permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lfl@intrex.net>]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: HOT POTATO - Pusztai: The True Story - excerpts from Rowell's new  
book
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2003 02:40:08 +0200
From: geno@ZAP.A2000.NL
Reply-To: Sustainable Agriculture Network Discussion Group 
<SANET-MG@LISTS.IFAS.UFL.EDU>
To: SANET-MG@LISTS.IFAS.UFL.EDU

On 17 Jul 2003, at 19:13, ngin@gmwatch.org wrote:

GM WATCH daily: http://www.gmwatch.org/archive.asp
---
http://victoria.indymedia.org/news/2003/07/15505.php
MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate
media
July 15, 2003

GUEST MEDIA ALERT: HOT POTATO

Excerpt From 'Don't Worry It Is Safe To Eat - The True Story Of GM
Food, BSE, And Foot And Mouth'   By Andrew Rowell

As the UK government continues to wriggle over weapons of mass
destruction, of sexing up dossiers and general spin, Tony Blair
argues
that there is no greater charge against a prime minister than for him
to have personally falsified claims on which to take a country to
war.


That may be so, but another grave charge would be personally
ordering
the sacking of a scientist who was involved in some of the first
independent tests on GM, especially if those tests showed
evidence of
harm, and also especially if the orders came from Monsanto, via the
White House. This is what Dr. Arpad Pusztai, who raised concerns
about
GM food in 1998, claims happened to him.

Part of the recent argument between the BBC and the government concern
the claims by a single unnamed intelligence source that the government
"sexed" up one of the dossiers on Iraq. In contrast five people have
said that they were told that Tony Blair ordered the sacking of Dr.
Pusztai. Here is Dr. Pusztai's story. It raises many unanswered
questions about new Labour, its link to the biotech industry and the
safety of GM food.


Dr. Arpad Pusztai

As we witness the dawn of the biotech revolution, Dr Arpad Pusztai is
a scientist who is convinced that he has uncovered vital evidence that
shows there are potential major health risks with GM crops. Pusztai
was catapulted from an unknown laboratory scientist based at the
Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen to the forefront of a raging
debate about the safety of GM foods, when he spoke on the World in
Action TV programme in 1998.

Overnight the Hungarian-born scientist, with some 35 years lab
experience, found himself at the centre of an international media
spotlight. The controversy would put him on a collision course with
the UK and US governments, the biotech industry and the scientific
establishment. His 150-second interview lead to Pusztai being
suspended, silenced and threatened with losing his pension. His wife,
Susan Bardocz, who also worked at the Rowett for 13 years, was
eventually suspended too. Their research was locked up. Scientists and
politicians alike vilified Pusztai.

As we search for answers as to whether GM foods are safe, two
questions stand out. Given such a huge controversy over Pusztai's
experiments, and the preliminary nature of their findings, why were
the political and scientific establishments so intent on rebutting
him? More importantly why have the experiments never been repeated?

The saga has had very personal consequences. Pusztai has suffered two
heart attacks and the saga has left him and his wife, Susan, needing
permanent medication for high blood pressure. Pusztai is still angry
about the whole affair. His only crime was to speak out, in his words,
according to his conscience: 'I obviously spoke out at a very
sensitive time. But things were coming to a head with the GM debate
and I just lit the fuse', he says. 'I grew up under the Nazis and the
Communists and I understand that people are frightened and not willing
to jeopardise their future, but they just sold me down the river.'

His story begins in post-war communist Hungary. After the Hungarian
revolution was crushed by the communists, the young Pusztai, a
chemistry graduate, escaped to refugee camps in Austria and from there
to England. By 1963, having finished his doctorate in biochemistry and
post-doctorate at the Lister Institute, he was invited to join the
prestigious Protein Chemistry Department at the Rowett Research
Institute, which has become the pre-eminent nutritional centre in
Europe.

Dr Pusztai was put to work on lectins, plant proteins that were going
to be central in the GM controversy years later.  Over the intervening
years, Pusztai became the world's leading expert on plant lectins,
publishing over 270 scientific studies, and three books on the
subject. Two books were co-written with his wife, Susan. Pusztai
became one of the Rowett's most senior and renowned scientists.

