European Food Safety Authority dismisses Seralini GMO rat food 'contamination' study - In a paper published in PLoS One and entitled ‘Laboratory
rodent diets contain toxic levels of environmental contaminants: Implications
for regulatory tests’, Mesnage et al. (2015) analysed commercial laboratory
rodent diets for environmental contaminants and genetically modified organisms
(GMOs). In samples from 13 different commercial rodent diets, the authors of
the study report the presence of pesticides, heavy metals, polychlorinated
dibenzo-p-dioxins and dibenzofurans, and GMOs. There are several limitations with the methodological
approach used by the authors, including insufficient information about the test
material and methodology used, incomplete reporting of the data, and
inappropriate interpretation of legislation and results. The vast majority of
pesticides were absent (below the limit of detection), and where detected, the
levels of pesticides, heavy metals and dioxins were only just above the limit
of detection in the feed samples but below regulatory levels for feed and
foodstuffs……
Beware mudslinging: How abuse of FOIA derails discussion of science and GMOs - In general, FOIA requests like those made of Dr. Kevin
Folta, and anything else journalists can do to find out whether someone
claiming the trustworthy mantle of scientist/expert has been corrupted by
funders, are a good idea. But more and more, advocates on all sorts of issues
are using them to cast doubt on the trustworthiness of what an opponent says. Money can corrupt. But it is unfair, and not mature
journalism, to simply say “He got money from some bad actor, and therefore you
can’t trust anything he says.” Because money doesn’t always corrupt,
mostly it finds those already saying what the funder likes. The views are
sincerely held, and predate the cash. There
are plenty of examples of companies funding scientists and pundits to say
whatever the company wants. And there are many examples on the “green” side of
environmental issues too…..
Epigenetics: Why there’s
no such thing as a ‘perfect’ human body - Epigenetics is a
burgeoning field of research that is the most synthetic of the sciences in
introducing the new, environmental view of biological development: it is the
science of how cellular environments determine genetic expression. The field
has yielded thousands of studies that show how certain nutrients, environmental
toxins and psycho-social stressors can affect genetic expression without
changing the underlying DNA sequence. Instead, epigenetic mechanisms affect
genetic expression by influencing which genes are available to the cell’s
protein-building ‘machinery’. The
implications of recent epigenetic insights are enormous. Epigenetics provides a
powerful way to think about openness, indeterminacy and variation in human
anatomy, physiology and behaviour. Foremost, epigenetics shows that variation
is the inevitable, natural state: that is, variation is the only possible
outcome because each person is made by a unique set of exposures, past and
present. Its inevitability is enhanced by the fact that epigenetic processes
are subtle and indeterminate. The upshot is that there is no ‘baseline’ for
determining the ‘natural’ state of the human body. In other words, there is no a
priori basis to treat bodily changes as deviations from a past natural
state.
More Here……
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