EXCLUSIVE. Yes, GMOs are poisons!
French researchers secretly studied, for two years, 200 rats fed on transgenic corn. Tumors, heavy pathologies ... a massacre. And a bomb for the GMO industry.
The very serious American journal "Food and Chemical Toxicology" - a benchmark in food toxicology - launched this September 19 at 15 p.m. by publishing the results of the experiment conducted by the French Gilles-Eric Séralini, professor of molecular biology at the University of Caen. A cluster bomb: scientific, health, political and industrial. It pulverizes an official truth: the harmlessness of genetically modified corn.
Heavily toxic and often fatal
Even at low doses, the GMO studied is found to be highly toxic and often fatal for rats. So much so that, if it was a drug, it should be suspended immediately pending further investigations. Because it is this same GMO that we find on our plates, through meat, eggs or milk.
In 2006, it is like a real thriller that this research begins, of which the project manager, Gilles-Eric Séralini, himself discloses the conclusions in a book to be published next week ("Tous cobayes!", Flammarion, in bookstores on September 26).
Code name In Vivo
Until 2011, the researchers worked under conditions of quasi-clandestinity. They encrypted their emails as in the Pentagon, prohibited any telephone discussion and even launched a decoy study as they feared a Jarnac shot from the multinational seed companies.
The story of the operation - codenamed In Vivo - evokes the very difficult recovery of GMO NK 603 corn seeds, patented by Monsanto, through a Canadian agricultural high school. Then the harvest and repatriation of the "big jute bags" to the port of Le Havre at the end of 2007, before the production of croquettes in the most total secrecy and the selection of two hundred laboratory rats called "Sprague Dawley". Balance sheet? Chilling: "After less than a year of differentiated menus with GMO corn, confides Professor Séralini, it was a massacre among our rats, the scale of which I had not imagined".
Heavy pathologies, breast tumors
All groups of rats, whether they are fed GMO corn treated with Roundup, Monsanto's herbicide or fed with water containing low doses of herbicide present in GM fields, are struck by a multitude of serious pathologies in the 13th month of the experience. In females, this manifests as explosions in the chain of breast tumors that sometimes reach up to 25% of their weight. In males, it is the purifying organs, the liver and the kidneys, which are marked or marked abnormalities. With a frequency two to five times higher than for rodents fed on corn without GMOs.
Relentless comparison: GMO rats therefore trigger two to three times more tumors than non-GMO rats, regardless of their sex. At the beginning of the 24th month, that is to say at the end of their life, 50% to 80% of GMO females are affected against only 30% in non-GMOs.
Above all, the tumors appear much faster in GMO rats: twenty months earlier in males, three months earlier in females. For an animal that benefits from two years of life expectancy, the difference is considerable. By way of comparison, a year for a rodent is roughly the equivalent of around forty years for a man ...
Require accounts
It is on the strength of these conclusions that Corinne Lepage, in a book which appears on Friday September 21 ("The truth about GMOs, it's our business", Editions Charles Léopold Mayer), intends to demand accountability from politicians and experts, French and European, health agencies and the Brussels Commission, who for so long opposed and by all means to the principle of a long-term study on the physiological impact of GMOs.
This battle, the former Minister of Ecology and first vice-president of the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety commission in Strasbourg, has led her for fifteen years within the Criigen (Independent Research and Information Committee on the Genetic engineering) with Joël Spiroux and Gilles-Eric Séralini. A simple 1901 association which was nevertheless able to raise end to end the funds of this research (3,2 million euros) that neither INRA, nor the CNRS, nor any public body had considered judicious to undertake.
A study funded by Auchan and Carrefour
How? 'Or' What ? Another surprise: by calling on the Swiss Charles Léopold Mayer Foundation. But also the bosses of the large distribution (Carrefour, Auchan ..), who met for the occasion in association. Since the mad cow, they want to protect themselves from any new food scandal. So much so that it was Gérard Mulliez, founder of the Auchan group, who released the first financings.
Professor Séralini's study therefore suggests a new deadly war between pro and anti-GMOs. Will health agencies urgently require similar studies to verify the conclusions of French scientists? It would be nice the least. Will Monsanto, the world's largest transgenic seed firm, let it go? Unlikely: its survival would be at stake. For a single GMO plant, there are a hundred varieties. This would imply at least ten studies of 100 to 150 million euros each!
The time of truth
Except that, in this new confrontation, the debate can no longer get bogged down as in the past. From September 26, everyone will be able to see at the cinema the shocking film by Jean-Paul Jaud, “Tous Cobayes?”, Adapted from Gilles-Eric Séralini's book, and the terrible images of rats suffocating in their tumors. Images that will go around the planet and the Internet, since they will be broadcast on Canal + (in the "Grand Journal" on September 19) and on France 5 (on October 16 in a documentary). For GMOs, the era of doubt is coming to an end. The time for truth begins.
http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/ogm-le-s ... isons.html