In 1995, the Scottish Office Agriculture Environment and Fisheries
Department commissioned a three-year multi-centre research programme
under the coordinatorship of Dr Pusztai into the safety of GM food. At
the time there was not a single publication in a peer-reviewed journal
on the safety of GM food.

The scientists' primary task was to establish credible methods for the
identification of possible human/animal health and environmental
hazards of GM. The idea was that the methodologies that they tested
would be used by the regulatory authorities in later risk assessments
of GM crops. For the first time, independent studies would be
undertaken to examine whether feeding GM potatoes to rats caused any
harmful effects on their health, bodies or metabolism.

The theory behind the modification of the potatoes was simple. For
years Dr Pusztai had explored the beneficial effects of lectins in
foods as well as in nutritional supplements and pharmaceutical agents.
Lectins can affect the digestive systems of insects and can act as
natural insecticides. Arpad's work had shown that one such lectin
called GNA (Galanthus nivalis), isolated from the snowdrop, acted in
this way. Pusztai had worked on the snowdrop lectin since the late
1980s.

The thinking was that, if you could genetically modify a potato with
the lectin gene inside it, the potato could have an inherent built-in
defence mechanism that would act as a natural insecticide, preventing
aphid attack. Because it looked promising, the snowdrop gene had
already been incorporated into several experimental crops, including
rice, cabbagesand oil-seed rape.

But by late 1997, the first storm clouds were brewing at the Rowett.
Preliminary results from the rat-feeding experiments were showing
totally unexpected and worrying changes in the size and weight of the
rat's body organs. Liver and heart sizes were getting smaller, and so
was the brain. There were also indications that the rats' immune
systems were weakening.

150 Seconds That Changed The GM Debate

Finally in August 1998, Pusztai expressed his growing concerns on
World in Action in a 150 second interview. So what did he say? 'We're
assured that this is absolutely safe,' said Pusztai. 'We can eat it
all the time. We must eat it all the time. There is no conceivable
harm, which can come to us. But as a scientist looking at it, actively
working in the field, I find that it's very, very unfair to use our
fellow citizens as guinea pigs. We have to find guinea-pigs in the
laboratory.' Dr Pusztai had been told not to talk about his
experiments in detail, but he did say, in a sentence that would become
the centre of the controversy, that 'the effect was slight growth
retardation and an effect on the immune system. One of the genetically
modified potatoes, after 110 days, made the rats less responsive to
immune effects'.

He continued: 'If I had the choice, I would certainly not eat it till
I see at least comparable experimental evidence which we are producing
for our genetically modified potatoes. I actually believe that this
technology can be made to work for us. And if the genetically modified
foods will be shown to be safe, then we have really done a great
service to all our fellow citizens. And I very strongly believe in
this, and that's one of the main reasons why I demand to tighten up
the rules, tighten up the standards.'

On the evening of the broadcast, the head of the Rowett Professor
James 'congratulated,' Pusztai on his TV appearance, commenting on
'how well Arpad had handled the questions'. The following morning a
further press release from the Rowett noticed that a 'range of
carefully controlled studies underlie the basis of Dr Pusztai's
concerns'.

The Riddle Of The Rowett

But it is here that the Rowett and Pusztai differ in what happened
next. The day after the programme, on the Tuesday James maintains he
asked Pusztai's staff for the data for the 110-day experiment, which
he claims they told him did not exist. 'I couldn't believe it,  says
James, 'I just said that this is the end of the world for us all'.
James maintains that this is the reason why Pusztai was suspended on
the Wednesday.

On Wednesday morning, Pusztai and Susan were told to hand over their
data. All GM work was stopped immediately and Pusztai's team was
dispersed. His three PhD students were moved to other areas. He was
threatened with legal action if he spoke to anyone. His phone calls
and emails were diverted.

The Rowett press machinery was adopting Orwellian overtones and
beginning to change the official story. First of all they said that
Pusztai had got muddled with the wrong potatoes, then they had said
that the experiments had not been done, but finally they reported that
Pusztai had done the right experiments but the results were not ready
yet

Other disputed events happened on the Tuesday too. Two phone calls,
Pusztai says he was told, were put through to James from the Prime
Minister's office. One was 'around noon, the other was slightly
earlier'. He learnt this information from two different employees at
the Rowett, who could be sacked if their identities were known. The
Pusztais were also later told by someone at the Rowett, currently in a
senior management position at the Institute, that Bill Clinton had
phoned Blair and told him to sort out the problem. 'That was the
beginning of all the trouble - Arpad was sacked as a consequence of
what was said in those phone calls,' says a friend.

