GM-free Scotland

Suggested links between 'Morgellons' skin disease currently sweeping the globe, and something nasty and unexpected in GM food may have seemed fanciful (see MORGELLONS – News, October 2007).

At first glance, the emergence of the problem at the same time and place as GM crops could be pure coincidence, the apparent increased incidence of Morgellons could simply be a result of the increased publicity and opportunity to report the disease, the presence of DNA from a soil bacterium in the skin lesions could simply be an occupational accident, and doctors could be right in dismissing the 'disease' as 'delusional parasitosis'.

However, accumulating evidence is presenting some concrete links between the epidemic and the procedures commonly used in genetic transformation.

The Morgellons Research Foundation had 12,016 people on its world-wide register on 14th April 2008. The US Center for Disease Control (CDC) has confirmed that it really has been receiving an increasing number of reports of Morgellons over the past year. So much so that in January 2008, it launched its own investigation.

The CDC describes the unexplained condition it will be examining as “ ... a range of cutaneous (skin) symptoms including crawling, biting and stinging sensations; granules, threads, fibers, or black speck-like materials on or beneath the skin, and/or skin lesions (e.g. rashes or sores). In addition to skin manifestations, some sufferers also report fatigue, mental confusion, short term memory loss, joint pain, and changes in vision.”

In order to learn more about who may be affected, their symptoms and possible clues about contributing factors, the CDC will work with a major US personal health care provider to identify individuals who have consulted a physician with appropriate symptoms. After a web-based or telephone survey, those with active symptoms will be invited to participate in an extensive clinical examination including skin biopsies, and blood and urine tests.

The known epidemiology so far suggests clusters of Morgellons in certain US cities, with 26% of US reports coming from California. However, the disease has emerged in all 50 US states and 15 other countries, including Canada, the UK, Australia and the Netherlands. The main occupational groups affected are nurses and teachers, both considered high-risk for contact with infectious agents. Family members often report similar, but lesser, symptoms. Domestic animals (dogs, cats and horses) are also affected.

One of the few US doctors who is taking the disease seriously has identified a connection with exposure to soil or waste, for example, during camping or gardening. A small-scale study found a 98% correlation with Lyme disease transmitted by ticks, and the remission of Morgellons symptoms when the Lyme disease was treated.

The science supporting a possible link between GM crops and Morgellons can't be ignored.

A major way of inserting foreign genes into crop plants has been to use a common soil bacterium, Agrobacterium, as a delivery agent. In its native form, Agrobacterium carries DNA which is pathogenic to plants. This DNA is separate from the main genome and is mobile. It can insert itself into the DNA of a plant cell which then grows into a gall (the plant equivalent of a tumour).

The mechanism of transfer involves two genes, one disease-promoting and one tumour-inducing, linked to sections of invasive DNA which help slot them into the plant cell genome.

On the assumption that the above mechanism is specific to the invasion of plant cells, genetic engineers 'disarm' the Agrobacterium by removing the tumour-inducing gene and replace it with their own engineered gene. The bacterium obligingly inserts this into the crop plant of their choice. Its job done, the bacteria are eliminated with antibiotics so that further gene transfers are avoided in the field.

Agrobacterium is not a common human pathogen, so risks to humans from its use are considered negligible.

This sounds safe enough until you consider:

1. The assumption that Agrobacterium is specific to plants is wrong: the bacterium has been shown to genetically transform at least 80 non-plant species including yeasts, other fungi, algae, a gram positive (pathogenic) bacterium, and non-human mammals, besides cultured human cancer, neuronal and kidney cells.
2. The assumption that the Agrobacterium is eliminated by antibiotics is wrong. One Scottish-Irish team of scientists realised that this assumption wasn't being routinely checked. They also realised that releasing bacteria laden with engineered genes and armed with a natural ability to transform plants with them could cause massive genetic pollution. The resulting study revealed:
   • not one antibiotic in use succeeded in eliminating the bacteria
   • 50% of contaminated GM plant tissue still harboured high levels of Agrobacterium plus its engineered DNA six months after its genetic transformation.

The implications here are serious. The transmission of engineered genes into other (pathogenic) bacteria in the environment is likely. The possibility of novel, evolving, GM Agrobacterium spreading in the soil (in campsites, in the garden, in tick-infested hillsides) from where they can pass to humans is inescapable. The potential for bizarre diseases to emerge from any such infection and genetic transformation of skin cells is clearly there.

OUR COMMENT

The lesson here is that it is easier to do comprehensive testing and check out all assumptions before the release of a GMO, than to be trying to unravel a highly complex picture involving multiple interacting factors (many uncheckable at this stage) as the CDC is now having to do.

Perhaps Morgellons will provide a warning shot to GM regulators of just how wrong GM can go.

SOURCE

Dr. Mae-Wan Ho and Prof Joe Cummins, Agrobacterium & Morgellons Disease, A GM Connection?, Press Release 28.04.08.