Genetic engineering

Espàñol

To ward off the presence of a fear-based thought system that has been empowered by a few who have so much to lose.
To carry the world from one level of consciousness to another.
Stand tall, my friends, amass your light and go in peace.
Kirael

GENETIC ENGINEERING & FOOD IRRADIATION

Dr. Vandana Shiva is a physicist, ecologist, activist, editor, and author of many books. In India she has established Navdanya, a movement for biodiversity conservation and farmers' rights. She directs the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy. Her most recent book is Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge. This interview with Dr. Vandana Shiva was conducted in St. Louis, Missouri at the First Grassroots Gathering on Biodevastation: Genetic Engineering, on July 18, 1998. Dr. Shiva was the keynote speaker at the conference.

Medicine: from healing to profits

For example, in the case of medicine, if there is no patent we can treat people with AIDS with $200 expenditure per year. Indian companies can make it for that cost because they can make them as generic drugs. They are not piracy drugs, which is the way the U.S. pharmaceutical industry talks about them. They are generic in the sense that different processes have been used. The same medicine, the same retroviral, costs $20,000 in the United States because of patenting -- that is the only difference. Which means something which is being made for $200 is being sold to consumers for not just ten times but a hundred times the price. As our prime minister said, the big companies are trying to turn the matter of disease from healing into a matter of profits.

There was an attempt made, at the beginning of the TRIPs negotiations, to make it look like the lower-cost production that could happen in the absence of monopolies was piracy. The industry managed to define piracy as absence of monopolies. We want to define monopoly as monopoly and recognize that things like seeds should be accessible to farmers, things like medicine should be accessible to those who are dying of AIDS, and no regime in the world can put profits above people’s lives.

"The deeper you can manipulate living structures
the more you can control food and medicine"

Interview with Vandana Shiva
The Role of Patents in the Rise of Globalization

In Motion Magazine:
Are the same corporations controlling food and health?

Vandana Shiva: It’s the same companies. The industry that used to be the chemical industry is also the pharmaceutical industry, is also the seed industry, is also the biotech industry. There is no separation -- and agro-chemical industry. It is all one.

"Seeds of Destruction, The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation"

(Dr. Arpad Pusztai, biochemist, formerly of the Rowett Research Institute Institute, Scotland)

If you want to learn about the socio-political agenda --why biotech corporations insist on spreading GMO seeds around the World-- you should read this carefully researched book. You will learn how these corporations want to achieve control over all mankind, and why we must resist... (Marijan Jost, Professor of Genetics, Krizevci, Croatia)

What is so frightening about Engdahl's vision of the world is that it is so real. Although our civilization has been built on humanistic ideals, in this new age of "free markets", everything-- science, commerce, agriculture and even seeds-- have become weapons in the hands of a few global corporation barons and their political fellow travelers. To achieve world domination, they no longer rely on bayonet-wielding soldiers. All they need is to control food production. (Dr. Arpad Pusztai, biochemist, formerly of the Rowett Research Institute Institute, Scotland)

The book reads like a murder mystery of an incredible dimension, in which four giant Anglo-American agribusiness conglomerates have no hesitation to use GMO to gain control over our very means of subsistence... (Anton Moser, Professor

Rats fed GMO potatoes had smaller livers, hearts, testicles and brains, damaged immune systems, and showed structural changes in their white blood cells making them more vulnerable to infection and disease compared to other rats fed non-GMO potatoes. It got worse. Thymus and spleen damage showed up; enlarged tissues, including the pancreas and intestines; and there were cases of liver atrophy as well as significant proliferation of stomach and intestines cells that could be a sign of greater future risk of cancer. Equally alarming - this all happened after 10 days of testing, and the changes persisted after 110 days that's the human equivalent of 10 years.

GM foods today saturate our diet. Over 80% of all supermarket processed foods contain them. Others include grains like rice, corn and wheat; legumes like soybeans and soy products; vegetable oils; soft drinks; salad dressings; vegetables and fruits; dairy products including eggs; meat and other animal products; and even infant formula plus a vast array of hidden additives and ingredients in processed foods (like in tomato sauce, ice cream and peanut butter). They're unrevealed to consumers because labeling is prohibited yet the more of them we eat, the greater the potential threat to our health.

Today, we're all lab rats in an uncontrolled, unregulated mass human experiment the results of which are unknown. The risks from it are beyond measure, it will take many years to learn them, and when they're finally revealed it will be too late to reverse the damage if it's proved GM products harm human health as independent experts strongly believe. Once GM seeds are introduced to an area, the genie is out of the bottle for keeps.

In "Seeds of Deception," Jeffrey Smith did a masterful job explaining the dangers of GM foods and ingredients. Engdahl explains them as well but goes much further brilliantly in his blockbuster book on this topic. It's the story of a powerful family and a "small socio-political American elite (that) seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival" - future life through the food we eat. The book's introduction says it "reads (like) a crime story." It's also a nightmare but one that's very real and threatening.

This review covers the book in-depth because of its importance. It's an extraordinary work that "reveals a diabolical World of profit-driven political intrigue (and) government corruption and coercion" that's part of a decades-long global scheme for total world dominance. The book deserves vast exposure and must be read in full for the whole disturbing story. It's hoped the material below will encourage readers to do it in their own self-interest and to marshal mass consumer actions to place food safety above corporate profits.

The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation"