Obstetrics and Gynecology International
Volume 2009 (2009), Article ID 807659, 4 pagesdoi:10.1155/2009/807659
Research Article
Labor Augmentation with Oxytocin Decreases Glutathione Level
RecoveringNicholas’s homeopath, Pierre Fontaine, has published a new book titled, “One Heart, One Mind – The Case for Healing Autism” which takes a look at several of his cases in which he recovered children from autism. He’s shared this book with me so that I can share it with all of you. It has been […]
Pierre Fontaine has shared a new case and the results have been phenomenal! DOB: 1/15/2008 ASD / PANDAS During pregnancy Mom was sick (nauseous), had sun poisoning, was Strep B positive and had to take a high dose of penicillin before birth. Parents were stressed (selling home and building a new one). Dad had just […]
To those of you who have emailed to check up on us, thanks so much – its so nice to hear from those of you who are still fighting so vigilantly to heal your children from autism, aspergers and adhd!! I hope that you all find the path to recovering your child! Nicholas continues to […]
Thank you all for the emails inquiring about Nicholas. We’re all doing great and continue to be ecstatic with his progress with homeopathy! Autism took away so much of our lives for too long, as I am sure you can imagine… whether it’s one day or three years, it’s all too long when you are […]
June 4th, Pierre Fontaine joined me live on Biomed for Autism’s radio show to discuss classical homeopathy for children with autism. You can listen to the archive here: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/biomed-for-autism/2010/06/04/classical-homeopathy-with-pierre-fontaine Visit the Biomed for Autism Facebook page to keep up on future events! Pierre Fontaine, RSHom (NA), CCH, has been a professional Homeopath in New York […]
October 23rd, 2009
Mom Obstetrics and Gynecology International
Volume 2009 (2009), Article ID 807659, 4 pagesdoi:10.1155/2009/807659
Research Article
Labor Augmentation with Oxytocin Decreases Glutathione Level
October 23rd, 2009
Mom Safety and Efficacy of Oral DMSA Therapy for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders: Part A – Medical Results
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6904/9/16
BMC Clinical Pharmacology 2009, 9:16doi:10.1186/1472-6904-9-16
Published: 23 October 2009
Abstract (provisional)
Background
This study investigated the effect of oral dimercapto succinic acid (DMSA) therapy for children with autism spectrum disorders ages 3-8 years.
Methods
Phase 1 involved 65 children who received one round of DMSA (3 days). Participants who had high urinary excretion of toxic metals were selected to continue on to phase 2. In phase 2, 49 participants were randomly assigned in a double-blind design to receive an additional 6 rounds of either DMSA or placebo.
Results
DMSA greatly increased the excretion of lead, substantially increased excretion of tin and bismuth, and somewhat increased the excretion of thallium, mercury, antimony, and tungsten. There was some increase in urinary excretion of essential minerals, especially potassium and chromium. The Phase 1 single round of DMSA led to a dramatic normalization of RBC glutathione in almost all cases, and greatly improved abnormal platelet counts, suggesting a significant decrease in inflammation.
Conclusions
Overall, DMSA therapy seems to be reasonably safe, effective in removing several toxic metals (especially lead), dramatically effective in normalizing RBC glutathione, and effective in normalizing platelet counts. Only 1 round (3 days) was sufficient to improve glutathione and platelets. Additional rounds increased excretion of toxic metals.
-AND-
Safety and Efficacy of Oral DMSA Therapy for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders: Part B – Behavioral Results
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6904/9/17
BMC Clinical Pharmacology 2009, 9:17doi:10.1186/1472-6904-9-17
Published: 23 October 2009
Abstract (provisional)
Background
This study investigated the effects of oral dimercapto succinic acid (DMSA) therapy on the behavioural symptoms of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) ages 3-8 years.
Methods
Phase 1 involved 65 children with ASD who received one round of DMSA (3 days). Participants who had high urinary excretion of toxic metals were selected to continue on to phase 2. In phase 2, 49 participants were randomly assigned in a double-blind design to receive an additional 6 rounds of either DMSA or placebo.
Results
The groups receiving one round and seven rounds of DMSA had significant improvements on all the assessment measures. The degree of improvement on the assessment measures could be partially explained by a regression analysis based on excretion of toxic metals and changes in glutathione (adjusted R2 of 0.28-0.75, p<0.02 in all cases). One round of DMSA had nearly the same benefit as seven rounds. The assessment measures correlated reasonably with one another at the beginning of the study (r=0.60-0.87) and even better at the end of the study (r=0.63-0.94).
Conclusions
Overall, both one and seven rounds of DMSA therapy seems to be reasonably safe in children with ASD who have high urinary excretion of toxic metals, and possibly helpful in reducing some of the symptoms of autism in those children.
Read more on the links above….
October 23rd, 2009
Mom Vaccines’ Dark Inferno: What is not on insert labels?
Neither our federal health authorities nor the private vaccine industrial complex know how to solve the hidden health dangers lurking in vaccines.
Richard Gale and Dr. Gary Null
Progressive Radio Network, September 28, 2009
The vast majority of scientists, physicians, nurses and public health educators’ trust that the ingredients in a vaccine have been individually and synergistically proven safe and effective. The public believes these vaccines, aside from their specified virus(es), are sterile solutions, free from undesirable contaminants not listed on the manufacturer’s package inserts. When the pediatrician injects a vaccine into the muscle of a child, the parents unquestioning faith that this is the case. In other words, we want to believe that vaccines have been generated under perfect conditions for the safety of children and ourselves.
Our investigation shows that most people do not know what is actually in a vaccine: the active ingredients listed on product labels, inert ingredients, and, most important, the hidden ingredients. Even more remote is taking the time to actually study the subject matter, review the scientific literature and discover the truth for oneself. To our amazement, that truth was easy to find. But it is a truth that will scare the hell out of you.
Similar to eating veal parmesan, what would happen if a video were placed on your table and used as a living reality recipe instead of the actual meal. This video unfolds before your eyes every step in that little creature’s life, from the veal’s birth to the parmesan on your plate. You witness how this veal was starved of its natural nutrients, kept in a tiny stall, grossly malnourished and deformed, filled with drugs—antibiotics—diseased and suffering complete privations until finally slaughtered, sliced, cooked and served on your plate. Would your appetite be the same? Would you still desire the parmesan? Conveniently we rarely ask the questions, where does our food come from? How and where was it grown? What was sprayed on it prior to our consumption? Therefore, we are going to re-record something that even most top health educators and opinion leaders on vaccines are unaware of. That is, what goes into the making of vaccines and what is hidden from you that should give you a moment’s of pause? Then ask yourself, do you want vaccines in your body?
To give us the most in depth, honest, scholarly and objective examination about the methods by which vaccines and their hidden ingredients are prepared we turn to the award-winning British investigative medical journalist, Janine Roberts, who paints an entirely different picture about the darker inferno in vaccines that do not appear on product labels. This is the same Janine Roberts who brought to the world’s attention blood diamonds, genocide in the Congo and the destruction of aboriginal cultures by the Australian government.
Roberts’ account of conversations between high level members from the World Health Organization (WHO), federal health agencies, and expert vaccine scientists, who determine whether or not a certain vaccine will be approved or not, is horrid. Her investigations are based on official meeting documents and her attendance at emergency vaccine meetings, and confirm that our world’s vaccine and health experts agree there is no solution in sight to resolve the potential and uncertain threats posed by these hidden ingredients.(1)
The story begins with the vaccine industrial complex’s attempt to reduce vaccine manufacturing costs by seeking government approval to use cancerous cell lines in the development of vaccines. Vaccine industry’s rationale is that cancerous cells are “immortal.” Current vaccine methodology relies on animal cells, such as fertilized hen embryos and monkey kidneys, that die quickly in culture. Using cancerous cell lines are also much cheaper than relying on the purchase of animals, especially monkeys, that need to be sacrificed for vaccine substrates.
Roberts records two separate meetings—a meeting of the Vaccine and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee on November 9, 1998, and a subsequent gathering of the Evolving Scientific and Regulatory Perspective Workshop less than a year later. The conversations were conducted at a scientific level between top officials and expert scientists from the FDA, Centers for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the WHO and others, each providing evidence and/or confirmation that all vaccines are dangerously contaminated.
