My Log 382, October 8 2013: GMO foods, nuclear power, unfavorably dissected in Cinema Politica’s latest offering

Monsanto (Photo credit: Grumbler %-|)

T-shirt against GMO food. The logo is not copyrighted. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

Concordia University has started again its laudable Cinema Politica series, and its third offering of this tenth year on Monday evening featured  a French film called Tous Cobayes?, or, in English, All of Us Guinea-Pigs Now?

This film, made by Jean-Paul Jaud last year, is a root-and-branch attack on the whole idea of Genetically Modified Organisms (or GMO) when applied to the growing of food.

This is still an extremely controversial subject, and the man whose work this film is built on, Prof. Gilles-Eric Seralini, of Caen University in France, is probably the most controversial figure in the global movement around this subject.

In fact, the global application of GMO to the growing of food crops is one of those subjects that arouses knee-jerk responses among most people who have any interest in it.  The major company responsible for development of the genetic modifications involved, Monsanto, has become a swear word among a certain section of the population, and it is hardly possible any longer to take a moderate position as between being pro-Monsanto and anti-Monsanto.

The fact is that Monsanto and the other companies involved seem to be overwhelmingly winning the day in this battle: GMO food is being grown throughout the world, with effects on people’s health, and the health of society in general, that are at the centre of the argument.

 Prof  Seralini, a microbiologist, has conducted a number of experimeNts on rats that were fed corn genetically modified to be resistent to pesticides, because, they have been manipulated to actually contain the pesticide  within their  physical structure. His results, when published, have been roundly criticized by many scientists and major scientific bodies, just as they have been supported by others. He has claimed that these GMO foods have been allowed into circulation without being subject to adequate testing to indicate their effects. The main argument he has used is that the 90-day trials normally undertaken by the companies have not been long enough to give any worthwhie result. So last night’s film was about a long-term, two-year study he conducted on a large number of rats which, as was shown in the film, developed major, deforming tumours as a result of the food they were fed. He compared them against a control group, in the approved manner, but there were things about the way his study was finally released to the public that aroused the ire of some scientists, and his methodology was also criticized.

 Of course,  from the point of view of a layman like myself (and most other people) this is complicated by the power of the companies, industries and governments that stand behind this GMO science. These are the wealth-owners who, in effect, control most governments throughout the capitalist world, and the suspicion is that many --- some would say, most --- of the scientists who agree with GMO science are in some way controlled by, bought by or dominated by the money forces that are profiting from it.  People are suspicious about things like that in these days, so it is difficult for someone like myself, preternaturally suspicious as I am of the corporate world, not to have a bias in favour of the brave people who are opposing having this science forced on them in their everyday work and lives.

M. Jaud’s film makes no pretence at being objective or even-handed: I had no objection to that because in my day I made films rather like this one, and my rationale thirty years ago still pertains today, even perhaps more so. In most cases --- certainly in these subjects under discussion in this fim,  GMO foods and nuclear power ---- the people one is fighting against are funded up to the hilt, have thousands of employees including vast public relations departments whose very purpose is to make the case for the corporate view of the world, and in such circumstances why should a film-maker who has an hour in which to argue his case be expected to provided twenty minutes or half an hour of his time to spokesmen for the other side?

I didn’t object to that in the film, but, looking acak on it I do feel that the film should have been produced by Cinema Politica with more context for the guidance of its audience.  Most of what I have written about the widespread opinions criticizing Prof. Seralini and all his works I have discovered from other sources: Cinema Politica did not provide me with any suggestion that what we had been watching was in any way a matter for dispute by reputable authorities, and I think they should have done. (I have to add here, I left when the film finished: so far as I could tell, no post-film discussion was intended, and if one took place after I left what I have just said would no longer apply).

The second part of the film was an attack on nuclear power. With this argument I wholeheartedly agreed. Much of what they showed dealt with the victims of the nuclear meltdown at Fukushima, consequent on the disastrous tsunami. The proponents of nuclear power always argue that it is safe, safer than coal-fired or oil-powered electricity stations, for example. The unfortunate fact is, however, that when an accident does occur, and there have been several of them, it can have a disastrous impact on millions of people, over a huge area of land. It can, in fact, poison land and make it unsafe for habitation for decades to come. And not only that, but when the time comes to decommission even a nuclear power station that has operated for years without accident,  the real problem begins, which is that its radio-active materials have to be guarded for thousands of years if they aren’t to irrevocably damage tens of thousands of people.

Why any sane society would strike that Faustian bargain just to get electricity, which can be generated by safer means, is beyond me. And M. Jaud’s film makes that case so convincingly as to be beyond argument.
In the midst of the argument, The /guardian, always a reliable source, ran a blog saying that whatever the objections to M. /seralini, the issue cannot be swept under the carpet. /they outlined the half dozen or so masin objections to his research, along with his response:

My Log 382, October 8 2013

GMO foods, nuclear power, unfavoraby dissected in Cinema Politica’s latest offering

Concordia University has started its laudable Cinema Politica series, and its third offering of this tenth year on Monday evening featured  a French film called Tous Cobayes?, or, in English, All of Us Guinea-Pigs Now?

This film, made by Jean-Paul Jaud last year, is a root-and-branch attack on the whole idea of Genetically Modified Organisms (or GMO) when applied to the growing of food.

