Selalini study on GMO corn re-published

[ApostateAbe]

Nope, no questions!

Except why didn't you do the most basic research on the topic before posting? Why are you thinking it was a cancer study?

OK, correct me. It wasn't a cancer study. So what was it? A tumor study? A throw-shit-against-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks study? A milk-the-anti-GMO-activists-for-money study?

The way the system works presently is this. The FDA assumes that GMO foods are sustantially equivalent to the foods they modify. This being the case they just ask Monsanto (or whoever) to do their own study and if they can get the result they want then the FDA ok's the food.
As Monsanto is making a lot amount of money out of this, it's reasonable to ask whether their results should be checked out. So Seralini's team did the original toxicity study again, but they did it for 2 years. This made it the first long term study of this kind.
So to answer your question. it was a toxicity study.
Now naturally when they noticed more tumors and larger tumors in the group fed the GM corn they said that another long term study, this time a cancer study, was in order.
So, it was you who were misled. You were misled into thinking they did a cancer study.

Yeah, when the tumors are discussed in the abstract, body and conclusions of the report, featuring pictures of rats with big ugly tumors, it is easy to get the wrong idea that it was a cancer study. But, it wasn't a cancer study, because cancer was not predicted, only observed. It was only the main selling point of the study. Why is this a point you are making? The Sprague-Dawley rats are appropriate for short-term studies, not long-term studies, because most Sprague-Dawley rats get tumors before they die. If you want to do a long-term study, then choose a different breed of rat. Don't choose the same breed that would be preferred for short-term study. That is bullshit. Why would you do that? Because Monsanto chose the same breed? How about I test the health of alcohol by pouring brandy down a baby's throat the same way I would pour brandy down my own throat? If you choose the Sprague-Dawley rat, then don't make any kind of fucking point about tumors. It was a bullshit study done with every seeming intention of marketing the author's products, and it is dismissed by every scientific authority on the planet. It is not because they are biased in favor of Mansanto. It is because they know their fucking science.

 

[ApostateAbe]

If you post that one more time, I will put you on ignore.

Why were you making out it was a cancer study. It's reasonable to ask. After all you posted a link to the paper. I suspect it's because you only really looked at media reports and wikipedia. You could have even read this thread and realized you were on the wrong track. Had you bothered to do some research before your rather condescending input you would have known that.
Not only that you went and slandered Dr Seralini on the basis of your ill informed opinion.
But by all means put me on ignore and continue to be condescending and wrong about topics you have not researched.

I wasn't threatening you. I was threatening bilby. You are not the broken record.

 

[bilby]

If you post that one more time, I will put you on ignore.

Why were you making out it was a cancer study. It's reasonable to ask. After all you posted a link to the paper. I suspect it's because you only really looked at media reports and wikipedia. You could have even read this thread and realized you were on the wrong track. Had you bothered to do some research before your rather condescending input you would have known that.
Not only that you went and slandered Dr Seralini on the basis of your ill informed opinion.
But by all means put me on ignore and continue to be condescending and wrong about topics you have not researched.

I wasn't threatening you. I was threatening bilby. You are not the broken record.

I strongly dispute that. He never stops banging on with the exact same anti-GMO PRATTs.

I might be a broken record, but I am assuredly not the only one on this thread.

The irony of Thief of Fire saying "by all means [...] continue to be condescending and wrong about topics you have not researched", is staggering.

 

[thief of fire]

I wasn't threatening you. I was threatening bilby. You are not the broken record.

Please accept my apology, I misunderstood.

 

[thief of fire]

Yeah, when the tumors are discussed in the abstract, body and conclusions of the report, featuring pictures of rats with big ugly tumors, it is easy to get the wrong idea that it was a cancer study. But, it wasn't a cancer study, because cancer was not predicted, only observed. It was only the main selling point of the study. Why is this a point you are making? The Sprague-Dawley rats are appropriate for short-term studies, not long-term studies, because most Sprague-Dawley rats get tumors before they die. If you want to do a long-term study, then choose a different breed of rat.

From the paper I have linked to in the thread about rats.

