PART 1: SEEDS OF DESTRUCTION

By William Engdahl

INTRODUCTION
 

"We have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction:' 

George Kennan, 

US State Department 

senior planning official, 1948 

This book is about a project undertaken by a'small socio-political elite, centered, after the Second World War, not in London, but in Washington. It is the untold story of how this self-anointed elite set out, in Kennan's words, to "maintain this position of disparity:' It is the story of how a tiny few dominated the resources and levers of power in the postwar world. 

It's above all a history of the evolution of power in the control of a select few, in which even science was put in the service of that minority. As Kennan recommended in his 1948 internal memorandum, they pursued their policy relentlessly, and without the "luxury of altruism and world-benefaction." 

Yet, unlike their predecessors within leading circles of the British Empire, this emerging American elite, who proclaimed proudly at war's end the dawn of their American Century, were masterful in their use of the rhetoric of altruism and world-benefaction to advance their goals. Their American Century paraded as a softer empire, a "kinder, gentler" one in which, under the banner of colonial liberation, freedom, democracy and economic development, those elite circles built a network of power the likes of which the world had not seen since the time of Alexander the 'Great some three centuries before Christ-a global empire unified under the military control of a sole superpower, able to decide on a whim, the fate of entire nations. 

This book is the sequel to a first volume, A Century of War: Anglo/American Oil Politics and the New World Order. It traces a second thin red line of power. This one is about the control over the very basis of human survival, our daily provision of bread. The man who served the interests of the postwar American-based elite during the 1970's, and came to symbolize its raw realpolitik, was Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Sometime in the mid-1970's, Kissinger, a life-long practitioner of "Balance of Power" geopolitics and a man with more than a fair share of conspiracies under his belt, allegedly declared his blueprint for world domination: "Control the oil and you control nations. Control the food, and you control the people." 

The strategic goal to control global food security had its roots decades earlier, well before the outbreak of war in the late 1930's. It was funded, often with little notice, by select private foundations, which had been created to preserve the wealth and power of a handful of American families. 

Originally the families centered their wealth and power in New York and along the East Coast of the United States, from Boston to New York to Philadelphia and Washington D.C. For that reason, popular media accounts often referred to them, sometimes with derision but more often with praise, as the East Coast Establishment. 

The center of gravity of American power shifted in the decades following the War. The East Coast Establishment was overshadowed by new centers of power which evolved from Seattle to Southern California on the Pacific Coast, as well as in Houston, LasVegas, Atlanta and Miami, just as the tentacles of American power spread to Asia and Japan, and south, to the nations of Latin America. 

In the several decades before and immediately following World War II, one family came to symbolize the hubris and arrogance of this emerging American Century more than any other. And the vast fortune of that family had been built on the blood of many wars, and on their control of a new "black gold;' oil. 

What was unusual about this family was that early on in the building of their fortune, the patriarchs and advisors they cultivated to safeguard their wealth decided to expand their influence over many very different fields. They sought control not merely over oil, the emerging new energy source for world economic advance. They also expanded their influence over the education of youth, medicine and psychology, foreign policy of the United States, and, significant for our story, over the very science of life itself, biology, and its applications in the world of plants and agriculture. 

For the most part, their work passed unnoticed by the larger population, especially in the United States. Few Americans were aware how their lives were being subtly, and sometimes not so subtly, influenced by one or another project financed by the immense wealth of this family. 

In the course of researching for this book, a work nominally on the subject of genetically modified organisms or GMO, it soon became clear that the history of GMO was inseparable from the political history of this one very powerful family, the Rockefeller family, and the four brothers-David, Nelson, Laurance and John D. III-who, in the three decades following American victory in World War II, the dawn of the much-heralded American Century, shaped the evolution of power George Kennan referred to in 1948. 

In actual fact, the story of GMO is that of the evolution of power in the hands of an elite, determined at all costs to bring the entire world under their sway. 

Three decades ago, that power was based around the Rockefeller family. Today, three of the four brothers are long-since deceased, several under peculiar circumstances. However, as was their will, their project of global domination-"full spectrum dominance" as the Pentagon later called it-had spread, often through a rhetoric of "democracy:' and was aided from time to time by the raw military power of that empire when deemed necessary. Their project evolved to the point where one small power group, nominally headquartered in Washington in the early years of the new century, stood determined to control future and present life on this planet to a degree never before dreamed of. 

The story of the genetic engineering and patenting of plants and other living organisms cannot be understood without looking at the history of the global spread of American power in the decades following World War II. George Kennan, Henry Luce, Averell Harriman and, above all, the four Rockefeller brothers, created the very concept of multinational "agribusiness': They financed the "Green Revolution" in the agriculture sector of developing countries in order, among other things, to create new markets for petto-chemical fertilizers and petroleum products, as well as to expand dependency on energy products. Their actions are an inseparable part of the story of genetically modified crops today. 

By the early years of the new century,it was clear that rio more than four giant chemical multinational companies had emerged as global players in the game to control patents on the very basic food products that most people in the world depend on for their daily nutrition-corn, soybeans, rice, wheat, even vegetables and fruits and cotton-as well as new strains of disease-resistant poultry, genetically-modified to allegedly resist the deadly HSNI Bird Flu virus, or even gene altered pigs and cattle. Three of the four private companies had decades-long ties to Pentagon chemical warfare research. The fourth, nominally Swiss, was in reality Anglo dominated. As with oil, so was GMO agribusiness very much an Anglo-American global project. . 

In May 2003, before the dust from the relentless US bombing and destruction of Baghdad had cleared, the President of the United States chose to make GMO a strategic issue, a priority in his post- war US foreign policy. The stubborn resistance of the world's second  largest agricultural producer, the European Union, stood as a formidable barrier to the global success of the GMO Project. As long as Germany, France, Austria, Greece and other countries of the European Union steadfastly refused to permit GMO planting for health and scientific reasons, the rest of the world's nations would remain skeptical and hesitant. By early 2006, the World Trade Organization (WTO) had forced open the door of the European Union to the mass proliferation of GMO. It appeared that global . success was near at hand for the GMO Project. 

In the wake of the US and British military occupation of Iraq, Washington proceeded to bring the agriculture of Iraq under the domain of patented genetically-engineered seeds, initially supplied through the generosity of the US State Department and Department of Agriculture. 

The first mass experiment with GMO crops, however, took place back in the early 1990's in a country whose elite had long since been corrupted by the Rockefeller family and associated New York banks: Argentina. 

The following pages trace the spread and proliferation of GMO, often through political coercion, governmental pressure, fraud, lies, and even murder. If it reads often like a crime story, that should not be surprising. The crime being perpetrated in the name of agricultural efficiency, environmental friendliness and solving the world hunger problem, carries stakes which are vastly more important to this small elite. Their actions are not solely for money or for profit. After all, these powerful private families decide who controls the Federal Reserve,. the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan and even the European Central Bank. Money is in their hands to destroy or create. 

Their aim is rather, the ultimate control over future life on this planet, a supremacy earlier dictators and despots only ever dreamt of. Left unchecked, the present group behind the GMO Project is between one and two decades away from total dominance of the planet's food capacities. This aspect of the GMO story needs telling. I therefore invite the reader to a careful reading and independent verification or reasoned refutation of what follows. 

