28 Rat experiments prove the harm of GMOs? Sorry, that experiment has been withdrawn

I am a senior media person in the industry, reporting on genetic modification for nearly 10 years, interviewing many scientists and industry experts at home and abroad, visiting many laboratories and breeding bases, preparing to fully explain the problem of genetic modification, ensuring that as long as you have a junior high school level, you can fully understand! This is a series, each article talks about one issue, and will be updated continuously with 40 questions.

Text/Hong Guangyu

28. I have seen foreign experts do rat experiments to prove the harm of genetic modification, is it true?

A: Many people may have seen a news called the "French Transgenic Corn Rat Experiment" to the effect that French scientists fed the mice genetically modified corn, and then the mice got tumors. But many people do not know the follow-up to this experiment: this experiment has been retracted because of serious problems in the research methods and conclusions. That is, this experiment does not count.

Ordinary people rarely know the details of such experiments, nor do they know that there are many famous statistics and interpretations of experimental results - but it doesn't matter, you just need to know that thousands of experiments are done every year in every segment of the world, some experiments are rigorous and reliable, and some are not so reliable. After an experiment is done, if the conclusion is amazing, peers will generally repeat the experiment, if it can be repeated, it means that there is credibility, if it cannot be repeated, it is necessary to check what may be wrong. Just like a student, he occasionally scored 100 points, but if he failed four or five times later, you have to wonder if he cheated that time.

So far, the world has done countless experiments on GMOs, and there are more than a thousand papers with data published in top journals alone, the vast majority of which prove the safety of transgenic technology, and a very small number of them have indeed come to unsafe conclusions, but these papers have been found to be various imprecise problems, that is, they have been rejected.

For the average person, you may not understand these papers — and there is no need to understand them, but there are specialized scientific institutions in the world to compile and study these papers (they also study papers in other fields), such as the World Health Organization, the American Academy of Sciences, the Royal Academy of Sciences, and they all have a clear conclusion about GMOs: GM foods are at least as safe as traditional foods.

Therefore, in the future, everyone should not pay too much attention to the "XX experiment proves the harm of genetic modification" spread on the Internet, after all, even if China is already an atheistic country, there will always be people who claim to have seen ghosts; even if "the earth is a rough circle" written into textbooks, there are also a lot of people in the United States who declare that "the earth is flat".

The series is continuously updated, so stay tuned

1 Rumors why more | 2 Absolutely safe| 3 Animal experiments are enough| 4 bugs do not eat | 5 there is no conclusion

6 technology is too new| 7 need long-term feeding| 8 can not germinate| 9 to eat three generations of | 10 government attitude

11 scientists all say good things| 12 interest groups| 13 whether to identify | 14 the right to know| 15 appearance identification

16 imported soybeans | 17 affect the ecology| 18 resistance| 19 the United States does not eat | 20 United States does not grow wheat

21 European bans | 22 Russia does not plant | 23 cancers| 24 Cui Yongyuan | 25 Olympic Games Expo

26 seed rights| 27 genetic weapons| 28 rat experiments| 29 no shortage of food| 30 increased production

31 Contrary to the laws of nature|32 Cautious application|33 Stealing seeds|34 There is always a disadvantage|35 green organic

36 golden rice | 37 poor people eat rich people do not eat | 38 unknown risks| 39 leaders eat | 40 why the public opposes