Fabricated GM Health Risks

The health risks associated with GM foods have been supported by pseudoscientific claims, not reliable primary research. Many online sites claim that GM foods have been causing diseases such as liver cancer and renal cancer (Sarich, 2014). The support for these claims rely on the correlation of the increase in the incidence of these diseases, and the increase in GM foods since their widespread inception (Smith, 2010). Although this may seem convincing, these claims are based in correlation, not causation, and therefore there are many potential confounding variables that must be accounted for.

Furthermore, when primary research is cited, it is often cited incorrectly. The most consistently cited evidence of the harms of GM foods states that a GM foods cause cancer (Smith, 2017). The study fed rat models a GM food diet consisting of GM maize and compared their health outcome to control rats after two years. To many individuals, this is more than enough proof to condemn the use of GM foods. However, this study was flawed as there were a low number of replicates and the strain of rats that were used (Sprague-Dawley) are susceptible to developing tumors. These factors are so debilitating, that the authors of the research have since retracted their article (Séralini et al., 2012). Additionally, several more recent articles have not found any significant differences between rats that were fed a GM food diet and control rats. Comprehensive 90-day animal feeding trials with GM maize, many replicates and a different breed of rats have found no significant difference between treatment groups (GMO 90plus, 2015). Additional 90-day animal feeding studies with other strains of GM maize yielded no significant differences (Zeljenková et al., 2014). Additionally, longer trials of 1 year did not yield any adverse effects (Zeljenková et al., 2014).