Hazards of GM Food: Female Sex Organs Affected by GMO Soybeans

Hazards of GM Food: Female Sex Organs Affected by GMO Soybeans

September 27, 2010

All247News - In a Brazilian study, female rats fed genetically-modified soybeans showed statistically-significant changes to their uterus and reproductive cycle.

Similar groups of female rats fed organic, non-GMO soy — or no soy at all — did not show these effects. According to senior UK pathologist Stanley Ewen, the GMO soybeans were “wrecking the ovary and endometrium” of the rats.

This study is just one of a growing body of evidence that GM foods contribute to reproductive disorders. Babies of rats fed GMO soy died within three weeks. Male rats fed GMO soy had profound changes in their testicles. Mice fed GMO corn had fewer children than other mice. Mice raised on corncob beds made from GMO corn don’t bother breeding. The list grows with every passing month.

Dr. Ewen believes that the GMO soy has a chemical effect on the rats’ abilities to produce the correct hormones, including excessive estrogen production, excessive production of a hormone that produces hair, and hormonal damage to the pituitary gland. The hormonal imbalances are ones that, chemically, could easily affect human females as easily as it affects rodents.

At first brush, not all of the changes appear to be all bad — one of the effects of GMO soy is to increase production of progesterone, which can increase fertility by causing more eggs to be released from the ovaries as well as improve their ability to become fertilized and successfully implant into the uterus. On the other hand, another hormonal shift caused by GMO soy increases the risk of retrograde menstruation — where instead of leaving the body through the normal route, menstrual blood travels backward through the fallopian tubes, leading to endometriosis. Endometriosis is a condition whose symptoms include infertility, gastrointestinal disorders, chronic fatigue, and more.

Dr. Ewen also reports that the hormonal changes the rats experienced are also, if they translate to humans as it appears they would, cause menorrhagia — prolonged and very heavy menstrual bleeding.

It deserves mention that no firm conclusions can be drawn from this study. Dr. Ewen believes that the problem with the GMO soy might not be the GMO soy at all, but rather the herbicide used on the plants. The breed of GMO soy in question is Monsanto’s Roundup Ready Soy, so-called because the genetic modification adds a bacterial gene to the soybean that allows it to survive what would otherwise be a lethal dose of the herbicide, Roundup.

Roundup’s active ingredient, glyphosate, doesn’t kill the Roundup Ready beans — but it does accumulate inside them, and is transferred in significant amounts into the rats, livestock, and humans that eat them. When Roundup Ready soybeans were introduced to Europe, they were found to have glyphosate levels two hundred fold greater than was allowable (Europe’s laws have since changes to allow that level of ‘residual’ glyphosate).

There is a lot of evidence that glyphosate virtually destroys endocrine and reproductive cycles in creatures that consume it. The chemical is “an endocrine buster”, in the words of Dr. Ewen. It “interferes with aromatase, which in turn produces estrogen.” Glyphosate is also toxic to the placenta, and the levels found in Roundup Ready soy can actually outright kill placental cells in such number that the placenta itself can die from the exposure.

Even worse, glyphosate accumulates in the body with repeated consumption of Roundup Ready foods — and soy isn’t the only culprit. There is also Roundup Ready corn, Roundup Ready rapeseed (used to make canola oil), and more in the works. Furthermore, there are no laws in the USA that require the labeling of genetically-modified food, and according to author and food expert, Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma), more than 80% of the products in your average supermarket utilize corn and/or soy ingredients that are likely to be genetically modified.

Of course, because of a very ill-thought-out Supreme Court Case, genetically modified crops have become a modern cash cow for the biotech/agribusiness complex, and they’re spending billions of dollars to discredit scientists that advocate not eating GMO foods. But many medical doctors aren’t waiting for ‘proof’ — they’re simply prescribing non-GMO diets to their patients as a sensible precaution.

That’s one prescription that we should all strongly consider following.

Why We Need GMO Food Labels

October 6, 2010

Organic Consumer - Only 26% of the U.S. public understands that most junk foods and animal products contain GMO ingredients.

• The FDA is moving fast to approve a brave new world of GMO foods, including genetically engineered animals like Frankenfish, the eel-like-ocean-pout-chinook-Atlantic-salmon mix.


• Genetically modified foods are less nutritious, more likely to trigger an allergy, and contain higher levels of growth hormones and pesticides. Yet GM foods aren't required to be rigorously tested for food safety before they end up in grocery stores and restaurants.


• Common genetically modified food ingredients include corn syrup from GM corn, sugar from GM sugar beets, vegetable oils from GM soy, cotton and canola, and cheese, eggs, milk and meat from animals given GM feed or shot up with GM growth hormones and vaccines.


• The same foods that are making people fat, sick, and undernourished are the ones that Monsanto has genetically engineered. High fructose corn syrup, trans-fats, fryer grease, chicken nuggets, and bacon cheese burgers all contain GMOs.


• The industrial-scale mono-crop farms, factory farms and slaughterhouses that are abusing workers and animals, destroying the soil, poisoning the water, polluting the atmosphere with climate-destabilizing greenhouse gases, and creating a breeding ground for mad cow disease, E. coli, salmonella, and swine flu, are the best customers for Monsanto's RoundUp Ready and Bt-spliced crops. Agribusiness thrives off feeding taxpayer subsidized GMO crops, especially corn, soy and cotton seeds, to the chickens, pigs and cows they keep confined in cesspools of their own waste.


• Companies like Monsanto and AquaBounty (the Frankenfish inventor), claim that GMOs are "sustainable" because they're going to feed the world as the global climate crisis accelerates. But genetic engineering companies' business model - mass-marketing techno-fixes for the industrialized food system - only perpetuates the waste and pollution that have already made agriculture the source of at least one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions.


• GMOs can't beat the capacity of organics for restoration, resilience, and abundance. Organic agriculture is the best way to remove billions of tons of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and safely sequester them for centuries in the living soil of organic farms, pastures, and rangelands. If all the world's cropland were transitioned to organic, it would sequester 40% of current greenhouse gas emissions. Organic systems also produce higher yields than GMOs and are more resistant to droughts, floods, diseases and pests.


• The organic solution to the climate crisis is threatened by contamination from GMOs. Organic agriculture relies on the diversity and resilience of the thousands of varieties of crops and food animals that humans have cultivated for every soil and climate on Earth. GMOs, also known as "recombinant DNA", are bizarre combinations of foreign genes forcefully inserted into "host organisms" from different species. Once you insert foreign genes into a food crop or animal, these mutant varieties breed and reproduce. These GE mutations are likely permanent, meaning that it is only a matter of time before natural and organic varieties are contaminated with GMO traits.


• GMO contamination could lead to the collapse of the industrialized food system. GMOs have the capacity to break the species barrier. Weeds that plague row crops have adopted the RoundUp Ready trait, creating super-weeds that are forcing farmers to turn to greater amounts of super-toxic herbicides and pesticides. The overuse of RoundUp, the most widely-used pesticide in the history of agriculture, enhances the virulence of pathogens such as Fusarium and may have dire consequences for agriculture such as rendering soils infertile, crops non-productive, and plants less nutritious.

For related articles and more information please visit OCA's Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology page or our Millions Against Monsanto Campaign page.