entrepreneur gregory stock from the vail symposium in mid-march. this is two hours. >> our guest on my far left is jeffrey smith. he's an international best selling author and film maker. . he's the executive director of the institute for response technology and a leading consumer advocate promoting nongmo choices. his books include seeds of

deception, which is the world east best seller on gmos. for those who are interested, jeff will be speaking this saturday at noon at true nature healing arts. i'm sure you can find that on the internet. gregory stock, who is to my immediate left, is a biotech entrepreneur, best selling author and public communicator. he's a leading authority on the broad impacts of advanced technologies in the life sciences. he founded the program on medicine, technology and society at ucla school of medicine in 1997 and served as its director for ten years. while leading a broad effort to explore technologies posed to impact humanity's future and reshape medical science. dr. stock has catalyzed debate

about the social and public policy implications of molecular genetic. one of you please raise your hand when dr. stock is here and ask what that means. and about how to most effecti effectively translate progress. among his books, "redesigning humans: our genetic future." with that, let me turn this over first to jeffrey smith and we'll look forward to your presentation. >> thank you. how many of you ski? i'm in the right place. so forgive me if i have raccoon eyes today. i was in vail for the first time. how many of you are farmers? let's hear it for the farmers. how many are gardeners?

how many eat? now make a note of it. there's more people that ski than eat here. strange place. we're going to talk about genetically engineered foods. soy, corn, sugar beets, alfalfa and papaya, you can ask me to say that slower during q&a. now the reason they are on our plates is because of a sentence in the fda policy from 1992. and that sentence says that the agency is not aware of any information showing that gmos are significantly different. therefore, no safety testing is necessary. no labeling is necessary. so companies like monsanto, who had previously told us that agent orange and ddt were safe, they can determine on their own and maybe get it right this time, that their u gmo seeds and

the crops they produce are safe. now it turns out that that basic sentence, which is, in fact, the basis for the u.s. policy overseas, it's for the state department, et cetera, et cetera, it was a lie. it was complete fiction. we didn't know about it in 1992, but we found out about it in 1999. because 44,000 secret internal memos from the fda were forced into the public domain from a lawsuit. not only were they aware u that gmos were significantly different, it was the overwhelming consensus among their own scientists that they were different and of high risk. that they could create allergies, toxins and nutritional problems. they repeatedly urged their superiors to require long-term study. every time they read the policy, they noticed that more and more of their science was removed

from that policy till one person wrote, what's become of this document? it's basically a political document. it doesn't deal with the unpredicted side effects. the person in charge of policy at the fda, the political appointee, was michael taylor. monsanto's former attorney. the fda was given instructions by the white house to promote bio technology. they created a position for him. his policy ignored the scientific consensus at the agency and then taylor became monsanto's vice president and chief lobbyist. now he's back at the fda as the u.s. food safety czar. now, is it true that gmos are dangerous? well, unfortunately, one of the scientists at the fda predicted correctly that, without required safety studies, the companies would not even do the normal studies that they would do because they're not on the fda list. so we have very few safety studies, but enough for the american academy of environmental medicine to

evaluate and discover that the rats and that the mice that were fed gmos had gastrointestinal disorders, immune system problems, organ damage, accelerated aging, reproductive disorders and dysfunction of regulation of cholesterol and insulin. they said this information is not casual. it is a causal relationship based on standard scientific criteria. and on that basis all doctors should prescribe non-gmo diets to every patient. this came out in may 2009. in november of that year, i went to the aam conference with a video camera and started to interview the doctors who had been prescribing non-gmo diets. up until this point i had been representing scientist around the world. independent scientists who found that the entire approach to genetic engineering of food was completely premature. that we did not yet have enough

information about genes, dna, the inversion process, to safely introduce it and expose it to the entire population who eats, which is most of you. and we could not release it with confidence into the environment with the self-propagating pollution of the gene pool without lasting effects of global warming and nuclear waste because it becomes a permanent background to the genetic pool. the only thing that lasts longer in genetic pollution is extinction. so i was interviewing these scientists and translating their concerns so that everyone could understand. and anything i wrote in book form was looked at by at least three scientists. and when i spoke, i, you know how scientists speak. they may say, converging lines of evidence suggest that i might be chilly. nothing is definite. but when i started asking these doctors at this conference, they did not speak like scientists.

