“In the past 2 weeks there has been considerable press about a forthcoming article in the journal Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology. This article ‘New Analysis of a Rat Feeding Study with a Genetically Modified Maize Reveals Signs of Hepatorenal Toxicity’ by Gilles-Eric Séralini, Dominique Cellier and Joël Spiroux de Vendomois, purports to show that a genetically-modified corn causes damaged to the livers and kidneys of rats and hence is likely to be dangerous to humans…
Read the full blog post entitled ‘Lies, damn lies and statistics’ over at GMO Pundit: http://gmopundit.blogspot.com/2007/03/lies-damn-lies-and-statistics.html
And there is more information in an earlier blog post entitled ‘WA Ag Minister Kim Chance wrong on GM food safety concerns’ also at GMO Pundit including comment that:
“Quite aside from the statistical procedure used it was found that the adverse toxicology results that they reported occurred only when 11% GM maize was fed – they did not occur when 33% maize was fed. This lack of a dose response alone should have alerted them to the fact that their procedure might be wrong, but it did not stop them publishing without explaining the anomalies! Their publication also contained four totally incorrect statements that have since been addressed by several groups. What is quite extraordinary is that these anomalies were not picked up by the reviewers of their paper.”
So much for peer review and eating corn.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.