PART I. 

The Political Beginnings 

CHAPTER 1 

Washington Launches 

the GMO Revolution 

Early GMO Research 

The issue of biotechnology and genetic-modification of plants and other life forms first emerged from research labs in the United States in the late 1970's. During the 1980's, the Reagan Administration acted in key areas of economic policy in ways which echoed the radical policies of the President's close ally, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. There was a special relationship between the two, as both were deeply committed advocates of radical free market policies and less government involvement, combining to give the private sector free reign. 

In one domain, however, that of the emerging field of genetic engineering which developed, some years before, out of DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid) and RNA (Ribonucleic Acid) research, Reagan's Administration was determined to take a back seat to no one in seeing to it that America was Number One. 

A curious aspect of the regulatory history of GMO foods and genetically-engineered products in the United States was that, beginning in the Reagan era, the government showed extreme partisanship in favour of the biotech agribusiness industry. The very  US Government agencies entrusted with the mandate to safeguard the health and safety of the overall population were becoming dangerously biased. 

Some years before, the first commercial GMO product hit the market in the US, the Reagan Administration had been moving quietly to open its doors wide to Monsanto and other private companies which were developing gene-manipulated products. The · key actor within the Reagan Administration on decisions pertaining to the new field of genetically modified products was former head of the CIA, Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush who would himself soon be President, and father of the later President, George W. Bush.[Of course it is Bush 

By the early 1980's, numerous agribusiness corporations were in a gold rush frenzy to develop GMO plants, livestock and GMO based animal drugs. There was no regulatory system in place to control the development, risks and sale of the products. The agribusiness companies wanted to keep it that way. 

The Reagan-Bush Administration was partly driven by an ideological agenda of imposing deregulation, reducing Government supervision in every facet of daily life. Food safety was no exception. Rather to the contrary, and even if that meant the general population could become guinea pigs for entirely untested new health risks. 

The Fraud of "Substantial Equivalence" 

In 1986, Vice President Bush hosted a group of executives from a giant chemical company, Monsanto Corporation of St .. Louis, Missouri, for a special White House strategy meeting. The purpose . of the unpublicized meeting, according to former US Department of Agriculture official, Claire Hope Cummings, was to discuss the "deregulation" of the emerging biotech industry. Monsanto had had a long history of involvement with the US Government and even with Bush's CIA. It had developed the deadly herbicide, Agent Orange, for defoliation of jungle areas in Vietnam during the 1960's. It also had a long record of fraud, cover-up and bribery. 

When he finally became President in 1988, Bush and his Vice President Dan Quayle moved swiftly to implement an agenda giving unregulated free-rein to Monsanto and other major GMO companies. Bush decided it was time to make public the regulatory framework which he had negotiated a few years earlier behind closed doors. 

Vice President Quayle, as head of Bush's Council on Competitiveness, announced that "biotech products will receive the same oversight as other products:' and "not be hampered by unnecessary regulation."1 On May 26, 1992, Vice President Dan Quayle proclaimed the Bush administration's new policy on bioengineered food. 

"The reforms we announce today will speed up and simplify the process of bringing better agricultural products, developed through biotech, to consumers, food processors and farmers," Mr. Quayle told executives and reporters. "We will ensure that biotech products will receive the same oversight as other products, instead of being hampered by unnecessary regulation:"2 Pandora's Box had been opened by the Bush-Quayle Administration. 

Indeed, not one single new regulatory law governing biotech or GMO products was passed then or later, despite repeated efforts by concerned Congressmen that such laws were urgently needed to regulate unknown risks and possible health dangers from the genetic engineering of foods. 

The framework that Bush put in place was simple. In line with the expressed wishes of the biotech industry, the US Government would regard genetic engineering of plants and foods or animals as merely a simple extension of traditional animal or plant breeding. 

Further clearing the path for Monsanto and company, the Bush Administration decided that traditional agencies, such as the US Department of Agriculture, the EPA, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), were competent to evaluate the risks of GMO products. 3 They determined that no special agency was needed to oversee the revolutionary new field. Furthermore, the responsibilities for the four different agencies were kept intentionally vague. 

That vagueness ensured overlap and regulatory confusion, allowing Monsanto and the other GMO operators maximum leeway to introduce their new genetically engineered crops. Yet, to the outside world, it appeared that the new GMO products were being carefully screened. The general public naturally assumed that the Food and Drug Administration or the National Institutes of Health were concerned about their well-being. 

Despite serious warnings from research scientists about the dangers of recombinant DNA research and biotechnology work with viruses, the US Government opted for a system in which the indus- . try and private scientific laboratories would "voluntarily" police themselves in the new field of genetically engineered plants and animals. 

There were repeated warnings from senior US government scientists of the potential dangers to the Bush-Quayle "no regulation" decision. Dr. Louis J. Pribyl, of the Food & Drug Administration was one of 17 government scientists working on a policy for genetically engineered food at the time. Pribyl knew from studies that toxins could be unintentionally created when new genes were introduced into a plant's cells. Pribyl wrote a heated warning memo to the FDA Chief Scientist declaring, "This is the industry's pet idea, namely that there are no unintended effects .. .. But time and time again, there is no data to back up their contention:" 

Other Government scientists concluded there was "ample scientific justification" to require tests and a government review of each genetically engineered food before it was sold. "The possibility of unexpected, accidental changes in genetically engineered plants justifies a limited traditional toxicological study:" they declared.4 Their voices went unheeded by the Bush Administration. They had cut their deal with Monsanto and the emerging biotech agribusiness industry. 

At that early stage, few paid any attention to the enormous implications of genetic engineering on such a mass scale, outside a small circle of scientists being financed by the largesse of a handful of foundations. And no foundation was more important in the financing of this emerging sector of biotechnology than the Rockefeller Foundation in New York.  

By 1992, President George H.W. Bush was ready to open the Pandora's Box of GMO. In an Executive Order, the President made the ruling that GMO plants and foods were "substantially equivalent" to ordinary plants of the same variety, such as ordinary corn, soybeans, rice or cotton.5 

The doctrine of "substantial equivalence" was the lynchpin of the whole GMO revolution. It meant that a GMO crop could be considered to be the same as a conventional crop, merely because GMO corn looked like ordinary corn or GM rice or soybean, and even tasted more or less like conventional corn, and because in its chemical composition and nutritional value, it was "substantially" the same as the natural plant. 

That determination that GMO plants were to be treated as "substantially equivalent" ignored the qualitative internal alteration required to genetically engineer the particular crop. As serious scientists pointed out, the very concept of "substantial equivalence" was itself pseudo-scientific. The doctrine of "substantial equivalence" had been created primarily to provide an excuse for not requiring biochemical or toxicological tests. 

Because of the Bush Administration's "substantial equivalence" ruling, no special regulatory measures would be required for genetically engineered varieties. 

Substantial equivalence was a phrase which delighted the agribusiness companies. That wasn't surprising, for Monsanto and the others had created it. Its premise was deceitful, as Bush's science advisers well knew. 

