i'm sam sachs in for tom hartman coming up in this half hour a previous conversations with great minds that tom had with g.m.o. expert jeffrey smith in november the state of california will vote on whether or not genetically modified food should come with special labeling corporations that peddle g m o's like monsanto are spending big bucks to make sure that doesn't happen in this conversational understand exactly what monsanto is trying to hide so here it is tom's conversations with great minds with jeffrey smith. for tonight's conversations of the great minds i'm joined by jeffrey smith jeffrey is a leading consumer advocate in the fight against the use of genetically modified foods he's council leaders on every continent influence some of the first state laws in

the united states regulating the use of g.m.o. those genetically modified organisms jeffrey has been described as the leading world expert in the understanding and communication of the health issues surrounding genetically modified foods is the author of numerous critically acclaimed books on genetically modified foods including genetic roulette a documented health risks of genetically engineered foods jeffrey joins me now in the studio you're welcome thank you thanks for joining us back in the eighty's when the g m o's were first coming out there there were no laws there were no regulations and monsanto actually went to the i believe it was the bush administration it's true it was the reagan administration ok and so we'd like you to regulate us what was this all about what have you see monsanto has not been a very popular company for decades because of continually lying about the toxicity of their products so they figured if the government gave a rubber stamp to it and it looked like it was the government approving it then

they were kind of off the hook and in the next decade they got what they wanted a rubber stamp that meant nothing but it gave the illusion that the government was . how so well the person in charge of policy at the f.d.a. was michael taylor monsanto's former attorney he had been put in that position because the white house under the first bush administration instructed the f.d.a. to promote biotechnology and so they brought in michael taylor to be in charge of the policy claims that the agency is not aware of any information showing that g m o's are significantly different and therefore no testing or labeling was necessary that's the actual language in fact we have a graphic of this showed on the screen the f.d.a. declares g m o's no different this is a graphic number one actually they were there yet the agency is not aware of any information showing the foods this is verbatim what i've just said is this is the this is the actual and this it was was written by a guy who worked for

a monsanto quit his job went to work for the government then went back to monsanto as their v.p. and now is back is that at the f.d.a. is u.s. food safety is are you kidding know. but it gets worse you see. what a lawsuit was filed against the f.d.a. they were forced to turn over their secret internal memos forty four thousand of them and it turns out that the statement the policy was a lie that it was actually the overwhelming consensus among the scientists working at the f.d.a. the g m o's were dangerous and should be carefully tested they warned against toxins allergens new diseases or nutritional problems and they complained about the proposed regulation that came out that's remarkable so and in fact you you have some examples here genetically modified potatoes this. the photo g.m. potatoes number two damage to rats tell us about this well in this case the rats ate genetically engineered potatoes engineered to produce an insecticide that's not

on the market it was an experiment so that the this is sort of like the corn that produces bacillus them. very similar very similar but what they did was they found that the potatoes the natural the rats the natural potatoes that was spiked with in the same insecticide that the g.m. potatoes produced they didn't get sick so it was only the process of genetic engineering that could be implicated the same process that's used for the saw in corn that are already on the market could it could it be that if the toxin the insecticide if it's externally applied the potato it's everything is outside of so you remember it and so the body can somehow distinguish that the just attract whereas if it's and this if it's if it's the product of the potato itself growing it would permeate every cellular structure of the potato in this case in this case they guarded against that because they had tested this particular insecticide at doses that seven hundred times higher than were produced in the potato and they had

no effect on the on the rats but we do know the process of genetic engineering causes massive collateral damage in the d.n.a. and so there could be hundreds or thousands of mutations in the d.n.a. of the tail of the plant right so the corn for example has a new allergen monsanto's bt corn has a completely new allergen that was not evaluated by the f.d.a. or anyone and only found out afterwards by allergen you mean something that causes human beings to react allergic lee exactly and monsanto's soybeans have as much as seven times higher levels of an existing soy allergen etc and these things are not evaluated now just to go back to this g.m. potatoes that the consequence of this next graphic the rats developed potentially pre-cancerous growth in the digestive tracks we have a picture of that in just a second smaller brains livers and testicles partial atrophy of the liver and immune system damage in ten days in ten days it seems to me that all you have to do

on your website to get the average american at least the average american male to pay attention to this is put you know months. anto gives you smaller testicles i get what i have almost better male rats are genetically modified story the testicles change from pink to blue. i have pictures of that why when i show it i kind of just take a sip of water and say i'll let that one sink in for a while yeah. the next graphic we have i believe is the stomach lining yes and this these are these are the stomach lines now this is this is a scale so the the lining cells this is the end of feeling. not to be the start of ok there's the stomach lining is. what are we seen this is called potentially precancerous cell growth there's no tumor but it's proliferative cell growth for some reason the cell architecture is completely different in the rats that ate the genetically modified potato so here's the scary thing when a pediatrician named michelle pair o.

