Yes, GMO's are great and here is why...

[ND-Dem]

117. once an editor with ties to monsanto was appointed.

We would like to comment on your answers (Hayes, 2014a) concerning the retraction of our study (Seralini et al., 2012 and Hayes, 2014b) by Food and Chemical Toxicology (FCT). Our study investigated the long-term effects in rats of consumption of two Monsanto products, a genetically modified (GM) maize and its associated pesticide, Roundup, together and separately. The decision to retract the paper was reached a few months after the appointment of a former Monsanto employee as “editor for biotechnology”, a position created for him at FCT ( Robinson and Latham, 2013). In a recent editorial, Portier and colleagues express concern about the “dangerous erosion of the underpinnings of the peer-review process” in the case of our study ( Portier et al., 2014).

The criticisms from Monsanto and others focused on two aspects of our study: the relatively low number of rats used compared with the 50 per sex per group usual for carcinogenicity studies (OECD, 2009a) and the strain of rat used, the Sprague–Dawley. The critics alleged that the Sprague–Dawley rat was prone to tumours and that therefore the increased rate of tumorigenesis found in some of our treatment groups was purely random, even if this strain is commonly used in toxicology. Other answers to critics have been already published (Seralini et al., 2013).

These criticisms were subsequently adopted in your statement explaining the decision to retract our study. You wrote that the low number of rats and the strain selected meant that the conclusions on two aspects of our study – mortality and tumorigenesis – were “inconclusive” (Hayes, 2014a). In addition, you attested that our raw data were “not incorrect”, “there was no misconduct”, and that “Unequivocally, the Editor-in-Chief found no evidence of fraud or intentional misrepresentation of the data” ( Seralini et al., 2014).

We are sceptical about the rationale given to retract our paper, in light of FCT’s recent publication of another study (Zhang et al., 2014) which, like ours, investigated the potential chronic effects of consumption of a genetically modified (GM) crop. Unlike our study, however, it concluded that the GM crop tested, a transgenic insecticide-producing rice, was as safe and nutritious as conventional rice. Yet according to your criteria, it is at least as inconclusive as our study. Thus, it should not be published. Double standards are clearly used in evaluating Seralini et al., 2012, Hayes, 2014b and Zhang et al., 2014 in FCT.


FCT’s retraction of our paper, while not retracting studies – Zhang et al., 2014 and Hammond et al., 2004 – is an example of unscientific double standards. The decision to retract our paper appears to be results-driven, in that findings of safety in Zhang et al., 2014 and Hammond et al., 2004 have not been subjected to critical analysis and have been allowed to stand, whereas our findings of risk have been viewed with suspicion and forcibly retracted. As a result, economic interests have been given precedence over public health.

The use of double standards by the editors of scientific journals in evaluating studies on matters important to public health will damage the image and the value of science.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278691514002002