Genetic modification of a plant or organism involved taking foreign genes and adding them to a plant such as cotton or soybeans to alter their genetic makeup in ways not possible through ordinary plant reproduction. Often the introduction was made by a gene "cannon" literally blasting a plant with a foreign bacteria or DNA segment to alter its genetic character. In agricultural varieties, hybridization and selective breeding had resulted in crops adapted to specific production conditions and regional demands. 

Genetic engineering differed from traditional methods of plant and animal breeding in very important respects. Genes from one  organism could be extracted and recombined with those of another (using recombinant DNA, or rONA, technology) without either organism having to be of the same species. Second, removing the requirement for species reproductive compatibility, new genetic combinations could be produced in a highly accelerated way. The fateful Pandora's Box had indeed been opened. The fictional horrors of the "Andromeda Strain:" the unleashing of a biological catastrophe, was no longer the stuff of science fiction. The danger was real, and no one seemed to be overtly concerned. 

Genetic engineering introduced a foreign organism into a plant in a process that was imprecise and unpredictable. The engineered products were no more "substantially equivalent" to the original than a tiny car hiding a Ferrari engine would be to a Fiat. 

Ironically, while companies such as Monsanto argued for "substantial equivalence:' they also claimed patent rights for their genetically modified plants on the argument that their genetic engineering had created substantially new plants whose uniqueness had to be protected by exclusive patent protection. They saw no problem in having their cake and eating it too .  

With the Bush Administration 1992 ruling, that was to be upheld by every successive Administration, the US Government treated GMO or bio-engineered foods as "natural food additives:' therefore not subjecting them to any special testing. If it wasn't necessary to test normal corn to see if it was healthy to eat, so went the argument, why should anyone have to bother to test the "substantially equivalent" GM corn, soybean, or GM milk hormones produced by Monsanto and the other agribusiness companies? 

In most cases, the Government regulatory agencies simply took the data provided to them by the GMO companies themselves in order to judge that a new product was fine. The US Government agencies never ruled against the gene giants. 

"Nature's Most Perfect Food" 

The first mass-marketed GMO food was milk containing a recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone, known as rBGH. This was a genetic manipulation patented by Monsanto. The FDA declared the genetically-engineered milk safe for human consumption before crucial information on how the GM milk might affect human health was available, diligently holding up to the doctrine of substantial equivalence.

The rBGH hormone constituted a huge temptation for struggling dairy farmers. Monsanto claimed that if injected regularly with rBGH, which it sold under the trade name Posilac, cows woUld typically produce up to thirty percent more milk. For the struggling farmer, a thirty percent jump in output per cow was astonishing and virtually irresistible. Monsanto advertised that farmers should "leave no cow untreated:" One state agriculture commissioner termed rBGH "crack for cows" because of its extraordinary stimulating effects on milk output.6 

Monsanto's new Posilac rBGH hormone not only stimUlated the cow to produce more milk. In the process it stimUlated production of another hormone, IGF-l, which regulated the cow's metabolism, in effect, stimulating the cell division within the animal and hindering cell death. This is where problems began to appear. 

Various independent scientists spoke out, warning that Monsanto's rBGH hormone increased the levels of insulin-like growth factors, and had a possible link to cancer. One of the most vocal scientists on the matter was Dr. Samuel Epstein, from the University of Illinois's School of Public Health. Epstein, a recognized authority on carcinogens, warned of a growing body of scientific evidence that the InsUlin-like Growth Factor (IGF-l), was linked to the creation of human cancers, cancers which might not appear for years after initial exposure.7 

Not surprisingly, hormone stimulation that got cows to pump 30% more milk had other effects. Farmers began to report their cows burned out by as much as two years sooner, and that many cows had serious hoof or udder infections as a by-product of the rBGH hormone treatment, meaning that some of them could not walk. In turn, the cows had to be injected with more antibiotics to treat those effects. 

The FDA countered the growing criticism by using data provided by Monsanto, which, not surprisingly, severely criticized the independent scientists. With Monsanto's chief rBGH scientist, Dr. Robert Collier, with tongue firmly in cheek, retorted that, "In fact the FDA has commented several times on this issue .... They have publicly restated human safety confidence ... this is not something knowledgeable people have concerns about" 8 That was hardly reassuring for anyone aware of the relationship between Monsanto and the FDA leadership. 

In 1991, a scientist at the University of Vermont leaked to the press that there was evidence of severe health problems affecting rBGH-treated cows, including mastitis, an inflammation of the udder, and deformed births. Monsanto had spent more than half a million dollars to fund the University of Vermont test trials of rBGH. The chief scientist of the project, in direct opposition to his alarmed researcher, had made numerous public statements asserting that rBGH cows had no abnormal levels of health problems compared with regular cows. The unexpected leak from the upstart whistleblower was embarrassing for both Monsanto and the University receiving Monsanto research dollars, to say the least.9 

The US General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of the US Congress, was called in to investigate the allegations. Both the University of Vermont and Monsanto refused to cooperate with the GAO, which was finally forced to give up the investigation with no results. Only years later did the University finally release the data, which indeed showed the negative health effects of rBGH. By then, however, it was too late. 

In 1991, the Food and Drug Administration created the new position of Deputy Commissioner for Policy to oversee agency policy on GMO foods. The agency named Michael R. Taylor to be its first head. Taylor came to the job as a Washington lawyer. But not just any old garden variety of Washington lawyers. As·a food and drug law specialist with the Washington power firm, King & Spalding, Taylor had previously successfully represented Monsanto and other biotech companies in regulatory cases. 10 

Monsanto's chief scientist, Margaret Miller, also assumed a top post in the FDA as Deputy Director of Human Food Safety at the beginning of the 1990's. In this position, Dr. Miller, without an explanation, raised the FDA standard by 100 times for the permissible level of antibiotics that farmers could put into milk. She single handedly cleared the way for a booming business for Monsanto's rBGH hormone. A cozy club was emerging between private biotech companies and the government agencies that should be regulating them. It was a club more than a little fraught with potential conflict of interest.11 

As one of its top officials, Taylor helped the FDA draw up guidelines to decide whether GMO foods should be labeled. His decision was not to label GMO foods. 

At the same time, again under Taylor's guiding hand, the FDA ruled that risk-assessment data, such as data on birth defects in cattle or even possible symptoms in humans arising from consumption of GMO foods, could be withheld from the public as "confidential business information:" 

Were it to leak out that Monsanto, Dow or other biotech companies were creating grotesque deformities in animals fed GMO foods, it might be detrimental for the stock price of the company, and that would damage the full flowering of private enterprise. 