Conversations focused primarily on the influenza, MMR and yellow fever vaccines, which rely on fertilized chicken eggs for their culturing viruses. Fertilized chicken eggs, while ideally suited for culturing certain viruses for vaccines, such as the influenza and MMR vaccines, are also living incubators for large numbers of known and unknown viruses in the animal kingdom. While these do not transmit from their animal host to humans naturally, they nevertheless are sequential genetic codes, which when injected into the human body, have the potential for any number of unpredictable adverse effects by interfering or merging with the codes of human cells. Vaccine research is at best a primitive science because it is injecting into the blood stream foreign substances, chemical and genetic, that would otherwise not enter the body naturally. When we include into the equation the enormous amount of known and unknown genetic material and foreign proteins that vaccines introduce into the body, and then consider the rapid increase in epidemics raging across the American population—adult diabetes in children, large numbers of various inflammatory and immune deficiency diseases, asthma and new allergies, severe gastro-intestinal disorders (eg., leaky gut syndrome and Crohn’s Disease), chronic fatigue syndrome, and many different neurological disorders (eg., autism, ADD and ADHD, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, etc.)—we must step back and reconsider their causes. We should avoid the kind of faith the vaccine industrial complex has in its determinist, reductionist perspective of genetic materialism to find these answers without taking into account the bombardment of toxic chemicals such as vaccine adjuvants and preservatives, extraneous genetic material, and pathogenic organisms and foreign genetic fragments that we assault our bodies from shortly after birth into old age.
For some time, it was known that the enzyme reverse transcriptase (RT) was present in final vaccine solutions. RT has been used to this day as an indicator that there is a presence of a retrovirus. During the meeting’s proceedings, the WHO decided to withhold public announcement of such genetic contamination, in this case concerning the MMR vaccine, and made the decision to not remove it from the market and, in the meantime, continue safety studies at various laboratories.
Roberts reports that Dr. Arifa Khan from the FDA confirmed:
The RT activity in the vaccine was associated with retrovirus particles from two separate viral strains: Avian Leuokosis Virus (ALV) and Equine Arteritis Virus (EAV). The former was especially disturbing because ALV is a leukemia cancer, and Dr. Khan stated: “There was a theoretical possibility that the virus [ALV] could” infect the [human] cell.” In summary, this means the ALV genetic code could integrate with human DNA, hence causing some kind of cancer.
The FDA’s reassurance that the ALV RT activity was safe is based on laboratory observations that there was no viral-human DNA merger activity for “a full 48 hours’. This kind of assurance is almost nonsensical and flies in the face of scientific reasoning since cancers can take years to develop!
As a side note, reverse transcriptase activity is one of the stalwarts of the HIV/AIDS hypothesis. An article, “Serious Questions Regarding the Safety and Efficacy of the Influenza Vaccine” published by Canada’s Vaccine Risk Awareness Network reports that some studies, and even some vaccine package inserts, “indicate that vaccinations increase HIV viral replication.”(2) This means all vaccines stimulate a strong suppressive effect on the immune system. Under stress conditions, viruses turn hyperactive and increase their ability to replicate.
The other risk stated by the FDA official was the possibility of the ALV sequence merging with the measles virus, hence creating a completely new, mutant and dangerous virus. (This could also apply equally to the H1N1 swine flu and any other flu vaccines). As an aside, the world renown British geneticist Dr. Mae-Wan Ho from the Institute of Science in Society wrote that, “Vaccines themselves can be dangerous, especially live, attenuated viral vaccines or the new recombinant nucleic acid vaccines, they have the potential to generate virulent viruses by recombination and the recombinant nucleic acids could cause autoimmune disease.”(3)
During the meeting, Dr. Andrew Lewis, then head of the DNA Virus Laboratory in the Division of Viral Products confirmed that “All the egg-based vaccines are contaminated”. These fertilized chicken eggs are susceptible to a wide variety of viruses.” The participants also realized that only a very small fraction of these small contaminants have been identified and there are likely hundreds more to be discovered.
Roberts found a 2001 CDC report showing that RT investigative studies for both the ALV and EAV retroviruses were conducted in 100 patients receiving the MMR vaccine. They found undesirable “RT activity in all measles vaccine lots from different manufacturers tested.” Their conclusion is that “this occurrence is not sporadic and that vaccine recipients may be universally exposed to these [chicken] retroviral particles.” In a separate National Institutes of Health transcript of a meeting, Dr. Conroy of the World Health Organization stated that EAV viruses are found in all fertilized chicken eggs. There appears to be little change in the scientific protocol for making the influenza, MMR and yellow fever vaccines. The current release of intramuscular H1N1 vaccines for the global market relies on the use of fertilized chicken embryos. These include each of the approved vaccines by CSL, Medimmune, Novartis and Sanofi-Pasteur, as well as GlaxoSmithKlines if and when it is approved in the US.
