Genetic Roulette: The Gamble of our Lives (2012) Movie Script
America - generous, innovative, entrepreneurial, diverse, progressive... sick?
Americans get sick more often than Europeans and people from other industrialized nations.
I'm sick all over.
Since the mid-nineties, the number of Americans suffering from at least three chronic diseases,
has nearly doubled.
US international ratings for infant mortality and life expectancy are also declining.
There are many reasons for this. One of them might be right in front of you.
Genetic roulette: PLAYING WITH OUR LIVES
Director:
Narrator:
Over the last 20 years there's been a huge logarithmic increase in chronic disease.
What we have today is not normal. It didn't happen 30 or 50 years ago.
Diseases that were previously epidemics are now. And on an incredible scale.
People are getting sicker. What has changed? One thing that has changed is the food.
The biggest change is the genetic engineering of our food supply.
Food in its natural form has been moved from our plates to scientific experiments.
In the United States there are millions of square kilometers of transgenic crops, but most people are unaware of this.
The normal consumer is unfortunately too busy living and raising children,
and doesn't realize that anything is genetically engineered.
The Obama Department of Agriculture supports biotechnology, as did previous administrations.
If we do nothing, in ten years all major crops will be genetically modified,
and we won't even know it.
GMOs. Genetically modified organisms.
Taking DNA from one species, and forcing it into the DNA of another species.
I can mix genes of species that were never meant to have offspring.
They have spider genes, hoping that will strip them and get protein webs
to make bulletproof vests. Not kidding.
They take cow genes and put them on pigs so the pigs have cow hides.
They take human genes and put them on corn to get a spermicide.
There are two main categories of food that we eat:
Herbicide-tolerant crops, which can be sprayed with herbicides and still live,
and crops that produce pesticides, toxic insecticides that kill the insects that bite them.
Gene exchange outside the normal range of species, creating new organisms
that are not part of the evolutionary process.
HOW IS A GMO MADE?
The public believes that genetic engineering is exact science.
In fact, it's a guess at a microscopic level.
The process of genetic engineering has harmful side effects.
Making millions of copies of genes, and literally shooting them into millions of cells,
and then these cells are cloned into factories.
Usually this involves inserting a virus or a retrovirus to activate the gene.
The process of insertion and cloning creates a guarantee of widespread damage.
This can be hundreds or thousands of DNA mutations, and the same gene can alter
the expression level of genes in normally functioning plants.
This creates unpredictable side effects.
From a biophysical perspective, when we look at the signature of a whole gene sequence on a page.
There's no place in nature.
Therefore, our immune system, which is actually a large electromagnetic sensor system,
sees a number of genes that should be food, and says: "I've never seen this sequence.
It's not in nature, this sequence." And then it creates inflammation and attacks this sequence.
Most of the diseases we deal with have inflammation as a cause, which is the body's first contact with food,
including GMO food.
In 1996, genetically modified corn was introduced into the American diet.
Since then, a number of digestive diseases have been linked to the emerging stoma-nim infections in the United States.
Is this just a coincidence?
But inflammation creates more serious digestive-related problems.
You have to look at allergies, autoimmune diseases, and anything related to inflammation.
Heart disease, kidney disease, diabetes, thyroid disease... the list is endless.
HOW GMOs GET TO YOUR TABLE
Food safety is one of the most important tasks of the government and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
For public health, there is nothing more important than food.
The current policy of the Food and Drug Administration on GMOs was created in 1992.
They argued that the agency did not have information on significant differences in GMOs.
Therefore, no safety research was needed.
It turns out that in 1998, a lawsuit led to the public release of 44,000 secret documents to the contrary.
When we went through all the memos and other documents, I was shocked.
It became clear that the Food and Drug Administration had repeatedly lied since 1992.
They claimed that the independent scientific community largely agreed that the food was safe.
But their own scientific staff's findings were completely contrary to that.
This food might not be safe.
The scientists working within the agency agreed that GMOs were not only variable, but also dangerous.
They could cause allergies, toxicity, new diseases, nutritional problems,
repeated several times
in the memo.
Their superiors were urged to launch
long-term studies, but ignored.
Why? The person responsible for policy at the agency
was Michael Taylor, a former Monsanto lawyer.
Later, Monsanto's Vice President, now in charge
of food safety at the US FDA.
Monsanto and the biotech industry wanted the FDA
to create a policy
that would create the illusion that genetically engineered food was carefully
regulated, but it was actually not regulated at all.
The FDA did an extraordinary job.
The FDA did not approve
any transgenic crops. There were voluntary consultations
where companies like Monsanto could
deal with scientific experiments.
If the FDA asked for more information,
they usually ignored them.
At the end of this nonsensical practice, the agency
received a letter from Monsanto reminding them
it was their responsibility to
determine if the food was safe.
The same company that told us
Agent Orange, PCBs, and DDT were safe
now tells us whether transgenic food is
safe. In fact, they don't even have to tell us.
They can come to market without
notifying the agency or consumers.
If you raise concerns, warning the FDA, scientists from our lawsuit,
the Royal Society of Canada, the British Medical Association,
as well as other experts, then
the damage may be extensive
to the health of every American citizen
and future generations.
The FDA, USDA, and EPA are responsible
for different aspects of food production,
and the way in which this is confirmed
is truly shameful.
In key positions like the Secretary of Agriculture are known supporters of transgenic crops,
where important decisions should be made independently,
so that ignorance in regulatory bodies
is the main cause for
these violations.
I think the most disturbing thing
is that in Washington we approve
new and unique products for human consumption
without careful and independent testing.
I think that money is
the only reason for this.
The American Academy of Ecological Medicine strongly
opposes GMOs due to disruptive research.
The American Academy leads research
on animals showing that infertility,
immune problems, accelerated
aging, cholesterol and insulin complications,
and changes in the liver, kidneys,
spleen, and digestive organs.
Unfortunately, American consumers for 20 years have been eating
foods that scientists from the FDA said
should not be on the market until
proven safe, because the FDA continues to lie.
When you have the power to manipulate the entire
evolutionary structure, it is the responsibility of every scientist,
no matter how wise, to take that power
and use it without full appreciation of the consequences.
The biotech companies themselves are investigated.
I call it tobacco science.
Using the wrong control groups, flawed detection methods and statistics,
and their food tests are so short they don't reveal things like cancer,
reproductive organ disorders, or birth defects.
From bad science has made Science.
No one has the right to play roulette with the genetic integrity of all life on Earth.
INSECTICIDE FOOD
There is a bacterium in the soil called Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt. If assembled and used as a spray,
the Bt toxin, which the bacterium produces, will kill insects. Engineers took the gene that produces the toxin
and inserted it into corn and cotton, and left the plants to kill.
Every cell in the plant
produces the toxic protein. Bt is designed to gut insects and kill them. When in the mid-nineties doctors heard
that Bt corn was introduced into our diet, they said this might explain the increase in digestive problems.
However, the Environmental Protection Agency said there was no need to worry about the Bt toxin, it was harmless
to humans and animals, because it only affected insects.
However, research from February 2012 shows
that the agency made a mistake. The Bt toxin opens pores in human cells and
can cause: Disruptions in our gut
just like in the insects it kills. If Bacillus thuringiensis induces a greater tendency for leaky guts in girls,
and premature entry of food into the bloodstream, the damage will be discussed. A whole range of diseases, premature aging,
Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, autism, cancer and asthma.
It's like when you buy a new car and it says you should put in gasoline, and you put in diesel -
you can't expect much catching up. When you put the wrong fuel into your body
and you have the audacity to heal, allow that wrong fuel to enter the body. Our digestive tract is not ready for it.
Our digestive tract is not ready for it.
Healthy flora in our body turns food into active things like true vitamin K.
A lot of the food we eat is not activated while the healthy flora starts working on it.
Because of disruptions and flora, we see so much eczema, asthma, and allergies among people.
Only one human study was done eating genetically modified food.
They found that a part of the gene inserted into soybeans, which made them resistant to Roundup, transferred to the DNA
of bacteria living in our gut and stayed there.
Furthermore, the bacteria could not break down Roundup, indicating that the gene was active.
This means that by itself it can have genetically modified proteins that continue to evolve within us,
long after we stop eating genetically modified food.
I did not check whether the Bt toxin gene transferred
via chips onto bacteria in our gut, and continued to work there. If this happens, it could make our gut flora a living pesticide factory.
This could explain the fact that 93% of Canadian pregnant women had the Bt toxin tested in their blood,
and in the blood of 80% of fetuses. The study's authors suggest that
the Bt toxin is produced by consuming meat and milk from animals fed Monsanto's Bt corn.
I think a more likely solution is that the Bt toxin continues to be produced in their digestive tracts
damaging the gut lining
and that leaky gut is responsible for many health problems.
To me, this is one of the most important reasons why GMOs are dangerous.
Lately, we've seen many children with leaky guts.
Normally, the gut lining should be strong, but in these children, it's not,
so the food they eat leaks into their bloodstream, which causes them to develop antibodies to that food,
leading to food intolerances and allergies.
When these disorders are exacerbated, it's possible for the gut lining to fail to block larger food particles,
which should have been blocked before assimilation. When they enter the bloodstream,
the body develops allergic reactions.
ALLERGIES
I have a child with severe food allergies, and she developed them on August 25, 2009.
From that day on, I tried to figure out how she got them.
I discovered that our food is genetically engineered. Guess what?
What she ate that day was raw corn, which almost killed her.
She started choking, wheezing, turning red, gasping for air. I started to panic, I called the hospital
because I thought my child was having a food allergy attack. I immediately took her to the doctor
and had all the tests done, and now she has a fatal allergy to corn.
Before 25-35 years ago, nobody was allergic to anything. Now you have allergies to black pepper,
celiac disease from wheat, gluten allergies, basic allergies like
dairy and seafood, but now people are even allergic to parsley and common natural plants.
Food has become dangerous. How could this happen? When you connect it to the GMO issue, everything makes sense.
I try to manage patients with allergies by avoiding GMO foods, because they will have a reaction.
They will need to say that.
I have four children with food allergies. This has never happened in my family before.
Similarly, I see it in every pregnancy, and friends have asked me what I'm doing differently.
I didn't have an answer. When I discovered the connection between GMOs and food allergies,
I finally had an answer. By learning about GMO foods, I was able to do something about it.
We completely cleared out the entire kitchen for 24 hours. We got rid of what our 6-year-old children were eating.
At first, I was very happy and relieved to get rid of all of it.
Then I went through a difficult phase of crying, and I wondered what I had done to my children,
and what they had eaten without my consent.
I have a child allergic to all food groups. How is that possible?
And not just a few of them, many children. It's almost impossible to achieve. Mothers ask me how to feed their children.
I see an exponential growth of allergies, and when I improve my patients' nutrition,
using organic, GMO-free food, the symptoms disappear.
For most of my patients, there's inflammation or an immune reaction to GMO food, so I have them
off GMO food, which is related to corn and grains, because in my experience,
the immune system has reactions to food with and without GMOs.
I had a healthy patient, 30 years old, who told me that her skin was really burning
when eating any food. She asked me what could be done. So I took her off all of it,
and put her on the highest quality organic food in its basic form.
How to do that, she got better immediately. We might have to help her with something or other enzymes,
but she's getting better. Guess what? When you put her back on corn or soy, she can consume them
if they are not genetically modified.
AUTISM
I worry about all the diseases that we see, but mostly I worry about disorders
on the autistic spectrum, which have increased several times.
We cannot definitively say that GMOs cause autism, but we cannot say they don't.
In fact, autism multiplied with the introduction of GMOs, and animals that ate transgenic plants,
both in the lab and on farms, showed signs of a connection to autism.
Research with pigs has shown that allergic responses to GMO food
produce the same physiological changes and inflammation that can be seen in autistic children.
When I announced this at a symposium in Germany, I was approached by a doctor whose entire career
was spent working with autistic children. He came to me and asked some questions.
I told him what you see in terms of symptoms and behavior in rats, pigs, and cows,
that ate with and without GMOs, he said it's the same found in autistic children.
If ten years ago I could change a child's diet and get a very good response,
remediation and recovery, why isn't this happening now? Because we can no longer change the microflora
because children are constantly given food contaminated with GMOs.