saw all these research studies she said oh we've got a problem this is what we're seeing in our children she has seen changes in the digestive capacity and they just are just effects in children that are different than they were thirty years ago kids that are allergic to everything are failure to thrive can't eat anything and we see that this kind of disruption may be. throughout the american population because inflammatory bowel disease is up forty percent since he was introduced colitis ulcers etc now we've interviewed thousands of doctors and their patients over time who have prescribed diets talk to them they said they were there describing diets to every patient and as we described their results it turns out these kind of things are seen the gastrointestinal problems are on the rise but when they switch to non g.m. a lot of them go away within days and with livestock it's the same way with pigs that were fed genetically modified soyuz their regular diet they were switched to

non g.m. soy diarrhea problems disappeared in two days ulcers bloated deaths from them disappeared comply. we're seeing changes in cattle pigs dogs cats and humans when they go from g.m. to non g.m. and it's very similar what's happening we're seeing an epidemic in the united states right now of what's being referred to as gluten intolerance so we act as a sweet and it's i can testify to this i really came back from australia about a decade well it was nine eleven the day before nine eleven and i got really really sick there from. those parasite that infects the water supply and so and. took a bunch of antibiotics somehow new to my guts and ever since then i've been able to eat anything with wheat i get really sick could it be and i and it's like in that decade from that is till now it's like everybody i know is like this and restaurants now are saying oh you want the gluten free menu it's like you know

a decade ago i'd say that they go are so used to right and it could be the you know not to personalize this but. that kind of thing that that intolerance to gluten isn't really an intolerance to gluten it's either ate in dollars to g.m.o. gluten or b. it is a change in the body that is the consequence of eating other g.m.o. foods or it's being maintained because i mean i eat a lot of corn now because i can't eat wheat soy things and tacos if i mean them in a restaurant the odds are they're g.m.o. corn so i'm continually. can you yes on that a little bit i think i will go on to something here i think we are i think we are when i describe for example the bt corn which you describe the corn engineered to produce its own insecticide when i describe that medical conference is that doctors go oh my god this could explain the increase in gastrointestinal problems in my practice since we're to do so in one thousand nine hundred six bt toxin it's designed to break open the stomach of insects and kill them right now according to

environmental protection agency there's no impact on human cells and it's destroyed during digestion they got it wrong february of this year journal of applied talks. they took the bt toxin out of monsanto's corn applied it to human cells it poked holes in the cells causing leakage the same kind of holes that may kill insects last year in canada they found ninety three percent of pregnant women had bt toxin in their blood as well as the blood of eighty percent of their unborn fetuses so if bt toxin is drilling holes in our intestine the walls and causing disruption of the lining of our digestive track then it could be causing the problems that we're seeing now you mention antibiotics the other type of g.m. crop or roundup ready crops engineered not to die when sprayed with roundup so it's the weed killing technology the roundup ends up in the food the roundup is an antibiotic we eat the antibiotic and not only has all these cancer promoting end of

can describe dander construction problem properties but it can also potentially kill the gut bacteria that's helpful for our immune system and our digestive system so all this kind of disruption can be wreaking havoc on the human diet in north america and we're seeing these kind of changes in the increased disorders since one thousand nine hundred six is there a control are there or are there other countries that have similar wealth of the united states similar dietary habits you know states but don't use genetically modified foods and if so they have different incidences of these kinds of problems yes the united states is falling behind europe united states gets sicker more often than europeans united states is falling behind in terms of infant mortality and longevity etc so europe is a good example in fact there's another genetically modified food called bovine growth hormone injected cows in the dairy products that come out and they compared the the rate of fraternal twins in the u.k. compared to the u.s. and found it was much bigger in the u.s. and they blame vat on r b g h because it increases the incidence of maternal twins

. that's remarkable i've seen a lot of speculation to the somehow these. hormones i can't identify any particular one but the increasing cocktail of on the right giving our animals are are contributing to breast cancer but it's growing as well possibly prostate cancers and just you know all these hormone mediated cancers and the growth hormone increases i.g.f. one which is linked to breast cancer pre-menopausal women with high levels of i.g.f. one are seven times more likely to develop breast cancer so what i just said because i spoke pretty quickly was when you take this injection and you inject cow's the milk has higher levels of a cancer promoting a former monsanto scientist told me that three of his colleagues found such high levels of i.g.f. one in the milk from cross treated with monsanto's drug these three months and a scientist refused to drink milk thereafter unless it was organic. mazie more with jefferson with.

