DR. IGNACIO
CHAPELA WINS TENURE!
First, we are very pleased to let you know that Professor Ignacio Chapela of
UC Berkeley has won his battle to get tenure.
Late last year, The Campaign launched an Action Alert to support Dr. Chapela
in his effort to receive tenure.
Further, The Campaign helped sponsor Dr. Chapela on a recent trip to
on May 4 & 5 when he lectured at the
about his discovery that native corn in
GMOs and provided details about his fight with UC Berkeley over tenure.
When Dr. Chapela spoke at the
had no idea that he would be successful in his effort to win tenure and was
preparing for an extended legal battle. So this turn of events is an exciting
victory for one of our foremost spokespersons in the battle over GMOs.
When discussing genetic engineering in the documentary movie "The Future
of
Food," Dr. Ignacio Chapela states, "As we move on into this so called
biotech revolution and we start producing more and more transgenic
manipulation, we will start seeing pieces of DNA interacting with each other
in ways that are totally unpredictable. I think this is probably the largest
biological experiment humanity has ever entered into." Dr. Chapela further
states, "If we started really asking the right questions, we would stop
this
technology for the next 50 to 100 years."
Posted below are two articles on Dr. Ignacio Chapela's victory. The first is
from the Berkeley Daily Planet and the article is titled "Professor
Ignacio
Chapela Wins Bitter UC Tenure Fight." The second article is from the San
Francisco Chronicle titled "Embattled UC teacher is granted tenure."
Congratulations Ignacio!!!
MONSANTO "CONFIDENTIAL REPORT" REVEALS HEALTH PROBLEMS
IN RATS FED GENETICALLY ENGINEERED CORN
The London newspaper, The Independent on Sunday, featured a potentially
explosive article that raises serious doubts about the safety of genetically
engineered foods.
The Independent article stated that a confidential 1,139-page report written
by Monsanto indicated that rats fed genetically engineered corn had smaller
kidneys and variations in the composition of their blood.
Monsanto tried to downplay the results claiming that the abnormalities in
rats is meaningless and due to chance, reflecting normal variations between
rats. But many scientists are not accepting Monsanto's spin on the results
and are calling for more studies.
Monsanto is further stating that since the corn in question has been
approved by nine "global authorities" that it must be safe. However,
if you
look at the approval process, it is often nothing more than an
acknowledgement of Monsanto's own internal studies.
For example, in the
to notify the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that they are bringing a
new biotech product to market unless it contains a known allergen or the
nutrient level has been significantly modified. However, the biotech
companies do voluntarily submit a statement to the FDA saying they think
their new genetically engineered product is safe. In turn, the FDA sends
back a letter acknowledging that they received the biotech company's
submission stating that the company thinks their product is safe.
This paper shuffle between the biotech companies and the FDA is far from the
approval process that is required for a new drug or food additive. New drugs
and food additives require double blind feeding studies on both rats and
humans and the results are printed in peer-reviewed medical journals. Only
after this time-consuming and thorough process does the FDA approve a new
drug or food additive for sale to the public.
So Monsanto's statement that nine global authorities have approved the
genetically engineered corn is not really an assurance that adequate safety
studies have been done. Moreover, it appears that Monsanto's own internal
studies on this genetically engineered corn give significant cause for
concern.
It is our position with The Campaign that each and all genetically
engineered crops should be subjected to thorough safety studies before being
feed to the public. It appears that Americans are again being made guinea
pigs when they are subjected to eating this genetically engineered corn that
is being sold without labeling or adequate safety testing.
The third and fourth articles below are from The Independent on Sunday. The
third article titled "Revealed: health fears over secret study into GM
food"
discusses the confidential report. The fourth article is titled "When fed
to rats it affected their kidneys and blood counts. So what might it do to
humans? We think you should be told." It reviews the history of
genetically
engineered crops in the
fired and discredited when his experiments with rats showed the early
development of severe health problems from feeding them genetically
engineered potatoes.
Monsanto has some further explaining to do as the evidence of health
concerns over genetically engineered foods continues to grow.
Craig Winters
President
The Campaign
PO Box 55699
Seattle, WA 98155
Tel: 425-771-4049
E-mail: mailto:label@thecampaign.org
Web Site: http://www.thecampaign.org
***************************************************************
Professor Ignacio Chapela Wins Bitter UC Tenure Fight
By RICHARD BRENNEMAN
Berkeley Daily Planet
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
Reversing a decision by his predecessor, UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert
Birgeneau has granted tenure and retroactive pay to embattled Professor
Ignacio Chapela. The action comes a month after Chapela filed suit against
the University of California.