The events of August 1998 have always puzzled Stanley Ewen, then a top
pathologist from the University of Aberdeen who had worked with
Pusztai for over a decade.  Ewen too had often wondered what caused
the sudden turn-around at the Rowett.

Speaking about the incident for the first time now he is retired from
the University of Aberdeen, he confirms the Pusztais' stories, but
crucially he was told by yet another senior member of the Rowett. This
makes four separate Rowett personnel who have spoken in private about
the phone calls. 'On Tuesday, Blair phoned the Rowett twice, although
everybody denies it', Ewen says.

Another ex-employee who was prepared to talk is Professor Robert
Ørskov OBE. Professor Ørskov worked at the Rowett for 33 years, and is
one of the UK's leading experts in ruminant nutrition. He too was told
about the phone calls. Professor Ørskov says he was told that the
phone calls went from Monsanto to Clinton to Blair. 'Clinton rang
Blair and Blair rang James - you better keep that man [Pusztai] shut
up. James didn't know what to do. Instead of telling him to keep his
mouth shut, they should have told him to say it needs more work. But
there is no doubt that he was pushed by Blair to do something.'

But Professor James is adamant the phone call never happened. 'There
is no way I talked to anybody in any circumstances' he says. 'It's a
complete pack of lies. I have never talked to Blair since the day of
the opening of Parliament in 1997.' This week Downing Street also
called the claims "total rubbish".

Although there is no proof that phone calls ever took place, Pusztai
points to other evidence about Blair and GM. It is a well-known fact
that Blair had been persuaded to back GM by Clinton, leading even the
BBC to remark that in the GM debate 'a question mark remains over the
government's independence of pressure from Washington'. In the
mid-1990s the Clinton administration was backing the biotech industry
'second to none'. One White House staff member said the 1990s were
going to be the decade of 'successful commercialization of
agricultural biotechnology products'.

When Pusztai spoke out in August 1998, the new Labour administration
was already beginning to shape government policy for its second term.
It was looking for drivers of the economy that could be trusted to
deliver the growth and hence results that Labour needed. Hightech
industries, such as biotechnology, were to be the central cogs of the
engine that would drive the Blairite revolution, and deliver the
coveted second term. What Pusztai was saying could literally derail an
entire industry and with it many of the hopes and aspirations of New
Labour.

Pusztai Backed By Colleagues

By the end of 1998, the Pusztai saga could have slowly subsided, with
the scientist forbidden to talk to inquiring journalists. But wherever
he went, scientific colleagues were curious to find out what had
really happened to their colleague. Although banned from talking to
the press, he was not banned from talking to other scientists outside
the Rowett. In February 1999 30 international scientists from 13
countries published a memo supporting Pusztai that was published in
the Guardian which sparked a media frenzy over GM.

A week after the international scientists backed Pusztai, a secret
committee met to counter the growing alarm over GM. Contrary to
reassurances by the government that GM food was safe, the minutes show
the cross departmental committee formed to deal with the crisis,
called MISC6, knew the reassurances were premature. It 'requested' a
paper by the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) and the Chief Scientific
Advisor (CSA) on the 'human health implications of GM foods'.

What would happen, the minutes asked, if the CMO/CSA's paper 'shows up
any doubts? We will be pressurised to ban them immediately. What if it
says that we need evidence of long-term effects? This will look like
we are not sure about their safety'.

The "Star Chamber"

That very same day - 19 February - The Royal Society publicly waded
into the Pusztai controversy saying it was going to review the
evidence on GM, but Pusztai argues it was nothing more than an attack
on him.

'Their remit was to screw me and they screwed me,' he argues. 'They
have never done it before and I had never submitted anything to them.
They took on a role in which they were self-appointed, they were the
prosecutors, the judges and they tried to be the executioners as well.
I see no reason why I should have cooperated with them in my own
hanging.'

But hung Pusztai was. On 18 May 1999, the Royal Society issued its
damning verdict against Pusztai, at a press conference. The report
said that Pusztai's work was 'flawed in many aspects of design,
execution and analysis and that no conclusions should be drawn from
it'. The same day, 18 May, the House of Commons Science and Technology
Select Committee attacked Pusztai too.

It is beyond coincidence that The Royal Society and the Science and
Select Committee published on the same day. Political insiders say
that pressure was put on the Science and Technology Committee and The
Royal Society to discredit Pusztai, thereby enabling the government to
take control again.

This behind-the-scene coordination was partly revealed by a memo
showing that the government had set up a 'Biotechnology Presentation
Group', which included senior Ministers. A decision was taken to
'present the government's stance as a single package by way of an oral
statement in the House. This would allow the government to get on the
front foot'.

This is exactly what happened. On 21 May, just three days after The
Royal Society and Select Committee published - Jack Cunningham stood
up in the House of Commons: 'Biotechnology is an important and
exciting area of scientific advance that offers enormous opportunities
for improving our quality of life.'

Cunningham then laid his killer punch: 'The Royal Society this week
convincingly dismissed as wholly misleading the results of some recent
research into potatoes, and the misinterpretation of it - There is no
evidence to suggest that any GM foods on sale in this country are
harmful'.

The Lancet

However Pusztai and Ewen had submitted a paper to the Lancet, which
was finally published in October 1999. Ewen faxed a copy of the
article to the Rowett before publication, as Pusztai was still
required to show them any papers based on his work there. However
publication was delayed by two weeks for technical reasons. 'The
rubbishing brigade had been given two weeks to do the dirty on the
article. I was almost sure they would stop it,' says Pusztai.

First of all came the misinformation. 'Scientists Revolt at
Publication of "Flawed" GM Study', ran The Independent, 'the study
that sparked the furore over genetically modified food has failed the
ultimate test of scientific credibility'. Connor said that the
referees were against publication.

However four out of the six reviewers were for publication. 'A clear
majority of The Lancet's reviewers were in favour,' says Richard
Horton, the editor of the Lancet. Then came the 'threats'. Three days
after The Independent article, Richard Horton received a phone call
from Professor Lachmann, the former Vice-President and Biological
Secretary of The Royal Society and President of the Academy of Medical
Sciences.

According to Horton, Professor Lachmann threatened that his job would
be at risk if he published Pusztai's paper, and called Horton
'immoral' for publishing something he knew to be 'untrue'. Towards the
end of the conversation Horton maintains that Lachmann said that if he
published this would 'have implications for his personal position' as
editor. Lachmann confirms that he rang Horton but vehemently denies
that he threatened him.

After the article was published, Horton and The Lancet were once again
attacked for publishing the work by the biotechnology industry and The
Royal Society. Horton likened the actions of the Royal Society to a
"Star Chamber". The publication of The Lancet paper also had a
detrimental effect on Stanley Ewen's long-term employment with the
University of Aberdeen, and rather than get recognition for his work,
all he seemed to get was anguish.

'I felt that I had done so much work that had been unacknowledged',
says the pathologist. 'I felt that I deserved some recognition, but
this was being blocked at a very high level by other spokespersons. It
wasn't helpful to my career. When you do these sorts of things it is
very difficult for your pension. Because that is what it comes down to
in the final analysis: money'. Eventually he felt that he had no
option left and Ewen retired on the 26 March, 2001. He now works as a
consultant to the NHS.

Why Have The Experiments Never Been Repeated?

But the fundamental flaw in the scientific establishment's response is
that in 1999 everyone agreed that more work was needed. Three years
later, that work remains to be undertaken. A scientific body, like The
Royal Society, that allocates millions in research funds every year,
could have funded a repeat of Pusztai's experiments. Is it that it is
easier to say there is no evidence to support his claim, because no
evidence exists, than it is to say that no one has looked?

Don't Worry It is Safe to Eat - The True Story of GM Food, BSE, and
Foot and Mouth,  by Andrew Rowell was published by Earthscan on 10th
July

Feel free to respond to Media Lens alerts: mailto:editor@medialens.org

Visit the Media Lens website: http://www.medialens.org

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http://market-farming.com
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