A later meeting of the FDA’s Scientific and Regulatory Perspective Workshop, without the press, was convened on September 7, 1999 in Washington DC, and attended by “representatives from all the largest public health institutions in the West.” The following are summaries of key points and statements raised during this meeting as recorded in Janine Roberts invaluable book Fear of the Invisible.
—- It was reconfirmed that vaccines are “widely contaminated by viral and DNA genetic code fragments, many viruses and proteins. There was expressed concern that these may also contain prions (tiny proteins responsible for incurable diseases and neurological disorders in both humans and animals) and oncogenes (a gene that turns normal cells into cancerous ones). One attendee, Dr. Goldberg, stated, “There are countless thousands of undiscovered viruses, proteins and similar particles. We have only identified a very small part of the microbial world—and we can only test for those we have identified. Thus the vaccine cultures could contain many unknown particles.”
—- Dr. Andrew Lewis of the FDA said that a brand-new monkey-human mutant virus was created during the course of creating an adenovirus vaccine with adenvovirus-SV40 hybrid viruses. Dr. Lewis also worried that “foreign cellular DNA” common in childhood vaccines could include “viral oncogenes” capable of causing cancer.
—- The scientists presented a question to themselves as to whether or not an attenuated vaccine strain could revert into a variant virus capable of replicating so fast that it would cause AIDS. They agreed that they were unable to answer this question.
—- On the question whether or not mutation events could occur in children after vaccination, the answer was that “Recombination among a variety of viruses [contaminant viruses] and cells co-infected in tissue culture is not uncommon.” What this basically means is that because it is “not uncommon” for genetic codes of both contaminant viruses and living cells to recombine and create mutations in laboratory cultures, it can certainly occur in a child’s body after vaccination.
—- Dr. Hana Golding, Chief of CBER’s Laboratory of Retrovirus Research, raised the fear that although DNA fragment contaminants in vaccines may be thought to be dead, they could remain active and dangerous. This meant that the codes of these contaminants could combine in vaccines and create new mutant strains of pathogens.
—- Dr. Leonard Hayflick, a virologist at both Stanford and the University of California at San Francisco raised a concern that the common primary culture used for making vaccines with animals and bird embryos has created a situation where it is “apparent that these cells contained many unwanted viruses, some of which were lethal to humans.” This was especially worrisome of those vaccines, such as polio, which still rely on monkey kidney cells that have contributed to widespread death and illness.
—- One of the UK’s leading vaccine expert, Dr. Phil Minor from the National Institute of Biological Standards and Control, noted that some cases of polio vaccine are polluted with more monkey virus, SV40, than actual poliovirus. Although the uninitiated who are not informed about-closed door vaccine science have been led to assume that SV40 was no longer in polio vaccines at the time of this meeting, the conversations confirmed that it was still in use. This is another example of deception at high levels within the vaccine industrial complex and high government health officials to withhold information that directly impacts the health and well being of citizens.
—- Dr. Rebecca Sheets from the CBER’s laboratory responsible for monitoring vaccine safety stated the national health organizations had no control over how vaccines were made. In short, they could make recommendations but the vaccine industrial complex was free to act as it chooses.
—- It is impossible to remove DNA contaminants from vaccines. Although weight limits for contaminating DNA were set by the FDA as far back as 1986, vaccine makers have never been able to reach that goal. The CDC decided to limit their weight recommendation to cancerous cell lines and then increase the other DNA contamination allowance one hundred-fold. However, these limits are only “recommendations” and, therefore, the FDA is unable to enforce them. Vaccine manufacturers continue to have the freedom to take scientific measures to reduce contaminants only if they wish.
Remember, this level of contamination (10 nanograms) only applies to a single vaccine. Children today are inoculated with many vaccines before entering school, each with unique DNA and viral contaminants due to the specific cell substrates used for a given vaccine. This toxic genetic soup is what then flows through a vaccinated person’s body.
—- One government health official stated, “I chaired the committee that licensed the chickenpox vaccine, and it [residual DNA] was actually an issue that we considered at that time. We looked among recipients of the vaccine for evidence of an autoimmune response associated with the DNA included in that vaccine”” Actually, we didn’t look, we asked the company to look and they did not find one.” Well, of course, only such assurances can be convincing if in fact the company conducted the study, for which there was no compulsory reason to. Clearly, what the official is saying is that health authorities may not possess any study documents that such a study actually exists.