As a consequence of the reproductive performance in the Wistar Han rat, the NTP has decided to evaluate the Harlan Sprague Dawley (Hsd:Sprague Dawley SD) as the primary rat model for NTP studies. This decision came after much deliberation. Historical data from eight previous NTP cancer studies were available for the female Sprague Dawley rat, and data on litter size, sex ratio, and body weight were very favorable. Currently, the NTP is developing historical control data on spontaneous, nonneoplastic and neoplastic lesions in male and female Harlan Sprague Dawley rats from ninety-day and two-year studies and is using this rat in reproductive and developmental toxicity studies. We will continue to evaluate the suitability of the HSD rat for NTP studies and will make this information available to the public.

No rat is going to be perfect. But this may still be the best option.

They produced photos of the internal organs too, which were what they looked at in the toxicity study, but if they are going to mention the tumors then it makes sense to post photos of them as well.

If you choose the Sprague-Dawley rat, then don't make any kind of fucking point about tumors.

But what you are saying here is that they should notice that the groups fed GM corn had more tumors and larger ones and not report that.
Surely it's better to report it and say let's look further into this and see if there is anything to it?

 

[bilby]

From the paper I have linked to in the thread about rats.

As a consequence of the reproductive performance in the Wistar Han rat, the NTP has decided to evaluate the Harlan Sprague Dawley (Hsd:Sprague Dawley SD) as the primary rat model for NTP studies. This decision came after much deliberation. Historical data from eight previous NTP cancer studies were available for the female Sprague Dawley rat, and data on litter size, sex ratio, and body weight were very favorable. Currently, the NTP is developing historical control data on spontaneous, nonneoplastic and neoplastic lesions in male and female Harlan Sprague Dawley rats from ninety-day and two-year studies and is using this rat in reproductive and developmental toxicity studies. We will continue to evaluate the suitability of the HSD rat for NTP studies and will make this information available to the public.

No rat is going to be perfect. But this may still be the best option.

They produced photos of the internal organs too, which were what they looked at in the toxicity study, but if they are going to mention the tumors then it makes sense to post photos of them as well.

If you choose the Sprague-Dawley rat, then don't make any kind of fucking point about tumors.

But what you are saying here is that they should notice that the groups fed GM corn had more tumors and larger ones and not report that.
Surely it's better to report it and say let's look further into this and see if there is anything to it?

So having thereby established that you know nothing about how scientific studies work, can we please ask that you STFU until you have learned these basics?

If you find something you were not looking for, its significance has to be assessed on the basis of all of the other things that you might possibly have found. By failing to do this, you lay yourself open to confirmation bias, and to cherry-picking, and to a whole raft of unreasonable conclusions.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Why would you choose a breed of rat like that to draw a conclusion about cancer?

Can you at least find out a little about the study?
That rat was used because that is the rat Monsanto used and that is the recommended rat for a toxicity study.
No one was trying to draw a conclusion about cancer. If they were they would have done a cancer study, which would mean 50 rats per group.
But if you notice more and larger tumors in one group then you don't hide it, you report it and suggest a proper cancer study be done. Which is what happened.

It's reasonable for toxicity studies. It's useless for cancer studies because they're so cancer-prone. Reporting the cancer "risk" was irresponsible "science".

 

[Loren Pechtel]

This is a low impact journal that you PAY to be published in.

It is like getting your Noah's ark theory published in a creation science journal.


Thief_of_fire, what is your handle on reddit?

Oh, one of those abominations. No wonder they accepted it. People have submitted gibberish to such "journals" and gotten it accepted.

 

[ApostateAbe]

From the paper I have linked to in the thread about rats.

As a consequence of the reproductive performance in the Wistar Han rat, the NTP has decided to evaluate the Harlan Sprague Dawley (Hsd:Sprague Dawley SD) as the primary rat model for NTP studies. This decision came after much deliberation. Historical data from eight previous NTP cancer studies were available for the female Sprague Dawley rat, and data on litter size, sex ratio, and body weight were very favorable. Currently, the NTP is developing historical control data on spontaneous, nonneoplastic and neoplastic lesions in male and female Harlan Sprague Dawley rats from ninety-day and two-year studies and is using this rat in reproductive and developmental toxicity studies. We will continue to evaluate the suitability of the HSD rat for NTP studies and will make this information available to the public.

