Altered Genes, Twisted Truth – the systematic government and scientific fraud over GM food

March 5, 2015 by Staff Reporter

In an acclaimed new book launched at a press conference in London yesterday, American public interest attorney Steven Druker exposed how the US government and leading scientific institutions have systematically misrepresented the facts about GMOs and the scientific research that casts doubt on their safety.

L-R: Chair Prof Richard C. Jennings, Author Stephen Druker and special guest Dame Jane Goodall at the launch of Altered Genes, Twisted Truth

The book is titled Altered Genes, Twisted Truth and features a foreword by the renowned primatologist Dame Jane Goodall, who spoke compellingly the conference, hailing it as “without doubt one of the most important books of the last 50 years”.

It arrives at a crucial time when the UK is considering the commercial planting of GM crops following the European Parliament’s decision to allow member states to opt out of the blockade that has barred them from the EU until now. Based on the evidence presented in the book, Druker and Goodall were unanimous that it would be foolhardy to push forward with a technology that is unacceptably risky and should never have been allowed on the market in the first place.

The book is the result of more than 15 years of intensive research and investigation by Druker, who came to prominence for initiating a lawsuit against the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that forced it to divulge its files on GM foods. Those files revealed that GM foods first achieved commercialisation in 1992 only because the FDA:

Covered up the extensive warnings of its own scientists about their dangers.
Lied about the facts.
And then violated federal food safety law by permitting these foods to be marketed without having been proven safe through standard testing.

Attorney and author Steven Druker and Jane Goodall who wrote the foreword to his book Altered Genes, Twisted Truth

Pat Thomas, Director of Beyond GM, which facilitated the press launch, said of the book’s revelations: “For a very long time, the pro-GM lobby have insisted that GM is a ‘science issue’. What Druker’s book shows us is that the regulatory processes that allowed GM foods to come to market are based on a perversion of science and that puts a very different spin on what a ‘science issue’ really means.”

Druker’s well-referenced book points out that if the FDA had actually heeded its own experts’ advice, told the truth, and obeyed the law, the GM food venture would have imploded and never gained traction anywhere. It also reveals:

Many well-placed scientists have repeatedly issued misleading statements about GM foods, and so have leading scientific institutions such as the US National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the UK’s Royal Society.
Consequently, most people are unaware of the risks these foods entail and the manifold problems they have caused.
Contrary to the claims of biotech advocates, humans have indeed been harmed by consuming the output of genetic engineering. In fact, the technology’s first ingestible product (a food supplement of the essential amino acid, L-tryptophan) caused dozens of deaths and seriously sickened thousands of people (permanently disabling many of them). Moreover, the evidence points to the genetic alteration as the most likely cause of the unusual contamination that rendered the supplement toxic.
Laboratory animals have also suffered from eating products of genetic engineering, and well-conducted tests with GM crops have yielded many troubling results, including intestinal abnormalities, liver disturbances, and impaired immune systems.
Numerous scientists (including those on the FDA’s Biotechnology Task Force) have concluded that the process of creating genetically modified food radically differs from conventional breeding and entails greater risk.
There has never been a consensus within the scientific community that GM foods are safe, and many eminent experts have issued cautions – as have respected scientific organisations such as the Royal Society of Canada and the Public Health Association of Australia.

Druker says: “Contrary to the pronouncements of its proponents, the massive enterprise to reconfigure the genetic core of the world’s food supply is not based on sound science but on the systematic subversion of science – and it would collapse if subjected to an open airing of the facts.”

At the press conference, Druker issued an open challenge Royal Society – the eminent UK scientific institution which has worked to promote the cause of GMOs – to confront the facts, apologise for the misleading statements that it and several of its prominent members have issued, and take earnest steps to set the record straight.

Beyond GM Directors Pat Thomas and Francesca Price with Jane Goodall

In her foreword to Altered Genes, Twisted Truth, Goodall commends it for countering the disinformation and providing much-needed clarity. She states: “I shall urge everyone I know who cares about life on earth, and the future of their children, and children’s children, to read it. It will go a long way toward dispelling the confusion and delusion that has been created regarding the genetic engineering process and the foods it produces. . . . Steven Druker is a hero. He deserves at least a Nobel Prize.”

Pat Thomas adds: “Under pressure from new legislation and the ongoing TTIP negotiations, the UK and the rest of Europe are on the precipice of making sweeping changes to their historical stance on GMOs. Much of our regulatory framework has been informed by foundations laid down in America in the early 1990s, and the belief that they got it right in terms of understanding the science of genetic modification. Steven Druker’s investigation into the history of fraud and deceit that ushered in the era of GMOs deserves serious consideration before we take actions that will irreversibly alter the European food supply.”

She concludes “GMOs are not a ‘science issue’ any more – they’re everyone’s issue”.