—- Can vaccine DNA contamination cause cancer or autoimmune disease? A meeting participant responded, “when you consider that almost every one of these vaccines is injected right into the tissue” I think you couldn’t do much more to get the DNA expressed [to get contaminating DNA taken up by human cells] than to inject it into a muscle in the way it’s being done.”
—- Again CBER’s Dr. Rebecca Sheets: “I think that the vast majority of licensed vaccines, US licensed vaccines, have not been tested for residual DNA.”
—- A more frightening question was raised as to whether it was known if there has been any presence of foamy virus. Foamy virus (HFV in human form and its more widespread parent SFV from monkeys), although not infectious, is a deadly carcinogen. To the participants’ knowledge, they did not know whether any laboratory has ever searched for it in vaccine preparations.
—- The meeting confirmed that a particular cell, “which under many conditions is neoplastic [tumor causing]” has been licensed for the production of both injectible and oral polio vaccines in the US, Thailand, Belgium and France. Therefore, these vaccines carry the high risk of containing cancer-causing oncogenes.
In order to appreciate the magnitude of the contamination problem in vaccine products, it is important to understand that vaccine filtration needs to allow the targeted virus’s passage to remain for vaccine use. Other particles and pathogens—DNA and RNA fragments from other organisms (and pathogens) in the manufacturing process, cellular substrates, and viral proteins–smaller than the vaccine’s virus will remain in the vaccine.
What the content of these meetings tells us is best expressed by one of the leading attendants at the meeting, Dr. Minor stated, “So even today then you have to bear in mind that a large amount of vaccine that’s made is made on really quite crude materials, from an adventitious agent point of view. It’s not a trivial usage. In fact, when considering what vaccines are actually made on these days, they are quite primitive in some respects.” Janine Roberts summarizes her investigations succinctly,
“In other words, the vaccines we give our children are liquids filled with a host of unknown particles, most of which came from the cells of non-humans: from chickens, monkeys and even from cancer cells. Truly we do not know what we are doing or what are the long-term consequences. All that is known for sure is that vaccines are a very cheap form of public medicine often provided by governments to assure the public that they really do care for the safety of our children.”
The conclusion that can be drawn from these meetings convened by our national and international health officials in vaccine science and safety is that vaccines are virtually genetic experiments, capable of causing mass cellular destruction, being injected into the world’s population, especially children. There remain so many unanswered questions about vaccine science. This includes the forthcoming swine flu vaccines that will include the contaminants mentioned above, if we take any of these meeting attendees’ words to heart.
If we are to express any awe and wonder it should be towards our body’s natural immune system and its ability to defend itself from the onslaught of vaccine brews. It is not vaccination that is a miracle of science, as the vaccine industrial complex, government health authorities and their congregations of believers are too eager to proclaim. In fact, the real miracle is the body’s ability to protect itself, in most cases, from the invasion of vaccines. Yet, even this statement is now turning suspect given the dramatic rise in multiple illnesses and inflammatory conditions across the age spectrum.
As with all living systems, whether it be a natural habitat in the wild, the planet’s climate system to support life, or the body’s immune system, a tipping point is eventually reached. Today, with the majority of the public still buying into the false promises of vaccination’s efficacy and safety, the vaccine industrial complex remains an extraordinarily lucrative business. More and more vaccines are now being developed for a wide variety of diseases and infections— Chlamydia, herpes simplex type 2, West Nile virus, Epstein-Barr virus, and others—that will only add to the overload of vaccines already recommended, especially to children who are officially recommended to receive 36 separate vaccinations by the time they reach 18 months of age. As these new genetic poisons are added to the national health agencies’ recommended vaccination schedule, a tipping point may be reached that will result in a more serious pandemic, a pandemic of Vaccine Disease, manifesting in myriad illnesses dependent upon each vaccinated person’s genetic predisposition and the robustness of the immune system, than any epidemic threat posed by wild infectious pathogens, including the H1N1 swine flu, that could unfold in our so-called developed, hygienic society.
