A Bomb Falls on the GMO Project

The Scottish Agriculture Office wanted Rowett to establish guidelines for a scientific testing methodology to be used by Government regulatory authorities to conduct future risk assessments of GMO crops. As the spread of GMO crops was in its earliest stages, mostly in test or field trials, it was a logical next step to prepare such sound regulatory controls.

No better person could have been imagined to establish scientific credibility, and a sound methodology than Dr. Pusztai. He and his wife, Dr. Susan Bardocz, also a scientist at Rowett, had jointly published two books on the subject of plant lectins, on top of Pusztai's more than 270 scientific articles on his various research findings. He was regarded by his peers as an impeccable researcher.

More significant, in terms of what followed, the Pusztai research project was the very first independent scientific study on the safety of gene-modified food in the world. That fact was astonishing, given the enormous importance of the introduction of genetically modified organisms into the basic human and animal diet.

The only other study of GM food effects at the time was the one sponsored by Monsanto, wherein conclusions not surprisingly claimed that genetically-engineered food was completely healthy to consume. Pusztai knew that a wholly independent view was essential to any serious scientific evaluation, and necessary to create confidence in such a major new development. He himself was fully certain the study would confirm the safety of GM foods. As he began his careful study, Pusztai believed in the promise of GMO technology.

Pusitai was given the task of testing laboratory rats in several selected groups. One group would be fed a diet of GM potatoes. The potatoes had been modified with a lectin which was supposed to act as a natural insecticide, preventing an aphid insect attack on the potato crops-or so went the genetically engineered potato maker's claim.

A Bomb Falls on the GMO Project The Scottish government, Rowett and Dr. Pusztai believed they were about to verify a significant breakthrough in plant science

which could be of huge benefit to food production by eliminating need for added pesticides in potato planting. By late 1997, Pusztai was beginning to have doubts.

The rats fed for more than 110 days on a diet of GM potatoes had marked changes to their development. They were significantly smaller in size and body weight than ordinary potato-fed control rats in the same experiment. More alarming, however, was the fact that the GMO rats showed markedly smaller liver and heart sizes, and demonstrated weaker immune systems. The most alarming finding from Pusztai's laboratory tests, however, was the markedly smaller brain size of GMO-fed rats compared with normal potatofed rats. This later finding so alarmed Pusztai that he chose to leave it out when he was asked to present his findings on a UK Independent Television show in 1998. He said later he feared unleashing panic among the population.

What Dr. Arpad Pusztai did say when he was invited to talk briefly about his results on the popular lTV "World in Action" broadcast in August 1998, was alarming enough. Pusztai told the world, "We are assured that this is absolutely safe. We can eat it all the time. We must eat it all the time. There is no conceivable harm which can come to us." He then went on to issue the following caveat to his millions of viewers. He stated, "But,.as a scientist looking at it, actively working in the field, I find that it is very, very unfair to use our fellow citizens as guinea pigs. We have to find guinea pigs in the laboratory."

Pusztai, who had cleared his TV appearance beforehand with the director of Rowett, had been told not to talk in detail about his experiments. What he went on to say, however, detonated the political equivalent of a hydrogen bomb across the world of biotech no logy, politics, science and GMO agribusiness.

Pusztai stated simply that, "the effect (of a diet of GM potatoes) was slight growth retardation and an effect on the immune system. One of the genetically modified potatoes, after 110 days, made the rats less responsive to immune effects." Pusztai added a personal note: "If I had the choice, I would certainly not eat it until I see at

least comparable scientific evidence which we are producing for our genetically modified potatoes:'2

Suddenly, the world was debating the sensational Pusztai comments. Damage to organs and immune systems was bad enough. But the leading UK gene scientist had also said he himself would not eat GMO food if he had a choice.

The initial response from Pusztai's boss, Prof. Philip James, was warm congratulations for the way Pusztai presented his work that day. On James's decision, the Institute even issued a press release based on Pusztai's findings, stressing that "a range of carefully controlled studies underlie the basis of Dr. Pusztai's concerns."3

That token support was to break radically. Within 48 hours, the 68-year-old researcher was told his cohtract would not be renewed. He was effectively fired, along with his wife, who had herself been respected Rowett researcher for more than 13 years. Moreover, under the threat of losing his pension, Pusztai was told not to ever speak to the press about his research. His papers were seized and placed under lock. He was forbidden to talk to members of his research team under threat oflegal action. The team was dispersed. His phone calls and e-mails were diverted.

That was to be only the beginning of a defamation campaign worthy of Third Reich Germany or Stalinist Russia, both of which Pusztai had survived as a young man growing up in Hungary.

Pusztai's colleagues began to defame his scientific repute. Rowett, after several different press releases, each contradicting the previous, settled on the story that Pusztai had simply "confused" the samples from the GMO rats with those from ordinary rats who had been fed a sample of potato known to be poisonous. Such a basic error for a scientist of Pusztai's seniority and proven competence was unheard of. The Press claimed it was one of the w.orst errors ever admitted by a major scientific institution.

However, it was simply not true, as a later audit of Pusztai's work proved.

Rowett, according to exhaustive research by UK journalist Andrew Rowell, later shifted its story, finding a flimsy fallback in the