Our son was nine and a half years old and diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder six years ago.
Through therapy, we had many interventions, but we were about two years into GMOs
and the potential damage they caused us and our child. In the last two years, we've seen
great improvement, but purifying his diet of GMOs was key to our success.
I always thought there was a connection between autism and the gut problems our children have.
My children always had problems with digestion, fungal infections, parasites, bacteria, and viruses
in their digestive tract for years.
But only when we kicked GMOs out of his diet did I see the biggest change, especially in behavior.
My son is now 10 years old and has autism. At a conference five years ago, we heard about GMOs
and we immediately decided we wouldn't change it. When we did this, the change was internal.
As the majority of autistic children have many problems with their gut, we immediately saw relief
in the symptoms. Bloating and bowel movements significantly decreased
and the stomach is now in a neurotypical child. It was amazing.
We didn't do anything except put them on organic, non-GMO food.
Most genetically modified crops are made for farmers to facilitate weed control.
For example, these crops resistant to Monsanto's Roundup, which covers most GMOs today,
can withstand the application of Monsanto's best means to eliminate weeds, Roundup.
Roundup.
The active ingredient in Roundup, called glyphosate, and Monsanto patented it as a herbicide in 1974.
However, ten years before that, it was patented as a broad-spectrum chelator.
At a molecular level, chelation is when it hugs and you won't let it go.
It kills the weeds so they don't grow nutrients and it weakens their defenses,
and then disease progresses in the soil, which eventually kills the plant.
This means that plants sprayed with Roundup lack nutrients.
Weak and sick. Animals that eat these plants don't have enough nutrients
and become weak and sick. Then we eat the animals and plants with nutrient deficiencies
and we can become weak and sick. In addition, residues of Roundup plants
can end up in our bodies, where they can chelate and hug nutrients from our bodies
and make them less accessible.
In areas where glyphosate is applied, plants get sick before. Tissue tests show deficits
of manganese, copper, zinc. As a result, food is less nutritious, and it shows in animals.
This is caused by using glyphosate, which lingers in the food chain.
Deficiencies of these substances are well-documented in human and animal diseases.
You need a balance of nutrients for the body to function in all areas,
because all elements support and depend on each other.
Generally, if you have one trace element and watch a specific disease, animals survive
and respond to treatment. If you miss two trace elements, the disease will be more virulent and aggressive,
even if it's the same disease. And if you miss three elements, then things are really serious.
Animals don't respond to treatment, and we will have a high mortality rate.
What does livestock in the United States eat? Crops resistant to Roundup, soybeans, corn, cotton, rapeseed,
sugar beet pulp, and now alfalfa. The majority of their food crops are resistant to Roundup.
And these crops lack nutrients and have high concentrations of Roundup.
Birth defects.
Glyphosate causes many problems for us. One sad side effect is birth defects.
In towns where people work in agriculture, especially soybean farming, we see a 70% increase in the number
birth defects, in areas that are sprayed.
In studies, even events around the world
that glyphosate is directly genotoxic and
causes birth defects.
This doesn't mean someone is directly exposed
to the spray; glyphosate exposure can be through ingestion.
Laboratory animals fed Roundup-resistant soybeans
had severe reproductive disorders.
In rats, the testes changed,
and young sperm were damaged.
In rats, there were changes in the uterus and
ovaries. DNA was not functioning in
the rat offspring embryos. When female rats were fed
transgenic soy, more than half of the young
died within three weeks. The young were
smaller and could not reproduce.
When rats were fed transgenic Bt corn resistant to Roundup,
a small number of young were smaller.
The early, unpublished results could be worse.
In rats, the testes changed color from
pink to blue. In Croatia, the third generation
could not have children, at least. Some
grew hair in their mouths. This is shocking.
But it never goes back. The industry usually suppresses or
denies findings, and pretends there's no problem.
We have a clinic for animal
fertilization; we now have an average of 14
In my community, within 150 kilometers of
my home, there are 50 animal fertilization clinics.
20 years ago,
there probably wasn't one.
One woman from the community worked as a
hairdresser, where women talk. She said women
had to accept that every fourth baby would
not be healthy and they'd have 3 or 4 abortions before a pregnancy.
What does this mean in the long term? I don't know. It's horrific.
We just know that fertility is declining.
There may be other reasons; I don't know the answer. But in the
livestock world, we know there's a downward trend.
MYSTERY ORGANISM
There's a real epidemic of reproductive organ disorders
in livestock in the United States.
Veterinarians and scientists are starting to question
the fetal tissue that's being aborted from livestock.
They found an organism unknown to science.
It's the size of a virus, but has the characteristics of a fungus.
It's never been seen before.
We're still not sure what it is. We've DNA analyzed and sequenced it
to be able to give it a name.
It's a small organism, more resistant to heat,
which could cause reproductive problems.
They took the organism and exposed pregnant chickens
in the lab. Within 48 hours, it killed the embryos.
Veterinarians have performed Koch's postulates on
it: the organism is isolated from the animal,
away from the fetal tissue. It can be grown in a pure
culture, put back into the animal, symptoms recur,
and it's isolated again. This is independent scientific
basis for the claim that it is the organism
that's causing the
reproductive problems.
This new organism is in high concentrations
in Roundup-sprayed soy and corn.
This is especially true with infected crops, where the disease creates the Roundup.
He called me from the sea, and the producer said
he was losing calves to abortion and that cows were dying.
The cows were fed Roundup-resistant corn silage,
sprayed with Roundup.
It's all GMO. Over the years, it reduced the health of cattle and now it's costing calves.
They tested the feed and the cattle and found deficiencies according to Dr. Huber's work.
We had liver samples sent to the university and found a manganese deficiency.
We sent food samples to another lab to test for organisms,
and the food was full of organisms.
Secretary Vilsack was the governor of Iowa before this. He won an award for Biotechnology
Governor of the Year. Now he's in charge of agriculture in the United States.
Dr. Don Huber sent him a letter, describing this organism as an emergency.
I thought it would be irresponsible of me as a scientist
not to inform the Secretary of Agriculture of the seriousness of the developing situation.
Dr. Huber wrote: "For the last 40 years I've been a scientist and a professional military agency
to evaluate and prepare for natural and man-made biological threats, including biological weapons
and disease outbreaks. Based on this experience, I believe this pathogen threat is unique and extremely risky.
Frankly, this should be viewed as an emergency.
He asked the Secretary to delay approval of Roundup-ready alfalfa.
This would increase the use of Roundup in the United States, and if Roundup is linked to this organism,
it will only add fuel to the fire.
A few weeks after receiving the letter, Huber was called by the Food and Drug Administration,
and he gave them the names of scientists and veterinarians with whom to speak.
Six months later, however, they couldn't be reached.
Unfortunately, the Food and Drug Administration completely ignored the problem with Roundup.
In 2011, they approved alfalfa that was resistant to Roundup, as well as Roundup-resistant prairie grass.
Let's look at that for a moment.
Genetic engineering switches genes between species. This process creates mutations throughout the DNA.
This can create new allergens, toxins, and other abominations.
Inserted genes and their proteins can start inflammation, which can lead to a number of problems,
like problems with digestion, allergies, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, cancer, Alzheimer's,
kidney, thyroid, and heart attacks.
Genetically engineered Bt corn produces an insecticide, which can create holes in our intestinal walls.
If this happens, experts link hollow tubes with allergies, autism, and premature aging.
As well as autoimmune diseases, cancer, asthma, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, and others.
Most transgenic crops are made to survive Roundup herbicide applications.
Roundup steals nutrients, which can lead to malnourished plants, animals, and humans.
Roundup can also cause birth defects and other reproductive disorders.
Laboratory animals fed these crops have lost many of their young.
Roundup is also linked to infertility, which can be called hormonal disruption,
nutritional deficiencies or entirely new organisms.
Scientists from the FDA warned that GMOs are dangerous, but their head is a Monsanto man.
Monsanto sells Roundup and most GMO seeds. The FDA doesn't require research and monitoring
of health problems associated with GMO crops.
GMOs AND ANIMALS
For 40 years I've written a newspaper column called 'The Veterinarian'.
In the nineties, I started getting letters from some readers, 25-30 million in the United States.
Mentioning that their cats and dogs had various health problems.
Veterinarians were not effectively curing them. These problems were permanent.
When I told them that changing the recommended nutrition to avoid GMO corn and soy,
and the animals started to get better, I got evidence-based treatments
that their health problems were primarily caused by GMO corn and soy,
and possibly residual glyphosate herbicide in Roundup.
I must have had 40 to 60 letters testifying to this magical treatment.
Veterinarians missed this. Most animals were prescribed special diets,
intestinal inflammation, or skin allergies. Poor dogs would go crazy from diarrhea, as would everyone in the house.
Again, not curing them, most prescribed diets had the same ingredients: GMO corn and soy.
An agricultural consultant described an experience with a client who raised miniature cattle on his farm.
He tried his best to keep things organic, so I gave them GMO corn,
and lost corn, so he went to the supplier. They had nothing but GMO corn,
so the stuff started giving them GMO corn. He said he was told that his cows
had many health problems.
They were very angry, they were calm creatures he was used to.
He said he lost about 90% of his miniature cows. It seems the problem was that they couldn't
process the food properly, so they bloated and died from it.
This is a large cattle producer from my community who feeds about 5,000 cattle, and made the transition.
Many animals died from eating GMO crops. What we ate them again, more of them were killed.
The first 60-80 days of feed we had no deaths, and then we lost one or two a week.
When we changed the diet, the cattle were much calmer,
and we had less pneumonia and health problems.
A farmer called a friend who was excited about switching from GMO corn to soybeans for his pigs.
I was surprised that he was so excited. He stammered, trying to explain what he was talking about.
He told the farmer that disease and treatment costs had decreased. Food intake increased.
The pigs were happy and playful.
He said they had seen changes by the third day. He and his brothers went into the barn and admired
how things had changed. They laughed, saying it couldn't be the GMO corn.
They were funny and ignored, but they understood that the prime changes began after two or three days.
By the eleventh day, he called me, dramatic changes.
The family was tormented by high morbidity rates for over 12 years, since they introduced genetically engineered corn.
But only when they saw the progress in the pigs' health and behavior,
they realized that the transgenic corn was causing the problems.
A pig farm owner in Denmark switched to GMO soy in April 2011.
Within two days, serious and fatal diarrhea in piglets almost disappeared.
After the switch, disease rates significantly declined. Deaths from stomach and liver disease stopped.
Congenital defects were astounding. Insemination rates and litter size also increased.
MILK PRODUCTS AND CANCER
Pozilak is the most researched new product ever, and now you can buy it to increase potential profits.
Monsanto scientists took genes from cows and put them into E. coli bacteria,
so the bacteria produce hormones for the cows.
This is given to cows to increase milk production.
It's nicknamed "crack for cows" and increases their metabolism.
It also creates more mastitis, a painful infection of the udder, so the milk has more pus, antibiotics,
because cows are increasingly given growth hormones. But what doctors really worry about is the increased amount of IGF-1:
insulin growth factor 1. People with high IGF-1 levels have a higher tendency for cancer.
Premenopausal women with high IGF-1 levels are seven times more likely to get breast cancer.
Men are four times more susceptible to prostate cancer.
It's at a much greater level from cows given bovine growth hormone.
In early 1994, data from the federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta had shown
a dramatic increase in the annual number of ductal breast cancer tissue
in older American women over 50. Ductal breast cancer tissue is among the
most aggressive and deadliest to grow. This increase in five years
resulted in a 55-60% increase of this type of breast cancer.
The FDA's approval process for bovine growth hormone has been highly controversial.
When Canadian scientists discussed how this hormone was approved, they said it was all a typical joke.
The data we have on bovine growth hormone shows enough evidence for rejection.
The agency said it didn't receive the same information. Then they said they did, but only some.
Then they said they got the same information, but that Canada didn't know how to apply the law.
This tells you about what the FDA is up to.
Bovine growth hormone is banned in Europe, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand,
and is now banned in milk at Wal-Mart, Starbucks, JCPenney, and most American products.