"I don't know what I will do next," said Chapela, a biology
professor. "This
was a very shocking decision, but I'm glad that this small chapter in my
story is over. This takes the tenure issue out of center stage and allows us
to concentrate on the questions of the corruption of the university and how
decisions are made."
The outspoken instructor has been a thorn in the side of the College of
Natural Resources where he taught in the Department of Environmental
Science, Policy and Management until last December.
Chapela took a lead role in challenging the 1998 $25 million five-year deal
collaborative agreement between Swiss biotech giant Novartis-now renamed
Syngenta-and his college, citing the potentials for conflicts of interest
and corporate control of research.
A study conducted last year by Michigan State University concluded that
Chapela's attack on the pact had played a major role in the denial of his
tenure.
In a written statement released Saturday, UC Berkeley spokesperson George
Strait denied that Chapela's attacks played any part in the original
decision to deny tenure. If anything, he said, the criticisms may have
actually worked in his favor-a point Chapela strongly contested.
Chapela's lawsuit, filed April 18 in Alameda County Superior Court by
Oakland attorney Dan Siegel, cited three actions of alleged wrongful conduct
by the university: discrimination on the basis of national origins (Chapela
was born in Mexico); violation of the California Whistleblower Protection
Act; and false representations by the university of the real grounds of
"secret, de facto requirements for promotion."
The lawsuit didn't seek specific monetary damages, but called for
remuneration for lost wages, earnings and benefits, compensatory damages for
humiliation, mental anguish and emotional distress and attorneys' fees and
costs of the action.
Siegel hailed Birgeneau's decision as "really great, a big victory for
Ignacio and the people who have supported him. We didn't even know it had
gotten this far."
The chancellor's decision also granted one of the demands in the lawsuit,
granting him full pay as a tenured professor back to 2003.
Siegel said he didn't know what effect Birgeneau's decision might have on
the lawsuit. "I'll have to have discussions with Ignacio," he said.
"I have to consult with my attorney," Chapela said, "but the
point must be
made that the merit of my claims remains intact. It's a meritorious lawsuit
that can allow the public to know what happened. It would be a painful
process to pursue it, but I feel a commitment to the public-though I don't
know if I'll have the energy to continue."
In a prepared statement, the university denied that Chapela's tenure had
been denied for improper reasons.
"The campus administration believes that the initial review of the case
was
fair and that there was no conflict of interest," according to the
statement. "This was a case in which reasonable reviewers can disagree,
depending on how different elements are weighed."
The original denial of tenure was made despite widespread support from
faculty in his own college, which voted 32 to 1 in favor of Chapela's tenure
in 2002. Their decision was ratified unanimously by an ad hoc tenure
committee.
The first decision to deny was reached by the campus Budget Committee in
June, 2003, and reaffirmed that November.
Former Chancellor Robert Berdahl issued the formal denial on Nov. 20, 2003
despite repeated recommendations for approval by his department chair and
the college dean.
The budget panel reported that it had decided against tenure based on
controversial research by Chapela and graduate student Donald Quist
reporting that strains of genetically modified corn had been found deep in
the heartland of Mexico where the grain was adapted to cultivation and
genetically modified crops were banned.
The research, published in the November 2001 issue of the prestigious
British journal Nature, resulted in a firestorm of controversy.
One British website featured scathing critiques from "scientists" who
turned
out to be figments of a publicist's imagination, while hostile letters
poured into Nature, including one from a Berkeley colleague of Chapela's.
Nature responded with a partial retraction, the first in the journal's
history, but subsequent research has verified the presence of manmade genes.
Marie Felde, director of media relations for the university, said that the
recommendation to approve tenure was made on April 25 by a special
six-member budget committee that didn't include any of the nine-member panel
that had voted against tenure.
Chancellor Birgeneau reached the decision to grant tenure on May 17, and
Chapela was informed of the decision on the following day by College of
Natural Resources Dean Paul Ludden, a supporter.
Chapela has emerged as perhaps the leading academic critic of genetically
modified organisms (GMOs), and a champion of opponents of the increasing
corporate control over the world's food supply.
