New Study Shows GE Corn Causes Infertility and Abnormal Gene Expression

A new study commissioned by the Austrian government has found that a diet of GM corn causes infertility and abnormal gene expression in mice. Most studies on the health effects of GM corn have been either short term, or corporate funded and controlled. This study adds to a growing body of independent evidence that GMO's may not be safe.

Alberta Velimirov at Research Institute on Biological Agriculture (Forschungsinttitut für biologishen Landbau) along with Claudia Binter and Jürgen Zentck at the Institute for Nutrition (Institut für Ernährung) both in Vienna, monitored multiple generations of mice fed GM corn for changes in overall heath and reproductive performance, and conducted sub-microscopic analyses of tissues, cells, and gene expression.

The Austrians tested a newer variety of “stacked” GM corn (NK603 x MON810) containing three sets of foreign genes: two of which code for tolerance to the herbicide glyphosate, (RoundUp), and one which produces the pesticide Bt inside the cells of the corn. The team reported that Monsanto was unwilling to provide neither the GM test crop nor the parent crop from which the GM crop was developed, so the research team had to use a close relative variety of corn as the control feed.

Three sets of experiments were performed:
• Starting with a multi-generation feeding trial, mice were fed and bred for four successive generations, beginning with parents who were fed on GM or control corn diets from birth.
• The second was a multi-cycle breeding trial lasting 20 weeks in which breeding pairs of mice were fed either GM or control corn beginning one week prior to breeding until the end of experiment, and allowed to go through four breeding cycles in the same generation.
• The third was a life-term trial involving feeding the mice without breeding from conception (via the pregnant mothers) to their eventual death.

In the multi-generation study, the control babies tended to have higher average size and weight. Mice fed control corn had larger litters, and more of the offspring survived as well. Over all of the generations, about twice as many mice were lost in the GM-fed group as compared with the control group (14.59% vs 7.4%).

Kidney weight of females in the GM-fed group was significantly lower in the second, third and fourth generations than in control mice. The researchers used an electron microscope to examine the liver cells of the mice. The GM-fed mice showed signs of significantly reduced core metabolism. In addition, DNA micro-array analyses showed important differences in gene expression between the two groups fed non-GM corn and the group fed GM corn.

In the third generation of the multi-generation trial, DNA micro-array analyses were performed on the lower small intestine. This identified 2,374 genes that were significantly abnormally expressed in GM-fed compared with non GM-fed mice; with 421 of these showing a two-fold or greater change from controls. The reproductive and other effects observed may be just the beginning of genetic changes that could take many generations of GM feeding to reveal other abnormalities.

Unknown multi-generational effects of GM corn
The Austrian team's study clearly showed that GM corn has a negative effect on fertility, and may cause changes to the genetic makeup that we cannot predict or understand. Reduced kidney weight, infertility, and abnormal gene expression are serious consequences—even more so because they often did not show up until the third or fourth generation. This means that if GM foods cause similar health problems in humans, we may not know until it is too late for our grandchildren.

This study should be a rallying cry for more independent research on the health effects of GM crops. The results raise serious questions about the potential human health effects of GM foods—and illuminate just how little we know about long-term effects of GM foods. The unwillingness of Monsanto to cooperate with the Austrian researchers is an indication, in and of itself, that genetically-modified crops may not be as safe as the corporation would like us to believe.

U.S. citizens (and increasingly others around the world) are the unwilling consumers of large quantities of genetically modified corn, soy, sugar beets, and canola widely used in processed foods. Studies like this beg for further research and regulation of GM crops, and at the very least, mandatory labeling of all foods containing GE ingredients—a change that more than 90% of Americans polled would like to see.

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Velimirov A, Binter C and Zentek J. Biological effects of transgenic maize NK603xMON810 fed in long term reproduction studies in mice. Report, Forschungsberichte der Sektion IV, Band 3. Institut für Ernährung, and Forschungsinttitut für biologischen Landbau, Vienna, Austria, November 2008.