No rat is going to be perfect. But this may still be the best option.

They produced photos of the internal organs too, which were what they looked at in the toxicity study, but if they are going to mention the tumors then it makes sense to post photos of them as well.

If you choose the Sprague-Dawley rat, then don't make any kind of fucking point about tumors.

But what you are saying here is that they should notice that the groups fed GM corn had more tumors and larger ones and not report that.
Surely it's better to report it and say let's look further into this and see if there is anything to it?

I think it would be appropriate to report that the differences in tumors between the control group and sample group is probably due to randomness following from small sample sizes and very high tumor rates in Sprague-Dawley rats in their two-year life spans. That is what a reasonable author would state. Seralini didn't. Not a word. Instead, he featured pictures of rats with big fat ugly tumors in his publication, and then immediately went on to release a book and docuganda, making a bunch of money off the anti-GMO activists.

Based on this study, Kenya criminally outlawed GMO foods. Kenya is a nation with a large population of the impoverished.

 

[fromderinside]

This is a low impact journal that you PAY to be published in.

It is like getting your Noah's ark theory published in a creation science journal.


Thief_of_fire, what is your handle on reddit?

To AdamWho's point. Here are reviewer recommendations for this Upay journal. http://www.enveurope.com/about/reviewers

 

[ApostateAbe]

 

[tupac chopra]

I think it would be appropriate to report that the differences in tumors between the control group and sample group is probably due to randomness following from small sample sizes and very high tumor rates in Sprague-Dawley rats in their two-year life spans. That is what a reasonable author would state. Seralini didn't.

That would have been bad science. They did not have enough data to say it was "probably due to randomness".

 

[bilby]

I think it would be appropriate to report that the differences in tumors between the control group and sample group is probably due to randomness following from small sample sizes and very high tumor rates in Sprague-Dawley rats in their two-year life spans. That is what a reasonable author would state. Seralini didn't.

That would have been bad science. They did not have enough data to say it was "probably due to randomness".

The whole point is that they didn't have enough data to say ANYTHING.

My hammer went missing from my garden shed. I don't have enough data to rule out pixies; so we should fund a large and comprehensive study to see if pixies were in fact involved, right?

I might publish a book or two on the issue, make myself some spending money too.

 

[RavenSky]

~ Your friendly neighborhood moderator

 

[ApostateAbe]

I think it would be appropriate to report that the differences in tumors between the control group and sample group is probably due to randomness following from small sample sizes and very high tumor rates in Sprague-Dawley rats in their two-year life spans. That is what a reasonable author would state. Seralini didn't.

That would have been bad science. They did not have enough data to say it was "probably due to randomness".

OK, how about a statement of, "this data is almost completely worthless"?

 

[tupac chopra]

I think it would be appropriate to report that the differences in tumors between the control group and sample group is probably due to randomness following from small sample sizes and very high tumor rates in Sprague-Dawley rats in their two-year life spans. That is what a reasonable author would state. Seralini didn't.

That would have been bad science. They did not have enough data to say it was "probably due to randomness".

The whole point is that they didn't have enough data to say ANYTHING.

They have enough data to say what they said.

In females, all treatment groups showed a two- to threefold increase in mortality, and deaths were earlier. This difference was also evident in three male groups fed with GM maize.

They have that data.

Females developed large mammary tumors more frequently and before controls; the pituitary was the second most disabled organ; the sex hormonal balance was modified by consumption of GM maize and Roundup treatments

They have that data.

Males presented up to four times more large palpable tumors starting 600 days earlier than in the control group, in which only one tumor was noted.

They have enough data to say that.
Then they present a hypothesis (one which does not include pixies ), which they say may explain it.

These results may be explained by not only the non-linear endocrine-disrupting effects of Roundup but also by the overexpression of the EPSPS transgene or other mutational effects in the GM maize and their metabolic consequences.