He said he will begin consulting with colleagues in his college to begin
working out a research program. Whatever he settles on, Chapela said, will
include a focus on biotechnology and GMOs.
***************************************************************
Embattled UC teacher is granted tenure
Critic of campus' ties with biotech lost initial bid
Charles Burress, Staff Writer
San Francisco Chronicle
May 21, 2005
A widely watched tenure battle at UC Berkeley has ended in victory for
assistant professor Ignacio Chapela, an outspoken critic of campus ties to
the biotech industry.
The university has reversed its 2003 rejection of Chapela's tenure bid and
hired him as a regular member of the faculty, campus spokeswoman Marie Felde
said Friday.
Chancellor Robert Birgeneau rendered his decision on hiring Chapela early
this week, Felde said. Birgeneau agreed with the recommendation issued in
late April by a six-member faculty committee appointed to review Chapela's
case after he appealed the tenure denial, Felde said.
His new position as an associate professor is retroactive with back pay to
2003, the year former Chancellor Robert Berdahl denied the tenure bid, Felde
said. A different faculty committee then had recommended against hiring
Chapela, who teaches microbial biology.
"I was quite surprised," Chapela said of the reversal. "I think
there's some
recognition that vindicates the legitimacy of my position."
"It's wonderful news," said Chapela's attorney, Dan Siegel. Chapela
sued the
campus April 18, alleging he was "a victim of retaliation." Siegel
said no
decision has been made on whether to proceed with the suit.
Chapela's supporters linked the rejection to his role as a leading opponent
of a five-year deal struck in 1998 that gave biotech giant Novartis
privileged access to UC plant research in exchange for $25 million.
His tenure application began with unusually strong support from his peers.
Faculty colleagues in the environmental science, policy and management
department voted 32-to-1 in favor, and a five-member ad hoc tenure committee
gave unanimous approval to hiring him.
But his bid was rejected by a third faculty committee that included a member
who also served on the advisory committee for the Novartis deal -- a fact
that helped inflame widespread controversy over the case.
A review of the UC-Novartis pact completed last year by Michigan State
University researchers concluded that there was "little doubt" that
the deal
played a role in the denial of tenure to Chapela.
His cause was bolstered by many supporters, about 100 of whom marched to
Birgeneau's office in December to present a petition on his behalf signed by
320 people, including 145 university professors from across the United
States and several other nations.
The Chapela case drew prominent coverage in the Chronicle of Higher
Education and the science journal Nature. The Novartis compact featured
prominently in an Atlantic magazine cover story, "The Kept
University," in
March 2000.
Chapela made news also because of a disputed article that he and former
graduate student David Quist published in Nature, alleging that genetically
engineered corn had infiltrated native maize in Mexico. Nature later issued
an apparent retraction, saying "that the evidence available is not
sufficient to justify the publication of the original paper."
Chapela and supporters planned to gather Friday night for a celebration and
rally at the construction site for rebuilding Stanley Hall, slated to become
Cal's bioengineering and biosciences center.
They staged rallies and bike rides around Stanley this past week with
banners challenging Berkeley research and publicizing their Web site at
www.pulseofscience.org.
"Needless to way, we're extremely excited," said Jesse Reynolds, a
former
student of Chapela's who helped organize the tenure campaign.
Birgeneau is unlikely to comment, Felde said. "He respects that while this
has been a high-profile case, it does remain a confidential personnel
process."
Attorney Siegel called the victory "a testament to Professor Chapela and
his
outstanding academic record and to the tremendous support he received from
faculty members and students, not only on the Berkeley campus, but
throughout the world."
***************************************************************
Revealed: health fears over secret study into GM food
Rats fed GM corn due for sale in Britain developed abnormalities in blood
and kidneys
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
The Independent (London)
22 May 2005
Rats fed on a diet rich in genetically modified corn developed abnormalities
to internal organs and changes to their blood, raising fears that human
health could be affected by eating GM food.
The Independent on Sunday can today reveal details of secret research
carried out by Monsanto, the GM food giant, which shows that rats fed the
modified corn had smaller kidneys and variations in the composition of their
blood.
According to the confidential 1,139-page report, these health problems were
absent from another batch of rodents fed non-GM food as part of the research
project.
The disclosures come as European countries, including Britain, prepare to
vote on whether the GM-modified corn should go on sale to the public. A vote
last week by the European Union failed to secure agreement over whether the
product should be sold here, after Britain and nine other countries voted in
favour.