This, at least, seemed the logic behind the perverse kind of "Shareholder value ueber Alles:" As FDA Biotechnology Coordinator James Maryansky remarked, "The FDA would not require things to be on the label just because a consumer might want to know them."12 

A lawyer for Monsanto, Michael R. Taylor, had been placed in charge of GMO food policy within the government's principal food safety body. As a suitable postscript, honoring the adage, "we take care of our friends;" Monsanto rewarded the diligent public servant by appointing Michael Taylor to be Vice President of Monsanto for Public Policy after he left the FDA. 13 

FDA and Monsanto Milk the Public 

By 1994, after a suitable amount of time had elapsed, the FDA approved the sale of rBGH milk to the public. Under the FDA rules, of course, it was unlabeled, so the consumer could avoid undue anxiety about giving himself or his children exposure to cancerous agents or other surprises. He would never know. When Monsanto's Posilac caused leukemia and tumors in rats, the US Pure Food and Drug Act was rewritten to allow a product that caused cancer in laboratory animals to be marketed for human consumption without a warning label. It was as simple as that. 

Though Monsanto claimed that its rBGH was one of the most thoroughly examined drugs in US history, rBGH was never tested in the long-term for (chronic) human health effects. A generally accepted principle in science holds that two years of testing is the minimal time for long-term health studies. rBGH was tested for only 90 days on 30 rats. The short-term rat study was submitted by Monsanto to the FDA but was never published. The FDA refused to allow anyone outside the administration to review the raw data from this study, saying that publication would "irreparably harm" Monsanto. Monsanto has continued to refuse to allow open scientific peer review of the 90 day study. This linchpin study of cancer and BGH has never been subjected to scrutiny by the scientific community. 14 

Not content to feed GMO milk exclusively to its own unwary population, the US Government exerted strong pressure on Mexico and Canada also to approve rBGH, as part of an effort to expand Monsanto's rBGH market globally. 

However, the FDA-Monsanto campaign got a nasty setback in January 1999, when the Canadian counterpart to the FDA, Health Canada, broke ranks with the US and issued a formal "notice of non-compliance" disapproving future Canadian sales of rBGH, sometimes also called rBST or recombinant Bovine Somatotropin. 

The action followed strong pressure from the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association and the Royal College of Physicians, which presented evidence of the adverse effects of rBGH milk, including evidence of lameness and reproductive problems. Monsanto had been very eager to break into the Canadian market with its rBGH, even to the point, according to a Canadian CBC television report, that a Monsanto official tried to bribe a Canadian health official sitting on the Government review committee with an offer of $1-2 million, to secure rBGH approval in Canada without  further studies.The insulted official reportedly asked, "Is that abribe?" and the meeting ended. 15

Moreover, a special European Commission independent committee of recognized experts concluded that rBGH, as reported in Canadian findings, not only posed the above-named dangers, but also major risks especially of breast and prostate cancer in humans.

In August 1999, the United Nations Food Safety Agency, the Codex Alimentarius Commission, ,ruled unanimously in favor of a 1993 European Union moratorium on the introduction of Monsanto's rBGH milk. Monsanto's rBGH was thus banned from the EU. 16

This setback was not to daunt the persistent bureaucrats at the FDA, or their friends at Monsanto. Since GMO labeling had been forbidden by the FDA, Americans were blissfully unaware of the dangers of drinking the milk they were encouraged to consume for better health. "Nature's most perfect food" was the dairy industry's slogan for milk. With regard to reporting the UN decision and the negative Canadian conclusions, the US media were respectfully quiet. Americans were simply told that the EU was trying to hurt American cattle farmers by refusing imports of hormone-fed US beef.

One concerned FDA scientist who refused to sit by idly was FDA Veterinarian Dr. Richard Burroughs, who was responsible, from 1979 until 1989, for reviewing animal drugs such as rBGH. From 1985 until the year he was fired, Burroughs headed the FDA's review of Monsanto's rBGH, thus being directly involved in the evaluation process for almost five years. Burroughs wrote the original protocols for animal safety studies and reviewed the data submitted by rBGH developers from their own safety studies.

In a 1991 article in Eating Well magazine, Burroughs described a change in the FDA beginning in the mid-1980s. Burroughs was faced with corporate representatives who wanted the FDA to ease strict safety testing protocols. He reported seeing corporations dropping off sick cows from rBGH test trials and then manipulating data in such ways as to make health and safety problems "disappear."17 

Burroughs challenged the agency's lenience and its changing role from guardian of public health to protector of corporate profits. He criticized the FDA and its handling of rBGH in statements to Congressional investigators, in testimonies to state legislatures, and in declarations to the press. Within the FDA, he rejected a number of corporate-sponsored safety studies, calling them insufficient. Finally, in November 1989, he was fired for "incompetence." 

The FDA failed to act on the evidence that rBGH was not safe. In fact, the agency promoted the Monsanto Corporation's product before and after the drug's approval. Dr. Michael Hansen of Consumers Union noted that the FDA acted as an rBGH advocate by issuing news releases promoting rBGH, making public statements praising the drug, and writing promotional pieces about rBGH in the agency's publication, FDA Consumer. 18 

In April 1998, two enterprising award-winning television journalists at Fox TV, an influential US network owned by Rupert Murdoch, put together the remarkable story of the rBGH scandal including its serious health effects. Upon pressure by Monsanto, Fox killed the story and fired Jane Akre and her husband Steve. In an August 2000 Florida state court trial, the two won a jury award of $425,000 damages and the Court found that Fox "acted intentionally and deliberately to falsify or distort the plaintiffs' news reporting on rBGH."19 

With their ample financial resources, Fox Television and Monsanto took the case to a higher court on appeal and got the decision reversed on a legal technicality. The FDA kept silent. Monsanto continued to market rBGH milk unabated. As one former US Department of Agriculture official stated, the guiding regulatory percent for genetically modified foods was, "don't tell, don't ask:" which meant, "If the industry does not tell government what it knows about its GMOs, the government does not ask:"20 That was little reassurance for the health and safety concerns of the population. Few ever realized it however, as on the surface it appeared that the FDA and other relevant agencies were guarding their health interests in the new area of GMO foods. 

In January 2004, after FDA inspectors broke their silence by declaring having found unacceptable levels of contamination in rBGH, Monsanto finally announced it would reduce the supply of Posilac by 50%. Many thought Monsanto would quietly discontinue production of the dangerous hormone. Not easily deterred by anything, least of all evidence of danger to human health, Monsanto announced a year later that they planned to increase the supply of Posilac again, initially to 70% of its peak level. They had come under enormous pressure not only from citizens concerned about health consequences, but also from farmers who realized that the 30% rise in national milk output from dairy herds had only served to create an even larger glut of unsold milk in a nation already in surplus. It had also triggered collapsing milk prices. 

By then, Monsanto had moved on to corner the global market in seeds for the most important staples in the human and animal diets. 

Monsanto's Cozy Government Relations 

The relation between the US Government and giant GMO seed producers such as Monsanto, DuPont or Dow AgriSciences was not accidental. The Government encouraged development of unregulated GMO crops as a strategic priority, as noted, since the early years of the Reagan Presidency, long before it was at all clear whether such engineering of nature was at all desirable. It was one thing for a government to support long-term laboratory research through science grants. It was quite another thing to open the market's floodgates to untested, risky new procedures which had the potential to affect the basic food supply of the country and of the entire planet. 

Washington was becoming infamous for what some called "revolving door government." The latter referred to the common practice of major corporations to hire senior government officials directly from government service into top corporate posts where their government influence and connections would benefit the company. Similarly, the practice worked in reverse,where top corporate persons got picked for prime government jobs where they could promote the corporation's private agenda inside the government. 

