Simon: The food that you eat can be genetically modified and may cause more cancer. You should avoid them now if you want to prevent cancer.

In this episode, you will first learn what GMOs are. Then, you are going to discover their health risks. After that, you will learn how biotech companies use patents to destroy farming. Finally, you will find out how to avoid GMOs and stay healthy.

Intro jingle: Welcome to the Cancer Wisdom podcast. This podcast teaches you how to treat cancer with natural remedies without using toxic treatments. Discover how to take charge of your health and not be a slave to Big Pharma medicine. Here's your host, Simon Persson.

Simon: GMO stands for genetically modified organism. Another name for it is genetic modification. So, you create GMOs by taking genes from one species and inserting them into another. Genetic engineering is different from traditional breeding and has unique risks.

In traditional breeding, it's possible to mate a pig with another pig to get a new variety. But it's impossible to mate a pig with a potato or a mouse.

It's also hard to breed animals that resemble each other. A horse, for example, can mate with a donkey, but the offspring is sterile. So, living organisms hinder the introduction of DNA from different species.

To force the DNA from one breed into another, you can use bacteria to infect the animal or plant cells with the new DNA. Or you can coat DNA into tiny metal pellets and then fire it with a special gun into the cells. Or you can inject the new DNA into fertilized eggs with a fine needle.

Another method is by using electric shocks to create holes in the membrane covering the sperm and then force the DNA into it. So, with genetic engineering, scientists can bridge species barriers set up by nature. For example, they have meshed fish genes into tomatoes.

This is normally impossible to do with natural processes because the body hinders that from happening. So, our understanding of DNA is limited.

Any change to an organism's DNA can have side effects that are impossible to predict or control. The new gene could alter the chemical reactions within the cell or disturb it.   This process can create new toxins or allergens and changes in the nutritional value.

GMOs have two main traits. One of them is tolerance to herbicides. So this feature lets the farmers spray a weed killer such as Roundup on the crop without killing it.

Farmers need to buy GMO seeds from the company's corresponding herbicide. Roundup Ready crops can withstand Monsanto's or now Bayer's Roundup herbicide.   

Liberty Link crops can tolerate Bayer's Liberty herbicide. And other GMO plants, like BT Cotton, can produce pesticides.

This poison kills or deters insects and saves the farmer from having to spray pesticides. There are several companies within the GMO seed industry known as AG Biotech. Monsanto was the largest GM company before they got bought by Bayer.

Due to Monsanto's global shopping spree, it was the largest seed supply of both GMO and conventional seeds. And Bayer, a pharmaceutical company, acquired Monsanto for 63 billion dollars in 2018.

Due to the deal, the brand name Monsanto disappeared. Other GMO companies are DuPont, Syngenta, Bayer CropScience, and Dow.

Soybeans, corn, canola,  and cotton are the most common GMOs on the market. There are also GMO zucchini, crooknek squash, papaya, and alfalfa.

The reason I created this podcast episode is because GMOs have many health risks. The country most supportive of GMO foods and the first to approve them is the United States.

According to U. S. law, GMO ingredients are considered food additives, and typically, when you add additives, they must undergo extensive safety studies.  

If approved, the food products that contain the additive must be labeled as an ingredient. But there is an exception if the product gets deemed generally recognized as safe or GRAS.  

The additive must go through peer-reviewed, published studies to get a GRAS stamp, or there needs to be a consensus among the scientific community that the product is safe.

GMO foods have not been through either of them. The FDA declare GMO crops are GRAS, as long as their products say they are. The FDA does not regulate GMO foods. Instead, the biotech companies make the call.  

You can't patent natural substances like vegetables. But if biotech companies can patent GMO crops, they can't be ordinary vegetables. How can you otherwise patent them?

That means that something changed in the organism that makes them able to be patented. So, scientists often lose their jobs or reputations when they try to reveal the truth about GMOs.

So one example was Dr. Pusztai. He attempted to expose the dangers of GMOs. Years ago, he was a respected scientist that got 1.6 million pounds from the government.

His task was to design a rigorous safety assessment protocol for testing GMO foods. About two years into his research, he reviewed several confidential industry GMO studies. What he saw shocked him.

Pusztai found problems and claimed that GMO technology was unsafe. But then two phone calls from the UK Prime Minister's office changed everything. So, the following day, Dr. Pusztai lost his job at the institute after working there for 45 years.

So, his research team dissolved, and the government stopped the long-term testing protocol. And he also got threats of a lawsuit if he revealed the truth.

And this is normal when it comes to biotech companies. Therefore, we don't have any great GMO studies.

They already have the FDA wrapped around their finger. The FDA is supposed to regulate businesses like biotech companies and drug companies. But they both control the FDA.

The biotech industry says that millions have eaten GMO foods without any ill effects. However, GMO foods might already have led to severe and widespread health problems.

So, no one monitors the impact of GMO foods on human health. There's no good human GMO feeding study. And without any follow-up tests, we can't know if genetic engineering may be the cause of our illnesses. It can take years or decades before we can identify the cause.

So, the only way to see the effects of GMOs is through animal studies. Various feeding studies on animals have resulted in pre-cancerous cell growth.

We also know that milk from treated cows contains more IGF-1 than regular dairy. As I said before in the podcast, IGF-1 is one of the highest risk factors for getting breast and prostate cancer.

It's a growth hormone that we need when we need to grow. But as we get older, we don't need IGF-1 as much. And therefore, too much IGF-1 can create more cancer. Nearly every independent animal feeding safety study shows adverse or unexplained effects of GMO foods.