However, the disclosure of the health effects on the Monsanto rats has
intensified the row over whether the corn is safe to eat without further
research. Doctors said the changes in the blood of the rodents could
indicate that the rat's immune system had been damaged or that a disorder
such as a tumour had grown and the system was mobilising to fight it.
Dr Vyvyan Howard, a senior lecturer on human anatomy and cell biology at
Liverpool University, called for the publication of the full study, saying
the summary gave "prima facie cause for concern".
Dr Michael Antoniu, an expert in molecular genetics at Guy's Hospital
Medical School, described the findings as "very worrying from a medical
point of view", adding: "I have been amazed at the number of
significant
differences they found [in the rat experiment]."
Although Monsanto last night dismissed the abnormalities in rats as
meaningless and due to chance, reflecting normal variations between rats, a
senior British government source said ministers were so worried by the
findings that they had called for further information.
Environmentalists will see the findings as vindication of British research
seven years ago, which suggested that rats that ate GM potatoes suffered
damage to their health. That research, which was roundly denounced by
ministers and the British scientific establishment, was halted and Dr Arpad
Pusztai, the scientist behind the controversial findings, was forced into
retirement amid a huge row over the claim.
Dr Pusztai reported a "huge list of significant differences" between
rats
fed GM and conventional corn, saying the results strongly indicate that
eating significant amounts of it can damage health. The new study is into a
corn, codenamed MON 863, which has been modified by Monsanto to protect
itself against corn rootworm, which the company describes as "one of the
most pernicious pests affecting maize crops around the world".
Now, however, any decision to allow the corn to be marketed in the UK will
cause widespread alarm. The full details of the rat research are included in
the main report, which Monsanto refuses to release on the grounds that "it
contains confidential business information which could be of commercial use
to our competitors".
A Monsanto spokesman said yesterday: "If any such well-known anti-biotech
critics had doubts about the credibility of these studies they should have
raised them with the regulators. After all, MON 863 isn't new, having been
approved to be as safe as conventional maize by nine other global
authorities since 2003."
***************************************************************
When fed to rats it affected their kidneys and blood counts. So what might
it do to humans? We think you should be told
The secret research we reveal today raises the potential health risks of
genetically modified foods. Here, environment editor Geoffrey Lean, who has
led this paper's campaign on GM technology for the past six years, examines
the new evidence. And he asks the questions that must concern us all: why is
Monsanto, the company trying to sell GM corn to Britain and Europe, so
reluctant to publish the full results of its alarming tests on lab rats? Why
are our leaders so keen to buy the unproven technology against the wishes of
consumers? And why is the man who first raised these concerns six years ago
shunned by the scientific establishment and his former political masters?
The Independent (London)
22 May 2005
One blustery day six years ago - at the start of The Independent on Sunday's
successful GM campaign - I travelled to Aberdeen to meet a man who had been
sent to Coventry.
Dr Arpad Pusztai was then the bogeyman of the British scientific
establishment. No less a figure than Lord May - then the Government's chief
scientific adviser, now president of the Royal Society - had accused him of
violating "every canon of scientific rectitude", and ministers and
top
scientists had queued up to denounce him.
His crime had been to find disturbing evidence that the GM potatoes he was
studying damaged the immune systems, brains, livers and kidneys of rats -
and to mention it briefly in a television programme before his research was
completed and published.
His punishment was draconian; his research was stopped, his team disbanded
and his data confiscated. He was ostracised by his colleagues, forced into
retirement and gagged for seven months, forbidden to put his case. I was the
first journalist to interview him at length, spending six hours with him.
I arrived, very sceptical, at his semi-detached house in the granite city,
where he had worked for the prestigious Rowett Research Institute for 37
years, with two handwritten pages of hostile questions. But I was surprised
by what I found.
For a start, he proved to be no wild-eyed maverick, but the world's
acknowledged top authority in his field, a small, vital, precise man with
270 papers to his name and a self-deprecating sense of humour. Far from a
headline-seeker, he was evidently a bewildered stranger to public
controversy, cautious in his language, anxious to cross every scientific
"t"
before venturing a conclusion.
Perhaps most surprising of all he turned out to be, in his words, "a very
enthusiastic supporter" of genetic modification who had fully expected his
experiments - approved and funded by the Government - to give it a "clean
bill of health".
