Frankenfoods in the Body
Dec. 14th, 2019 04:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithThis is the first I've heard the issue mentioned, but here's a study showing that altered DNA from gengeneered food can survive digestion to get into the body and potentially affect cells.
I'm a bit dubious, since I haven't seen other studies on this topic yet, but I can think of at least one area of significant concern. I've also seen studies linking frankenfoods with leaky gut syndrome, and the whole problem there is that things get out of the digestive system into the body. If we have a food category that increases that tendency, which also contains persistent molecules, that is a very bad combination. Bear in mind that the human body is a lot more agglutinative than most people realize, and not only can new snippets get subsumed into human DNA, they can also latch onto symbiotic organisms necessary for survival and sanity such as gut microbes. So this is something to keep an eye on.
This also makes me wonder if it contributes to the allergies to frankenfoods that Big Food is trying so hard to pretend don't exist. The human body really doesn't like foreign tissue, especially when it gets out of the designated processing zone. If frankenfoods are indeed shedding bits of DNA into the body, I can see why that would make the immune system go haywire. Especially if they really are more prone to do that compared to normal food of similar type.
I'm seeing more and more people complaining of "erratic" allergies where sometimes corn or whatever is fine and other times makes them very sick -- that's either a reaction to different types of corn or to different things put on corn (such as pesticides) that don't appear on labels and thus can't be avoided other than by avoiding the whole category. Some people find that eating only organic food solves their problem, others don't.
I'm a bit dubious, since I haven't seen other studies on this topic yet, but I can think of at least one area of significant concern. I've also seen studies linking frankenfoods with leaky gut syndrome, and the whole problem there is that things get out of the digestive system into the body. If we have a food category that increases that tendency, which also contains persistent molecules, that is a very bad combination. Bear in mind that the human body is a lot more agglutinative than most people realize, and not only can new snippets get subsumed into human DNA, they can also latch onto symbiotic organisms necessary for survival and sanity such as gut microbes. So this is something to keep an eye on.
This also makes me wonder if it contributes to the allergies to frankenfoods that Big Food is trying so hard to pretend don't exist. The human body really doesn't like foreign tissue, especially when it gets out of the designated processing zone. If frankenfoods are indeed shedding bits of DNA into the body, I can see why that would make the immune system go haywire. Especially if they really are more prone to do that compared to normal food of similar type.
I'm seeing more and more people complaining of "erratic" allergies where sometimes corn or whatever is fine and other times makes them very sick -- that's either a reaction to different types of corn or to different things put on corn (such as pesticides) that don't appear on labels and thus can't be avoided other than by avoiding the whole category. Some people find that eating only organic food solves their problem, others don't.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-12-15 02:24 am (UTC)Thoughts
Date: 2019-12-15 02:39 am (UTC)It can. That's one thing that makes leaky gut harmful. I'm not sure of the proportions. They may be the same -- or GE may be more prone to such, as hinted in some other articles where it's found to promote leaky gut.
>> Because honestly, I can't think of anything about GM DNA that would make it more likely to do this. If anything, it tends to be more fragile and liable to cleavage and digestion at the terminal ends.<<
The problem with gengineering is simply that it changes things. Those genetic differences can alter how people's bodies respond to the stuff. Wheat or corn that was acceptable before suddenly makes some people sick. Because it's not required to be labelled, those people are subjected to that new substance against their will, and their only way to avoid that is to restrict their own diet, which makes it harder to stay healthy -- especially with things like wheat and corn that not only appear as ingredients but also contaminate almost the entire foodstream.
But it gets worse. Many GE items are transgenic. That means they have genes from a whole different organism. Someone might not be allergic to the base creature but allergic to its added DNA. And what are they splicing in? Some of these patches contain DNA from shellfish or other major allergens. This is a problem.
It's a problem if it simply flails around the digestive system making people sick. But if it gets outside of that, it could do more harm. Some studies have implicated frankenfoods in systemic illnesses such as autoimmune diseases. It seems plausible that foreign DNA drifting around the body could contribute to that type of problem. So could unmodified DNA, but if GE makes this kind of leakage more common, that would correlate with the rising rate of autoimmune diseases that's happening.
It's not proof, quite. But it goes on the pile of reasons why I think GE everything should be labeled, and it's reason 1 zillion why people should not gengineer things whose genes can get loose like wind-pollinated crops.
I may not be a gengineer in this life, but I still remember the Do and Do Not list and why things are on which list. It's driving me batshit how careless people are on this planet. And I know all too well that it only takes one bad botch to wreak complete and utter havoc. Even if it's not a human disease -- even if all it does is wipe out one crop one season, that is still a tremendous amount of damage, which is totally preventable if people would just follow bioethics.