This gives something which may be tested should these sort of results be mirrored in the kind of study they suggest.

Conclusion
Our findings imply that long-term (2 year) feeding trials need to be conducted to thoroughly evaluate the safety of GM foods and pesticides in their full commercial formulations.

 

[tupac chopra]

The study was crap (and anyone with a class on statistics has the qualifications necessary) to know that when you do a study on rats, first you need to use a HUGE sample size, .

Some comments, from the team that Seralini was a part of, on the original studies from Monsanto.

The most fundamental point to bear in mind from the outset is that a sample size of 10 for biochemical parameters measured two times in 90 days is largely insufficient to ensure an acceptable degree of power to the statistical analysis performed and presented by Monsanto. For example, concerning the statistical power in a t test at 5%, with the comparison of 2 samples of 10 rats, there is 44% chance to miss a significant effect of 1 standard deviation (SD; power 56%). In this case to have a power of 80% would necessitate a sample size of 17 rats. Therefore, the statistical power is insufficient in these studies to allow an a priori dismissal of all significant effects. Indeed, this is true overall with the amplitude of the effects that can usually be observed within three months, in the case of usual chronic toxicity appearing after one year of treatment. Hence, the lack of rejection of the null hypothesis at 5% does not mean that this hypothesis is true. Thus, the assessment of statistical power is absolutely necessary to understand the undetectable size effect; the statistical power depends on the sample and effect size, and the level of the test. This is exemplified when Monsanto performed one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) calculations at 5% with a sample size of 10 animals for 10 groups. In this case the probability of not detecting a medium size effect [3] (0.5 SD for a t test for instance) is about 70% (power of the test 30%). However, the fact is that within 90 days, a chronic toxicity has a maximum chance of giving rise to a medium rather than large size effects. The disturbance of parameters at the beginning of a disease is generally less important than at its end or as time progresses. Therefore, the protocol has to be drastically improved at this level, and as a result we consider that based on the analysis as presented by Monsanto that it fails to demonstrate that the consumption of these GM maize feeds was indeed safe as claimed. Any sign of toxicity should be taken into consideration to justify the prolongation of the experiment, or, if this is not possible, to reassess the statistical analysis, and to propose a scientifically valid physiological interpretation of any findings relating to disturbed functional parameters on a per organ basis. This was the ultimate objective of this investigation.

Monsanto's studies were the real crap.. which is why they tried to hide data and only released it after being forced to in court.
A Comparison of the Effects of Three GM Corn Varieties on Mammalian Health

 

[Jarhyn]

Some comments, from the team that Seralini was a part of, on the original studies from Monsanto.

The most fundamental point to bear in mind from the outset is that a sample size of 10 for biochemical parameters measured two times in 90 days is largely insufficient to ensure an acceptable degree of power to the statistical analysis performed and presented by Monsanto. For example, concerning the statistical power in a t test at 5%, with the comparison of 2 samples of 10 rats, there is 44% chance to miss a significant effect of 1 standard deviation (SD; power 56%). In this case to have a power of 80% would necessitate a sample size of 17 rats. Therefore, the statistical power is insufficient in these studies to allow an a priori dismissal of all significant effects. Indeed, this is true overall with the amplitude of the effects that can usually be observed within three months, in the case of usual chronic toxicity appearing after one year of treatment. Hence, the lack of rejection of the null hypothesis at 5% does not mean that this hypothesis is true. Thus, the assessment of statistical power is absolutely necessary to understand the undetectable size effect; the statistical power depends on the sample and effect size, and the level of the test. This is exemplified when Monsanto performed one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) calculations at 5% with a sample size of 10 animals for 10 groups. In this case the probability of not detecting a medium size effect [3] (0.5 SD for a t test for instance) is about 70% (power of the test 30%). However, the fact is that within 90 days, a chronic toxicity has a maximum chance of giving rise to a medium rather than large size effects. The disturbance of parameters at the beginning of a disease is generally less important than at its end or as time progresses. Therefore, the protocol has to be drastically improved at this level, and as a result we consider that based on the analysis as presented by Monsanto that it fails to demonstrate that the consumption of these GM maize feeds was indeed safe as claimed. Any sign of toxicity should be taken into consideration to justify the prolongation of the experiment, or, if this is not possible, to reassess the statistical analysis, and to propose a scientifically valid physiological interpretation of any findings relating to disturbed functional parameters on a per organ basis. This was the ultimate objective of this investigation.