To educate consumers about the risks, especially cancer, so we made a milestone
consumer rejection that is slowly pushing bovine growth hormone out of the market.
For all these companies, it all comes down to money.
If you think you're going to make more money
with bovine growth hormone, then it'll be removed. If they
think they can get away with it and make money, they won't.
Our job is to try to ensure that enough
of the public knows about this, tell them this:
"If you continue to use it, I'm not going to buy your products.
I'll go with someone who doesn't use it."
This will be understood.
I spoke with a former Monsanto scientist
and it turns out his colleagues, three
did research on the safety of milk
from cows using bovine growth hormone,
but they found a lot of IGF-1 in the milk and after
that refused to drink milk unless it was organic.
One of them was
himself buying cows.
CHILDREN AND GMOs
Children are more sensitive to GMOs for several reasons.
The first is a higher rate of metabolism.
They process food faster and they need more
food. Their cells grow faster. They grow rapidly,
so you have a higher rate of cellular turnover and
metabolism, a greater frequency of respiration,
they need more
nutrients, they eat more.
Another reason is that children are more sensitive than adults
to lower doses of toxins, and don't react the same to them.
Their immune systems aren't ready yet,
they can't digest it well,
enzymes and have developed
bacteria in their gut.
The bioaccumulation of toxins may be greater in their bodies,
which have a lower mass.
For all these reasons,
children are more vulnerable.
All pregnant women speak up
to give their children GMO-free food.
We tell them to eat GMO-free food
at least two weeks before trying to conceive,
and even better. We know that all
genetic changes can be passed to the baby,
can be transferred to future generations. This is
a new field of genetics called epigenetics.
It worries me. Before thinking genetics didn't
change that much. Now we know that's not true.
Speed can modify
expression and be inherited.
If the mother eats GMO food, it will have
an effect on her child's growth and development.
This is another factor that affects the uterine fluid badly,
and over time causes disaster.
Formula for newborn babies
No pediatrician would ever tell
you instead of breastfeeding, to use formula.
So I breastfeed. Throughout my career I have not met
a pediatrician who said she couldn't breastfeed.
Breastfeed, breastfeed, and
then breastfeed again.
Some mothers can't breastfeed, so they use
formula. I recommend only organic formula.
I think that almost all formula for newborn babies
is soy-based, made from genetically modified soy.
This means that it's a dangerous threat
to health. The risk of allergic reactions
is too great that it gives to
children, especially at such a young age.
Almost all formula for newborn babies
uses cow's milk exposed to bovine growth hormone
and its derivatives from GMO corn.
Independent lab tests show
a large amount of GMO soy
in four popular soy-based
formulas.
Similac Advance: 42%; Gerber Good Start Soy: 48%; Enfamil ProSobee: 49%; Walmart Soy: 66%.
The U.S. government's WIC program supplies
2 million newborn babies with formula,
but only with
transgenic species.
When I first found out that GMO food was for
newborn babies, honestly, I was offended.
I didn't know how it could happen
in this country, and I felt guilty
because as a mother I didn't know it existed, and
that I was giving my child something dangerous.
But when I found out, I immediately stopped, and
everything I threw out, so we're starting over.
They are very vulnerable, and we fed
them GMO food before they were born.
We know that things like Bt toxin and Roundup can
enter the fetus and then feed them formula
from transgenic corn and soy, and milk
from cows given growth hormones.
What are we doing
to our children?
WHY GMOs?
They just tell us that this is probably the best
technology to feed the world, and that's not true.
I'm not sure why we have
GMOs; it doesn't make sense.
Genetically modified organisms are really just products for sale.
Unless there's a company pushing them and trying
to make money from it, there's no point.
Because we can all find what we want
without genetically modified organisms.
There's always a better way to achieve everything because
every GMO is trying to do it for you.
There are better ways when
we understand nature.
It's cheaper, requires less
labor, and without damaging nature.
I think that our international companies presented
a huge lie, and forced us to think
that transgenic is the way to feed
the future. That's not true.
It's a bad idea because we don't know the bad health effects.
It's not worth sacrificing human health
for a small increase in yield or longer shelf life.
We are in an age where the history of science should not be to do something just because we can.
We started planting Roundup-resistant transgenic cotton crops in
2005 and 2006, about 4 square kilometers.
We thought this would be a great way to
offset labor and fuel costs.
That was before I started reading what
was written on the bag with the cotton seeds.
There were several different warnings: don't touch, don't put in your mouth, don't do this, come running to the doctor,
call this number. And I sat there thinking, 'What am I planning to put in the ground?'
Trying to save some fuel? I'm even making the problem worse.
I participated in this toxic recipe that
creates the need for additional chemicals.
If this is the solution for our agriculture, no wonder we have so many problems.
This system is excellent, why do we need GMOs? Because we can't feed the world.
On the contrary. In my community, we did testing with corn.
And we did better than with GMOs, no question.
The myth that people are starving in the world is very strong. It's been presented to us for 30-40 years.
In reality, there's 1.5 times more food in the world than we need for everyone.
Josette Sheeran, even from the World Food Programme, at the height of the crisis, acknowledged
the problem wasn't a lack of food, but that people couldn't afford it.
I was at a conference of experts who really know world nutrition. Secretary Vilsak was a speaker.
When he started talking about how GMOs could feed the world, the experts scoffed at him.
There's no evidence that GMOs will sustainably and equitably feed the world in the future.
The world can eat, it always could. The world has enough food.
People might not get food because of corruption, but there's plenty.
Monsanto's desire to make GMOs fail is falling on our eyes.
The world can and should be solved, faster, better. Soon.
MYTHS ABOUT GMOs
There are many myths about what GMOs should and can do.
You need to increase supply. Actually, they reduce yields.
Looking at reports from the Center for Food Safety, the yields aren't successful.
Investigations were done on millions of farms in developed countries, and they showed
an average yield increase of 79%; but for sustainable techniques, not for GMOs.
In the US, GMOs showed no difference from organic crops grown side-by-side
for soybeans and corn, except in times of drought, when organic outperformed GMO crops.
They also say GMOs should increase profits for farmers. That's not true.
In principle, all independent research, while I refer to those not directly or indirectly
paid by the biotech industry, all these studies show that transgenic technology
is something close to an economic fairy tale.
They said it would increase American transgenic exports. What happened was the opposite.
We lost 99% of our corn exports to Europe.
The biotech industry has argued for years that herbicide-resistant crops
reduce the amount of herbicides applied. That was true for the first few years when these new crops were introduced.
After a few years, the weeds changed and developed resistance, and herbicide use has increased recently.
Research has shown that transgenic crops apply 147 million more pounds of pesticides
compared to non-GMO ones in the United States. We have 40 square kilometers of cotton in Diodji
that is resistant to herbicides, including glyphosate. Guess how we control them?
Because glyphosate no longer works, we now have to use crops made with 2,4-D.
For those of you too young to know, this is one of the components of Agent Orange,
So it's not safe herbicide.
Roundup is used so much that the geological survey found it in 60-100%
of air, rain and water samples.
It's in citizens' urine, in pregnant women's blood, in their fetuses. It's everywhere.
This is a scam for rich companies to make money. It's not going to improve our lives,
or anything that happens in nature.
It has nothing to do with feeding the world. The blind and disabled won't change the blind walking,
only chemical companies that sell chemicals.
When I heard Monsanto's plans, I was stunned.
Monsanto's goal is to replace all natural seeds and to have the world's agriculture
start with transgenic seeds and create a market for the chemicals associated with the seeds.
There are no signs of nature. The question arises how to eliminate natural seeds.
I get into debates with people who say: "The government reviewed and approved it, there was a lot of research,
so they can't be wrong, and if it were so bad, someone would have said something about it."
In fact, the minority who say something against it pay a high price in their lives and careers.
These are recorded attacks on people who ask questions. They are not secret.
They have a chilling effect on other scientists' willingness to do their work.
One way to prevent scientists from doing something is to show them that if they get results
that disagree with the biotech industry's public relations message,
and if they persist and publish the results, or talk about them at meetings - their dean will be visited
by a delegation from the company. Politicians at the state level say: "You know what's happening
in the agronomy department at the university? One of the professors wants to hurt your farmers.
It's better to call the dean and send a message to that person."
This happens through routine.
Frankly, because of their direct investment in our universities, new teachers also realize
that if they want to get tenure, they shouldn't do negative research on transgenics.
When I spoke at the UN about the dangers of GMOs and returned to the department
at Oregon State University, I immediately received a letter from the former university president,
in which he told me that if I don't believe in the technology, I don't belong at the university.
It's amazing how much the companies dominate the discussion about anything and what is said
and who is willing to participate in it.
It's difficult for researchers to get seeds to test them. Monsanto, Syngenta, and Dupont
won't provide seeds for testing. They maintain they do their own research
for their industrial purposes. It's hard to do research, and then when they do,
it's very difficult to get it published.
Many researchers working on transgenic crops are severely punished. They lose their jobs,
cancel their funding, and reposition them in labs.
As soon as you fight these international corporations, they try to destroy your reputation,
to show that your methodology is wrong.
In the end, the responsibility falls on the scientists who estimate. That's me.
If I agree, then I'm part of the corruption, and if I don't agree, they fire me. I choose the latter.
Dr. Arpad Pusztai, one of the world's leading researchers in his field, received funding
$3 million to test the safety of GMOs. We wanted to create a protocol
that would be used for approval in the European Union.
Through this protocol, rats were tested, and it turned out that the genetic engineering process
is intrinsically dangerous and can create precancerous cell growth in the digestive tract,
the brain, the testes, partial atrophy of the liver, damage to the immune system, and do all that within ten days.
When he went public with this issue, he was a hero for two days at his prestigious institute.
Then came two alleged phone calls from the office of the British Prime Minister,
from the receptionist to the CEO.
The next morning, Dr. Pusztai was fired after 35 years. Threatening a lawsuit,
it spread, and the research team of 20 members, taking the data
and never completed the protocol.
Instead, they launched a campaign to destroy his reputation.
In Argentina, when a scientist, Andres Carrasco, planned to give a lecture on Roundup
and its involvement with birth defects, an organized group of a hundred people attacked him.
He managed to get into his car, where he locked himself in, but they battered his car for two hours.
His friends weren't so lucky. One is blind and another paralyzed.
And the list goes on:
Dr. Ignacio Chapela - found GMO corn infected in Mexico. They threatened him, denied him a permanent position at the university, and organized a campaign to falsely discredit him.
Dr. Irina Ermakova - stated that most of the offspring of rats fed transgenic soy died after three weeks. She was openly attacked and discredited. She was ordered to stop her research.
Dr. Terje Traavik - investigated an outbreak in the Philippines where farmers inhaled pollen from Bt corn. He also became a victim of 'scientists' for GMOs.
GMOs IN INDIA
Monsanto's story is eating the world. This is a thumb of their liberation.
Let's see what happened in India.
They took over the cotton industry and forced millions of farmers to grow their Bt cotton.
The cotton is designed to create an insecticide that pierces the stomach of insects and kills them.
Normally, Bt is a natural soil bacterium. When used as a spray,
for example, on the Pacific coast against the gypsy moth, about 500 people came forward with symptoms
like allergies and flu. Some had to go to the hospital.
In India, thousands of workers complained of the same symptoms - rashes, itching.
Farmers complained that they got itchy when they went to read.
When farmers work in Bt cotton fields, they get allergies and skin rashes.
But when you work in fields of non-Bt cotton, there are no such symptoms.
In India, animals are allowed to graze in cotton fields after harvest.
For years, they had no problems. But when they introduced Bt cotton, they saw that thousands of animals got sick,
and thousands died.
There's a small organization called the Dean Society for Development, which asked the government to test the Bt cotton,
to see if it was connected to the animal deaths.
They went to the government, which did nothing. Then to the university, which again did nothing.
Then they did their own research. They took nine sheep.
6 of the sheep ate Bt cotton, Bolgard 1 or 2, and 3 sheep ate non-transgenic cotton.
Throughout the month, all the sheep that ate Bolgard 1 or 2 died.
And the animals that ate non-Bt cotton and pesticides were still alive and active.