This is still an extremely controversial subject, and the man whose work this film is built on, Prof. Gilles-Eric Seralini, of Caen University in France, is probably the most controversial figure in the global movement around this subject.

In fact, the global application of GMO to the growing of food crops is one of those subjects that arouses knee-jerk responses among most people who have any interest in it.  The major company responsible for development of the genetic modifications involved, Monsanto, has become a swear word among a certain section of the population, and it is hardly possible any longer to take a moderate position as between being pro-Monsanto and anti-Monsanto.

The fact is that Monsanto and the other companies involved seem to be overwhelmingly winning the day in this battle: GMO food is being grown throughout the world, with effects on people’s health, and the health of society in general, that are at the centre of the argument.

 Prof  Seralini, a microbiologist, has conducted a number of experimeNts on rats that were fed corn genetically modified to be resistent to pesticides, because, they have been manipulated to actually contain the pesticide  within their  physical structure. His results, when published, have been roundly criticized by many scientists and major scientific bodies, just as they have been supported by others. He has claimed that these GMO foods have been allowed into circulation without being subject to adequate testing to indicate their effects. The main argument he has used is that the 90-day trials normally undertaken by the companies have not been long enough to give any worthwhie result. So last night’s film was about a long-term, two-year study he conducted on a large number of rats which, as was shown in the film, developed major, deforming tumours as a result of the food they were fed. He compared them against a control group, in the approved manner, but there were things about the way his study was finally released to the public that aroused the ire of some scientists, and his methodology was also criticized.

 Of course,  from the point of view of a layman like myself (and most other people) this is complicated by the power of the companies, industries and governments that stand behind this GMO science. These are the wealth-owners who, in effect, control most governments throughout the capitalist world, and the suspicion is that many --- some would say, most --- of the scientists who agree with GMO science are in some way controlled by, bought by or dominated by the money forces that are profiting from it.  People are suspicious about things like that in these days, so it is difficult for someone like myself, preternaturally suspicious as I am of the corporate world, not to have a bias in favour of the brave people who are opposing having this science forced on them in their everyday work and lives.

M. Jaud’s film makes no pretence at being objective or even-handed: I had no objection to that because in my day I made films rather like this one, and my rationale thirty years ago still pertains today, even perhaps more so. In most cases --- certainly in these subjects under discussion in this fim,  GMO foods and nuclear power ---- the people one is fighting against are funded up to the hilt, have thousands of employees including vast public relations departments whose very purpose is to make the case for the corporate view of the world, and in such circumstances why should a film-maker who has an hour in which to argue his case be expected to provided twenty minutes or half an hour of his time to spokesmen for the other side?

I didn’t object to that in the film, but, looking acak on it I do feel that the film should have been produced by Cinema Politica with more context for the guidance of its audience.  Most of what I have written about the widespread opinions criticizing Prof. Seralini and all his works I have discovered from other sources: Cinema Politica did not provide me with any suggestion that what we had been watching was in any way a matter for dispute by reputable authorities, and I think they should have done. (I have to add here, I left when the film finished: so far as I could tell, no post-film discussion was intended, and if one took place after I left what I have just said would no longer apply).

The second part of the film was an attack on nuclear power. With this argument I wholeheartedly agreed. Much of what they showed dealt with the victims of the nuclear meltdown at Fukushima, consequent on the disastrous tsunami. The proponents of nuclear power always argue that it is safe, safer than coal-fired or oil-powered electricity stations, for example. The unfortunate fact is, however, that when an accident does occur, and there have been several of them, it can have a disastrous impact on millions of people, over a huge area of land. It can, in fact, poison land and make it unsafe for habitation for decades to come. And not only that, but when the time comes to decommission even a nuclear power station that has operated for years without accident,  the real problem begins, which is that its radio-active materials have to be guarded for thousands of years if they aren’t to irrevocably damage tens of thousands of people.

Why any sane society would strike that Faustian bargain just to get electricity, which can be generated by safer means, is beyond me. And M. Jaud’s film makes that case so convincingly as to be beyond argument.

                  

The British newspaper The Guardian, in a blog they published recently, asserted that the GMO issue cannot be swept under the carpet. They provided a list of the major objections to Prof. Seralini's work, and his responses to them: 

1. The French researchers were accused of using the Sprague Dawley rat strain which is said to be prone to developing cancers. In response Séralini and his team say these are the same rats as used by Monsanto in the 90-day trials which it used to get authorisation for its maize. This strain of rat has been used in most animal feeding trials to evaluate the safety of GM foods, and their results have long been used by the biotech industry to secure approval to market GM products.

2. The sample size of rats was said to be too small. Séralini responded that six is the OECD recommended protocol for GM food safety toxicology studies and he had based his study on the toxicity part of OECD protocol no. 453. This states that for a cancer trial you need a minimum of 50 animals of each sex per test group but for a toxicity trial a minimum of 10 per sex suffices. Monsanto used 20 rats of each sex per group in its feeding trials but only analysed 10, the same number as Séralini.

3. No data was given about the rats' food intake. Seralini says the rats were allowed to eat as much food as they liked.

4. Séralini has not released the raw data from the trial. In response he says he won't release it until the data underpinning Monsanto's authorisation of NK603 in Europe is also made public.

5. His funding was provided by an anti-biotechnology organisation whose scientific board Séralini heads. But he counters that almost all GM research is funded by corporates or by pro-biotech institutio