What is Corn Spliced With? GMO Genes Revealed!

10:04 PM corn, dangerous, food, Health No Comments

For exactly three decades genetically modified organisms(GMOs) for agricultural purposes have been in production. Under the premise of “trying to feed the world”, agricultural, chemical and chemical defense companies, their investors included, have given great praise to the transgenic creations their science teams have invented. If the products of genetically modified foods are so amazing that they will “end hunger” then why is the language praising them so uninformative, so incomplete, and why is the public uneducated as to what they even are?
If those who produce GMOs aren’t going to educate the public on what their products contain, and their results, then we might as well perform the research and bring the knowledge for you. As a means of education this article will specifically highlight the GMO technology ‘Bt’. We’ll talk a bit about the origination of Bt, it’s use within GMO technology, the byproducts that have resulted from it’s use and conclude with health and environmental effects.
What does the Bt stand for anyway?

“Bacillus thuringiensis, or simply Bt, is a naturally occurring soil bacterium that, when sprayed on plants, is toxic to certain pest insects. For years, farmers and home gardeners have used Bt as a microbial spray pesticide to control caterpillars, certain types of beetles, as well as mosquitoes and black flies.”
- EPA on Bt Regulation

It’s unbelievable that even this small bit of information is completely unknown to the average person who eats produce containing Bt, Bt genes or it’s byproduct almost daily. Bacillus thuringiensis has been used as a natural insecticide for nearly a century and can still be bought by anyone in it’s natural form today. This natural insecticide was first discovered by the Japanese scientist, Shigetane Ishiwatari, in 1901 while investigating the sotto disease. The sotto disease was a large problem at that time as it was killing the silkworm population, and silk is a very important cultural and economic resource in the region. When Ishiwatari isolated the bacterium he named it Bacillus sotto but when it was rediscovered in 1911 killing moths in Thuringia, Germany. The German scientist Ernst Berliner had renamed it to what we know today, but Bt wasn’t actively used as an insecticide by humans until the year 1920 in France.
The History of Bt
Bt in it’s natural form is considered a safe, natural and non-toxic insectide that is deadly to specific insects. For Bt to kill these insects it first has to be eaten. Upon digestion crystalline protein chains are released which slowly punch holes through the insect’s cell walls, causing the insect to stop eating, and spores of Bt begin germinating throughout the insects entire body. Different Bt strains kill certain types of insects, each Bt strain can only attach to specific types of receptors in the gut.
How Does Bt Work?

Effects on the environment are largely considered mild. It is a soil bacterium and thrives at body temperature. When exposed to higher temperatures such as sunlight (UV light), however, its half-life greatly decreases to around 3.8 hours. As soon as it is exposed to a warmer-than-normal medium, B. thuringiensis’ spores start deteriorating and lose viability within four days. Normally, a short half-life is bad. But in Bt’s case, it is actually good in that the short half-life minimizes insect resistance. Additionally, when field tests were performed on a sample of transgenic corn, researchers discovered better protection from root damage by Western corn rootworm than by chemical pesticides.
Bacillus thuringiensis Wiki

Bacillus thuringiensis Goes Transgenic
Bt seems to have a bright future until the 1990s, when bugs around the world began to evolve, growing extremely resistant to pesticides. The European corn borer, the bollworm (Helicoverpa armigera) and arthropods of all sorts were becoming worse pests than they ever had been before. Alike the story of any sci-fi novel, the solution to this devestating problem had come from a very interesting source, but this story is reality.
During the 1980s, research teams in laboratories from many different corners of the world had been developing a very interesting technology. This technology is what we know of today as genetic modification, the organisms referred to as GMOs or transgenic life forms.
Though working with plants was not the first time a transgenic being had come to life, scientists had been working with identifying key genes in Bt strains and applying them to plants such as tobacco, tomato and cotton. These new transgenic plants were trial tested in the mid to late 1980s, the plants were successful at producing the crystal protein chains that tear the guts of susceptible insects apart.
Transgenic Plants: Present Status and Social and Economic Impacts
Academic Press, Oct 14, 1992

