Genetically Engineered Foods Archives

GM Crop DNA Found in Human Gut Bug

Comments?
Misty L. Trepke
http://www.searching-alternatives.com

GM crop DNA found in human gut bugs
Andy Coghlan

http://online.sfsu.edu/%7Erone/GEessays/GMhumangutbugs.html

For the first time, it has been proved that bacteria in the human
gut can take up DNA from genetically modified food.

However, the UK's Food Standards Agency, which commissioned the
research, says that the overall findings are reassuring rather than
alarming because the amount taken up was barely detectable and only
occurred in special circumstances.

Nonetheless, opponents of GM foods say the results vindicate their
warnings that this might happen, and that the risk of gut bacteria
scavenging antibiotic resistance genes from GM food is no longer
theoretical.

"This is a first," says Adrian Bebb of the Friends of the
Earth. "We've said time and time again there's a risk of this
happening. Now, they've looked just once and they've found it."

Burger and shake

Harry Gilbert and colleagues at the University of Newcastle upon
Tyne made the discovery, after feeding volunteers with a burger and
a milk shake containing GM soya.

To see how the GM food was dealt with by different parts of the
digestive system, he gave the food to 12 healthy volunteers and to
seven volunteers who had previously had their colons surgically
removed.

When he examined stools from the healthy volunteers, he found no
traces whatever of DNA from the GM food. It had all been digested.
Nor did he find any evidence that gut bacteria had taken up the DNA.

But when he examined waste products collected from the seven
ileostomy bags, he found that up to 3.7 per cent of the GM DNA
survived.

Crucially, in three of the seven, he found that bacteria had taken
up GM DNA from the soya. But "despite exhaustive attempts", he could
not isolate the precise bacteria which had taken up the GM DNA. He
concludes that the DNA must have been taken up only by tiny
proportions of gut bacteria.

Destructive enzyme

To account for the differences between the "ileostomists" and
volunteers with intact digestive systems, Gilbert's team speculate
that DNA might survive the small bowel but gets completely destroyed
in the large bowel. They say in a draft manuscript that people with
ileostomies might produce less of the enzyme that degrades DNA.

As supporting evidence, they found that unmodified soya DNA survived
in the small bowel as plentifully as the GM DNA. "It shows that the
GM DNA acts in the body the same way as DNA from regular food," says
a spokeswoman from the FSA.

In a separate experiment on colonies of intestinal cells, Gilbert's
team showed that raw loops of GM DNA called plasmids can be taken up
directly, but only by one gut cell in 3000.

Bacteria containing the same plasmids proved totally incapable of
transferring their genetic cargo into the gut cells. "These data
support the view that GM soya does not represent a significant risk
to human health through gene transfer," says the Gilbert team.

http://online.sfsu.edu/%7Erone/GEessays/GMhumangutbugs.html
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Follow Ups:

• Re: GM Crop DNA Found in Human Gut Bug (Archive in frankenfood.) Walt Stoll [9.8] 08:59:55 1/17/04 (0)

In Reply to: GM Crop DNA Found in Human Gut Bug posted by Misty L. Trepke [676.4] on January 16, 2004 at 17:45:33:

Thanks, Misty.

The one thing you can be sure of is that the manufacturer, who has the federal government bought and paid for, will not ever have to pay for any of the damage to come.

Walt