Monsanto is evil. Monsanto is unethical. Monsanto poisons. Monsanto kills.
These are pretty common assertions here in the progressive blogosphere. The first, of course, is subjective to what one considers evil. Unethical is absolutely true—their legal practices are dodgy at best, horrific at worst. Poison, well, I don’t trust their Round-up product as far as I could throw it. As for kills, Indian farmers have committed suicide because of their unethical legal practices. I suppose one could make an inference that their suicides would not have happened if not for Monsanto’s business practices and one would, in my book I suppose, be correct.
This is not a diary about evil, ethics (well, maybe, but not Monsanto's in this case), poisons, or murder.
This diary is about a study (Séralini, G.-E., et al. Long term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize. Food Chem. Toxicol. (2012)) now making the rounds. Using rats, the researchers discovered that rats fed GMO corn developed by Monsanto, or its roundup product, developed tumours. The implications are rather obvious—laboratory modified crops (GMOs) are dangerous and need to be removed from the market, yesterday. But when others took a look deeper at the study, there appeared to be problems, problems so bad the study itself could be entirely bunk. I looked for myself, and rather agreed. Monsanto remains a highly unethical corporation whose practices have likely lead to the deaths of several and the ruination of quite a few, but this study seems very dodgy.
(This is the part where I make my disclaimer, and that I have to do so irritates me but, welp. No, I don’t work for Monsanto. No, I don’t work in biotech. No, I don’t work in the chemical industry. No, I don’t work in the pesticide industry. Yes, I think Monsanto is deeply unethical. I’m entirely ambivalent to GMOs since everything we eat, by the strict definition, is a GMO based on 10,000-plus years of artificial selection. I prefer organic products and grow a mix of heirloom and hybrid fruits and vegetables---generally pesticide free. Gene-splicing in a lab doesn’t bother me any more than grafting rootstock on a fruit tree to make a new variety. I don’t accept the concept of “playing god” because said god and/or gods as defined in various holy books around the world are likely not real and I don’t accept mother nature as a conscious, living force. Disclaimer isn’t here to stifle objections, though. By all means, I want them. We good? Make the jump.)
The study, claimed to be the first of its kind (we’ll get to this claim) and published in the relatively obscure Journal of Food and Chemical Toxicology, is simple. The authors took 200 rats and divided them into groups of 10. Rats were fed genetically modified Maize (and by this, I mean laboratory modified, as maize doesn’t exist in the wild at all) that has been designed to resist Roundup and other herbicides. They also fed some groups of rats the herbicide itself, in their water. Lastly, out of 200 rats, only 20 were given non-Round-up ready food and water. These were my first alarms. Only 20 rats out of 200? I have questions.
The rats fed the GM or pesticide diet experienced hormone imbalances. They developed breast tumours. They died earlier. Especially the female rats. Those in the control group? Nope.
Sort of.
Only 5 of the 20 control group developed tumours and died. In some test groups, 60% who ate the GM maize died. But some test groups did better than the controls, the breed of rat used is apparently prone to tumours regardless of what they're fed, and oddly, the rats fed larger doses of the GM maize and pesticide did somewhat better than the ones who did not.
Now I know a thing or two about statistics and probability, enough to be “dangerous” as they say in my workplace. I also (and I admit this is a very strange hobby) read academic journals for fun. Google Scholar is like the best thing on the internet ever (despite the annoying “creationism is true” papers that sometimes appear in my searches) and there are a number of scientific associations I belong to (anyone can join, you know) that produce journals that get delivered to my house. I know that some papers have methodologies and statistical analyses that the average person would look at and say “this is Sanskrit. I don’t understand this.” However, if you read enough, you can figure out what they did.
It’s my understanding that in toxicology, which this study is, one would use a standard deviation to see what the difference is from random variation and if that difference is significant. This study did not do that. I couldn’t make heads or tails of what their analysis was. Perhaps people smarter than I can (and while I consider myself of reasonably average intelligence, I’m definitely not an idiot), but it really looked like a hot bunch of gibberish. This was my second group of alarms. Even if the audience is other academics (and even though I’m not, I can still easily follow along), the audience should still be able to grasp your methodology. I read the damn thing 5 times.
This statistical analysis, as I said, appeared to be gibberish. I thought so and my grasp of stats is basic. Actual statisticians had issues too.
Now, this study claims it is the first of its kind. It is absolutely not. That’s another alarm. The concerns that people have over laboratory-modified foods and herbicides are decades old, and I rather think those concerns are very, very valid. I also think that consumers should be able to tell, through a labeling system, what they’re eating. This seems fair to me, despite my general lack of concern about “frankenfoods.” Studies of this sort, involving animals, have been conducted for quite some time and none have found anything significant. There’s even a natural experiment ongoing as we speak---humans in the Americas are eating this variety of corn and others like it. Humans in Europe are not. No disease prevalence has been noted among the two groups that can’t be explained via other factors.
Take into account one of the authors has already been critiqued by the EU for dodgy analysis, that the other is a homeopath (and don't get me started on those),that the entire thing appears funded by people with a political agenda (that is, to ban “frankenfoods”), and that the study is full of horrifying pictures designed to play on ones emotions that it’s tough not to be suspicious. I’m of the mind to ignore some of this---scientists will write about things that interest them, and research things that interest them, and I’m loathe to doubt a study just because it’s funded by folks with an agenda. I would want to see the actual study itself before I dive into any type of doubt, and I doubt this study because the math seems dodgy and the methodology even more so. And lastly, why be dishonest and state that your study is the first of its kind when it isn't?
But this is just my scientific layperson’s opinion. By all means, this is something that absolutely should be studied, but not like this, I think.