I visited a village in Andhra Pradesh. For years they let the buffalo
graze in the cotton fields after harvest.
13 grazing buffalo in a Bt cotton field for just one day. After 3 days, 13 buffalo died.
We know that transgenic crops have unexpected side effects.
It doesn't just affect health, but also agriculture.
Bt cotton, grown in India, is very unreliable. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
But there's no safety net. Millions of farmers have invested money in expensive seeds and chemicals.
Many of them took loans with high interest rates. When the cotton doesn't succeed,
most can't repay the high-interest loans.
The consequence is a shocking number of farmer suicides.
The unreliable, expensive seed performance achieved by farmers leads to debt, and that debt leads to suicide.
All our research in the last decade shows that suicides are concentrated
in areas where cotton is grown, and especially Bt cotton, where the numbers are much higher.
My colleague estimates there are 250,000 farmer suicides in this country,
of which at least three-quarters are from Bt cotton.
GMOS IN SOUTH AFRICA
Farmers in South Africa grow genetically engineered corn and feed it to their animals.
The cows have problems with milk production, arthritis, sterility, and short life expectancy.
Pigs have also been affected by this.
The biggest problem is infertility. There are respiratory problems like pneumonia,
also diarrhea, and they eventually die.
It's cannibalism, they literally eat each other.
He said, 'Dr. Skau, you've told me so many things, can you narrow it down to just one thing?'
'What should I do when I go home?' I said, 'You can, it's very simple.'
Go home and stop putting transgenic products on their farms.
After cultivating GMO corn and feed, their animal health problems
disappeared after a few weeks.
It lasted 5-6 months until they ran out of food. And guess what - the only food available
was again based on transgenics. Within 60 days, the herd of cattle was the same mess as before.
It took the pigs about three months to return to the same state.
In South Africa, corn is the basis of nutrition, and they eat it three times a day.
50-60 workers on the farm eat only the transgenic corn grown there.
Perhaps every day they eat GMO food from every group in the world.
They have problems like breathing, fever, colds - flu-like symptoms,
as well as severe headaches.
Once or twice a month, one of the workers, and these are older people,
but young people from 20 to 40 years old. He saw something very dramatic.
Individuals talking to each other, their eyes would go in opposite directions and not turn.
When he saw that, the person would usually die within 24 to 48 hours.
When the farmers harvested transgenic corn for their animals, and the workers switched.
All the workers' health problems disappeared.
And then he ran out of corn.
It took 30 to 40 days to return to the same state.
Since then, we have heard several times and said that now there are no GMOs
and that we are grateful for the advice to plant something that is GMO.
REVERSAL OF DAMAGE FROM GMO
People always ask me if the damage from GMO food can be reversed.
Research in Italy on rats gives us some hope. They were fed transgenic soy for 8 months
and had liver, pancreas, and testicle damage. But the following month,
when they got non-GMO food, many of those problems disappeared.
When doctors in this country and other countries learn about the importance of nutrition,
one of the key factors we teach them is to avoid all GMO foods.
In every patient, it's consistent that GMOs must be removed.
I get many patients with various stages of chronic illness.
Even I am competent. Changing the diet and nutritional status,
many of these diseases almost disappeared.
Of course, GMOs are not the only thing I do. I don't just prescribe them,
but whatever works for the individual patient.
Look at what they eat and encourage non-GMOs, and the food industry and everyone will be better off.
So from two days to 2-3 months, and some people healed in a few years.
But it never happened
that this didn't work.
We have to somehow educate the public so they understand
that they have a choice. You don't have to eat GMO food.
AVOID GMOs
There are only 9 transgenic food crops, but their
derivatives can be found in 70% of foods in the supermarket.
Especially in processed foods.
There are 4 ways to avoid GMOs:
Buying organic food, products
that say they are non-GMO,
products from our guide to non-
GMO foods, or completely avoiding risky ingredients.
Especially soy, corn, cottonseed oil,
canola oil, and sugar from sugar beets.
Most crops are
genetically modified.
If grown in the United States, and it says it's
organic or GMO, genetically engineered then.
If we can avoid that, I think that would be a
big step forward in improving health,
as far as allergies, autoimmune diseases and
many others of which we know a lot.
Aspartame is also derived from GMO
microorganisms. Just type into Google
and see the symptoms for a few hours, and
you will never eat aspartame again.
LABELING
When people hear about the health issues of GMOs, the first thing
they want is to avoid them.
Millions of people are trying to avoid
GMOs, and we help to facilitate that.
Go to NonGMOShoppingGuide.com. Search and
find thousands of certified non-GMO products.
Or download the free app for iPhone
ShopNoGMO. Or get our pamphlet.
This makes it easier for you
to buy healthy non-GMO products.
We are very grateful to organizations
that confirm non-GMO products, so we know for sure
to buy something
that we support.
And when looking for non-GMO labels, look for
those that say NON GMO Project Verified.
They are independent verifiers
who confirm companies' claims.
The NON GMO Project is a non-profit organization
dedicated to supplying non-GMO foods,
consumer education on GMO issues and
providing verified non-transgenic options.
Over the past year, sales of confirmed
non-GMO foods rose from 348 million
to over $1.2 billion.
Amazing growth, 219%.
This is because more and more companies
are joining as consumers increasingly seek it out.
We have almost 400 brands that are
enabled in the non-GMO project.
6,000 products,
of which 4,000 are verified.
The dedication of these companies comes
from consumer demand.
People are looking for non-transgenic options, they don't want to be
part of an experiment. I don't want to feed my family.
Companies in the organic and
natural economy are increasing their pace
so what verified and labeled their products,
so people can't be cut off from transgenic experiments.
Currently in the United States, there is no official obligation
to label products that contain transgenics.
The real problem is that this isn't disclosed.
It's celebrated in Europe, Australia, and Asia. But here in the U.S., we live in blissful ignorance.
This is a problem for me because it's not in my family's best interest.
For moms, it's hard to go and read every label. Your time is limited and you need guidance.
It should have been there all along. I feel cheated.
We're all part of a big, controlled experiment. I don't get answers,
because we don't know who's eating GMO food and who isn't. There's no way to investigate this.
I think this is the intent of the producers. Let them be confused,
you can never determine responsibility, even when there's a big problem.
Currently, there are 5 million children with food allergies, and there's no way to know
what your children are eating, if it's not labeled.
These products are on the shelves before you realize it, and now they're in everything.
I don't want to be a human guinea pig. And certainly don't want my two-year-old.
If there's a problem with GMO food, why don't you label it?
If there's no problem, say it's labeled.
So that happened. A ballot initiative for 2012 to label GMOs, and I'm telling you that support.
VOTE THE INITIATIVE IN CALIFORNIA
The issue of labeling GMOs is in full swing in the United States.
Bills have been introduced in 19 states, though none have passed due to Monsanto's lobbying impact.
In California, we have a real chance to win because of the voter's initiative.
People vote directly.
Finally, we have a chance to get what 9 out of 10 Americans have wanted for decades:
labeling GMO food.
About this technology, I have enough questions wondering what's happening to us.
We have an economy where research says everything is in order, an economy that doesn't.
We have independent doctor research that says there are big questions and problems.
There are no long-term studies on humans.
And I'm angry that my grandmother and my government and our institutions aren't protecting us.
We have a right to know what we're putting into our bodies.
The eyes of the world are focused on California.
Because we can reverse all these places with this one. The magnitude of the threat is invisible so far.
All living beings and all future generations are at stake.
We can't let it escape the magnitude of the decision.
If you like GMOs and think you're great, super, be proud of it. Buy it. Highlight it.
We may not buy it. That's the problem we have, is that we go to Washington.
We need to push from the outside, invigorate the FDA, and make our voices heard.
We're going to put power back in the hands of the people. We have people all over the country constantly working in communities.
151 leaders who are organizing their communities and educating their people.
Now we understand what's happening with governments and corporations.
This can happen when a very persistent, semi-disgusting Italian grandmother in California
decides that it's going to.
I just want these corrupt governments and corporations out of my body and my family's lives.
Leave my milk, my food, my family, and my community alone. I can take care of myself.
The whole world can take care of itself.
Do you know the dirty little secret of your biotech industry you'll never not talk about?
Nobody wakes up in the morning with the desire to buy GMO food. Nobody.
No living creature on Earth stands up and says, 'Gee, I can't wait to go to the supermarket
and buy GMO food!'
It's because after 30 years, and hundreds of billions of dollars invested, they haven't come up with anything
that helps the consumer.
Better taste, no lower price, no more nutrition. Ah, it's nothing. Zero. Potatoes.
GET OUR FOOD BACK
How to get rid of GMO food? It's easier than you think.
I don't need to ask the government for help. We can do it ourselves.
When you were in Europe, consumer rejection came to a head at the end of April 1999,
in one week, most of the major food producers had promised to stop using transgenic ingredients.
They became marketing constraints.
When you in the US parents realized the connection between bovine growth hormone and cancer,
it was kicked out of the majority of the dairy products in the United States.
How many Americans does it take to make a tipping point? We think it's just 5%.
Why? If the same companies that dumped GMOs in Europe
see even a small drop in market share in the United States, that can be linked to GMOs, and here it will be settled as well as in Europe.
It becomes a wake-up call, a rejection of GMOs, and we can do it ourselves.
These companies are parasites, they don't care. They want to get and manage the government,
and now they run our government. I don't know for how long, but I think their time is running out.
Even though you can't control what yesterday produced, what today spends money on,
you control what will be produced tomorrow.
Mothers and consumers will bring change. If it requires healthy products for our children,
if we refuse to buy transgenic products, then the economy will have to respond.
Mothers are the ones who buy 80% of products, including food and cleaning products.
And if we stop supporting companies, then they will feel it in their pockets.
Unfortunately, I think they're just relevant.
One of the basic powers of nature is a mother's protection of her child.
Most women will do anything to protect their child.
When you take advantage of that power in a positive way, we are unstoppable.
This affects everything and everyone. This is not just a question of agriculture and the food industry.
It is a question of all living beings.
This is the most dangerous thing that humanity has faced in our generation.
Should I be worried? You should be scared. Not just for your children, but for yourselves too.
Why do you think so many people are sick now? We must not tolerate this.
We must stand up and write to our politicians. We need to talk to people in the stores and say:
"I will not buy it if it's genetically engineered."
I think now we can change the system. The world is ready.
Sometimes we hear that Monsanto cannot win, that the genie is out of the bottle. But that's not true.
Over the last 15 years, we have won all the GMO tomatoes, they don't exist anymore.
GMO potatoes, that they tried and we have decided against that. GMO wheat, that was their big effort.
All the world's wheat to become GMO - that we won. Genetically modified rice - and we won.
GMO biological agents - when they want to put all the vaccines in your food. That is a victory.
GMO alfalfa, which would destroy the dairy industry. Six years to stop
and again we did it in court.
GMO sod grass in schools and golf courses - and we won.
They can win. We, win against them and again we did it.
Everything is in our hands, in front of us. It's just a question of avoiding GMO food and inspiring others to do so.
And in the new school, I will try to get it away from GMO. - "What will you do?"
I keep talking to them and maybe will get him out.
"What will you tell them?"
To stop GMO and point with good food.
Written, produced and directed:
Editor:
Associate producer and screenwriter:
If animals had a choice, I know for sure which one they would always pick: non-GMO food.
We have an office mascot dog, a small cocker spaniel named Chloe.
We decided to see if she could tell the difference between food with and without GMO.
She immediately went to the pile of non-GMO corn, instead of the genetically modified corn next to it.
She tasted it, spit it out, took the non-GMO corn and ate it. This is every time.
It was amazing.
In the garage, we continue feeding the livestock. GMO food was placed next to them with non-GMO.
We have seen that rats, mice, and ferrets attacked the non-GMO food, but never the other.
I have 4, 5 clips of GMO corn, brought them home.
I threw them to the chickens and I expected
them to eat it, but they didn't. They just
walked over it and didn't even touch it.
I put two feeders side by side.
The chickens naturally chose the non-GMO supplement.
They emptied the feeder and the other one they
didn't touch. I filled it up again and thought,
to trick the chickens. I turned them
around, and the chickens again chose the non-GMO food,
Which is amazing.