Few companies were more masterful at this game of the revolving door than Monsanto. That corporation was a major contributor to both Republican and Democratic national candidates. During the controversy over the labeling of Monsanto's rBGH milk, the 12 members of the Dairy Subcommittee of the House Agricultural committee were no strangers to Monsanto's campaign largesse. They had won a total of $711,000 in Monsanto campaign finance. It is not possible to prove that this fact influenced the Committee's decision. However, it evidently did not hurt Monsanto's case. The Committee killed the proposed labeling law. 

Monsanto had a special skill in placing its key people in relevant Government posts. George W. Bush's Agriculture Secretary, Ann Veneman, came to Washington in 2001 from a job as director of Calgene, a biotech company which became a Monsanto subsidiary. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had been CEO of Monsanto subsidiary G.D. Searle, producer of GMO-based artificial sweetener and carcinogen, Aspartame. Rumsfeld had also been Chairman of California biotech company Gilead Science, which held the patent on Tamiflu. 

Former US Trade Representative and lawyer to Bill Clinton, Mickey Kantor, left Government to take a seat on the Board of Monsanto. Monsanto also had on its board William D. Ruckelshaus, former head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under Presidents Nixon and Reagan. Michael A. Friedman, M.D., senior vice-president of clinical affairs for Monsanto's pharmaceutical division G.D. Searle, was once acting director of the FDA. Marcia Hale, Monsanto's director of UK government affairs, was formerly an assistant to President Clinton for intergovernmental affairs. Linda J. Fisher, Monsanto vice president of public affairs, was once administrator of EPA's Office of Prevention, Pesticides, and Toxic Substances. Monsanto legal adviser, Jack Watson, was chief of White House staff in the Carter Administration. 

This pattern of revolving door conflicts of interest between top officials of government agencies responsible for food policy and their corporate sponsors, such as Monsanto, Dow, DuPont and the other agribusiness and biotech players, had been in place at least . since the time of the Reagan Administration. 

Unmistakable was the conclusion that the US Government was an essential catalyst for the "gene revolution" of GMO-altered food crops and their proliferation worldwide. In this they acted in concert with the corporate giant agrochemical firms such as Monsanto, Dow and DuPont, as if public and private interests were the same. 

What could explain the extraordinary backing of no fewer than four US Presidents for the GMO agrochemical industry? What could explain why Bill Clinton put the very authority of his office on the line to demand that the British Prime Minister silence a critic of the genetic manipulation of plants? What could explain the extraordinary ability of firms such as Monsanto to get their way among government officials regardless of overwhelming evidence of potential health damage to the population? What could cause four Presidents to expose the health of their nation and the entire world to untold risks, against the warnings of countless scientists and even government officials responsible for public health regulation? 

The answer to those questions was there for anyone willing to look. But it was an answer so shocking that few dared to examine it. A press conference in late 1999 gave a hint as to the powerful interests standing behind public players. On October 4, 1999, Gordon Conway, the President of an influential private tax-exempt foundation based in New York, applauded the announcement by Monsanto that it agreed not to "commercialize" its controversial "terminator" seed genetics.21 

The organization was the Rockefeller Foundation. It was no coincidence that the Rockefeller Foundation and Monsanto were talking about a global strategy for the genetic engineering of plants. The genetic revolution had been a Rockefeller Foundation project from the very beginning. Not only, as Conway reminded in his public remarks, had the Rockefeller Foundation spent more than $100 million for the advance of the GMO revolution. That project was part of a global strategy that had been in development for decades.

At the 1999 press conference, Conway declared, "The Rockefeller Foundation supports the Monsanto Company's decision not to commercialize sterile seed technologies, such as the one dubbed "the Terminator." He added, "We welcome this move as a first step toward ensuring that the fruits of plant biotechnology are made available to poor farmers in the developing world."22 

Conway had gone to Monsanto some months before to warn the senior executives that they risked jeopardizing the entire GMO revolution and that a tactical retreat was needed to keep the broad project on track. 23 

Terminator seeds had been designed to prevent the germination of harvested grains as seeds, and had engendered strong opposition in many quarters. This technology would block farmers in developing countries from saving their own seed for re-sowing.24 

The involvement of the Rockefeller Foundation in Monsanto's corporate policy was not by chance. It was part of a far more ambitious plan rooted in the crisis of the post-war dollar order which began in the era of the Vietnam War. 

The GMO project required that scientists should serve their agribusiness patrons. The development of a research project in Scotland was intended to send a strong signal to biologists around the world as to what happens when the results of GMO research contradict the interests of Monsanto and other GMO producers.

CHAPTER 2 

The Fox Guards the Hen-House 

Science Bending the Knee to Politics 
As GM seeds were being commercially introduced into Argentine and North American fanning, an event of enormous significance for the future of the GMO project occurred in faraway Scotland. There, in Aberdeen, in a state-supported laboratory, the Rowett Research Institute, an experienced scientist was making studies in a carefully controlled manner. His mandate was to conduct long-term research on the possible effects of a GMO food diet on animals. 

The scientist, Dr. Arpad Pusztai, was no novice in genetic research. He had worked in the specialized field of biotechnology for more than 35 years, published a wealth of recognized scientific papers, and was considered the world's leading expert on lectins and the genetic modification of plants. 

In 1995, just prior to Monsanto's mass commercial sales of GM soybean seeds to American and Argentine farmers, Scotland's Office of Agriculture, Environment and Fisheries contracted the Rowett Research Institute to undertake a three-year comprehensive study under the direction of Dr. Pusztai. With a budget of $1.5 million, it was no small undertaking. 1 

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 potato fed 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 contract would not be renewed. He was effectively fired, along with his wife, who had herself been a 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 of legal 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 worst 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 claim that Pusztai had not carried out the long-term tests needed to prove the results. 

But the clumsy efforts of Prof. James and Rowett Institute to justify the firing and defaming of Pusztai were soon forgotten, as other scientists and government ministers jumped into the frenzy to discredit Pusztai. In defiance of these attacks, by February 1999, some 30 leading scientists from 13 countries had signed an open letter supporting Pusztai. The letter was published in the London Guardian, triggering a whole new round of controversy over the safety of GMO crops and the Pusztai findings. 

Blair, Clinton and "Political" Science 
Within days of the Guardian piece, no less august an institution than the British Royal Society entered the fray. It announced its decision to review the evidence of Pusztai. In June 1999, the Society issued a public statement claiming that Pusztai's research had been "flawed in many aspects of design, execution and analysis and that no conclusions should be drawn from it."4 

Coming from the 300-year-old renowned institution, that statement was a heavy blow to Pusztai's credibility. But the Royal Society's remarks on Pusztai's work were also recognizable as a political smear, and one which risked tarnishing the credibility of the Royal Society itself. It was later revealed by a peer review that the latter had drawn its conclusions from incomplete data. Furthermore, it refused to release the names of its reviewers, leading some critics to attack the Society's methods as reminiscent of the medieval Star Chamber.5 

Research by Andrew Rowell revealed that the Royal Society's statements and the British House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee's similar condemnation issued on the same day, May 18, were the result of concerted pressure on those two bodies by the Blair Government. 

