Forestdragon’s Weblog

The 21st Century is when everything changes and you’ve got to be ready.

Archive for the ‘Science’ Category

Why do we have to find this out from a blog?

Posted by forestdragon on Monday, June 30, 2008

Found by Dvorak.org/blog
From NaturalNews.com - Originally published April 10 2007

Monsanto’s GM corn MON863 shows kidney, liver toxicity in animal studies

by David Gutierrez
A variety of genetically modified corn that was approved for human consumption in 2006 caused signs of liver and kidney toxicity as well as hormonal changes in rats in a study performed by researchers from the independent Committee for Independent Research and Genetic Engineering at the University of Caen in France.

What you need to know – Conventional View

• The corn in question, MON863, is made by the Monsanto Company and approved for use in Australia, Canada, China, the European Union, Japan, Mexico, the Philippines, and the United States. It has had a gene inserted from the bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), which causes the plant’s cells to produce a pesticide.

• Researchers fed rats either unmodified corn or diets containing 11 or 30 percent MON863 for 90 days. The rats who ate modified corn were found to exhibit signs of liver and kidney toxicity, as well as signs of hormonal changes.

• Male rats lost an average of 3.3 percent of their body weight, and their excretion of phosphorus and sodium decreased. Female rats gained an average of 3.7 percent of their body weight, while their triglyceride levels increased by 24 to 40 percent.

• The mechanism that causes the toxicity is not yet known, but the researchers say there is evidence that the Bt toxin may cause the perforation of blood cells. They expressed concern that the methods used by Monsanto in initial tests of the corn were statistically flawed and called their own tests “the best mammalian toxicity tests available.”

• Greenpeace responded to the study by calling for an immediate recall of all MON863 corn and the reassessment of all genetically modified foods currently approved for the market.

• Quote: “Our counter-evaluation shows that there are signs of toxicity, and nobody can say scientifically and seriously the consumption of the transgenic maize MON863 is safe and good for health.” – Lead Author Gilles Eric Seralini

*****I guess we the people don’t need to know about anything that can harm us, this is the type of behavior that destroys the trust  in the proponents of GM Foods, you just can’t trust them, and they won’t tell us what has been genetically modified.

Posted in Family, Health, Science | Tagged: , | Leave a Comment »

Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture

Posted by forestdragon on Thursday, March 13, 2008

This is from Oprah. The full last lecture is available on YouTube in 11 parts, just search on the title of this posting.

Amazing story, an inspirational leader, as of today he’s still fighting the good fight.

http://download.srv.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/news/index.html

Posted in Family, Heroes, Science | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »