GM foods will give huge great horrible breast cancers
GM foods give you breast cancer. That’s the takeaway message from a new scientific paper just released. That GM corn from Monsanto and the Roundup herbicide that it is meant to be resistant to will kill us all in our beds by giving us breast and liver cancers. Oh, and rot our pituitary glands. Expect to see this paper accepted as gospel truth by every environmentalist on the planet for the next few years.
The only problem with the idea is that it may or may not be true. If it’s true we most certainly want to know about it of course. But the way that the scientists have done the research we don’t actually know if they’re right.
I’ve a loooong piece about it all here. For those who want to go into the details. But the real story is simply that they haven’t done the basic statistical tests to work out whether their results are a matter of random chance or due to the GM or the Roundup. And they’ve not released enough information for anyone else to be able to work it out either.
This isn’t, I’m afraid, science, this is woo masquerading as such.
Which leaves only the question of why they bothered to release the paper. Obviously they would have known that every scientist in the field is going to have a go at them about it. But that’s not the point. California votes in 6 weeks about whether to have mandatory labeling for GM foods. And 6 weeks of “GM gives rats cancer” headlines is a worthwhile result: even if you do trash your own scientific reputation in the process. And yes, I was sent a copy of the paper by the people behind the California proposal: showing that there is indeed a link.
Photo: ‘The Grim Reaper’ takes part in a protest in Dublin city centre, taking the form of a ‘funeral procession’ for the good food sector in Ireland against the recent decision by Teagasc to plant genetically modified potatoes in Co.Carlow.
Posted: 20th, September 2012 | In: Money, The Consumer Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