The Blair Government had indeed set up a secret Biotechnology Presentation Group to launch a propaganda campaign to counter the anti-GMO media, at that point a dominant voice in the UK. The Pusztai debate threatened the very future of a hugely profitable GMO agribusiness for UK companies.

Three days after the coordinated attacks on Pusztai's scientific integrity from the Royal Society and the Select Committee, Blair's so-called "Cabinet Enforcer:' Dr. Jack Cunningham, stood in the House of Commons to declare, "The Royal Society this week convincingly dismissed as wholly misleading the results of some recent research into potatoes, and the misinterpretation of it-There's no evidence to suggest that any GM foods on sale in this country are harmful:" Making his message on behalf of the Blair Cabinet unmistakable, he added, "Biotechnology is an important and exciting area of scientific advance that offers enormous opportunities for improving our quality of life."6 

Public documents later revealed that the Blair Cabinet was itself split over the GMO safety issue and that some members advised further study of potential GMO health risks. They were silenced, and Cunningham was placed in charge of the Government's common line on GMO crops, the Biotechnology Presentation Group. 

What could possibly explain such a dramatic turnaround on the part of James and the Rowett Institute? As it turned out, the answer was political pressure. 

It took five years and several heart attacks, before the near-ruined Pusztai was able to piece together the details of what had taken place in those 48 hours following his first TV appearance in 1998. His findings revealed the dark truth about of the politics of GMO crops. 

Several former colleagues at Rowett, who had retired and were thus protected from possibly losing their jobs, privately confirmed to Pusztai that Rowett's director, Prof. Philip James, had received two direct phone calls from Prime Minister Tony Blair. Blair had made clear in no uncertain terms that Pusztai had to be silenced. 

James, fearing the loss of state funding and worse, proceeded to destroy his former colleague. But the chain did not stop at Tony Blair. Pusztai also learned that Blair had initially received an alarmed phone call from the President, of the United States, Bill Clinton. 

Blair was convinced by his close friend and political adviser, Clinton, that GMO agribusiness was the wave of the future, a huge-and growing-multibillion dollar industry in which Blair could offer British pharmaceutical and biotech giants a leading role. What is more, Blair had made the promotion of GMO a cornerstone of his successful 1997 election campaign to "Re-brand Britain." And it was well-known in the UK that Clinton had initially won Blair over to the promise of GM plants as the pathway towards a new agro-industrial revolution.7 

The Clinton Administration was in the midst of spending billions to promote GMO crops as the technology of a future biotech revolution. A Clinton White House senior staff member stated at the time that their goal was to make the 1990's, "the decade of the successful commercialization of agricultural biotechnology products." By the late 1990's, the stocks of biotech GM companies were soaring on the Wall Street stock exchange. Clinton was not about to have some scientist in Scotland sabotage his project, nor clearly was Clinton's good friend Blair. 

The final piece of the puzzle fell into place for Pusztai, thanks to further information from former colleague, Professor Robert Orskov, a leading nutrition scientist with a 33-year career at Rowett. Orskov, who had in the meantime left the institute, told Pusztai that senior Rowett colleagues had informed him that the initial phone call behind his 'dismissal came from Monsanto.8 

Monsanto had spoken with Clinton, who in turn had directly spoken to Blair about the "Pusztai problem." Blair then spoke to Rowett's director, Philip James. Twenty four hours later, Dr. Arpad Pusztai was out on the street, banned from speaking about his research and talking to his former colleagues. 

Orskov's information was a bombshell. If it was true, it meant that a private corporation, through a simple phone call, had been able to mobilize the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Great Britain on behalf of its private interests. A simple phone call by Monsanto could destroy the credibility of one of the world's leading independent scientists. This carried somber implications for the future of academic freedom and independent science. But it also had enormous implications for the proliferation of GMO crops worldwide.9 

A Not-so-ethical Royal Society Joins the Attack 
With his scientific reputation already severely damaged, Pusztai finally managed, in October 1999, to secure the publication of his and his colleague's research in the respected British scientific journal, The Lancet. The magazine was highly respected for its scientific independence and integrity, and before publication, the article was submitted to a six-person scientific review panel, passing with 4 votes in favor. 

The Lancet editor, Dr; Richard Horton, later said he had received  a "threatening" phone call from a senior person at the Royal Society, who told him that his job might be at risk should he decide to publish the Pusztai study. Prof. Peter Lachmannn, former Vice President of the Society, later admitted to phoning Horton about the Pusztai paper, though he denied having threatened him. 

Investigative journalists from the Guardian newspaper discovered that the Royal Society had set up a special "rebuttal unit" to push a pro-GM line and discredit opposing scientists and organizations. The unit was headed by Dr. Rebecca Bowden, a former Blair environment ministry official who was openly pro-GM.10 

The paper discovered that Lachmann, who publicly called for scientific "independence" in his attack on Pusztai, was himself hardly an impartial judge of the GMO issue. Lachmann was a scientific consultant for a private biotech company, Geron Biomed, doing animal cloning similar to Dolly the Sheep, and was a non-executive director of the agri-biotech firm, Adprotech. He was also a member of the scientific advisory board of the GMO pharmaceutical giant, Smith Klein Beecham. Lachmann was many things, but impartial in the issue of GMO science he definitely was not. 

Lord Sainsbury was the leading financial contributor to Tony Blair's "New Labour" party in the 1997 elections. For his largesse, Sainsbury had been given a Cabinet post as Blair's Science Minister; His science credentials were minimal but he was a major shareholder in two GMO biotech companies, Diatech and Innotech, and was aggressively pro-GMO. 

To cement the ties further between the Blair government and leading biotech companies, the PR firm director who successfully ran Blair's 1997 and 2001 election campaigns, Good Relations David Hill, also ran the PR for Monsanto in the UK. 

Shedding more doubt on the self-proclaimed scientific neutrality of the Royal Society, was the fact that despite its public pronouncements on Pusztai's "flawed" research, the Society never went on to conduct a "non-flawed" version of the important study. This suggested that their interests lay perhaps in something else than scientific rectitude. 

Following the publication of Pusztai's article, The Lancet was severely attacked by the Royal Society and the biotechnology industry, whose pressure eventually forced Pusztai's co-author, Prof. Stanley Ewen, to leave his position at the University of Aberdeen. 11 

Science in the Corporate Interest 
The Pusztai case, as devastating as it threatened to be to the entire GMO project, was one among several cases of suppression of independent research or of direct manipulation of research data proving the potentially negative effects of GMO foods on human or animal health. In fact, this practice proved to be the rule. 

In 2000, the Blair government ordered a three year study to be carried out by a private firm, Grainseed, designed to demonstrate which GMO seeds might safely be included on the National List of Seeds, the standard list of seeds farmers may buy. 