Translation: Mile ivkovi
(Milezivkovic@yahoo.com)
Americans get sick more often than Europeans and people from other industrialized nations.
I'm sick all over.
Since the mid-nineties, the number of Americans suffering from at least three chronic diseases,
has nearly doubled.
US international ratings for infant mortality and life expectancy are also declining.
There are many reasons for this. One of them might be right in front of you.
Genetic roulette: PLAYING WITH OUR LIVES
Director:
Narrator:
Over the last 20 years there's been a huge logarithmic increase in chronic disease.
What we have today is not normal. It didn't happen 30 or 50 years ago.
Diseases that were previously epidemics are now. And on an incredible scale.
People are getting sicker. What has changed? One thing that has changed is the food.
The biggest change is the genetic engineering of our food supply.
Food in its natural form has been moved from our plates to scientific experiments.
In the United States there are millions of square kilometers of transgenic crops, but most people are unaware of this.
The normal consumer is unfortunately too busy living and raising children,
and doesn't realize that anything is genetically engineered.
The Obama Department of Agriculture supports biotechnology, as did previous administrations.
If we do nothing, in ten years all major crops will be genetically modified,
and we won't even know it.
GMOs. Genetically modified organisms.
Taking DNA from one species, and forcing it into the DNA of another species.
I can mix genes of species that were never meant to have offspring.
They have spider genes, hoping that will strip them and get protein webs
to make bulletproof vests. Not kidding.
They take cow genes and put them on pigs so the pigs have cow hides.
They take human genes and put them on corn to get a spermicide.
There are two main categories of food that we eat:
Herbicide-tolerant crops, which can be sprayed with herbicides and still live,
and crops that produce pesticides, toxic insecticides that kill the insects that bite them.
Gene exchange outside the normal range of species, creating new organisms
that are not part of the evolutionary process.
HOW IS A GMO MADE?
The public believes that genetic engineering is exact science.
In fact, it's a guess at a microscopic level.
The process of genetic engineering has harmful side effects.
Making millions of copies of genes, and literally shooting them into millions of cells,
and then these cells are cloned into factories.
Usually this involves inserting a virus or a retrovirus to activate the gene.
The process of insertion and cloning creates a guarantee of widespread damage.
This can be hundreds or thousands of DNA mutations, and the same gene can alter
the expression level of genes in normally functioning plants.
This creates unpredictable side effects.
From a biophysical perspective, when we look at the signature of a whole gene sequence on a page.
There's no place in nature.
Therefore, our immune system, which is actually a large electromagnetic sensor system,
sees a number of genes that should be food, and says: "I've never seen this sequence.
It's not in nature, this sequence." And then it creates inflammation and attacks this sequence.
Most of the diseases we deal with have inflammation as a cause, which is the body's first contact with food,
including GMO food.
In 1996, genetically modified corn was introduced into the American diet.
Since then, a number of digestive diseases have been linked to the emerging stoma-nim infections in the United States.
Is this just a coincidence?
But inflammation creates more serious digestive-related problems.
You have to look at allergies, autoimmune diseases, and anything related to inflammation.
Heart disease, kidney disease, diabetes, thyroid disease... the list is endless.
HOW GMOs GET TO YOUR TABLE
Food safety is one of the most important tasks of the government and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
For public health, there is nothing more important than food.
The current policy of the Food and Drug Administration on GMOs was created in 1992.
They argued that the agency did not have information on significant differences in GMOs.
Therefore, no safety research was needed.
It turns out that in 1998, a lawsuit led to the public release of 44,000 secret documents to the contrary.
When we went through all the memos and other documents, I was shocked.
It became clear that the Food and Drug Administration had repeatedly lied since 1992.
They claimed that the independent scientific community largely agreed that the food was safe.
But their own scientific staff's findings were completely contrary to that.
This food might not be safe.
The scientists working within the agency agreed that GMOs were not only variable, but also dangerous.
They could cause allergies, toxicity, new diseases, nutritional problems,
repeated several times
in the memo.
Their superiors were urged to launch
long-term studies, but ignored.
Why? The person responsible for policy at the agency
was Michael Taylor, a former Monsanto lawyer.
Later, Monsanto's Vice President, now in charge
of food safety at the US FDA.
Monsanto and the biotech industry wanted the FDA
to create a policy
that would create the illusion that genetically engineered food was carefully
regulated, but it was actually not regulated at all.
The FDA did an extraordinary job.
The FDA did not approve
any transgenic crops. There were voluntary consultations
where companies like Monsanto could
deal with scientific experiments.
If the FDA asked for more information,
they usually ignored them.
At the end of this nonsensical practice, the agency
received a letter from Monsanto reminding them
it was their responsibility to
determine if the food was safe.
The same company that told us
Agent Orange, PCBs, and DDT were safe
now tells us whether transgenic food is
safe. In fact, they don't even have to tell us.
They can come to market without
notifying the agency or consumers.
If you raise concerns, warning the FDA, scientists from our lawsuit,
the Royal Society of Canada, the British Medical Association,
as well as other experts, then
the damage may be extensive
to the health of every American citizen
and future generations.
The FDA, USDA, and EPA are responsible
for different aspects of food production,
and the way in which this is confirmed
is truly shameful.
In key positions like the Secretary of Agriculture are known supporters of transgenic crops,
where important decisions should be made independently,
so that ignorance in regulatory bodies
is the main cause for
these violations.
I think the most disturbing thing
is that in Washington we approve
new and unique products for human consumption
without careful and independent testing.
I think that money is
the only reason for this.
The American Academy of Ecological Medicine strongly
opposes GMOs due to disruptive research.
The American Academy leads research
on animals showing that infertility,
immune problems, accelerated
aging, cholesterol and insulin complications,
and changes in the liver, kidneys,
spleen, and digestive organs.
Unfortunately, American consumers for 20 years have been eating
foods that scientists from the FDA said
should not be on the market until
proven safe, because the FDA continues to lie.
When you have the power to manipulate the entire
evolutionary structure, it is the responsibility of every scientist,
no matter how wise, to take that power
and use it without full appreciation of the consequences.
The biotech companies themselves are investigated.
I call it tobacco science.
Using the wrong control groups, flawed detection methods and statistics,
and their food tests are so short they don't reveal things like cancer,
reproductive organ disorders, or birth defects.
From bad science has made Science.
No one has the right to play roulette with the genetic integrity of all life on Earth.
INSECTICIDE FOOD
There is a bacterium in the soil called Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt. If assembled and used as a spray,
the Bt toxin, which the bacterium produces, will kill insects. Engineers took the gene that produces the toxin
and inserted it into corn and cotton, and left the plants to kill.
Every cell in the plant
produces the toxic protein. Bt is designed to gut insects and kill them. When in the mid-nineties doctors heard
that Bt corn was introduced into our diet, they said this might explain the increase in digestive problems.
However, the Environmental Protection Agency said there was no need to worry about the Bt toxin, it was harmless
to humans and animals, because it only affected insects.
However, research from February 2012 shows
that the agency made a mistake. The Bt toxin opens pores in human cells and
can cause: Disruptions in our gut
just like in the insects it kills. If Bacillus thuringiensis induces a greater tendency for leaky guts in girls,
and premature entry of food into the bloodstream, the damage will be discussed. A whole range of diseases, premature aging,
Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, autism, cancer and asthma.
It's like when you buy a new car and it says you should put in gasoline, and you put in diesel -
you can't expect much catching up. When you put the wrong fuel into your body
and you have the audacity to heal, allow that wrong fuel to enter the body. Our digestive tract is not ready for it.
Our digestive tract is not ready for it.
Healthy flora in our body turns food into active things like true vitamin K.
A lot of the food we eat is not activated while the healthy flora starts working on it.
Because of disruptions and flora, we see so much eczema, asthma, and allergies among people.
Only one human study was done eating genetically modified food.
They found that a part of the gene inserted into soybeans, which made them resistant to Roundup, transferred to the DNA
of bacteria living in our gut and stayed there.
Furthermore, the bacteria could not break down Roundup, indicating that the gene was active.
This means that by itself it can have genetically modified proteins that continue to evolve within us,
long after we stop eating genetically modified food.
I did not check whether the Bt toxin gene transferred
via chips onto bacteria in our gut, and continued to work there. If this happens, it could make our gut flora a living pesticide factory.
This could explain the fact that 93% of Canadian pregnant women had the Bt toxin tested in their blood,
and in the blood of 80% of fetuses. The study's authors suggest that
the Bt toxin is produced by consuming meat and milk from animals fed Monsanto's Bt corn.
I think a more likely solution is that the Bt toxin continues to be produced in their digestive tracts
damaging the gut lining
and that leaky gut is responsible for many health problems.
To me, this is one of the most important reasons why GMOs are dangerous.
Lately, we've seen many children with leaky guts.
Normally, the gut lining should be strong, but in these children, it's not,
so the food they eat leaks into their bloodstream, which causes them to develop antibodies to that food,
leading to food intolerances and allergies.
When these disorders are exacerbated, it's possible for the gut lining to fail to block larger food particles,
which should have been blocked before assimilation. When they enter the bloodstream,
the body develops allergic reactions.
ALLERGIES
I have a child with severe food allergies, and she developed them on August 25, 2009.
From that day on, I tried to figure out how she got them.
I discovered that our food is genetically engineered. Guess what?
What she ate that day was raw corn, which almost killed her.
She started choking, wheezing, turning red, gasping for air. I started to panic, I called the hospital
because I thought my child was having a food allergy attack. I immediately took her to the doctor
and had all the tests done, and now she has a fatal allergy to corn.
Before 25-35 years ago, nobody was allergic to anything. Now you have allergies to black pepper,
celiac disease from wheat, gluten allergies, basic allergies like
dairy and seafood, but now people are even allergic to parsley and common natural plants.
Food has become dangerous. How could this happen? When you connect it to the GMO issue, everything makes sense.
I try to manage patients with allergies by avoiding GMO foods, because they will have a reaction.
They will need to say that.
I have four children with food allergies. This has never happened in my family before.
Similarly, I see it in every pregnancy, and friends have asked me what I'm doing differently.
I didn't have an answer. When I discovered the connection between GMOs and food allergies,
I finally had an answer. By learning about GMO foods, I was able to do something about it.
We completely cleared out the entire kitchen for 24 hours. We got rid of what our 6-year-old children were eating.
At first, I was very happy and relieved to get rid of all of it.
Then I went through a difficult phase of crying, and I wondered what I had done to my children,
and what they had eaten without my consent.
I have a child allergic to all food groups. How is that possible?
And not just a few of them, many children. It's almost impossible to achieve. Mothers ask me how to feed their children.
I see an exponential growth of allergies, and when I improve my patients' nutrition,
using organic, GMO-free food, the symptoms disappear.
For most of my patients, there's inflammation or an immune reaction to GMO food, so I have them
off GMO food, which is related to corn and grains, because in my experience,
the immune system has reactions to food with and without GMOs.
I had a healthy patient, 30 years old, who told me that her skin was really burning
when eating any food. She asked me what could be done. So I took her off all of it,
and put her on the highest quality organic food in its basic form.
How to do that, she got better immediately. We might have to help her with something or other enzymes,
but she's getting better. Guess what? When you put her back on corn or soy, she can consume them
if they are not genetically modified.
AUTISM
I worry about all the diseases that we see, but mostly I worry about disorders
on the autistic spectrum, which have increased several times.
We cannot definitively say that GMOs cause autism, but we cannot say they don't.
In fact, autism multiplied with the introduction of GMOs, and animals that ate transgenic plants,
both in the lab and on farms, showed signs of a connection to autism.
Research with pigs has shown that allergic responses to GMO food
produce the same physiological changes and inflammation that can be seen in autistic children.
When I announced this at a symposium in Germany, I was approached by a doctor whose entire career
was spent working with autistic children. He came to me and asked some questions.
I told him what you see in terms of symptoms and behavior in rats, pigs, and cows,
that ate with and without GMOs, he said it's the same found in autistic children.
If ten years ago I could change a child's diet and get a very good response,
remediation and recovery, why isn't this happening now? Because we can no longer change the microflora
because children are constantly given food contaminated with GMOs.