they said gmos cause inflammation. gmos cause my allergic patients to have more allergic reactions. one woman said that she prescribes non-gmo diets to every patient and everyone gets better. now, i was skeptical. for years people would come up to me and say, i react to gmos. when i take them out of my diet, i feel better. and my skeptic brain was saying, how do you know? but maybe it's true, but probably not. how do you know? i was looking for sort of background scientific trends. but not individuals who would react or not react. but here were doctors, so i was skeptical. i said to this woman, what percentage? she said, 100% get better. well maybe 98. so i asked her again how many patients do you have that you prescribe non-gmo diets to? she figured it out, 5,000 over several years. can i come to your office and talk to your patients? she said, sure.

i went there with a video camera. somebody was 25 days into a non-gmo diet, they had lost ten pounds, their skin condition was clearing up, their crohn's disease had cleared up, irritable powell in six weeks. another doctor invited me to their office. so many dramatic improvements. then i started asking rooms like this how many of you have removed gmos and noticed an improvement in your health. and i've been to 95 lectures in the last two years. and every single time i ask this, the most consistent reaction is gastrointestinal getting better. there's also headaches, brain fog, energy issues, weight loss, allergies, asthma and also behavioral problems with kids, autistic problems. now, when i ask people, as i did

in the doctor's office, how did you avoid gmos? they're not labeled. and they often say they buy organic or they reduced processed foods. as soon as they buy organic or reduced processed foods because i'm representing the scientific community i throw up my hands and say, too many co-factors. maybe it's the diet. probably it's the diet. but is it the non-gmo aspect of the diet. is it the reduction of the chemicals that are not used in organic? is it a reduction of the chemicals that are not found in processed foods? but at the same time i started visiting farms and veterinarians who had taken livestock off of gmo corn or soy and put them on non-gmo corn or soy and the animals got better in the same problems that the people reported getting better from. and there were no co-factors. so the danish pig farmer said in two days his massive

uncontrollably diarrhea that he'd been facing for two years disappeared in his pigs. they called it diarrhea, in the chicago office it was called irritable bowel. you can match them one after the other. then i talked to veterinarians who dealt with pets. when gmos were introduced gastrointestinal problems and immune problems. they would tell their patients -- pet owners to take their animals off the gmos and they'd get better. i have videos of pet owners repeating the same thing. now we see a pattern in the animal feeding study, gastrointestinal a immune, reproductive organ damage et cete cetera. people getting better from these same diseases and disorders when they remove gmos from their diet. pets and livestock get better from these same diseases and disorders when taken off of gmos and these same disorders and diseases are on the rise in the u.s. population paralleling the increase in the use of gmos and

roundup which is the herbicides sprayed on most gmos. now there's a big variety of disorders and diseases that i just talked about. how is it that gmos might impact weeds. if you look at gmos there's two main traits. the pesticide producing corn and cotton. they produce a dt toxin which breaks open little holes in the stomach walls of insects to kill them. then there's herbicide tolerant crop s mostly roundup ready whih is designed to absorb roundup and we eat it. if we look at the characteristics of these two toxins, it can explain the variety of these diseases and disorders. so let's start with roundup, about 85% of the cropsous there are sprayed with roundup or hosh

ba sides so the crop doesn't die because it's genetically engineered with a viral gene that's been inserted. roundup was the subject of a review paper last year. and the authors linked it just looking at the biochemical properties, to cancer, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, autism, parkinson's, alzheimer's, multiple sclerosis, anorexia, aggression and depression. they just came up with another article two weeks ago linking it to gluten sensitivity and celiac disease and death by kidney function. now the way roundup works is it chelates or binds with nutrients with trace minerals and making them unavailable to plants, making them unavailable to us. so that's one of the actions in our body that it can deprive us of important nutrients. it's also a potent antibiotic. how many people here have heard that gut bacteria is important

for health? okay. it's like a gut bacteria revolution in the medical conferences where i give lectures these days. there's many, many talks on gut bacteria. gut bacteria is critical for digestion and immunity. now, roundup is an antibiotic. it kills bacteria. but it's selective. it kills the beneficial gut bacteria but not the e. coli, salmonella and botulism. so it might cause an overgrowth of the negative gut bacteria. and that was confirmed in laboratory studies and is linked to possible botulism outbreaks, et cetera. when it messes up the gut bacteria, that can affect the immune system, the digestive system. it can produce something called zonulin which can cause leaky gut, holes in the gut walls. and if you have holes in the gut walls, undigested proteins can get in there causing immune reaction, inflammation, allergies, autoimmune disease,

it's also linked to cancer, alzheimer's parkinson's and other diseases. roundup blocks a certain pathway called the shake and make pathaway. doesn't matter what the pathway is but monsanto says humans don't have the shake and bake pathway, so it doesn't matter if it gets blocked because it doesn't get blocked in us. but our gut bacteria uses the pathway to produce transcript to fan which is the precursor to serotonin and melatonin. this could explain the mood changes and sleep issues and depression that go away when people get a proper diet and have enough tryptophan. so there's plenty of specific details that roundup does including endocrine disruption which it can messup the reproductive capacity possibly linging to birth defects and it also is linked to cancers. so just roundup in high concentrations in our food can link to all of these different diseases. but it has a strong competitor