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a supposed whatever your destination hitch a ride to tomorrow's water world today. welcome back to conversations with great minds with jeffrey smith jeffrey has been described as the leading world expert in the understanding and communication of the health issues surrounding genetically modified foods he's the author of numerous critically acclaimed books on genetically modified foods including genetic roulette documented health risks of genetically engineered foods let's get back to it we talked about celiac disease intolerance allergies these all these things are exploding autism is something that has been really in the headlines recently back twenty thirty years ago as one in several thousand children now it's one in several hundred children eighty one in eighty eight born in the autistic spectrum some of that apparently is the consequence of better detection or you know changes in our

definitions of what is and what isn't autism but that can't account for more than a very very small percentage of that change and there's all this speculation you know the mercury that tomorrow so all these other things you're suggesting in the genetically modified organisms may be connected i think it may be a contributor but many scientists and doctors also agree in fact in my film coming out called genetic will it will be out in august we interview three different parents including a medical doctor that took their kids off of genetically modified foods and saw changes in behavior and gastrointestinal distress one of the scientists that i work with gave a talk in germany and described the behavioral physiological and neurological changes in laboratory animals in livestock that were fed genetically modified feet and they autism specialists came up to him afterwards said these are exactly what we're seeing in autistic children the gastrointestinal problems the gut permeability the changes in the bacterial balance and behavioral changes are found in the rats in the mice in the pigs and the cows that they've been tested and now

in our kids in our kids and that's and is this in utero or or exposure. after birth we haven't gotten that far into your breast milk or it's hard to say we do know that inside the in utero you have the bt toxin and the round up they both pass through the window into the fluid and of course the blood brain barrier is not well developed at all and so it's things like if the toxin which breaks open pores in human cells in fact it's in the brain we have no idea if that's going to be leading to developmental disorder in our last segment i asked you if there was a control group against the united states could we measure it i'm trying to be under control group as myself so good on you i don't know how to do it and we want to get i want to get to that a minute because this is one of the big problems here in america but in any case you said europe what's the status of g m o's and you're well the person who did this potato study was gagged and fired and threatened within two days of going

public with his findings but after seven months he was invited to speak before parliament the gag order was lifted a firestorm erupted there was a european central european scientist he had been he had been hired to figure out how to test for the safety of g m o's he was an insider when his gag order was lifted in april in february of one thousand nine hundred nine within ten weeks the tipping point of consumer rejection was achieved because using g m o's had become a marketing liability so. unilever nestle's the bay of the major food companies of all remove g.m. and gradients from the european brands but not in the u.s. where most people are unaware. so was here a for some period of time using g.m.o. foods yes is it possible to see a change and in that you know over time that it correlates to that with things like you know autism or i.b.s. or whatever we did see that soon after g m so i was introduced to the u.k. sort of by fifty percent in a single year or years this was in one thousand nine hundred just before they were

moved and in the article that came out the york laboratory was saying this. could implicate genetically engineered soy but i think the government stepped in and they wouldn't release the report and they stopped speaking about it because the same government that jumped on our part to discover the problems with the potatoes remarkable. india yeah has had a. apparently a real problem with you have all products and and that problem has been more economic i mean we've been talking medical here. i'm assuming that there's that as well but chopra so that using g.m.o. as are risking our extension extinction as a species he was talking about medical banana shiva has as just done some brilliant work on the on the on the thousands tens of thousands of farmers who are committing suicide quarter of a million quarter of a quarter million farmers according to vonn when she have committed suicide and she says at least three quarters are due to bt cotton genetically engineered cotton

engineered to produce the bt toxin to kill insects now basically what's what's the relationship between that and so it's ok they borrow heavily to buy the more expensive seeds and associated chemicals the bt cotton is unreliable and when it doesn't even pay back enough to allow the people to pay their loans they commit suicide going to lose the land and they have found about ninety five out of one hundred homes with a knock on the doors and say what's the cause of the suicide it's bt and it was leaked documents from the government which is that was that all was not bt cotton but the documents now say in fact it is bt why why why why would be to be any different than the you know regular cotton and why wouldn't the farmers just grow regular right now it's impossible to even get regular cotton in the many of the districts because monsanto has basically taken over the market making it virtually impossible to find it it's a monopoly yes how does how do they achieve that well they purchased it they also

went to dance of lengths of advertising and disinform so they had bollywood actors . spiritual leaders that cetera converting the minds of the people saying oh you're going to make a lot of money and a lot of money so even though independent research was tracking the reduction in income monsanto was claiming just the opposite and broadcasting that to the farmers so they were basically twisting their arm to get them to invest in the seeds were going to make the rich and a lot of them committed suicide and this is ongoing oh yeah in addition people when they pick the cotton are getting itchy and rational over their rations all over their bodies and when they allow animals to graze on the cotton plants after harvest many of the animals die i visited one village where they had allowed their buffalo to graze on normal cotton plants for eight years they allowed them to graze on bt cotton plants for a single day and all thirteen buffalo died. and the bt plants have a built in selected sector which is arguably a poison given given all this b.s.