“A timeline of information about the discoveries and advances made in genetics. Note the speed at which this area of science has evolved in the last thirty years.”
A brief history of genetic modification
The following link describes a long history of Bt and it’s many uses within the field of GMO technology.
Insect Resistant Plants and Genetic Engineering
Transgenic Bt Plants and Human Health

Now, the thing is that these Bt toxins are actually not even harmless to mammals (Portilho et al., 2013) and we need to ask ourselves about the ecological sense in creating something which cannot be eaten by the other organisms in the ecosystem.
- Are GMOs All Bad? The Truth About GMOs

Just what was Michael Thomas, fellow write at Exposing The Truth, trying to tell us? According to the report he was referencing, the use of specific Bt genes in GMOs rendered the strains hematotoxic! Hematoxins destroy red blood cells, disrupt blood clotting and may cause damage to cell tissues and organs. While this may not be the case in the use of natural Bt, transgenic plants spliced with certain types of Bt may cause a massive amount of health problems when consumed over a long period of time. The more of this stuff we eat the more toxic our blood becomes.
Portilho et al., 2013

How could this have happened, why wouldn’t the researchers have known that this would be a problem? When it comes to Genetically Modified Organisms, specifically in the United States, the Food and Drug Administration’s approval policy is currently 21 years old. The approval system is very outdated, especially for these times in which scientific discovery and progress occurs nearly overnight! The story does become more fishy though, something just doesn’t seem right about sacrificing human health in the name of progress.

The FDA policy (unchanged since 1992) places responsibility on the producer or manufacturer to assure the safety of the food, explicitly relying on the producer/manufacturer to do so:
“Ultimately, it is the responsibility of the producer of a new food to evaluate the safety of the food and assure that the safety requirement of section 402(a)(1) of the act is met.”
So it is the company, not any independent scientific review, providing the research that is relied on to assert safety. FDA guidance to industry issued in 1997 covered voluntary “consultation procedures,” but still relied on the developer of the product to provide safety data. There is currently no regulatory scheme requiring GM food to be tested to see whether it is safe for humans to eat.
The FDA approach can be understood as the result of having a dual mission. In addition to its mission to protect food safety, the FDA was charged with promotion of the biotech industry.”
- American Bar Association: FDA and Regulation of GMOs

Health Studies

The scientists already knew that Bt toxin was very toxic and potentially deadly at levels above 270 milligrams per kilogram (basically ppm), so they instead tested levels ranging from 27mg/kg, 136mg/kg, and 270mg/kg for one to seven days (each of the Cry toxins were separated out and tested individually to maximize accuracy and total info). It was quite clear right off the bat that these Cry toxins were quite hemotoxic even at the lowest level of 27mg/kg administered only one time and one day as they clearly had damaged the blood, particularly in reference to red blood cells. The quantity and size of the erythrocytes (RBCs) were both significantly reduced, as was the overall levels of hemoglobin for which oxygen to attach to.
- New Study Proves Bt Toxins in GMOs Toxic to Mammalian Blood

Dangerous Toxins From Genetically Modified Corn Found in Blood of Women and Fetuses
Mercola Article
Bt Toxin Kills Human Kidney Cells
I-Sis Article

“A groundbreaking new study published in the current issue of the Journal of Hematology & Thromboembolic Diseases reveals the potential “leukemogenic” properties of the Bt toxin biopesticides engineered into the vast majority of GMO food crops already within the US food supply.”
- Green Med Info

The manners in which we go about these methods has to change. Genetic engineering has the potential of being an amazingly wonderful technology, but when society allows things so complex to go on unchecked is when things run astray. Is it possible to engineer life that isn’t harmful to the natural environment? Can we learn, as a species, to grow in harmony with all around us or will we fall victim to our own necessity for progress?