David H. Gorski, a distinguished scientist and surgeon specializing in breast cancer, is also a redoubtable opponent of pseudoscience. In a blog posting, “More bad science in the service of anti-GMO activism,” he takes on the recently published paper by Judy Carman and Howard Vlieger claiming that genetically modified grain caused severe stomach inflammation in pigs.

It’s safe to say the Carman-Vlieger paper does not survive the encounter. Among Dr. Gorski’s observations:

– “The only seeming hypothesis was “GMOs bad,” and the study was designed to find bad things associated with GMOs.”

– “Carman’s study resembles the Seralini study in that it basically looks at a whole lot of outcomes in a fairly arbitrary fashion and cherry picks the inevitable “positive” result.”

– “Analyzed correctly, there is no statistically significant (or, no doubt, biologically significant) difference in stomach inflammation in this study.”

– “This study abused a fairly large number of innocent pigs to produce no useful data.”

To date, about 20 rebuttals to the Carman-Vlieger paper have been posted, according to www.rbutr.com.

Independent scientists continue to knock the props out from under a paper claiming that pigs fed genetically modified grain had worse health outcomes than a control group fed non-GM grain. It turns out that the major finding of the study is meaningless.

The headline-grabbing finding was that the experimental group supposedly had worse stomach inflammation than the controls. The paper was illustrated with grisly photographs of reddened stomach linings of autopsied pigs.

Trouble is, a professor of veterinary medicine who’s an expert in swine health management says you can’t identify inflammation just by color.
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On Tuesday, June 12, 2013, an obscure online journal financed by the organic industry published a paper asserting that GMO corn and soybean meal caused an elevated level of stomach inflammation in pigs. The study ran directly counter to a vast amount of scientific research showing no differences in animals fed GMO or non-GMO rations.

The paper was written by Judy Carman, a well-known anti-biotech campaigner in Australia, and Howard Vlieger, an Iowa businessman who sells equipment to the “sustainable farming” channel. The publication was aggressively promoted by the anti-biotech industry, calling far more attention to it than a paper in a virtually unknown journal would usually get. Among the readers were several scientists and knowledgeable journalists.

Their verdict: this paper is junk.
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Opponents of biotech are once again bringing up, and misinterpreting, a paper on the use of Cauliflower Mosaic Virus (CaMV) in genetic modification of plants. The original paper did not claim any danger to humans, but that is the “spin” being put on it by the critics. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) says there is actually no danger to animals or humans. Here’s an excerpt from the paper and the EFSA response.

Podevin and du Jardin 2012, Possible consequences of the overlap between the CaMV 35S promoter regions in plant transformation vectors used and the viral gene VI in transgenic plants, GM Crops and Food - Biotechnology in Agriculture and the Food Chain
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A strong lineup of biotech advocates took on the task of dispelling the myths and proclaiming the facts of genetically modified crops and foods at a forum in Washington, D.C. Tuesday (June 4, 2013). All that was missing were the biotech detractors.

That was no fault of forum organizer Jon Entine, a journalist and founder of the Genetic Literacy Project at George Mason University. He originally booked Jeffrey Smith, author of “Genetic Roulette” and a veteran naysayer, and Gilles-Eric Seralini, the French scientist who claimed that biotech corn caused rats to grow tumors.

But Smith and Seralini backed out when they realized they would also be up against Kevin Folta, a plant geneticist from the University of Florida who is very active in debunking anti-biotech claims. Rounding out the panel was Karl Haro von Mogel, a graduate student at the university of Wisconsin and proprietor of the Biofortified blog.

Folta pointed to the use of scary-sounding statements by anti-biotch forces, noting “the use of fear is pervasive” in those circles. Activists like Smith try to frighten people by claiming that the rise of biotech corps is linked to the alleged rise in autism, diabetes, and other disorders, he said.

“But you shouldn’t confuse correlation with causality,” Folta said. “Just because two things happen at the same time does not mean they are linked.” He noted that the increase in both diabetes and autism tracks almost perfectly with the increase in organic food sales.

“But I wouldn’t say one causes the other,” he said. “Obviously not. And we must make decisions based on data and evidence, not on fear.”