why are americans more outraged because americans have been disinformed you may have you may said earlier feed the world through g.m.o. the experts don't think so no one really believes it in fact g.m.o. is actually reduce you but if you asked the average american because two hundred fifty million dollars at the turn of the century was spent on convincing americans the g m o's were needed to feed the growing population but the argument. my understanding is that the main argument of g.m.o. is historically has not been yield it's been you know this crop will grow just well as any other crop but it's been genetically engineered to have its own antibiotic and under its own and in its own insecticide and therefore it's less expensive to grow because you don't have to pour insecticide out or a roundup ready for example roundup ready you know you can use roundup which is herbicides nukes weeds and. actually described rot a pretty what is that you are so excited scientists found bacteria growing near

monsanto's factory that wasn't dying in the presence of round herbicide it was in a chemical waste dump or. and they figured great let's put in the food supply so they took the gene that allowed the bacteria to survive roundup took it out and put it into soybeans now you can spray roundup over a field of soybeans and all of the other play of biodiversity dies but not the soybeans so you can have a completely clean field with no we and if you go to an argentina there's miles and miles of basically sterile outdoors whereas normally if you were sprayed roundup out a bunch of soybeans they would die all along with all the other reeds as well so now we're in just a roundup is it's worse now because the roundup actually is now thought to be creating a proliferation of a new type of organism that may be linked to miscarriages and infertility a group of scientists wrote a letter to tom vilsack which was leaked on to the internet the secretary of agriculture and described how this organism when isolated when it was exposed to

pregnant chickens it killed the embryo within forty eight hours when they have ranches or forms with high levels of miscarriages they look at the aborted fetal tissue and they're packed with this new organism which is also on the fire which has been which has been treated with round by organism you're talking about a bacteria it's new science it's the size of a virus so it's only seen in an electron microscope it's never been characterized before and you know viruses are those weird kind of in between or i'm not sure if it's alive and i'm sure it's not because they don't they don't excrete they don't metabolize they do it's basically do this is not and are so this is not a virus it's not a it's not a lot of things it's probably something like a fungus that's a microfungus but they've never seen it before they're isolating the d.n.a. right now. i know i mean it gets stranger than truth there are those who suggest that all of this is just a byproduct globalization how do you respond well what i've seen traveling to

thirty four countries is the monsanto like serfs on globalization and corruption captures governments all over so. it's not just the byproduct i'd say it's that appear to me of an incredible global takeover when you look at the speech that was given by monsanto's consultant arthur andersen in one nine hundred ninety nine january they described it the ideal future of monsanto's executives was a world in which one hundred percent of all commercial seeds were genetically engineered and patented and had monsanto's associated chemicals sold alongside that and they created the plan to create the strategy and tactics to achieve that ideal future within fifteen to twenty years i suppose this is it is this just monsanto are there other companies and syngenta down dupont and bear the five major jim crow tell me what gene drift is gene drift i plant over here my pollen comes up doesn't read the sign that says do not spray it comes over across pollinates with your plants or the seeds blow over or passing truck comes in delivering canola seeds in

the wind blows and it ends up on your farm there's no coexistence that's possible because nature has figured out a way to spread her bounty over centuries and millennia and this and this gene drift is not just a problem with soybeans you know there's a lot of other stuff growing around those nola to mustard canola to broccoli relatives wild relatives and domestic relatives sugar beets to chart so and it may be and it could just as easily go to things that we don't eat but other parts of the system eat to the grasses or what we call weeds that the rabbits are eating and now try and recall it. impossible for getting pollution a gene pool oh you can't recall the g.m. is once it's a nature it's a nature exactly so it's going to go beyond the effects of global warming beyond nuclear waste it's at this point in our science it's permanent self-propagating pollution so what do we do we have a little less than a minute left first of all we have to cap it right now the good news is this we

know from europe even a small percentage of consumers avoiding g m o's can drive it out of the market with a tipping point. so we're educating people at responsible technology dot org with information that changes people's diet and respond at nudgee most shopping guide dot com you can learn how to avoid those but now there's a labeling initiative in california where if it wins in november will be labeled fifty three percent of americans say they would avoid those if labeled we think i think that the companies would rather eliminate those than admit they use them so winning in california is essential right now amazing and spreading the word yes jeffrey thanks so much if you sent us now. to see this or other conversations in the great minds go to our website conversations of great minds dot com and that's the big picture for tonight friday august twenty fourth two thousand and twelve if you missed any of tonight's show you can now watch an h.d. on hulu at hulu dot com slash the big picture and don't forget as tom always says democracy begins with you get out there get active occupy something your it will

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