Internal documents from the UK Ministry of Agriculture were later obtained by the London Observer newspaper, and revealed that some strange science was at work in the tests. At least one researcher at the Grainseed firm manipulated scientific data to "make certain seeds in the trials appear to perform better than they really did." Far from causing the Ministry of Agriculture to suspend the tests and fire the employee, the Ministry went on to propose that a variety of GMO corn be certified. 12 

In another example of British state intrusion in academic freedom and scientific integrity, Dr. Mae-Wan Ho, senior academic scientist at the Open University and later Director of the Institute of Science in Society, was pressured by her university into taking early retirement. Mae-Wan Ho had been a Fellow of the National Genetics Foundation in the US, had testified before the UN and World Bank on issues of bioscience, had published widely on genetics, and was a recognized expert on GMO science. 

Her "mistake" was that she was too outspoken against the dangers of GMO foods. In 2003, she served on an international Independent Science Panel on GM plants, where she spoke out against the slipshod scientific claims being made about GMO safety. 

She warned that genetic modification was entirely unlike normal plant or animal breeding. She stated, "Contrary to what you are told by the pro-GM scientists, the process is not at all precise. It is uncontrollable and unreliable, and typically ends up damaging and scrambling the host genome, with entirely unpredictable consequences!' That was more than enough for the GMO lobby to pressure her into "retirement." 13 

To protect the so-called integrity of state-funded research into the safety of GMO foods and crops, the Blair government put together a new code of conduct. Under the Government's Biotechnology and Biological Science Research Council code (BBSRC), any employee of a state-funded research institute who dared to speak out on his findings into GMO plants, could face dismissal, be sued for breach of contract or face a court injunction. 

Many institutes doing similar research into GMO foods, such as the John Innes Center's Sainsbury Laboratory, the UK's leading biotechnology institute, had received major financial backing from GMO biotechnology giants such as Zeneca and Lord Sainsbury personally. As Science Minister, Lord Sainsbury saw to it that the BBSRC got a major increase in government funding in order to carry out its biotech police work of suppressing scientific dissent. 

The board of the BBSRC was made up of representatives of large multinationals with a vested interest in the research results, while public interest groups such as the Country Landowners' Association were kept out. 14 

In March 2003, a rare case of dissent took place in the Blair government lobby against allowing the free introduction of virtually untested GMO products into the UK diet. Dr. Brian John submitted a memorandum to the British journal, GM Science Review, entitled, "On the Corruption of GM Science." John stated, "There is no balance in the GM research field or in the peer-review process or in the publication process. For this we have to thank corporate ownership of science, or at least this branch of it .... Scientific integrity is one loser, and the public interest is another."15 

Dr. John went on to critique sharply the Royal Society in the area of GMO science, in which "inconvenient research simply never sees the light of day:" He added, "The prevention of academic fraud is one matter; the suppression of uncomfortable research results is quite another:" John further pointed out that the International Life Sciences Institute Bibliography on GMO safety investigations was overwhelmingly biased towards pro-GMO papers, either from Government sources or directly from the biotech industry themselves. "Very few of them involve genuine GM feeding trials involving animals, and none of them so far as I can see, involves feeding trials on humans."16 

Pusztai's research at the Rowett Institute was one of the first and last in the UK to involve live animal research. The Blair government was determined not to repeat that mistake. In June 2003, amid the furor in the British House of Commons over the decision to back George W. Bush's war in Iraq, Tony Blair sacked his Environment Minister, Michael Meacher. Meacher, later openly opposing UK involvement in Iraq, was in charge of his Ministry's three-year study of GMO plants and their effects on the environment. Openly critical of the prevailing research on GMO crops, Meacher had called on the Blair government to make far more thorough tests before releasing GMO crops for general use. As Mr. Meacher was becoming an embarrassment to the genetic revolution, the response was the French Revolution's-"Off with his head." 

As determined the Blair government was in its support of the GMO revolution, its efforts paled in comparison to those of its closest ally across the Atlantic. The United States, the cradle of the GMO revolution in world agriculture, was way ahead of the game in terms of controlling the agenda and the debate. The US GMO campaign of the 1980's and 1990's however had roots in policies going decades back. Its first public traces were found during the Vietnam War era of the late 1960's and into the second Nixon Presidency. Henry Kissinger, a Rockefeller protege, was to playa decisive role in that early period. He had introduced the idea of using "food as a weapon" into United States foreign policy. The "food weapon" was subsequently expanded into a far-reaching US policy doctrine.

next



notes
chapter 1

1. Quoted in Kurt Eichenwald et aI., "Biotechnology Food: From the Lab to a Debacle", New York Times, 25 January 2001. 
2. Ibid. 
3. Dr. Henry Miller, quoted in Eichenwald et ai., op.cit. Miller, who was responsible for biotechnology issues at the Food and Drug Administration from 1979 to 1994, told the New York Times: "In this area, the u.s. government agencies have done exactly what big agribusiness has asked them to do and told them to do." 
4. Eichenwald, op. cit. 
5. Claire Hope Cummings, Are GMOs Being Regulated or Not?, 11 June 2003, in http://www.cropchoice.com/leadstry66t7.htrnl?recid= 1736. Cummings was a senior US Department of Agriculture official at the time. 
6. Jeffrey Smith, Got Hormones-The Controversial Milk Drug that Refuses to Die, December 2004, http://www.responsibletechnology.org. 
7. Robert P. Heaney, et ai., "Dietary Changes. Favorably Affect Bone Remodeling in Older Adults;' Journal of the American Dietetic Association, vol. 99, no. 10, October 1999, pp. 1228-1233. Also, "Milk, Pregnancy, Cancer May Be Tied", 'Reuters, 10 September 2002. 
8. Dr. Robert Collier, quoted in Jane Akre & Steve Wilson, from text of banned FOX TV documentary, "The Mystery in Your Milk;' in http://www.mercola.coml 2001lmay/26/mystery _milk.htm. 
9. Jennifer Ferrara, "Revolving Doors: Monsanto and the Regulators", The Ecologist, September/October 1998. 
10. Michael R. Taylor, "Biography", in Food Safety Research Consortium, Steering Committee, in http://www.rff.orglfsrc/bios.htm. 
11. Robert .cohen, FDA Regulation Meant to Promote rBGH Milk Resulted in Antibiotic Resistance,S May 2000, in http://www.psrast.orglbghsalmonella.htm. 
12. James Maryansky, quoted in Julian Borger, "Why Americans are Happy to Swallow the GM Food Experiment", The Guardian, 20 February 1999. 
13. Steven M. Druker, Bio-deception: How the Food and Drug Administration is Misrepresenting the Facts about Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods ... , http://www.psrast.orglfdaiawstmore.htm. Druker drafted the statement in May 1998 as part of a lawsuit against the FDA to demand mandatory testing and labeling of GMO food, both of which are not, as of 2007, done in the United States. 
14. In his book, Milk, the Deadly Poison, Argus Press, Inglewood Cliffs, NJ, 1997, pp. 67-96, Robert Cohen describes his efforts to obtain a copy of this unpublished study from the FDA. Cohen filed a Freedom of Information Act request  for the study and it was denied; he appealed within the FDA and lost. He then filed a lawsuit in federal court and again, lost. The FDA and the courts agree that the public should never learn what happened to those rats fed BGH because it would "irreparably harm" Monsanto. Based on the scant information that has been published about the weight gains of the rats during the 90-day study, Cohen believes that many or perhaps all of the rats got cancer. 
15. In November 1994, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) program The Fifth Estate televised a one-hour documentary reporting that Monsanto had tried to bribe Health Canada (Canada's equivalent to the FDA), offering to pay as much as two million dollars under the condition that Monsanto receive approval to market rBGH in Canada without being required to submit data from any further studies or trials. According to journalists who worked on the documentary, Monsanto tried to kill the show, arguing through its lawyers that CBC had maliciously rigged the interviews. But CBC stuck to its guns and ran the program. 
16. PRNewswire, Monsanto's Genetically Modified Milk Ruled Unsafe by the United Nations, Chicago, 18 August 1999. John R. Luoma, "Pandora's Pantry", Mother Jones, January/February 2000. 
17. Robert Cohen, FDA Regulation Meant to Promote rBGH Milk Resulted in AntibioticResistance, http://www.psrast.org, 5 May 2000. 
18. Ibid. 
19. RBGH Bulletin, Hidden Danger in Your Milk?: Jury Verdict Overturned on Legal Technicality, http://www.£oxrBGHsuit.com. 2000. 
20. The Agribusiness Examiner, Kraft "Cheese?": Adulterated Food?-FDA: Don't Ask! Don't Tellf, 7 May 2001, http://www.mindfully.org/Food/Kraft-CheeseAdulterated:htm. 
21. Dr. Gordon Conway in a speech to Directors of Monsanto, "The Rockefeller Foundation and Plant Biotechnology", 24 June 1999, in http://www.biotechinfo.net/gordon_conway.html. 
22. Rockefeller Foundation, Press Release, "Terminator' Seed Sterility Technology Dropped, 4 October 1999, in http://www.rockfound.org!. 
23. John Vidal, "How Monsanto's Mind was Changed", The Guardian, 9 October 1999. 
24. Rockefeller Foundation, "Terminator" Seed Technology Dropped, Press Release, New York, 4 October 1999. 