So, the increase in several diseases in North America may be due to changes in our diet. There's not much published data on the risk of GMO foods.

Therefore, we must look at other sources. So, we have observed the ill effects of GMO foods on animals and humans. Soon after GMO soy hit the UK market, soy allergies skyrocketed by 50%.  

And when you look at cows, pigs, and rats, when they can choose between eating regular food or GMO foods, they usually avoid GMO foods.

Therefore, there must be something wrong with the food if they try to avoid it. We have also seen that after the cotton harvest in part of India, sheep herds grazed on BT cotton plants.

And reports from four villages revealed that about 25% of their sheep died within a week. Workers at six villages became ill after handling BT cotton. They got reactions in the skin, eyes, and upper respiratory tract.

In 2003, about 100 people living next to BT cornfield in the Philippines became ill. They had skin, respiratory, and intestinal problems while the corn was shedding pollen.

The United States doesn't want to label GMOs. So, neither consumers or manufacturers know how much GMO content is in the food.

Even if GMO foods may cause harm, it may take several years of effort to remove it from the food supply. And since the FDA doesn't require any safety studies, the makers of GMO foods can claim that they are safe, and the agency has no further questions.

Even if GMO foods were safe, the largest risk factor with GMOs is the herbicide used. So one example is glyphosate. Glyphosate is the active ingredient in the herbicide Roundup.

The World Health Organization labels glyphosate as probably carcinogenic, meaning it may cause cancer.
Bayer faces ongoing Roundup lawsuits because it causes cancer.

So, the Roundup lawsuit began with the case of Dwayne Johnson. He was a former school groundskeeper, and he used to spray Roundup when he worked.  

Dwayne said that his prolonged exposure to Roundup caused his non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. In 2018, a jury awarded Johnson $218 million, but it was later reduced to 78.5 million.   

The court found that Monsanto acted with malice and oppression, and Monsanto failed to warn consumers about the potential health risks of its product.   

Since then, thousands of people have filed similar lawsuits, and they claim that Roundup's active ingredient glyphosate causes cancer.

The lawsuits claim that Monsanto and its parent company, Bayer, failed to warn the public about the potential cancer risk with Roundup.

Bayer agreed to pay nearly $11 billion to settle most Roundup cancer claims. But there are still thousands of ongoing cases.

The health risks are not the only bad thing about GMOs. Another problem is patents. So before Bayer bought Monsanto, the company said they wanted to help poor nations by giving them GMOs. But that was a lie. The whole idea of Monsanto was to steal people's land and kill them.

So, money and power were the motivations behind the deception. Patents allow biotech companies to take over the whole agriculture industry.

Because you can patent GMOs, that means biotech companies can own the crop. Monsanto bought up many seed companies and converted them to GMOs.

And because GMOs can self-pollinate, they don't need the help of bees. Instead, these plants contain poisons that kill insects. In this way, they have reduced the world's bee population and harmed the competition.

So you can't patent vegetables and food under normal circumstances. However, because Monsanto modified their seeds, they could license them. 

Monsanto was one of the most corrupt companies on the planet. They wanted to take over the agriculture market.   Monsanto also owned several patents that they used to abuse farmers.

For example, in May 2003, the Centers for Food Safety investigated how Monsanto abused farmers. Monsanto used heavy-handed investigations and ruthless persecution to destroy farming in the world.

They began this process by getting the farmers to sign their technology agreement. So, this agreement allowed Monsanto to conduct property investigations.

They could expose the farmer to enormous financial liability, and this prevented farmers from selling or reusing their seeds.

The farmer had to buy new seeds every year, and they also modified their seed so that even if the farmer wanted to use them, they couldn't because they didn't work anymore.  

Monsanto sued farmers for patent infringement if they tried to reuse seeds. Farmers who planted Monsanto seeds have faced severe financial penalties.   

Many went bankrupt. This evil practice ruined the economy of Indian cotton farmers. These innocent farmers had to take massive loans to buy the seeds and the weed killers.

However, the farmers couldn't repay their loans when the GMO crops failed. And because of this evil practice, Indian farmers started to commit suicide at an alarming rate. Monsanto also sued farmers when GMO plants were pollinated on their lands.

They did that even if farmers' lands got contaminated by GMOs. Monsanto claimed that the crop became the property of Monsanto, even if the farmer didn't plant it there and it spread from other farms.

It didn't matter if the farmer did not buy or know about the contamination. Farmers have not only suffered from Monsanto's legal warfare but also from failed crops.

Monsanto forged studies and prevented investigations on GMOs. GMO crop producers' studies are substandard, and they use creative ways to avoid finding problems.

First, they keep sample sizes too low, dilute or overcook the GMO sample, or compare GMOs with useless controls. They also limit the duration of the feeding trials and even ignore animal deaths.

So, there are several ways to avoid GMOs. The United States and Canada do not have GMO labeling requirements. But most other industrialized nations do. The EU requires labeling of GMO crops.

It doesn't matter whether it's detectable in the final product or not. The European Union and others still have a loophole.

They don't require labeling milk and meat from animals fed GMO food. Almost 98% of Canadian-grown canola is genetically engineered for herbicide resistance.

US sugar beet production is over 95% GMO. You should also look for GMO sweet corn, papaya, zucchini, and yellow summer squash.

They are for sale in grocery stores but in far lesser amounts. The safest way to avoid GMOs is to buy organic products. So they can't use GMO ingredients or herbicides.

If you want to learn more ways to avoid GMOs,  you can download our free cheat sheet. Get a detailed list of ingredients that are GMOs and that you should avoid.

And also learn what products are safe to use. So, the link to this document is in the description box below. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode.