MRC Acknowledges GM Food Risks : Human Studies Proposed

Press Release 10.12.2000
Institute of Science in Society

Director: Dr. Mae-Wan Ho

MRC Acknowledges GM Food Risks : Human Studies Proposed

The UK Medical Research Council has established an Expert Group to consider the risks of GM foods and the feasibility of human studies to assess the risks. Their Report , published in June this year, goes beyond what many other groups have done in acknowledging that GM foods do pose special risks. At the same time, however, it dismisses the evidence from toxicological and epidemiological studies suggesting that the risks are real, and does not call for more research before GM foods are grown for human consumption. Instead, it proposes that long term studies should be carried out on humans, and that “randomised controlled trials” could be conducted on infants and people receiving “a free supply (to promote compliance) of a key staple food”.

The risks mentioned in the Report include the potential transfer of antibiotic resistance genes into pathogens, the uptake of DNA from GM foods by human cells or micro-organisms in the gastrointestinal tract and more indirectly (though beyond the scope of the report) health-related ecological disturbances caused by the genes or dissemination of the genes. While underplaying the transfer of GM DNA to micro-organisms and human cells, it at least recommends further research.

It also advocates removal of antibiotic resistance genes from GM constructs used in the production of food, but falls short of calling for their removal in animal feed, even though there is growing evidence that bacteria can pass from farm animals to human beings – E. coli 0157 is a well known example.

The Expert Group considered many of the direct health effects that critics including ISIS have drawn attention to:

· Altered nutritional quality of foods in the diet (and attendant impact on various chronic non-communicable disease processes)

· Acute and chronic toxic effects

· Immune effects

· Transfer of antibiotic resistance genes to human pathogens

· Infectious disease risks (e.f. from viruses used as gene vectors)”

One notable omission from the list is genetic damage due to random insertion of the constructs into animal and human cells, which has the potential to trigger cancer.

The Report is critical of the principle of substantial equivalence in risk assessment, and acknowledges that the principle does not address unintended effects. It recommends using both state-of-the-art and routine methods to screen for unintended changes in gene expression and metabolites.

However, the more contentious half of the Report proposes human studies in order to assess the risks. Is it ethical to do so when there is already abundant evidence suggesting that GM foods may be unsafe? (summarised in “The precautionary principle is coherent” ISIS paper .) This is a blatant example of the anti-precautionary principle being applied in risk assessment. Regulators and pro-GM scientists alike are saying, “there is no evidence that GM foods are harmful”, and hence we must accept GM foods. Whereas what they should be saying is, “there is no evidence that GM foods are safe” and hence we must not approve them for release.

The Report goes further. It criticises established toxicological studies using cells, cell cultures and animals, on the spurious grounds that “whole foods represent a bulky and complex chemical mixture, only limited quantities of which can be fed to animals”. And this was considered one of the major criticisms of the Pusztai experiment. In effect, it is dismissing existing evidence from animal studies already indicating that the GM foods may be unsafe.

The Report also finds fault with epidemiological studies because of the lack of “firm hypotheses as to what the adverse effects of GM foods are” and “the difficulty in assessing the extent of GM food exposure”. In this way, it also disposes of circumstantial evidence that soya allergies had gone up 50% in the UK within a year, coinciding with the increased import of GM soya (see “GM soya and increased soyal-associated allergy” ISIS News #3, December 2000 ).

Nevertheless, it transpires that “prospective studies” have already begun several years ago with “detailed personal and dietary information” of the sort that can be obtained from major supermarkets, and blood samples have been taken and put into storage. Other prospective studies have also collected blood and other biological samples from individuals and “these would allow markers of GM food consumption in blood to be assessed as a measure of exposure, should such markers be developed.” The Report did not give any further details as to who has been carrying out those studies.

The most controversial proposal is for “randomised controlled trials”.

“Theoretically, the most effective studies are likely to be those where the GM food selected forms a major and consistent part of the diet. Randomisation of infants, whose whole or predominant source of nutrition happens to be infant formula, to formulas based on GM versus non-GM soya should be a good example. Another would be the random assignment of individuals or families to a free supply (to promote compliance) of a key staple food (that exists in GM or non-GM form) e.g. potatoes, bread or rice.”

The most immediate group of people who would qualify for such trials are the starving, who could be asked to volunteer as guinea pigs in order to obtain food. In effect, this may already be happening, as GM foods are being dumped as ‘food aid’ on the Third World and Latin American countries.

Mae-Wan Ho, Angela Ryan & Peter Saunders

Contacts: Angela Ryan, tel: 44-20-8441-6480 , Prof. Peter Saunders, tel: 44-20-7848-2218