (Emeritus, Department of Cell and Molecular Biology University of California, Berkeley) and two other Berkely academics noted Gruissem's connection to Quist and Chapela's critics: "All eight authors of the two critiques of Quist/Chapela published by Nature either currently or recently have had all or part of their research funded by the Torrey-Mesa Research Institute (TMRI), a progeny of ag-biotech firm Novartis (currently Syngenta). The affiliation of seven of those authors with TMRI is a result of that company's $25-million "strategic alliance" with the University of California, Berkeley’s College of Natural Resources.[18] Wilhelm Gruissem, formerly of U.C., Berkeley and architect of the strategic alliance, whose current laboratory is in partnership with TMRI, is the supervisor of the eighth author, Johannes Fütterer. None of the eight authors declares this funding from an ag-biotech firm as a competing financial interest. Such a funding arrangement might be less noteworthy had Chapela not been the leading faculty critic, and Quist a leading student critic, of the strategic alliance and its implications for scientific freedom and balanced science.Their vocal opposition to the alliance jeopardized a large flow of financial support for these same scientists who, out of the thousands of biotechnology researchers qualified to evaluate their research, have now become their chief critics." The smears against Quist and Chapela and their study are also very much in evidence in the article. We are told, "The study was later discredited for its shoddy chemical analysis. Nature said it shouldn't have been published, although the scientists stood by their work." No mention here of the source of the criticism - the Berkeley opponents of Quist and Chapela - nor of the fact that the editior of Nature gave in to the industry-backed campaign of pressure despite the fact that 2 of the 3 peer reviewers who he asked to review the criticisms did not call for a withdrawal of support but confirmed that the critics had failed to undermine Quist and Chapela's main findings. (SCIENTIST TELLS NEWSNIGHT HE WAS THREATENED) Similar smears pop up in the Daily Telegraph piece (item 2) where we are told, "The [Quist and Chgapela] paper had sparked a protest to Nature by 100 biologists and was disowned by the Mexican government after its scientists could not repeat the experiment." The "100 biologists" were organised by CS Prakash's AgBioWorld in a campaign that was later shown to have been launched by Monsanto and its PR company. And the AgBioWorld signatories were not even necessarily biologists - some were GM lobbyists and assorted others. Moreover, the Mexican scientists far from not being able to "repeat the experiment" came up with still more extensive evidence of DNA from GM maize in Mexico's farmland. But - and here's the point - they could not get their findings published! The journal Nature refused to publish their paper. Now, however, that no contamination has been found in 870 maize cobs there has been absolutely no problem over publication and it has taken place not to the deluge of abuse that Quist and Chapela faced but to a fanfare from St Louis and even suggestions there may never have been any contamination! And this, in the end, is what is so surreal about the whole Mexcian maize affair. On the one hand, GM proponents have been extraordinarily anxious to attack Quist and Chapela, to smear their research and to create as many questions as possible over the issue. On the other hand, as one of Chapela's principal critics has readily admitted - it's a "no-brainer" that GM maize will contaminate other maize plants! And even in the St Louis article below this kind of contamination is described as "inevitable"! Yet the industry and its supporters have created so much noise and confusion around that simple reality that they have helped to stall a decisive response to limit the damage from the "inevitable". 1.Modified corn didn't mix with native maize in Mexico, study says (KRT) - ST. LOUIS - Genetically modified corn hasn't mixed with native maize in southern Mexico, according to a study posted online this week by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study contradicts results from four years ago, when scientists said modified corn genes had moved into the traditional crops, called maize in Mexico. But scientists said that gene flow - which leads to the movement of traits from one plant to another - is inevitable for both traditional and engineered plants since it happens during the constant, natural process of crossing. "That's what plants do. They do it all the time. They've been doing it for millions an |
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