How Monsanto and Univ. of California tried to silence Dr. Ignacio Chapela

Jan, I totally agree with you that there is a danger in these crops spreading their mutated DNA around. These could be at the heart of current and future pandemics.

Thats exactly what they are doing Jan. they are trying their best to shove this down our throats... And what really makes me mad is they are getting by with it. They have to be stopped at no cost. keep up the good work Jan. you have really educated me about Monsanto

Below are a couple of things that jumped out at me in the excerpts you posted JanforGore.

'Just one mistake by a biotech company and we'll be eating other people's prescription drugs in our corn flakes', argues Larry Bohlen, from Friends of the Earth in the USA. [99]

I wonder when this happens, will people even care? I mean we seem to be drinking water that has drugs in it and no seems to care.

and this...

"corporatization of science"

I always think of the term "best science money can buy". But the one above, definitely has a much more sinister tone to it.

"There have now been episodes of GM contamination in Argentina, Austria, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, India, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand, Sweden, Thailand, the UK and the USA, amongst others."

That is closing in pretty tight I would say.....

no where to run and no where left to hide.

(I am going to read the entire article and return, this is just my initial responses to your article)

Monsanto will soon have a patent on every plant in the world which will make gardening illegal

Do you feel good knowing that Monsanto is coercing you into eating their GMO garbage whether you want to or not?

From the article:

The fact that many biotech scientists have signed on to a statement that says that GM contamination is inevitable, underpins the theory that many of the industry's critics and analysts have felt for some time. They believe that the industry has deliberately set out to contaminate both non- GM and organic crops with the implicit or explicit intention of making contamination inevitable. All hope of another alternative agriculture system simply vanishes and once that vanishes, the anti-GM fight becomes hopeless.

'I think the industry now recognise that hopelessness is their best hope', adds Alan Simpson. 'They have manifestly failed to convince the public of either the desirability or safety of GM products. Having failed to convince, having failed to co-opt or to buy the public support, they are left with coercion. Coercion comes in two forms. One is putting an arm lock over the farmers and the other is putting a choice lock on consumers.'

One more excerpt:

With widespread GM commercialization, GM contamination is inevitable. There have now been episodes of GM contamination in Argentina, Austria, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, India, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand, Sweden, Thailand, the UK and the USA, amongst others. [95] The health and environmental impact of these contamination episodes is unknown. But waiting in the wings are the second-generation crops, those with health and nutritional benefits, and third generation crops - with industrial, or pharmaceutical properties, known as pharm crops. These include vaccines, growth hormones, clotting agents, industrial enzymes, human antibodies, contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs. [96]

Scientists believe that work needs to be done to stop pharm crops - which are already being grown - from contaminating other crops. If these are not contained, the US National Academy of Scientists warn that 'it is possible that crops transformed to produce pharmaceutical or other industrial compounds might mate with plantations grown for human consumption, with the unanticipated result of novel chemicals in the human food supply'. [97]

Dr Norman Ellstrand, a professor of genetics at the University of California, Riverside, and a leading expert on corn genetics, says that 'if just 1 percent of [American] experimental pollen escaped into Mexico, that means those landraces could potentially be making medicines or industrial chemicals or things that are not so good for people to eat. Right now, we just don't know what's in there'. [98]

Others are worried too. 'Most people are assuming that plants being used for these purposes [bio-pharming] will not enter the food supply, but if you assume that you need to have controls in place to make sure that does not happen,' says Michael Taylor, who used to work for the FDA and Monsanto. Some are more blunt: 'Just one mistake by a biotech company and we'll be eating other people's prescription drugs in our corn flakes', argues Larry Bohlen, from Friends of the Earth in the USA. [99]

It is not clear yet who will bear the ultimate responsibility for GM contamination, but it is likely to be the consumer. As we wait to find out, it is worth looking at another part of the fall-out from the Mexican maize fiasco. Ignacio Chapela believes that one of the reasons he was attacked is because he had opposed the corporate of alliance between Berkeley and Novartis; that he had opposed the corporatization of science. But it is not only in the USA that it is happening.

end of excerpt.

From the article:

Back in the laboratory, Quist and Chapela starting using the standard amplification technique for DNA called polymerase chain reaction. Known as PCR for short, it is used to test 'for the presence of a common element in transgenic constructs' and in this case that was the promoter for the CaMV virus. The CaMV, the promoter at the heart of the Pusztai controversy, is seen as an ideal marker to tell if transgenic contamination has occurred. [5] But the PCR technique can also be problematic, as the amplification process can cause 'false positives' where simple contamination in the lab can seem to be part of the transgenic DNA. So researchers can believe they are looking at genetic contamination when in fact they are looking at experimental contamination.

Chapela and Quist also analysed control samples that came from maize grown in Peru and from seeds from the Sierra Norte de Oaxaca region in Mexico taken in 1971, long before the introduction of GM crops. They found positive PCR amplification in four of the six samples of the Oaxaca maize, but no contamination in the Peruvian maize or the older sample. [6]

They then undertook a further similar analysis, called inverse PCR, so that they could establish the precise position of the transgenic sequences. They were able to identify the DNA fragments flanking the CaMV promoter sequence through inverse PCR tests, known as iPCR. The fragments were scattered about in the genome, suggesting a random insertion of the transgenic sequence into the maize genome. [7]

So essentially, Quist and Chapela reached two conclusions. The first was that GM contamination had occurred in Mexican maize and the second was that the GM DNA seemed to be randomly fragmented in the genome of the maize. If the first point was contentious, the second was explosive, as it suggested that transgenic DNA was not stable. Quist and Chapela knew that if the research was published it would cause an international outcry, so they wanted to make sure that their research was correct. The biotech industry had hardly recovered from the StarLink scandal in the USA, and GM contamination of Mexican maize would represent a 'nightmare' scenario for the industry. [8]

'I repeated the tests at least three times to make sure I wasn't getting false-positives', says Quist. [9] Convinced of their findings, Chapela shared the preliminary results with various Mexican government officials who started to do their own testing. He also approached the scientific journal Nature with a view to publishing the work.

end of excerpt.
There is much more