"I was totally taken aback," he told me. "I was absolutely
confident that I
wouldn't find anything. But the longer I spent on the experiments, the more
uneasy I became."
One by one he answered my questions. I can't say I was totally convinced,
but I was persuaded of his integrity, and that he deserved a hearing.
Grey-faced with the strain - and just recovering from a minor heart attack
that he put down to it - he spoke of the "intolerable burden" of
being
attacked by the scientific community, without being able to defend himself,
of being "vilified and totally destroyed".
As we walked to a nearby shop to photocopy some of his papers, he told me
that he believed his troubles had started with a phone call to his
employers, the Rowett Research Institute, from Downing Street. That really
did seem incredible at the time - though rather less so now after the David
Kelly affair and the revelations of the Hutton and Butler inquiries.
Some supporting evidence for his suspicion since seems to have emerged. But
whatever the truth about that, this was a time when the Government was
determined to press full-speed ahead with GM technology - and to rubbish
him.
Tony Blair had just put his full weight behind modified foods, letting it be
known that he would happily eat them himself. Jack Cunningham, then in
charge of the Government's GM strategy, announced that Dr Pusztai had been
"comprehensively discredited". His office drew up secret plans -
revealed in
The Independent on Sunday - to enlist "eminent scientists" to attack
him and
"trail the Government's key messages".
Worse, the Government refused to undertake the normal scientific process of
repeating Dr Pusztai's experiments in order to either confirm or disprove
his findings. Top officials at the then Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries
and Food told me that it would be "wrong", "immoral" and
"a waste of money"
to do so - an extraordinary attitude given the potential threat to public
health, should he be right.
In the end all these official efforts were in vain. The public settled the
argument simply by refusing to eat GM food. Before the Pusztai controversy,
60 per cent of processed foods on supermarket shelves contained GM material.
After it the big chains fell over themselves to remove them in the face of
the consumer revolt. Eighty-four per cent of Britons still say they will not
eat them and even the most pro-GM ministers admit there is no market for
them.
Attention then moved away from the health effects of GM food to the
infinitely stronger evidence emerging on the environmental impact of GM
crops. Study after study - reported in our pages - showed that genes escaped
from them to breed superweeds and to contaminate organic and conventional
produce. Finally, the Government's own trials - widely expected to support
GM crops - found that growing most of them damaged wildlife.
The biotech companies - in stark contrast to their confidence before the
start of our campaign - abandoned their plans to grow GM crops in Britain.
Six years ago they were awaiting imminent government approval to grow 53
different varieties of them. Not one of these applications now remains, and
no new one is expected to be made in the near future. The Independent on
Sunday's campaign has been widely praised for its key role in this
volte-face.
Now, the focus is swinging back to GM foods - and their safety. The European
Commission is pressing for more and more of them to be allowed to be sold in
Britain and the rest of the EU. European governments are almost evenly
divided for and against them and, in the resulting deadlock, the commission
is using a loophole in the democratic process to nod them through one by
one.
The latest modified crop to come up for approval for use in food is MON 863,
a modified corn already grown and eaten in the US and Canada. On Thursday
officials from EU governments were deadlocked again, making it likely that
the commission will again wave it through later in the year.
It is particularly controversial because, as we report on page one today,
secret research carried out on rats by Monsanto - which owns the corn -
suggests that eating it may damage their health.
It indicates that rats fed relatively high levels of MON 863 had smaller
kidneys and suffered potentially more harmful blood chemistry than those on
a conventional diet. Monsanto dismisses the results as meaningless and due
to chance, reflecting normal variations between rats.
Environmentalists, however, will claim that it partially vindicates Dr
Pusztai's research, and Dr Beatrix Tappeser, a top German GM official, says
that it gives "some reason for concern".
Apart from any possible implications for public health, the research data -
as in Dr Pusztai's experiments - are important because they could, if found
to be valid, challenge the whole system by which GM foods are approved.
Regulatory bodies assume that if GM crops are similar to their conventional
counterparts in a restricted number of ways - such as the amounts of fibre
and fatty acids, protein and carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals they
contain - then the chemical and genetic differences that do exist between
them will not make them more toxic. They pronounce them "substantially
equivalent" to non-GM ones and wave them through.