Monsanto's studies were the real crap.. which is why they tried to hide data and only released it after being forced to in court.
A Comparison of the Effects of Three GM Corn Varieties on Mammalian Health

You say this, and I say that you are wrong. The Monsanto study didn't look for cancer deaths, they looked for deaths resulting from toxicity. Tumors can be caused by many things, especially when the evolutionary shadow is so stark in a species that it has not evolved proper gene repair and apoptosis in the event of failure.

You specifically have to study other factors. If you use a two year study on such rats, and look at tumors, you are an idiot. I don't think that the Monsanto study was good, but the other study was terrible. Over time, the possibility of cancer and random factors leading to noise compounds. So if the Monsanto study was crap, then the Seralini study was crap^8

In other news, even if this stuff was a little bit more toxic, it'd still be a win in the long run because we can feed more with less labor, labor which itself has at least as much net loss as that created by a slightly more toxic food supply... As if anything is actually preventing the food supply from generating its own toxic alleles. Would you support it if the exact same trait arose from random mutation and selection? It is entirely possible that the slightly different protein created by the jellyfish they took the gene from is significantly less harmful in aggregate to any such thing that would arise as a result of normal random mutation.

You are, I think, only screaming because man had the audacity to say 'fuck random, let's have selective traits by DESIGN!'. Nature has no intent. Evolution has no magical property that guarantees things will benefit us in addition to the organisms which are our food. 'Nature', or more accurately the specific state of nature now, is not benevolent. So get over this holistic woo bullshit and either give a reason why GM is to be attacked or bugger off. Aspirin is more toxic than this corn could possibly be and I still eat the asprin.

 

[fromderinside]

So get over this ... bullshit and either give a reason why GM is to be attacked or bugger off. Aspirin is more toxic than this corn could possibly be and I still eat the asprin.

You don't know that corn is less toxic and that is the problem

I'm not really in to Pollyanna politics when it comes to genetically messing with what can indirectly interact with our evolved fitness in any way. To wit: We are finding out after about 50 years of extensive antibiotic use that we may have selected our support bacteria, that within the human body, to a dangerous degree, by killing off every bacteria that may be attacking us with broad spectrum antibacterials. That's the known and it may be fatal to our species and may others.

More recent aids to our food supply and the perceptual desirability of it may also change how our little friends subsist or care challenged. For instance, why should we have crisp apples when the ones we adapted to quickly rot, perhaps in so doing, potentially helping our little internal helpers stay robust. We don't know. Don't go thinking our immune system and adaptive capacities will get us through this minimal risk as seen through a microscope (today and tomorrow) without light (without any information on global effects or long term effects).

That's the reason we should be careful. That's the reason why we shouldn't go all its keeping people alive and free from starvation until we know that our short term gains aren't causing long term existential problems.

GMOs permit designer crops to tolerate insecticides and to tolerate herbicides which, it may turn out are part of our genetic expectations which brought us to where we are. I really don't go for = some sage's idea of what is good for us (and very very profitable), essentially doing what chemists used to do when they tested for good anesthesia, play Russian roulette with their own lives, only now inflicting the notion on the general populations.

We have very strict standards on experimentation in science for good reasons. We don't conduct basic research on anyone who isn't an informed volunteer and we only do small step by step study sequences. Hand waving "it's good for us" when we have no idea whether it is or not is not an acceptable protocol. I'm happy to wait the 10-20 years for the development of heart saving stuff through detailed and exhaustive research when I know I probably won't live to see it is the proper approach.

 

[tupac chopra]

If you use a two year study on such rats, and look at tumors, you are an idiot.

What about if you do a two year study with 50 rats in each group and something statistically significant turns up?