Gene-Edited Crops Endanger Human and Planetary Health
In an interview with Patrick Holden, co-founder of the Sustainable Food Trust, leading molecular geneticist Dr. Michael Antoniou warns of the unintended consequences of genetic engineering, including gene-editing.
Below is the transcript of a fascinating interview with Michael Antoniou — a scientist who has been highly outspoken about the dangers involved in deregulating gene-edited crops.
Dr. Antoniou is not someone who can easily be dismissed as ignorant of genetics or unfamiliar with the technology involved.
As he explains in the interview, he is a career-long molecular geneticist who has studied the structure and functions of genes for decades.
And, as part of that research, he has long used “all manner of genetic engineering technologies,” including gene editing.
In fact, it is his deep familiarity with gene editing that makes him so concerned about the way it is being used in agriculture, as he explained in a recent edition of the BBC’s popular Countryfile program.
More specifically, it’s why he rejects all those claims about gene editing’s supposed precision. He told the interviewer:
“The gene-editing tools in question here invariably produce unintended DNA damage [and that can] end up changing the biochemistry and the composition of the crop and that could include the production of novel toxins and allergens.”
In a Scottish daily paper, Dr. Antoniou spelled out more about the ways in which the gene-editing process can lead to such unintended outcomes:
“The gene-editing tool DNA can fragment and bits of it can randomly insert in many locations around the DNA of the plant, and that is not being checked for. At each one of the stages of the gene-editing process, you introduce unintended genetic alterations running into the hundreds of thousands. Even the process of growing plant cells in the laboratory introduces hundreds of sites of DNA damage. You end up with a plant that carries a high burden of unintended DNA damage with unknown downstream consequences.”
This is why Dr. Antoniou is critical of the tendency of pro-GM scientists, the U.K. government and a compliant media to mislead people about the level of complexity and risk involved in gene editing, never mind attempts to pretend it is not even a form of genetic modification.
Michael Antoniou also feels that it is his familiarity with genetic engineering in a medical context that helps him recognize the cavalier way in which it is being deployed in agriculture.
As he explains in the following interview, its clinical use is highly regulated, highly contained, carefully monitored, and carefully targeted. One might also add that informed consent is fundamental to medical ethics and the law.
By contrast, in agriculture novel organisms are being created with essentially the same imprecise technology and are then released into the environment and the food supply without, in the case of deregulation, either safety checks or even labeling.
But, as Patrick Holden draws out in this interview, Michael Antoniou’s area of knowledge is not confined to genetic engineering.
Dr. Antoniou has also used his expertise as a health scientist to research not just the health risks associated with GM foods but also those of the pesticide most closely associated with them: glyphosate-based herbicides.
In fact, as Michael Antoniou himself notes, his research lab at King’s College London is “one of the leading groups in the world… in investigating glyphosate and Roundup toxicity, and we’ve seen some very worrying outcomes from our studies.”
What makes this interview particularly compelling is that the podcast host Patrick Holden, as a farmer himself, the former Director of the Soil Association (1995-2010) and the co-founder with Anthony Rodale of the Sustainable Food Trust, brings a wealth of knowledge of farming and the food industry to this lively but in-depth exploration of Michael Antoniou’s concerns, expertise and research.
You may prefer to listen to the interview as a podcast, rather than read the transcript, or even listen and read simultaneously. Either way, in our view, it’s definitely worth a listen.