Our son was nine and a half years old and diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder six years ago.
Through therapy, we had many interventions, but we were about two years into GMOs
and the potential damage they caused us and our child. In the last two years, we've seen
great improvement, but purifying his diet of GMOs was key to our success.
I always thought there was a connection between autism and the gut problems our children have.
My children always had problems with digestion, fungal infections, parasites, bacteria, and viruses
in their digestive tract for years.
But only when we kicked GMOs out of his diet did I see the biggest change, especially in behavior.
My son is now 10 years old and has autism. At a conference five years ago, we heard about GMOs
and we immediately decided we wouldn't change it. When we did this, the change was internal.
As the majority of autistic children have many problems with their gut, we immediately saw relief
in the symptoms. Bloating and bowel movements significantly decreased
and the stomach is now in a neurotypical child. It was amazing.
We didn't do anything except put them on organic, non-GMO food.
Most genetically modified crops are made for farmers to facilitate weed control.
For example, these crops resistant to Monsanto's Roundup, which covers most GMOs today,
can withstand the application of Monsanto's best means to eliminate weeds, Roundup.
Roundup.
The active ingredient in Roundup, called glyphosate, and Monsanto patented it as a herbicide in 1974.
However, ten years before that, it was patented as a broad-spectrum chelator.
At a molecular level, chelation is when it hugs and you won't let it go.
It kills the weeds so they don't grow nutrients and it weakens their defenses,
and then disease progresses in the soil, which eventually kills the plant.
This means that plants sprayed with Roundup lack nutrients.
Weak and sick. Animals that eat these plants don't have enough nutrients
and become weak and sick. Then we eat the animals and plants with nutrient deficiencies
and we can become weak and sick. In addition, residues of Roundup plants
can end up in our bodies, where they can chelate and hug nutrients from our bodies
and make them less accessible.
In areas where glyphosate is applied, plants get sick before. Tissue tests show deficits
of manganese, copper, zinc. As a result, food is less nutritious, and it shows in animals.
This is caused by using glyphosate, which lingers in the food chain.
Deficiencies of these substances are well-documented in human and animal diseases.
You need a balance of nutrients for the body to function in all areas,
because all elements support and depend on each other.
Generally, if you have one trace element and watch a specific disease, animals survive
and respond to treatment. If you miss two trace elements, the disease will be more virulent and aggressive,
even if it's the same disease. And if you miss three elements, then things are really serious.
Animals don't respond to treatment, and we will have a high mortality rate.
What does livestock in the United States eat? Crops resistant to Roundup, soybeans, corn, cotton, rapeseed,
sugar beet pulp, and now alfalfa. The majority of their food crops are resistant to Roundup.
And these crops lack nutrients and have high concentrations of Roundup.
Birth defects.
Glyphosate causes many problems for us. One sad side effect is birth defects.
In towns where people work in agriculture, especially soybean farming, we see a 70% increase in the number
birth defects, in areas that are sprayed.
In studies, even events around the world
that glyphosate is directly genotoxic and
causes birth defects.
This doesn't mean someone is directly exposed
to the spray; glyphosate exposure can be through ingestion.
Laboratory animals fed Roundup-resistant soybeans
had severe reproductive disorders.
In rats, the testes changed,
and young sperm were damaged.
In rats, there were changes in the uterus and
ovaries. DNA was not functioning in
the rat offspring embryos. When female rats were fed
transgenic soy, more than half of the young
died within three weeks. The young were
smaller and could not reproduce.
When rats were fed transgenic Bt corn resistant to Roundup,
a small number of young were smaller.
The early, unpublished results could be worse.
In rats, the testes changed color from
pink to blue. In Croatia, the third generation
could not have children, at least. Some
grew hair in their mouths. This is shocking.
But it never goes back. The industry usually suppresses or
denies findings, and pretends there's no problem.
We have a clinic for animal
fertilization; we now have an average of 14
In my community, within 150 kilometers of
my home, there are 50 animal fertilization clinics.
20 years ago,
there probably wasn't one.
One woman from the community worked as a
hairdresser, where women talk. She said women
had to accept that every fourth baby would
not be healthy and they'd have 3 or 4 abortions before a pregnancy.
What does this mean in the long term? I don't know. It's horrific.
We just know that fertility is declining.
There may be other reasons; I don't know the answer. But in the
livestock world, we know there's a downward trend.
MYSTERY ORGANISM
There's a real epidemic of reproductive organ disorders
in livestock in the United States.
Veterinarians and scientists are starting to question
the fetal tissue that's being aborted from livestock.
They found an organism unknown to science.
It's the size of a virus, but has the characteristics of a fungus.
It's never been seen before.
We're still not sure what it is. We've DNA analyzed and sequenced it
to be able to give it a name.
It's a small organism, more resistant to heat,
which could cause reproductive problems.
They took the organism and exposed pregnant chickens
in the lab. Within 48 hours, it killed the embryos.
Veterinarians have performed Koch's postulates on
it: the organism is isolated from the animal,
away from the fetal tissue. It can be grown in a pure
culture, put back into the animal, symptoms recur,
and it's isolated again. This is independent scientific
basis for the claim that it is the organism
that's causing the
reproductive problems.
This new organism is in high concentrations
in Roundup-sprayed soy and corn.
This is especially true with infected crops, where the disease creates the Roundup.
He called me from the sea, and the producer said
he was losing calves to abortion and that cows were dying.
The cows were fed Roundup-resistant corn silage,
sprayed with Roundup.
It's all GMO. Over the years, it reduced the health of cattle and now it's costing calves.
They tested the feed and the cattle and found deficiencies according to Dr. Huber's work.
We had liver samples sent to the university and found a manganese deficiency.
We sent food samples to another lab to test for organisms,
and the food was full of organisms.
Secretary Vilsack was the governor of Iowa before this. He won an award for Biotechnology
Governor of the Year. Now he's in charge of agriculture in the United States.
Dr. Don Huber sent him a letter, describing this organism as an emergency.
I thought it would be irresponsible of me as a scientist
not to inform the Secretary of Agriculture of the seriousness of the developing situation.
Dr. Huber wrote: "For the last 40 years I've been a scientist and a professional military agency
to evaluate and prepare for natural and man-made biological threats, including biological weapons
and disease outbreaks. Based on this experience, I believe this pathogen threat is unique and extremely risky.
Frankly, this should be viewed as an emergency.
He asked the Secretary to delay approval of Roundup-ready alfalfa.
This would increase the use of Roundup in the United States, and if Roundup is linked to this organism,
it will only add fuel to the fire.
A few weeks after receiving the letter, Huber was called by the Food and Drug Administration,
and he gave them the names of scientists and veterinarians with whom to speak.
Six months later, however, they couldn't be reached.
Unfortunately, the Food and Drug Administration completely ignored the problem with Roundup.
In 2011, they approved alfalfa that was resistant to Roundup, as well as Roundup-resistant prairie grass.
Let's look at that for a moment.
Genetic engineering switches genes between species. This process creates mutations throughout the DNA.
This can create new allergens, toxins, and other abominations.
Inserted genes and their proteins can start inflammation, which can lead to a number of problems,
like problems with digestion, allergies, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, cancer, Alzheimer's,
kidney, thyroid, and heart attacks.
Genetically engineered Bt corn produces an insecticide, which can create holes in our intestinal walls.
If this happens, experts link hollow tubes with allergies, autism, and premature aging.
As well as autoimmune diseases, cancer, asthma, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, and others.
Most transgenic crops are made to survive Roundup herbicide applications.
Roundup steals nutrients, which can lead to malnourished plants, animals, and humans.
Roundup can also cause birth defects and other reproductive disorders.
Laboratory animals fed these crops have lost many of their young.
Roundup is also linked to infertility, which can be called hormonal disruption,
nutritional deficiencies or entirely new organisms.
Scientists from the FDA warned that GMOs are dangerous, but their head is a Monsanto man.
Monsanto sells Roundup and most GMO seeds. The FDA doesn't require research and monitoring
of health problems associated with GMO crops.
GMOs AND ANIMALS
For 40 years I've written a newspaper column called 'The Veterinarian'.
In the nineties, I started getting letters from some readers, 25-30 million in the United States.
Mentioning that their cats and dogs had various health problems.
Veterinarians were not effectively curing them. These problems were permanent.
When I told them that changing the recommended nutrition to avoid GMO corn and soy,
and the animals started to get better, I got evidence-based treatments
that their health problems were primarily caused by GMO corn and soy,
and possibly residual glyphosate herbicide in Roundup.
I must have had 40 to 60 letters testifying to this magical treatment.
Veterinarians missed this. Most animals were prescribed special diets,
intestinal inflammation, or skin allergies. Poor dogs would go crazy from diarrhea, as would everyone in the house.
Again, not curing them, most prescribed diets had the same ingredients: GMO corn and soy.
An agricultural consultant described an experience with a client who raised miniature cattle on his farm.
He tried his best to keep things organic, so I gave them GMO corn,
and lost corn, so he went to the supplier. They had nothing but GMO corn,
so the stuff started giving them GMO corn. He said he was told that his cows
had many health problems.
They were very angry, they were calm creatures he was used to.
He said he lost about 90% of his miniature cows. It seems the problem was that they couldn't
process the food properly, so they bloated and died from it.
This is a large cattle producer from my community who feeds about 5,000 cattle, and made the transition.
Many animals died from eating GMO crops. What we ate them again, more of them were killed.
The first 60-80 days of feed we had no deaths, and then we lost one or two a week.
When we changed the diet, the cattle were much calmer,
and we had less pneumonia and health problems.
A farmer called a friend who was excited about switching from GMO corn to soybeans for his pigs.
I was surprised that he was so excited. He stammered, trying to explain what he was talking about.
He told the farmer that disease and treatment costs had decreased. Food intake increased.
The pigs were happy and playful.
He said they had seen changes by the third day. He and his brothers went into the barn and admired
how things had changed. They laughed, saying it couldn't be the GMO corn.
They were funny and ignored, but they understood that the prime changes began after two or three days.
By the eleventh day, he called me, dramatic changes.
The family was tormented by high morbidity rates for over 12 years, since they introduced genetically engineered corn.
But only when they saw the progress in the pigs' health and behavior,
they realized that the transgenic corn was causing the problems.
A pig farm owner in Denmark switched to GMO soy in April 2011.
Within two days, serious and fatal diarrhea in piglets almost disappeared.
After the switch, disease rates significantly declined. Deaths from stomach and liver disease stopped.
Congenital defects were astounding. Insemination rates and litter size also increased.
MILK PRODUCTS AND CANCER
Pozilak is the most researched new product ever, and now you can buy it to increase potential profits.
Monsanto scientists took genes from cows and put them into E. coli bacteria,
so the bacteria produce hormones for the cows.
This is given to cows to increase milk production.
It's nicknamed "crack for cows" and increases their metabolism.
It also creates more mastitis, a painful infection of the udder, so the milk has more pus, antibiotics,
because cows are increasingly given growth hormones. But what doctors really worry about is the increased amount of IGF-1:
insulin growth factor 1. People with high IGF-1 levels have a higher tendency for cancer.
Premenopausal women with high IGF-1 levels are seven times more likely to get breast cancer.
Men are four times more susceptible to prostate cancer.
It's at a much greater level from cows given bovine growth hormone.
In early 1994, data from the federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta had shown
a dramatic increase in the annual number of ductal breast cancer tissue
in older American women over 50. Ductal breast cancer tissue is among the
most aggressive and deadliest to grow. This increase in five years
resulted in a 55-60% increase of this type of breast cancer.
The FDA's approval process for bovine growth hormone has been highly controversial.
When Canadian scientists discussed how this hormone was approved, they said it was all a typical joke.
The data we have on bovine growth hormone shows enough evidence for rejection.
The agency said it didn't receive the same information. Then they said they did, but only some.
Then they said they got the same information, but that Canada didn't know how to apply the law.
This tells you about what the FDA is up to.
Bovine growth hormone is banned in Europe, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand,
and is now banned in milk at Wal-Mart, Starbucks, JCPenney, and most American products.
To educate consumers about the risks, especially cancer, so we made a milestone
consumer rejection that is slowly pushing bovine growth hormone out of the market.