The official European Food Safety Authority, the Food Standards Agency in
Britain and other regulatory agencies back Monsanto's view - as does most
weighty scientific opinion. It would be extremely foolhardy to disregard
their judgements and jump to alarming conclusions.
But it would be equally foolish to dismiss the few dissident voices. For I
have found, time after time, in covering controversial environmental issues
over the past 35 years, that lone scientists, stubbornly raising concerns in
the teeth of entrenched opposition from industry and the scientific
establishment, have often proved to be right.
Professor Derek Bryce-Smith of Reading University was ridiculed and
marginalised for decades after warning of the dangers of lead in petrol in
the 1950s - but it is now being phased out all over the world. The now much
honoured Alice Stewart came under similar attack for first warning of the
hazards of radiation to the unborn child. And I well remember one of
Britain's top officials solemnly informing me a quarter of a century ago
that Dr Irving Selikoff, who did more than anyone to sound the alarm on
asbestos - now one of the main causes of premature death in Britain - was
"evil".
I have sat in the august halls of the Royal Society and been told that acid
rain caused by pollution did not exist. I have been lectured by one of
Britain's top meteorologists - now travelling the world to warn about global
warming - that the climate never changes, and that human activities could
not possibly cause it to do so. And who can forget the constant reassurances
from the political and scientific establishments that BSE could not spread
to people?
A few weeks ago my teenage daughter asked me to test her on her
environmental chemistry exam revision. As I checked her answers against the
text book, I surprised her by letting out the occasional chuckle at its dry
contents. For there, presented as indisputable fact, were many of these once
highly controversial concerns raised by dissident scientists and roundly
dismissed by the weight of scientific opinion.
It is still a long shot, and the balance of probability is still against it,
but it is not impossible that in 25 years today's apparently alarmist
concerns about the dangers of GM food will have found their way into a new
generation of text books. If so, Dr Pusztai will finally come in from the
cold.
The lone doctor who first exposed the risks to humans
It was a startling and sensational claim - a claim aired on prime-time
national television. Rats fed on genetically modified potatoes had suffered
serious damage to their immune systems and shown stunted growth.
This result, said Dr Arpad Pusztai, the scientist involved, was immensely
worrying, since it raised substantial questions about the safety of GM food.
"I find it is very unfair to use our fellow citizens as guinea pigs,"
he
remarked.
Dr Pusztai's claims - broadcast by World in Action, one of the nation's most
respected current affairs programmes - provoked one of the most intense
scientific rows of the decade.
The backlash was orchestrated by ministers, led by Jack Cunningham, then New
Labour's "Cabinet enforcer", and by the British scientific
establishment.
Dr Pusztai, pictured, was a world authority on the subject, and his remarks,
in August 1998, had come at a crucial time for Tony Blair. It ignited a
public debate on the safety of GM foods, at a time when the Prime Minister
was committing the UK to take a leading role in the bio-tech revolution.
That brief interview left Dr Pusztai's career in ruins.
That Monday evening, Professor Philip James, the head of Dr Pusztai's
research centre, the Rowett Research Institute, had congratulated the
Hungarian scientist on his television appearance.
Over the next 48 hours, Dr Pusztai and some of his colleagues allege that
Professor James took two angry calls from Downing Street - a claim the
professor denies. Yet by Wednesday, the Rowett had retracted Dr Pusztai's
findings.
Its senior officials alleged the Hungarian had admitted he had
misrepresented his findings. Rather than being fed GM potatoes, they
claimed, the rats were given ordinary potatoes spiked with a protein which
the extra genes might have made.
They also stated these were preliminary findings which had not gone through
normal peer-review. In short, said Professor James, Dr Pusztai should not
have gone public.
Dr Pusztai still refutes these charges. His study was funded by the Scottish
Office's agriculture department. His research was designed to test the
environmental safety of using GM potatoes with a toxin, lectin, added.
In 2001, he told a Royal Commission on GMOs in New Zealand it was the GM
potatoes that produced the startling finding. The Rowett's tests showed that
the GM potatoes were "significantly different" from normal potatoes.
Yet, in
May 1999, a panel of Royal Society-appointed toxicologists branded his
research flawed.
And that was enough for Dr Cunningham to re-enter the debate. Dr Pusztai's
findings were "not valid", he said.
But Dr Pusztai may yet emerge as a prophet. The revelations about Monsanto's
secret GM corn research may confirm that this pro-GM scientist has become a
hero of the anti-GM movement.
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