chapter 2
1. Author's interview with Dr.Pusztai, 23 June 2007. 
2. Ibid. 
3. The exact words were "the rats had slightly stunted growth when tested after 110 days of feeding and the response of their lymphocytes to mitogenic stimuli was about half that of controls." A second press release from the Chairman of the Institute's governing body, published on 10 August 1998, the same day as the lTV's World in Action TV interview with Pusztai, asked for an assurance from the European Commission "that any GMOs be adequately tested for any effects that might be triggered by their consumption in animals or humans". In addition, "The testing of modified products with implanted genes needs to be thoroughly carried out in the gut of animals if unknown disasters are to be avoided;' cited in Alan Ryan et al., Genetically Modified Crops: the Ethical and Social Issues, Nuffield Council on Bioethics, pp. 140-141. 
4. The Royal Society, Review of Data on Possible Toxicity of GM Potatoes, June 1999, Ref: 11199, p. 1, in http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk. 
5. The Royal Society itself had extensive ties to the corporate sponsorship of industrial biotech firms such as Aventis Foundation, BP pic, Wellcome Trust, Astra-Zeneca pic, Esso UK pic, the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, cited in Martin J. Walker, Brave New World of Zero Risk: Covert Strategy in British Science Policy, London, Slingshot ~ublications, 2005, pp.173-193. 
6. Jack Cunningham, Minister for the Cabinet Office, Statement to House of Commons, 21 May 1999, in http://www.publications.parliament.uklpa/cmI99899/ cmhansrd/vo990S211debtext/90S21-07.htm. 
7. Tony Blair, press comment, Remarks Prior to Discussions With Prime Minister Tony Blair of the United Kingdom and an Exchange With Reporters in OkinawaTranscript, Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, 31 July 2000, in http://www.gpoaccess.gov/wcomp/. Blair's comments during his meeting with Clinton then were:" ... this whole science of biotechnology is going-,--I mean, I'm not an expert on it, but people tell me whose opinions I respect that this whole science of biotechnology is perhaps going to be, for the first half of the 21st century what information technology was to the last half of the 20th century. And therefore, it's particularly important, especially for a country like Britain that is a leader in this science of biotechnology ... " 
8. Robert Orskov, quoted in Andrew Rowell, "The Sinister Sacking of the World's Leading GM Expert-and the Trail that Leads to Tony Blair and the White House", The Daily Mail, 7 July 2003. 
9. Andrew Rowell, Don't Worry, it's Safe to Eat: The True Story of GM food, BSE and Foot and Mouth, London, 2003, and Rowell, "The Sinister Sacking ... " op. cit. Arpad Pusztai, Letter from Arpad Pusztai to the Royal Society dated 12/05/1999, provides a personal account of the scientific events, in http://www.freenetpages.co.uklhp/A.PusztailRoyalSoc!Pusztai ... htm. The official Rowett Institute version of the Pusztai events is on http://www.rowett.ac. uklgmoarchive. The same site reproduces the entire Pusztai 1998 analysis of the GMO potato experiments with rats, SOAEFD Flexible Fund Project RO 818: Report of Project Coordinatoron Data Produced at the Rowett Research Institute (RR!), 22 October 1998. Arpad Pusztai, "Why I Cannot Remain Silent", GM-FREE magazine, August/September 1999. Subsequent to Pusztai's firing, he sent the research protocols to 24 independent scientists in different countries. They rejected the conclusions of the Review Committee and found that his research was of good quality and defended his conclusions. Their report was ignored in media and government circles. 
10. Laurie Flynn and Michael Sean, "Pro-GM Scientist 'Threatened Editor", The Guardian, 1 November 1999. 
11. Stanley Ewen and Arpad Pusztai, "Effect of Diets Containing Genetically Modified Potatoes Expressing Galanthus Nivalis Lectin on Rat Small Intestine': The Lancet, 16 October 1999. A detailed scientific defense of Pusztai's work was given by former colleague, T. C. Bog-Hansen, who became senior associate professor at the University of Copenhagen. See http://plab.ku.dk!tcbh/Pusztai. Geoffrey Lean, "Expert on GM Danger Vindicated", The Independent, 3 October 1999. For a thorough account of the witchhunt against Pusztai: George Monbiot, "Silent Science", in Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain, Pan Books, London, 2000. 
12. Anthony Barnett, "Revealed: GM Firm Faked Test Figures," The Observer, 16 April 2000. 
13. Anastasia Stephens, "Puncturing the GM Myths': The Evening Standard, 8 April 2004. Despite the pressure, Dr. Mae-Wan Ho continued to be one of the few scientists to speak out on the dangers of GMO plants. 
14. Norfolk Genetic Information Network, Scientists Gagged on GM Foods by Public Funding Body with Big Links to Industry, press release, 1999, http://www.ngin.tripod.com/scigag.htm. 
15. Dr. Brian John, "On the Corruption of GM Science", Submission to the GM Science Review, 20 March 2003. The UK Government closed the journal, curiously enough, in 2004. It had been founded in 2002 to deepen debate on the issue of GMO plants. 
16. Ibid. 

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