Richard Gale is the Executive Producer of the Progressive Radio Network and a former Senior Research Analyst in the genomic industry. Dr. Gary Null is the host of the nation’s longest running public radio program on nutrition and natural health and a multi-award-winning director of progressive documentary films, including Vaccine Nation and Autism: Made in the USA..
(1) The following quotes and events were taken from Roberts, Janine. Fear of the Invisible: How Scared Should We Be of Viruses and Vaccines, HIV and AIDS Impact Investigative Media Productions: Bristol UK, 2009; and from an interview with Janine Roberts. The Gary Null Show. The Progressive Radio Network and WNYE-New York on August 19, 2009.
(2) “Serious Questions Regarding the Safety and Efficacy of the Influenza Vaccine” Vaccine Risk Awareness Network. http://vran.org/about-vaccines/specific-vaccines/influenza-vaccine-flu-shot/influenza-nursing-home-deaths/
(3) Ho, Mae-Wan, Cummins, Joe. “The vaccines are far more deadly than the swine flu”. Global Research. August 21, 2009. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=mae+wan+ho+global+research&aq=o&oq=&aqi=g10
October 23rd, 2009
Mom This year it is more important that you protect your children and loved ones from the flu vaccines than influenza itself.
In his article published on LewRockwell.com, Bill Sardi details 18 reasons why you should not vaccinate your children against the flu this season. Here are nine of them:
The swine flu is simply another flu. It is not unusually deadly.
This is the first time both seasonal and pandemic flu vaccines will be administered. Both seasonal flu and swine flu vaccines will require two inoculations. This is because single inoculations have failed to produce sufficient antibodies. This is an admission that prior flu vaccines were virtually useless. Can you trust them this time?
Adjuvants are added to vaccines to boost production of antibodies but may trigger autoimmune reactions. Some adjuvants are mercury (thimerosal), aluminum and squalene. Why would you sign a consent form for your children to be injected with mercury, which is even more brain-toxic than lead?
This is the first year mock vaccines have been used to gain FDA approval. The vaccines that have been tested are not the same vaccines your children will be given.
Over-vaccination is a common practice now in America. American children are subjected to 29 vaccines by the age of two. Meanwhile, veterinarians have backed off of repeat vaccination in dogs because of observed side effects.
Modern medicine has no explanation for autism, despite its continued rise in prevalence. Yet autism is not reported among Amish children who go unvaccinated.
Researchers are warning that over-use of the flu vaccine and anti-flu drugs like Tamiflu and Relenza can apply genetic pressure on flu viruses and then they are more likely to mutate into a more deadly strain.
Most seasonal influenza A (H1N1) virus strains tested from the United States and other countries are now resistant to Tamiflu (oseltamivir). Tamiflu has become a nearly worthless drug against seasonal flu.
Public health officials are irresponsible in their omission of any ways to strengthen immunity against the flu. No options outside of problematic vaccines and anti-flu drugs are offered, despite the fact there is strong evidence that vitamins C and D activate the immune system and the trace mineral selenium prevents the worst form of the disease.
For even more reasons — 18 in all — please review the full article on LewRockwell.com.
October 23rd, 2009
Mom http://whitehouse.blogs.foxnews.com/2009/10/08/first-daughters-not-vaccinated-against-h1n1/
October 8, 2009
President Obama’s school age daughters have not been vaccinated against the H1N1 flu virus. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs says the vaccine is not available to them based on their risk.
The Centers for Disease Control recommend that children ages 6 months through 18 years of age receive a vaccination against the H1N1 flu virus. At this time only children with chronic medical conditions are receiving the vaccination because their immune system is not strong enough to fight off the strain. The CDC also says a regular seasonal flu shot does not protect against the virus.
October 23rd, 2009
Mom Greenpeace protests genetically modified corn in Mexico
updated 8:22 a.m. EDT, Tue October 20, 2009
By Arthur Brice
CNN
(CNN) — Mexico saw the first public protests this weekend over the government’s decision to allow cultivation of the first genetically modified corn, which environmentalists and others say could ruin the nation’s native crop.
About 45 Greenpeace activists hung a black banner and protest signs Sunday at the Angel of Independence, a victory column in a busy traffic circle on one of Mexico City’s major thoroughfares. It is one of Mexico City’s most recognized monuments.
“Today, the Angel of Independence is in mourning to demand that the Mexican government protect our principal nourishment — corn,” said Aleira Lara, a Greenpeace leader at the protest.
The nation’s agriculture and environment departments approved two permits last week from among 35 applications to grow the controversial crop.
Unlike traditional crops, which are modified through selective breeding, genetically modified crops are engineered by having changes introduced into their DNA.
Genetic engineering can improve desired traits such as nutritional content or resistance to herbicides, pests and disease. The modifications also can increase tolerance for cold and drought.
Other genetically modified crops include soybeans, cotton and papayas.
Critics of the technique say they worry about the effect on consumers, other crops and the environment.
Germany earlier this year banned a genetically modified strain of corn, saying the government wanted to protect the safety of consumers and the environment.
Mexico said the genetically modified crops are in an experimental phase and will be planted on plots controlled by the government and isolated from other crops. The new crops also will be planted in states that do not grow native corn, which is a major staple of the Mexican diet. Corn is grown on about one-third of the country’s cultivated land, mostly in central Mexico.
But the Mexican protesters said they fear the genetically modified corn could harm the nation’s 55 varieties of native corn.
“Without corn, there is no country,” some protesters said. The slogan rhymes in Spanish: “Sin maiz, no hay pais.”
Two scientific studies have determined that transgenic corn has already contaminated some native Mexican corn fields.
In 2001, a study in the journal Nature reported that transgenic DNA had been found in traditional corn crops in the state of Oaxaca. Earlier this year, research published in the journal Molecular Ecology also found genetically modified corn contamination of native Mexican corn.
Signs hung on statues at the protest said: “Our corn first, traitors” and “Transgenic corn: End to independence.”
Greenpeace and other critics say that modified corn would kill off independent growers, because they would have to buy their seed from one of four businesses that own the patents.
“Farmers will be beholden to those companies when their fields are contaminated and no producer will be able to plant his seed, like they do now, because they will have to pay royalties to those corporations to plant again,” protest leader Lara said.
In its February article, Molecular Ecology said that most of the current crop in the nation comes from private supplies of seed.
“Maize is a staple food in Mexico, with a pivotal place in the country’s past and present economic, cultural and agricultural spheres,” the article says in its introduction. “In contrast to the United States and Europe, commercial seed sources account for only one-fourth of the maize seed planted in Mexico. Furthermore, Mexican maize is mostly grown by smallholder farmers who obtain seed from their own harvest or from other farmers.”
Molecular Ecology also points out, though, that the “introduction of transgenic maize has resulted in an increase in maize production.”
And it is that increase in production that lies at the heart of Mexico’s decision to allow the two test permits, analysts say.
“Mexico is a net importer of corn from the United States,” said Bruce Bagley, chairman of the University of Miami Graduate School of International Studies.
Mexico grows two types of corn: yellow, which is similar to that grown in the United States, and white, which is native to Mexico.
The native white corn amounts to roughly 90 percent of the nation’s production. Yellow corn makes up the remaining 10 percent.
White corn is used for human consumption while yellow corn is used primarily for animal feed. An increase in meat and chicken consumption in Mexico in the past decade has led to greater demand for yellow corn for animal feed. Unable to meet this demand, Mexico has had to import about 89 percent of the corn it needs for feed, says the U.S. Agriculture Department. And 99.8 percent of that corn comes from the United States, the department says.
“Mexico wants to produce enough crops so they don’t have to import foods,” said Susan Kaufman Purcell, director of the Center for Hemispheric Policy at the University of Miami. “Greater yields will lead to not having to import as much food from the United States.”
There are other factors, such as increasingly common food shortages throughout the world that have driven up prices. The price of corn, for example, has more than doubled since 2007. That prompted about 70,000 people to take to the streets of Mexico last year to protest the price of tortillas, which jumped through the roof in January 2008.
“Mexico is feeling the pangs of food insecurity,” Bagley said.
Greater corn production and less importation also would ease the nation’s balance of payments.
Bagley also sees another reason why Mexico may have allowed introduction of the genetically modified corn.
The United States has pressured Mexico strongly to accept the modified crop, Bagley said. Mexico has acquiesced due to provisions in the North American Free Trade Agreement.
But if the experimental plots lead to greater contamination of native crops, Bagley said, Mexico could have the legal grounds to refuse widespread importation of the new corn.
Greenpeace doesn’t want to wait that long. The global environmental organization asked Mexico for an immediate moratorium on the use of the transgenic corn.
There has been no indication they’re likely to get it any time soon.