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Press release 21 February 2006
from GM Free Cymru

GM SCIENCE -- SUPPORTED BY A TISSUE OF LIES
Revealed -- how the GM industry kills off "uncomfortable" research

Fact: Two years ago, when Prof Bela Darvas and his colleagues in the
Hungarian Academy of Sciences revealed a massive buildup of toxins
associated with plantings of a GM maize called MON810, and indicated
that they wanted to repeat and extend their research, Monsanto
immediately shut off supplies of seeds and effectively killed off the
research project.

Fact: In 2005, Dr Judy Carman asked Bayer CropScience for a
tablespoon of GM InVigor canola seeds, needed to determine the accuracy
of a field test for GM contamination in otherwise non-GM seeds that
farmers and grain handlers may start to use in Australia. The company
simply ignored her request and made the research impossible.

These cases are by no means unique (1).

----------------------------

Within the GM science community there has been concern for several
years about the "corporate control" of the scientific agenda and about
the difficulties encountered by independent researchers who have
discovered "uncomfortable" things about the health and environmental
impacts of GM crops and foods (2).

There is also concern about the manner in which the regulatory
authorities have comprehensively ditched the precautionary principle,
and about the vast list of "junk science" articles in the literature
based upon the nonsensical concept of "substantial equivalence" (3).

Genuinely independent GM research is made extremely difficult because
of lack of funding; because of the hostility of regulatory and advisory
bodies such as ACNFP, FSA, ACRE and EFSA and indeed of Government
Departments like DEFRA; because august scientific institutions like
the Royal Society are robustly pro-GM; because the GM lobby is well
practiced in the dark arts of obfuscation and spin; and because
scientists who question the safety of GM are routinely personally
vilified by the industry. Dr Arpad Pusztai, Dr Mae-wan Ho and Dr
Ignacio Chapela have been knocked over and have come up fighting (4),
but there are many others who have simply been silenced and subdued by
the hired hit-men of the GM industry (5).

It has now been revealed that the GM industry routinely refuses to
supply GM seed and other GM "reference material" to bona fide
scientists who ask for it, citing as justification patent protection
and "commercial in confidence" rules (6). In the case of the Bt10
fiasco, Syngenta even refused to send to the EC reference materials
needed by research laboratories for the development of a testing and
monitoring programme (7).

"This means that one of the fundamental principles of science has now
been abandoned, with the apparent connivance of certain governments,"
says Dr Brian John of GM Free Cymru. "Science has always operated on
the assumption that experiments must be replicable in order that
results may be verified or falsified. But if the GM multinationals
refuse to allow their GM seeds and reference materials to be examined
by anybody other than their own scientists, there is no way that
anybody should trust their results, whether or not they have been
through a peer review process. Integrity is immediately swept away,
and corruption takes its place."

GM Free Cymru has therefore made the following demands:

1. We demand that all owners of GM seed and reference materials who
have submitted experimental results in support of their applications
for GM consents must state unequivocally, in writing, that identical
materials are available to bona fide researchers who wish to repeat the
published experiments.

2. We demand that the regulatory bodies which have issued "opinions"
or given consents for GM crops and foods should immediately revoke
those decisions pending the receipt of assurances as in (1) above.

3. We demand that all applications in the regulatory pipeline should
be placed on hold until (a) the applicants have given assurances that
every single experiment described in supporting dossiers may be
repeated by independent researchers without let or hindrance, and (b)
all published results are verified independently.

4. We call upon all journals which publish GM-related papers (whether
or not peer-reviewed) to refuse to publish unless and until they have a
written commitment from the seed owners that they will freely provide
identical GM materials for the conduct of repeat experiments by
independent researchers.

5. We call upon all scientists working in the GM field, no matter what
their affiliations may be, to support these demands so that integrity
and respect for scientific principles may be restored.

"These are minimum demands," says Dr John. "The on-going refusal by GM
multinationals to provide GM materials to independent researchers is a
scientific outrage. Until the demands are met, we have to assume that
GM crops and foods are dangerous, that industry-sponsored published
research is untrustworthy, and that the GM approval process is
supported by a flimsy tissue of lies." (8)

ENDS
Contact:
Brian John
Tel 01239-820470

------------------

NOTES

1. See this for example: http://www.gefreemaine.org/index.php?page=13
GM Free Cymru is building a dossier of cases involving refusals by the
GM seed owners to supply seed and other materials to respected
scientists and research laboratories. Check for updates here:
http://www.gmfreecymru.org/

2. There is a large literature on the vilification of dissenting
scientists, the use of personal attacks as a diversionary tactic, and
of the use of spinning and dissembling techniques whenever the GM
industry needs to deal with "uncomfortable" evidence of harm relating
to GFM food and crops. See Jeffrey Smith's book "Seeds of Deception"
(2004), Green Books, or see the following:
http://www.seedsofdeception.com/
http://www.gmwatch.org/
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/appeal.php
http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5989
http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm199899/cmselect/
cmsctech/286/9030804.htm

3. On the Precautionary Principle:
http://www.biotech-info.net/in_defense.html
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/prec.php
http://www.mindfully.org/Precaution/2003/Science-Based-
Precaution4apr03.htm
On Substantial equivalence:
http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/downloaddoc.asp?id=1050
Prof Janet Bainbridge: "The presumption of safety of novel GM plants
on the basis of substantial equivalence lacks scientific credibility,
given modern expectations of standards of evidence
http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/substequiv.cfm
"Beyond Substantial equivalence", Oct. 7, 1999, Nature, by Erik
Millstone, Eric Brunner and Sue Mayer
"Showing that a genetically modified food is chemically similar to its
natural counterpart is not adequate evidence that it is safe for human
consumption."

4. When confronted with uncomfortable evidence, the first instinct of
the GM industry is to "shoot the messenger." See the following:
http://counterpunch.org/tonak06262004.html
http://www.mindfully.org/GE/2005/Chapela-State-Enemy19jan05.htm
http://www.healthcoalition.ca/pusztai.html
http://www.psrast.org/pusztai.htm

5. See Jeffrey Smith, "Seeds of Deception". During the Nazi era in
Germany "....... far from being subjected to force, many scientists
voluntarily oriented their work to fit government policies - as a way
of getting money and of exploiting the new resources that Nazi
policies made available ......... Most researchers, it turns out, seem
to have regarded the regime not as a threat, but as an opportunity for
their research ambitions." (Nature, 7 April 2005)
Encouraging the people of Britain to stand up to Hitler, Winston
Churchill said this: "....... if we fail, the whole world, including
the Unites States, including all that we have known and cared for, will
sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age, made more sinister, and perhaps
more protracted, by the lights of perverted science." (June 18th,
1940)

6. http://www.gefreemaine.org/index.php?page=13
Date: 25 May 2005

7. Syngenta Dodgy Dossier -- GM Free Cymru
http://www.gmfreecymru.org/news/Press_Notice8December2005.htm

8. For an example of the "dodgy science" used in support of GM
applications for approval, see this:
http://www.gmwatch.org/p1temp.asp?pid=66&page=1