in the bt toxin. now, the toxin breaks little holes in the stomach walls of insects to kill them. it wasn't supposed to have any impact on human beings, but a 2012 study found that it did, in fact, break holes in human cells and the conclusion said just like as in insects. now, if it breaks open little holes in our stomach walls, our intestinal walls, it also can create the leaky gut that we just talked about. now, not just -- it doesn't just allow the undigested food proteins to get in there but also the bt toxin and the roundup. so in the blood of canadian women that were tested, they found bt toxin and roundup. in fact, in pregnant women it was in 93% of their blood and in 80% of their unborn fetuses. now, if it gets into their blood, another study with mice showed that it caused damage to the red blood cells. so it might be causing damage to

our blood cells. then when it gets to the unborn fetus there's no well developed blood brain barrier, so it might get into the brain. we have a hole-poking toxin that might be in the brain of the offspring of this generation. now, another -- i talked to a scientist, several scientists who talk about the bt toxin in the blood saying it probably would wash out very quickly. now, if it washes out very quickly, why would 93% of the pregnant women in canada have bt toxin in their blood if it washes out quickly? they must have some constant source of bt toxin. the author speculated that the bt toxin probably came from the milk and meat of animals fed bt corn. i think there's another plausible explanation. in a 2004 study they found that part of the roundup-ready soybean gene, that's the

soybeans that can be sprayed with roundup, transferred into the dna of the bacteria living inside our intestines. and that that bacteria was unkillable with roundup. this suggests but doesn't prove that when the gene from genetically engineered crops transfers to gut bacteria, it continues to function producing genetically modified proteins continuously 24/7 inside our digestive tract. now, they didn't study to see whether eating a corn chip could turn your intestinal floor into living pesticide factories. what do i mean by that? corn in the united states is produced with bt corn and roundup-ready corn. now, the gene that produces the bt toxin is in the corn. what if it transfers to the gut bacteria and continues to produce the bt toxin? that might explain why 93% of

the pregnant women tested had bt toxin in their blood. because they are producing it continuously inside of us. now, this was never confirmed, this was never tested. which is a tragedy. because we're feeding it to the entire population. but if you just look at the qualities of the bt toxin and roundup, it could explain all of the different reports we're hearing from now thousands of physicians prescribing non-gmo diets. i've actually counted about 5,000, 6,000 in auditoriums where i spoke when i asked for a share of hands as to how many are prescribing non-gmo diets. in 2007, 15% of americans said they were avoiding or reducing gmos. last year 39%. so we are seeing a change and a lot of it is the concern by the medical community. now, unfortunately, the biotech

industry has earned a reputation among observers as being underhanded and, let's say, not so appreciative of the facts when scientists discover problem, according to "nature" and other publications and interviews i've done with those scientists, they're typically attacked often fired, sometimes gagged or lose their funding, lose access to seeds, they'll be demoted. so much so that there are very, very few scientists willing to do research in this area. and we have tracked very consistently the reaction by the biotech scientists in attacking these independent scientists and denying or distorting their evidence. when you look at industry-funded studies, however, they're designed to avoid finding problems. we call it tobacco science.

i sit with scientist and go over the research done by the industry, and they point out exactly how this thing would mask this effect or this thing is not tested or they don't use the modern techniques. and if they do find problems, they just explain it away with often nonscientific explanations. so during the q&a, if you want to know more specifics about how they rig their research, there's some very humorous and entertaining descriptions that everyone can understand. now, fortunately, by educating people about the health dangers, many of us have seen a revolution that's occurring. non-gmo-labeled products are the fastest growing label in the united states. the products that were labeled non-gmo in 2012 grew faster than any other category in terms of sales of all the 35 other health

care wellness claims. last year the second fastest. in europe we saw a solution to the gmo issue not from political enactments but from consumer education. and i'll -- what i want to do is i'll talk a little bit about the way out of gmos with q&a if you like, but i want to show you some pictures for the visual learner. because some of you will take home more of what's going to be on the screen. i'm just showing some of the photographs, not the peer-reviewed published studies, et cetera, just the photographs. here on the left side is a normal intestine of a rat, on the right side the change in the architecture and cell walls along the intestines after eating a genetically modified potato. this is a stomach lining. this is a potato that's not current on the market. see how the stomach lining is about twice as big? this is after eating a