For all these companies, it all comes down to money.
If you think you're going to make more money
with bovine growth hormone, then it'll be removed. If they
think they can get away with it and make money, they won't.
Our job is to try to ensure that enough
of the public knows about this, tell them this:
"If you continue to use it, I'm not going to buy your products.
I'll go with someone who doesn't use it."
This will be understood.
I spoke with a former Monsanto scientist
and it turns out his colleagues, three
did research on the safety of milk
from cows using bovine growth hormone,
but they found a lot of IGF-1 in the milk and after
that refused to drink milk unless it was organic.
One of them was
himself buying cows.
CHILDREN AND GMOs
Children are more sensitive to GMOs for several reasons.
The first is a higher rate of metabolism.
They process food faster and they need more
food. Their cells grow faster. They grow rapidly,
so you have a higher rate of cellular turnover and
metabolism, a greater frequency of respiration,
they need more
nutrients, they eat more.
Another reason is that children are more sensitive than adults
to lower doses of toxins, and don't react the same to them.
Their immune systems aren't ready yet,
they can't digest it well,
enzymes and have developed
bacteria in their gut.
The bioaccumulation of toxins may be greater in their bodies,
which have a lower mass.
For all these reasons,
children are more vulnerable.
All pregnant women speak up
to give their children GMO-free food.
We tell them to eat GMO-free food
at least two weeks before trying to conceive,
and even better. We know that all
genetic changes can be passed to the baby,
can be transferred to future generations. This is
a new field of genetics called epigenetics.
It worries me. Before thinking genetics didn't
change that much. Now we know that's not true.
Speed can modify
expression and be inherited.
If the mother eats GMO food, it will have
an effect on her child's growth and development.
This is another factor that affects the uterine fluid badly,
and over time causes disaster.
Formula for newborn babies
No pediatrician would ever tell
you instead of breastfeeding, to use formula.
So I breastfeed. Throughout my career I have not met
a pediatrician who said she couldn't breastfeed.
Breastfeed, breastfeed, and
then breastfeed again.
Some mothers can't breastfeed, so they use
formula. I recommend only organic formula.
I think that almost all formula for newborn babies
is soy-based, made from genetically modified soy.
This means that it's a dangerous threat
to health. The risk of allergic reactions
is too great that it gives to
children, especially at such a young age.
Almost all formula for newborn babies
uses cow's milk exposed to bovine growth hormone
and its derivatives from GMO corn.
Independent lab tests show
a large amount of GMO soy
in four popular soy-based
formulas.
Similac Advance: 42%; Gerber Good Start Soy: 48%; Enfamil ProSobee: 49%; Walmart Soy: 66%.
The U.S. government's WIC program supplies
2 million newborn babies with formula,
but only with
transgenic species.
When I first found out that GMO food was for
newborn babies, honestly, I was offended.
I didn't know how it could happen
in this country, and I felt guilty
because as a mother I didn't know it existed, and
that I was giving my child something dangerous.
But when I found out, I immediately stopped, and
everything I threw out, so we're starting over.
They are very vulnerable, and we fed
them GMO food before they were born.
We know that things like Bt toxin and Roundup can
enter the fetus and then feed them formula
from transgenic corn and soy, and milk
from cows given growth hormones.
What are we doing
to our children?
WHY GMOs?
They just tell us that this is probably the best
technology to feed the world, and that's not true.
I'm not sure why we have
GMOs; it doesn't make sense.
Genetically modified organisms are really just products for sale.
Unless there's a company pushing them and trying
to make money from it, there's no point.
Because we can all find what we want
without genetically modified organisms.
There's always a better way to achieve everything because
every GMO is trying to do it for you.
There are better ways when
we understand nature.
It's cheaper, requires less
labor, and without damaging nature.
I think that our international companies presented
a huge lie, and forced us to think
that transgenic is the way to feed
the future. That's not true.
It's a bad idea because we don't know the bad health effects.
It's not worth sacrificing human health
for a small increase in yield or longer shelf life.
We are in an age where the history of science should not be to do something just because we can.
We started planting Roundup-resistant transgenic cotton crops in
2005 and 2006, about 4 square kilometers.
We thought this would be a great way to
offset labor and fuel costs.
That was before I started reading what
was written on the bag with the cotton seeds.
There were several different warnings: don't touch, don't put in your mouth, don't do this, come running to the doctor,
call this number. And I sat there thinking, 'What am I planning to put in the ground?'
Trying to save some fuel? I'm even making the problem worse.
I participated in this toxic recipe that
creates the need for additional chemicals.
If this is the solution for our agriculture, no wonder we have so many problems.
This system is excellent, why do we need GMOs? Because we can't feed the world.
On the contrary. In my community, we did testing with corn.
And we did better than with GMOs, no question.
The myth that people are starving in the world is very strong. It's been presented to us for 30-40 years.
In reality, there's 1.5 times more food in the world than we need for everyone.
Josette Sheeran, even from the World Food Programme, at the height of the crisis, acknowledged
the problem wasn't a lack of food, but that people couldn't afford it.
I was at a conference of experts who really know world nutrition. Secretary Vilsak was a speaker.
When he started talking about how GMOs could feed the world, the experts scoffed at him.
There's no evidence that GMOs will sustainably and equitably feed the world in the future.
The world can eat, it always could. The world has enough food.
People might not get food because of corruption, but there's plenty.
Monsanto's desire to make GMOs fail is falling on our eyes.
The world can and should be solved, faster, better. Soon.
MYTHS ABOUT GMOs
There are many myths about what GMOs should and can do.
You need to increase supply. Actually, they reduce yields.
Looking at reports from the Center for Food Safety, the yields aren't successful.
Investigations were done on millions of farms in developed countries, and they showed
an average yield increase of 79%; but for sustainable techniques, not for GMOs.
In the US, GMOs showed no difference from organic crops grown side-by-side
for soybeans and corn, except in times of drought, when organic outperformed GMO crops.
They also say GMOs should increase profits for farmers. That's not true.
In principle, all independent research, while I refer to those not directly or indirectly
paid by the biotech industry, all these studies show that transgenic technology
is something close to an economic fairy tale.
They said it would increase American transgenic exports. What happened was the opposite.
We lost 99% of our corn exports to Europe.
The biotech industry has argued for years that herbicide-resistant crops
reduce the amount of herbicides applied. That was true for the first few years when these new crops were introduced.
After a few years, the weeds changed and developed resistance, and herbicide use has increased recently.
Research has shown that transgenic crops apply 147 million more pounds of pesticides
compared to non-GMO ones in the United States. We have 40 square kilometers of cotton in Diodji
that is resistant to herbicides, including glyphosate. Guess how we control them?
Because glyphosate no longer works, we now have to use crops made with 2,4-D.
For those of you too young to know, this is one of the components of Agent Orange,
So it's not safe herbicide.
Roundup is used so much that the geological survey found it in 60-100%
of air, rain and water samples.
It's in citizens' urine, in pregnant women's blood, in their fetuses. It's everywhere.
This is a scam for rich companies to make money. It's not going to improve our lives,
or anything that happens in nature.
It has nothing to do with feeding the world. The blind and disabled won't change the blind walking,
only chemical companies that sell chemicals.
When I heard Monsanto's plans, I was stunned.
Monsanto's goal is to replace all natural seeds and to have the world's agriculture
start with transgenic seeds and create a market for the chemicals associated with the seeds.
There are no signs of nature. The question arises how to eliminate natural seeds.
I get into debates with people who say: "The government reviewed and approved it, there was a lot of research,
so they can't be wrong, and if it were so bad, someone would have said something about it."
In fact, the minority who say something against it pay a high price in their lives and careers.
These are recorded attacks on people who ask questions. They are not secret.
They have a chilling effect on other scientists' willingness to do their work.
One way to prevent scientists from doing something is to show them that if they get results
that disagree with the biotech industry's public relations message,
and if they persist and publish the results, or talk about them at meetings - their dean will be visited
by a delegation from the company. Politicians at the state level say: "You know what's happening
in the agronomy department at the university? One of the professors wants to hurt your farmers.
It's better to call the dean and send a message to that person."
This happens through routine.
Frankly, because of their direct investment in our universities, new teachers also realize
that if they want to get tenure, they shouldn't do negative research on transgenics.
When I spoke at the UN about the dangers of GMOs and returned to the department
at Oregon State University, I immediately received a letter from the former university president,
in which he told me that if I don't believe in the technology, I don't belong at the university.
It's amazing how much the companies dominate the discussion about anything and what is said
and who is willing to participate in it.
It's difficult for researchers to get seeds to test them. Monsanto, Syngenta, and Dupont
won't provide seeds for testing. They maintain they do their own research
for their industrial purposes. It's hard to do research, and then when they do,
it's very difficult to get it published.
Many researchers working on transgenic crops are severely punished. They lose their jobs,
cancel their funding, and reposition them in labs.
As soon as you fight these international corporations, they try to destroy your reputation,
to show that your methodology is wrong.
In the end, the responsibility falls on the scientists who estimate. That's me.
If I agree, then I'm part of the corruption, and if I don't agree, they fire me. I choose the latter.
Dr. Arpad Pusztai, one of the world's leading researchers in his field, received funding
$3 million to test the safety of GMOs. We wanted to create a protocol
that would be used for approval in the European Union.
Through this protocol, rats were tested, and it turned out that the genetic engineering process
is intrinsically dangerous and can create precancerous cell growth in the digestive tract,
the brain, the testes, partial atrophy of the liver, damage to the immune system, and do all that within ten days.
When he went public with this issue, he was a hero for two days at his prestigious institute.
Then came two alleged phone calls from the office of the British Prime Minister,
from the receptionist to the CEO.
The next morning, Dr. Pusztai was fired after 35 years. Threatening a lawsuit,
it spread, and the research team of 20 members, taking the data
and never completed the protocol.
Instead, they launched a campaign to destroy his reputation.
In Argentina, when a scientist, Andres Carrasco, planned to give a lecture on Roundup
and its involvement with birth defects, an organized group of a hundred people attacked him.
He managed to get into his car, where he locked himself in, but they battered his car for two hours.
His friends weren't so lucky. One is blind and another paralyzed.
And the list goes on:
Dr. Ignacio Chapela - found GMO corn infected in Mexico. They threatened him, denied him a permanent position at the university, and organized a campaign to falsely discredit him.
Dr. Irina Ermakova - stated that most of the offspring of rats fed transgenic soy died after three weeks. She was openly attacked and discredited. She was ordered to stop her research.
Dr. Terje Traavik - investigated an outbreak in the Philippines where farmers inhaled pollen from Bt corn. He also became a victim of 'scientists' for GMOs.
GMOs IN INDIA
Monsanto's story is eating the world. This is a thumb of their liberation.
Let's see what happened in India.
They took over the cotton industry and forced millions of farmers to grow their Bt cotton.
The cotton is designed to create an insecticide that pierces the stomach of insects and kills them.
Normally, Bt is a natural soil bacterium. When used as a spray,
for example, on the Pacific coast against the gypsy moth, about 500 people came forward with symptoms
like allergies and flu. Some had to go to the hospital.
In India, thousands of workers complained of the same symptoms - rashes, itching.
Farmers complained that they got itchy when they went to read.
When farmers work in Bt cotton fields, they get allergies and skin rashes.
But when you work in fields of non-Bt cotton, there are no such symptoms.
In India, animals are allowed to graze in cotton fields after harvest.
For years, they had no problems. But when they introduced Bt cotton, they saw that thousands of animals got sick,
and thousands died.
There's a small organization called the Dean Society for Development, which asked the government to test the Bt cotton,
to see if it was connected to the animal deaths.
They went to the government, which did nothing. Then to the university, which again did nothing.
Then they did their own research. They took nine sheep.
6 of the sheep ate Bt cotton, Bolgard 1 or 2, and 3 sheep ate non-transgenic cotton.
Throughout the month, all the sheep that ate Bolgard 1 or 2 died.
And the animals that ate non-Bt cotton and pesticides were still alive and active.
I visited a village in Andhra Pradesh. For years they let the buffalo
graze in the cotton fields after harvest.
