The Written Word
for May 16, 1999

We have been scammed by science. The men and women who told you DDT was safe for you, that IUD contraceptive devices were safe for you, that told women that Thalidomide was safe for them, that told women that breast implants were safe for them have now so distorted your eating habits that there may be nothing you can do. I speak of course of genetically altered foods.

For those who may have been on Mars the past year and may have missed it, science now meddles with foods by injecting into them foreign genes, including human genes, in order to make them "better". They become pest resistant, they become bigger, they grow faster – genetically altered foods are the farmer’s delight. We will, we’re told, end famine in the world thanks to modern science. That we could do so now with a sensible distribution of the foods we presently grow seems irrelevant.

There is a misimpression, scarcely corrected by governments, that all these innovations have passed muster with the appropriate governments. Well, they haven’t. Both in the United States and Canada all the testing is done by the companies that will reap the huge profits. Scientists at FDA in Washington and the Health Protection Branch in Ottawa do little more than review what company scientists tell them. (How ironic it is that when it comes to "herbal medicines", the government gets very cross and very active if, for example, a herbalist claims that a certain tea reduces blood sugar readings – which as a diabetic I can tell you they do - but requires no special labeling if a food is genetically altered by adding human genes.)

In Europe things are different. The European Community will likely make it mandatory that all foods genetically altered must be so labeled. But the trouble is it has now become unbelievably complicated because there is a mixture of altered foods – for example in breakfast cereals which may now contain several genetically altered ingredients.

Pharmaceutical companies now have the uncontested power of life and death over us. Take Monsanto and Aspertame which appears under several names, most commonly Nutrasweet. This sugar substitute was accepted by the United States and Canada on the say-so of Monsanto. Yet the evidence is growing that aspertame is bad for you – very bad for you. I undertook an experiment suggested by a doctor. I am diabetic and I tested myself, then drank three room temperature Diet Cokes with aspertame and tested again. My blood sugar went up two whole points plus. The Canadian Diabetes Association and other Diabetes organizations throughout the country recommend foods with aspertame so that diabetics can have things like "safe" ice cream. Monsanto is a big contributor to the Canadian Diabetes Association. It borders on the criminal.

The question is whether or not Canadians care enough or, if they do, can raise enough hell in time.

In the meantime the pharmaceutical companies make runaway outrageous profits, have batteries of lawyers to protect their patents, and the federal government does nothing except ask them to file their scientific findings with them.

The only ray of hope is that perhaps more and more people will start buying unaltered, natural foods to the point where their now hugely expensive wares will come within reach of those who just aren’t prepared to accept the pharmaceutical companies’ word for it.