genetically modified potato. this was almost certainly due to the generic process of genetic engineering, not the particular gene that was inserted. because the process causes massive collateral damage in the dna, and causes unpredicted side effects like this. in india, thousands and thousands of farm workers who deal -- who pick the cotton that produces the bt toxin are reporting itching, rashes and other gastrointestinal or immune system problems. i went to a village in india where they allowed their buffalo to graze on bt cotton plants for a single day. all 13 of their buffalo died within two or three days. many had been eating john gmo cotton plants after harvest for eight years. rats that were fed genetically modified soybeans their lives are on the right, you can see the difference compared to the lives of rats that were fed

non-gmo soybeans. rats that were fed gmo soybeans their testicles changed from the normal pink to blue. i normally take time and drink some water so that this slide can take its toll, but i don't have much time left. i gave a talk at the european parliament where a senior researcher at the academy of sciences. she's are russian-speaking rats. she fed them genetically modified soybeans starting two weeks before they got pregnant, more than 50% of their offspring died within three weeks compared to 10% in the control. the offspring were also smaller on average than the control that ate the johnnon-gmo soybeans. a study in france showing massive tumors and early death. i'm sure my colleague will try to pick that apart and i'll be happy to pick up the pieces and reinstate the scientific importance of this study. here's pictures of pig stomachs

after they were fed genetically modified feed on the right. it's hard to see in this light, but they saw severe irritation and they also showed 25% larger uteruses and other studies showed significant ulcerations. now i'm going to flip through some of the evidence, this does not guarantee causation, but it gives you an idea that if gmos are causing a problem and if we're feeding it to the entire population and if the problems are significant enough so that when people get rid of gmos they're feeling better, we would expect to see something like this. so this is deaths from senile dementia tracked with the use of glyphosate which is the active ingredient in roundup. this is the death of parkinson's disease tracked with glyphosate and corn .th gmo factor came into play.

you see that it looks like that. this is the number of hospitalizations for acute kidney injury, end-stage kidney disease, kidney and pelvis cancer incidents, thyroid cancer incidents, liver and bile duct cancer. and if you look at the cancers that are increasing in the u.s. population, those that are in the red, some of which we just mentioned, they're the target tissues for glyphosate or roundup. this is the diagnosis of hepatitis c, this is high blood pressure in the u.s., this is autism. this is low birth weight babies.

hospital discharge diagnosis of inflammatory bowel. there's a similar one for irritable bowel. chronic constipation. deaths due to intestinal infection. hospital discharge diagnosis and pair it onitis. obesity in the u.s. population. rheumatoid arthritis. celiac disease in a canadian hospital in an area where they increased the planting around it. now obviously there are other factors that support some of these diseases, but the correlations are rather shocking. they're very parallel. so what i would love to do is come back in about 21 minutes, after my esteemed colleague and competitor has a chance to try and rebut all of this information and give you a sense

that gmos are easy -- or safe to eat, so let's be able to pick apart the argument in great detail. i want to thank the vail symposium for this opportunity, this rare opportunity for this debate. thank you so much. aup aup. >> i want those of you in the front row to notice our computer stand here. with that stead, dr. stock. >> so i'm actually not going to try and rebut these things at this point in a case by case basis. this is the most absurd fabrication that i have ever listened to. and i didn't know anything about jeffrey smith before i agreed to come to this and, actually, i assumed that, you know, that it was less distorted than i'm really listening to. this set of graphs here, for

example, about, oh, it's suggestive. i can do the same set of graphs with use of the internet to try and claim that the use of internet was potentially responsible for all of these things. anything that is increasing over time would show that out. and what i heard here was that gmo crops are the most extraordinary poison that ever existed. they're responsible for all sorts of diseases. and yet, you would have all of the major scientific organizations and medical organizations be in some sort of an extraordinary conspiracy to deny this. it denies all of these institutions. and we have here someone who is actually profiting by -- or is in groups that are profiting by the gmo controversy and who has absolutely zero scientific training. not a hoot. and talks about speaking before medical audiences, speaking before scientific audiences.

and we'll get into that in a moment. but we can discuss some of these details. so i ask you to just sort of suspend your judgment on some of this stuff. and what i want to do is to try and talk a little bit about the context of these changes with gmos. only one aspect of the way we're only one aspect of the way we're using technology and the changes that are taking place today. and so i want you to step back and some things that are absolutely fundamental in the history of life are occurring right now. there are two revolutions that are without precedence. the first is the silicon revolution and what is really occurring there is that we're taking the inert materials around us, the silicon, silicon dioxide, and we're breathing a level of complexity into it that rivals life itself, and that's why we have all of our amazing