News | Morgellons
Two disturbing reports of GM contamination have been reported in Germany.
The first was the discovery by the German authorities of GM rapeseed in about 1500 hectares of conventional crops. Rapeseed was approved for importation in March 2007, but it has never been legal to grow it in the Europe. The contaminated plants were immediately ordered to be destroyed, but it is likely that the problem has been on-going for several years and further areas may be affected.
The second was the revelation that, in a survey which tested three replicate packages of 33 different soya-containing products, GM contamination was found in two-thirds of them. The highest value was found in dried food designed for babies with intolerance to cows' milk.
Although the actual amounts of the GM contamination may be very small, novel substances which trigger allergic reactions need only be present in molecular amounts to sensitise susceptible individuals. Similarly, horizontal gene transfer from GM crops into common environmental microbes to create novel pathogens, need not occur in large quantities: they will reproduce themselves. So far, the only clearly recognised danger from horizontal transgene transfer has been that of antibiotic resistance genes which would compromise the efficacy of clinical antibiotics. However, other engineered DNA constructs taken up by micro-organisms could easily generate allergens or toxins in very small quantities.
A major concern of all anti-GM campaigning groups through the years has been that unknown and untestable substances or pathogens would emerge from the mish-mash of engineered DNA filling up our fields and plates.
If is difficult to get your head round what sort of problem might arise, consider the following.
A very strange disease seems to be sweeping the globe. It has been nick-named 'Morgellons disease' by the mother of a two-year-old boy who started to complain that he had 'bugs' on his lips. The mother found no doctor willing to investigate her son's problems, but her researches turned up a 17th-century article which described 'The Morgellons' in which unusual hairs would grow out of the skin. The main symptoms of this new disease are itching and a feeling that there are tiny insects crawling around on and under the skin. An even more disturbing symptom is the appearance of tiny fibres pushing out of the irritated skin.
Doctor's have tended to dismiss the symptoms as delusional parasitosis, a purely psychological condition. They blame the effects of drugs, alcohol or hormone-imbalances on brain-chemistry for triggering the sensations. Immunopsychologists, however, recognise that invaders which trigger the body's own immune reactions can also significantly upset levels of important chemicals in the brain.
The presence of fibres are commonly explained away as the lint from clothes, household fibres and hair which have become trapped in the sores produced in the skin due to constant scratching. What is less easily explained is that pathology- and forensic-laboratory analyses of the fibres have failed to identify their nature, except to say they do not match some 90,000 organic compounds tested.
Judging by the number of people who have registered on a website set up for victims of Morgellons disease, there seem to be well over 10,000 'delusional' people in the world, the majority of whom are American. A psychiatrist who has studied a database of 8,000 of such suffers concludes that their psychological profiles do not fit with a diagnosis of 'delusional parasitoses', because before the onset of the illness their mental status appears to be quite representative of the general population.
The disease is both disfiguring and disabling. Sufferers often suffer from fatigue and mental confusion. It has affected people of all age-groups and often affects members of the same family at the same time. The cause is unknown, treatment is undetermined, and mode of transmission a complete mystery.
More sinister still, a Professor at the State University of New York found that the skin lesions of 'Morgellons' patients test positively for the presence of Agrobacterium, a micro-organism whose DNA is commonly spliced into transgene constructs and transfected into plant cells.
The problem appeared 11 years ago, but after years of denial by the medical profession, the scale of the epidemic can no longer be ignored. The American Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has announced it is now investigating the condition.
OUR COMMENT
The symptoms of 'Morgellons' may be due to any number of interactions of the novel substances , GM or otherwise, we have poured into our environment and food during the last fifty years. It seems unlikely that more than a tiny fraction of the people suffering symptoms have registered on the website, especially since 'mild' cases will not be likely to be represented. This means there there may be hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of victims world wide. The idea of such a vast number of 'delusional' people, including a two-year-old, suddenly appearing in the world simultaneously is hard to swallow.
It is impossible to ignore the timing of the emergence of the symptoms and their location. The first commercial GM crops went into the ground eleven years ago. Before this, came several years of very uncontrolled field tests, mainly in the USA.
Agrobacterium is a soil bacterium, not associated with human pathology. It would not normally be tested for during the sorts of routine investigations of skin-disease used by the clinicians who dismiss Morgellans as 'psychological'. What sort of changes have occurred in this microbe to render it suitable for the colonisation of human skin?
The reports of GM contamination in crops and baby food coming out of Germany will no doubt be used by regulators to 'prove' that the system works and by the biotech industry to 'prove' that quite enough regulations are in place, since the contaminations have been detected and dealt with where necessary. But, Morgellons should put the whole GM issue into a very different perspective.
The biggest lesson here, is that if YOU find yourself with a bizarre set of symptoms your problems will be treated as delusional. Like the veterans incapacitated by traumas suffered during the conflicts in Northern Ireland, Iraq and elsewhere, you will likely be told to 'pull yourself together' and find something to occupy yourself with. It will be many years before any unexpected health effects of GM food or GM micro-organisms are recognised and taken seriously. By that time, it will be too late for many, or all, of us.
If you want to know more about Morgellons, check out www.morgellons.org/, the website of the not-for-profit organisation dedicated to raising awareness about the condition.
SOURCES
- Evening Standard 18.09.07
- Coalition against BAYER Dangers Press Release 18.09.07
- Aktion GEN-Klage 27.09.07 from www.focus.de
- Sunday Herald 14.10.07