Green Health Watch

The UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) claimed that their latest research [1] proved that GM soya was harmless to humans. The distinguished scientist Dr Arpad Puszta, who lost his job at Aberdeen’s Rowett Institute after announcing that he had found stunted growth, immune system damage and stomach abnormalities in mice fed with GM potatoes, condemned the FSA’s science:

When seven ileostomy patients* were given a single meal containing GM soya, measurable amounts of full-length soy transgene (GM DNA) construct were found in gut bacteria collected from their bags. In three of the patients there were highly significant amounts. This confirmed earlier studies using mice [2] and artificial guts [3] The FSA report falsely portrayed these full-length soy transgene constructs as small, non-functional (and therefore harmless) fragments of GM DNA which could not have transformed the gut bacteria to become antibiotic resistant
The FSA’s assertion that GM soya was harmless because their scientists could not find transgenic DNA in the faeces of normal human subjects should also be dismissed. It is the physiological effects of the transgene(s) and their products on the gut during their passage through the small intestine that is important, not what is left after the digested remnants have journeyed through the large intestine and left the body
It was also curious that the FSA used GM soya to establish whether the antibiotic resistance marker gene could be passed on to human gut bacteria. GM soya is one of the few GM crops which do not contain such a marker gene

* People whose large intestine has been surgically removed and replaced with an external bag joined to the lower end of their small intestine