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My Personal Work Experience Questionnaire Biological Article Summary The genetically modified food becomes the problem of increased concern for the modern world. Arpad Pusztai, the author of the article Genetically Modified Foods: Are They a Risk to Human/Animal Health? dwells on risks associated with GM food. According to Pusztai, it is very difficult to make proper decision regarding the use of GM food in everyday life as we do not have much information due to a number of reasons: The crop products are more complex as their composition varies according to differences in growth and agronomic conditions. In such a wat, it is quite difficult to evaluate the safety of crop-derived foods; Publications on toxicity of GM food are scarce as no peer-reviewed publications of clinical studies on the human health effects of GM exist; The industry prefers to use compositional comparison between non-GM and GM crops.
In case they do not have much differences, they are considered as substantially equivalent, and therefore, safe. So, what are GM food-crops? The crop is called GM crop when one gene (or more genes) are incorporated into the genome using a vector containing several other genes, including as a minimum, viral promoters, transcription terminators, antibiotic resistance marker genes and reporter genes. The scientists consider the GM food crops to be safe, however, this assumption is not correct due to the following reasons: DNA doesnt always fully break down in the alimentary tract; The insertion of genes into genome sometimes results in side effects that may cause various allergenic / toxic reactions that affect the functioning of the crops own genes.
Nowadays the toxicity of food-crops is measured by chemical analysis of known toxins and micro / macro nutrients. However, this method is not always effective and should be accompanied by other diagnostic methods such as mRNA fingerprinting, proteomics and secondary metabolite profiling. It is also known that even small quantities of toxins can impose threat to human and animal health, thats why the diagnostics is very important. Lets dwell on safety tests on commercial GM crops.
The author explores the Gm tomatoes and claims that the first and only safety evaluation of a GM crop, the FLAVR SAVRTM tomato, was commissioned by Calgene, as required by the FDA. However, he adds that the studies were poorly designed and the conclusion that Gm tomatoes were safe doesnt rest on good science, questioning the validity of the FDA's decision that no toxicological testing of other GM foods will in future be required. The same results were shown for GM maize that also can not be treated as safe product. Compositional studies examining GM soybeans, potatoes, rice and cotton also speak about the use of inappropriate statistics, lack of information and thorough scientific research. Nutritional / toxicological studies on herbicide-resistant soybean have been conducted on the feeding value and possible toxicity, however, the experiments were poorly designed, no individual feed intakes, body or organ weights were given and no histology was performed. Moreover, the experiment with broiler chicken was a commercial and not a scientific study.
Nutritional / toxicological studies of GM corn also tend to have commercial coloring. Finally, the studies on GM tomatoes, GM potatoes and GM peas were also poorly conducted. Allergenicity studies The scientists often claim that GM food imposes a potential threat to increase allergies and anaphylaxis in humans eating unlabeled GM foodstuffs. Unfortunately, there are no good animal models for allergenicity testing (in contrast to nutritional / toxicological testing), so it is difficult to assess the allergenicity of GM food-crops. In conclusion, the author underlines that safety of GM food-crops is quite questionable, as there are no reliable methods for testing whether the GM food is safe or not. Besides, the author empathizes on the fact that the potential health risks of using GM food-crops are quite high and proposes to conduct additional researches on the safety of genetic techniques used in developing of GM crops, if the industry wants to put this technology on a proper scientific foundation and allay the fears of the general public.
Bibliography Pusztai, Arpad. (June 2001). Genetically Modified Foods: Are They a Risk to Human/Animal Health? American Institute of Biological Sciences. Retrieved August 9, 2006. web
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