13 grazing buffalo in a Bt cotton field for just one day. After 3 days, 13 buffalo died.
We know that transgenic crops have unexpected side effects.
It doesn't just affect health, but also agriculture.
Bt cotton, grown in India, is very unreliable. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
But there's no safety net. Millions of farmers have invested money in expensive seeds and chemicals.
Many of them took loans with high interest rates. When the cotton doesn't succeed,
most can't repay the high-interest loans.
The consequence is a shocking number of farmer suicides.
The unreliable, expensive seed performance achieved by farmers leads to debt, and that debt leads to suicide.
All our research in the last decade shows that suicides are concentrated
in areas where cotton is grown, and especially Bt cotton, where the numbers are much higher.
My colleague estimates there are 250,000 farmer suicides in this country,
of which at least three-quarters are from Bt cotton.
GMOS IN SOUTH AFRICA
Farmers in South Africa grow genetically engineered corn and feed it to their animals.
The cows have problems with milk production, arthritis, sterility, and short life expectancy.
Pigs have also been affected by this.
The biggest problem is infertility. There are respiratory problems like pneumonia,
also diarrhea, and they eventually die.
It's cannibalism, they literally eat each other.
He said, 'Dr. Skau, you've told me so many things, can you narrow it down to just one thing?'
'What should I do when I go home?' I said, 'You can, it's very simple.'
Go home and stop putting transgenic products on their farms.
After cultivating GMO corn and feed, their animal health problems
disappeared after a few weeks.
It lasted 5-6 months until they ran out of food. And guess what - the only food available
was again based on transgenics. Within 60 days, the herd of cattle was the same mess as before.
It took the pigs about three months to return to the same state.
In South Africa, corn is the basis of nutrition, and they eat it three times a day.
50-60 workers on the farm eat only the transgenic corn grown there.
Perhaps every day they eat GMO food from every group in the world.
They have problems like breathing, fever, colds - flu-like symptoms,
as well as severe headaches.
Once or twice a month, one of the workers, and these are older people,
but young people from 20 to 40 years old. He saw something very dramatic.
Individuals talking to each other, their eyes would go in opposite directions and not turn.
When he saw that, the person would usually die within 24 to 48 hours.
When the farmers harvested transgenic corn for their animals, and the workers switched.
All the workers' health problems disappeared.
And then he ran out of corn.
It took 30 to 40 days to return to the same state.
Since then, we have heard several times and said that now there are no GMOs
and that we are grateful for the advice to plant something that is GMO.
REVERSAL OF DAMAGE FROM GMO
People always ask me if the damage from GMO food can be reversed.
Research in Italy on rats gives us some hope. They were fed transgenic soy for 8 months
and had liver, pancreas, and testicle damage. But the following month,
when they got non-GMO food, many of those problems disappeared.
When doctors in this country and other countries learn about the importance of nutrition,
one of the key factors we teach them is to avoid all GMO foods.
In every patient, it's consistent that GMOs must be removed.
I get many patients with various stages of chronic illness.
Even I am competent. Changing the diet and nutritional status,
many of these diseases almost disappeared.
Of course, GMOs are not the only thing I do. I don't just prescribe them,
but whatever works for the individual patient.
Look at what they eat and encourage non-GMOs, and the food industry and everyone will be better off.
So from two days to 2-3 months, and some people healed in a few years.
But it never happened
that this didn't work.
We have to somehow educate the public so they understand
that they have a choice. You don't have to eat GMO food.
AVOID GMOs
There are only 9 transgenic food crops, but their
derivatives can be found in 70% of foods in the supermarket.
Especially in processed foods.
There are 4 ways to avoid GMOs:
Buying organic food, products
that say they are non-GMO,
products from our guide to non-
GMO foods, or completely avoiding risky ingredients.
Especially soy, corn, cottonseed oil,
canola oil, and sugar from sugar beets.
Most crops are
genetically modified.
If grown in the United States, and it says it's
organic or GMO, genetically engineered then.
If we can avoid that, I think that would be a
big step forward in improving health,
as far as allergies, autoimmune diseases and
many others of which we know a lot.
Aspartame is also derived from GMO
microorganisms. Just type into Google
and see the symptoms for a few hours, and
you will never eat aspartame again.
LABELING
When people hear about the health issues of GMOs, the first thing
they want is to avoid them.
Millions of people are trying to avoid
GMOs, and we help to facilitate that.
Go to NonGMOShoppingGuide.com. Search and
find thousands of certified non-GMO products.
Or download the free app for iPhone
ShopNoGMO. Or get our pamphlet.
This makes it easier for you
to buy healthy non-GMO products.
We are very grateful to organizations
that confirm non-GMO products, so we know for sure
to buy something
that we support.
And when looking for non-GMO labels, look for
those that say NON GMO Project Verified.
They are independent verifiers
who confirm companies' claims.
The NON GMO Project is a non-profit organization
dedicated to supplying non-GMO foods,
consumer education on GMO issues and
providing verified non-transgenic options.
Over the past year, sales of confirmed
non-GMO foods rose from 348 million
to over $1.2 billion.
Amazing growth, 219%.
This is because more and more companies
are joining as consumers increasingly seek it out.
We have almost 400 brands that are
enabled in the non-GMO project.
6,000 products,
of which 4,000 are verified.
The dedication of these companies comes
from consumer demand.
People are looking for non-transgenic options, they don't want to be
part of an experiment. I don't want to feed my family.
Companies in the organic and
natural economy are increasing their pace
so what verified and labeled their products,
so people can't be cut off from transgenic experiments.
Currently in the United States, there is no official obligation
to label products that contain transgenics.
The real problem is that this isn't disclosed.
It's celebrated in Europe, Australia, and Asia. But here in the U.S., we live in blissful ignorance.
This is a problem for me because it's not in my family's best interest.
For moms, it's hard to go and read every label. Your time is limited and you need guidance.
It should have been there all along. I feel cheated.
We're all part of a big, controlled experiment. I don't get answers,
because we don't know who's eating GMO food and who isn't. There's no way to investigate this.
I think this is the intent of the producers. Let them be confused,
you can never determine responsibility, even when there's a big problem.
Currently, there are 5 million children with food allergies, and there's no way to know
what your children are eating, if it's not labeled.
These products are on the shelves before you realize it, and now they're in everything.
I don't want to be a human guinea pig. And certainly don't want my two-year-old.
If there's a problem with GMO food, why don't you label it?
If there's no problem, say it's labeled.
So that happened. A ballot initiative for 2012 to label GMOs, and I'm telling you that support.
VOTE THE INITIATIVE IN CALIFORNIA
The issue of labeling GMOs is in full swing in the United States.
Bills have been introduced in 19 states, though none have passed due to Monsanto's lobbying impact.
In California, we have a real chance to win because of the voter's initiative.
People vote directly.
Finally, we have a chance to get what 9 out of 10 Americans have wanted for decades:
labeling GMO food.
About this technology, I have enough questions wondering what's happening to us.
We have an economy where research says everything is in order, an economy that doesn't.
We have independent doctor research that says there are big questions and problems.
There are no long-term studies on humans.
And I'm angry that my grandmother and my government and our institutions aren't protecting us.
We have a right to know what we're putting into our bodies.
The eyes of the world are focused on California.
Because we can reverse all these places with this one. The magnitude of the threat is invisible so far.
All living beings and all future generations are at stake.
We can't let it escape the magnitude of the decision.
If you like GMOs and think you're great, super, be proud of it. Buy it. Highlight it.
We may not buy it. That's the problem we have, is that we go to Washington.
We need to push from the outside, invigorate the FDA, and make our voices heard.
We're going to put power back in the hands of the people. We have people all over the country constantly working in communities.
151 leaders who are organizing their communities and educating their people.
Now we understand what's happening with governments and corporations.
This can happen when a very persistent, semi-disgusting Italian grandmother in California
decides that it's going to.
I just want these corrupt governments and corporations out of my body and my family's lives.
Leave my milk, my food, my family, and my community alone. I can take care of myself.
The whole world can take care of itself.
Do you know the dirty little secret of your biotech industry you'll never not talk about?
Nobody wakes up in the morning with the desire to buy GMO food. Nobody.
No living creature on Earth stands up and says, 'Gee, I can't wait to go to the supermarket
and buy GMO food!'
It's because after 30 years, and hundreds of billions of dollars invested, they haven't come up with anything
that helps the consumer.
Better taste, no lower price, no more nutrition. Ah, it's nothing. Zero. Potatoes.
GET OUR FOOD BACK
How to get rid of GMO food? It's easier than you think.
I don't need to ask the government for help. We can do it ourselves.
When you were in Europe, consumer rejection came to a head at the end of April 1999,
in one week, most of the major food producers had promised to stop using transgenic ingredients.
They became marketing constraints.
When you in the US parents realized the connection between bovine growth hormone and cancer,
it was kicked out of the majority of the dairy products in the United States.
How many Americans does it take to make a tipping point? We think it's just 5%.
Why? If the same companies that dumped GMOs in Europe
see even a small drop in market share in the United States, that can be linked to GMOs, and here it will be settled as well as in Europe.
It becomes a wake-up call, a rejection of GMOs, and we can do it ourselves.
These companies are parasites, they don't care. They want to get and manage the government,
and now they run our government. I don't know for how long, but I think their time is running out.
Even though you can't control what yesterday produced, what today spends money on,
you control what will be produced tomorrow.
Mothers and consumers will bring change. If it requires healthy products for our children,
if we refuse to buy transgenic products, then the economy will have to respond.
Mothers are the ones who buy 80% of products, including food and cleaning products.
And if we stop supporting companies, then they will feel it in their pockets.
Unfortunately, I think they're just relevant.
One of the basic powers of nature is a mother's protection of her child.
Most women will do anything to protect their child.
When you take advantage of that power in a positive way, we are unstoppable.
This affects everything and everyone. This is not just a question of agriculture and the food industry.
It is a question of all living beings.
This is the most dangerous thing that humanity has faced in our generation.
Should I be worried? You should be scared. Not just for your children, but for yourselves too.
Why do you think so many people are sick now? We must not tolerate this.
We must stand up and write to our politicians. We need to talk to people in the stores and say:
"I will not buy it if it's genetically engineered."
I think now we can change the system. The world is ready.
Sometimes we hear that Monsanto cannot win, that the genie is out of the bottle. But that's not true.
Over the last 15 years, we have won all the GMO tomatoes, they don't exist anymore.
GMO potatoes, that they tried and we have decided against that. GMO wheat, that was their big effort.
All the world's wheat to become GMO - that we won. Genetically modified rice - and we won.
GMO biological agents - when they want to put all the vaccines in your food. That is a victory.
GMO alfalfa, which would destroy the dairy industry. Six years to stop
and again we did it in court.
GMO sod grass in schools and golf courses - and we won.
They can win. We, win against them and again we did it.
Everything is in our hands, in front of us. It's just a question of avoiding GMO food and inspiring others to do so.
And in the new school, I will try to get it away from GMO. - "What will you do?"
I keep talking to them and maybe will get him out.
"What will you tell them?"
To stop GMO and point with good food.
Written, produced and directed:
Editor:
Associate producer and screenwriter:
If animals had a choice, I know for sure which one they would always pick: non-GMO food.
We have an office mascot dog, a small cocker spaniel named Chloe.
We decided to see if she could tell the difference between food with and without GMO.
She immediately went to the pile of non-GMO corn, instead of the genetically modified corn next to it.
She tasted it, spit it out, took the non-GMO corn and ate it. This is every time.
It was amazing.
In the garage, we continue feeding the livestock. GMO food was placed next to them with non-GMO.
We have seen that rats, mice, and ferrets attacked the non-GMO food, but never the other.
I have 4, 5 clips of GMO corn, brought them home.
I threw them to the chickens and I expected
them to eat it, but they didn't. They just
walked over it and didn't even touch it.
I put two feeders side by side.
The chickens naturally chose the non-GMO supplement.
They emptied the feeder and the other one they
didn't touch. I filled it up again and thought,
to trick the chickens. I turned them
around, and the chickens again chose the non-GMO food,
Which is amazing.
Translation: Mile ivkovi
(Milezivkovic@yahoo.com)