ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANCE AND GMO’S

Antibiotic Resistance

An excerpt from Dr. Michael Wald’s upcoming book, Frankenfoods – Controversy, Lies & Your Health available in 4 weeks!! Order your copy today (www.intmedny.com).

In recent years, health professionals and supervising agencies such as the Center for Disease Control (CDC) have begun to recognize the increasing number of bacterial strains that are resistant to antibiotics. Antibiotic resistance has become a major health crisis that might have been prevented had the medical community heeded the scientific evidence predicting we, as a society of “antibiotic over-consumers,” would face an epidemic of antibiotic-resistant infections that would result in increased morbidity and mortality for current and future generations. Because of improper training and despite many warnings about the risk of antibiotics creating resistant strains even when used correctly, physicians have overprescribed antibiotics, leading to a worldwide pandemic antibiotic resistance. Antibiotic resistance has already resulted in both young and old people becoming resistant to many types of antibiotics by creating resistant genes. These resistant genes were produced when antibiotics, commonly and often inappropriately prescribed by doctors, were taken by the general population over the last few decades. People are now falling victim to infections, and perhaps even cancers and other diseases that might previously have been easily treated with appropriate antibiotics or other medications. There is concern that GMOs may potentially worsen this health crisis as GMO products may “jump” from GMOs in one’s digestive tract and then “jump” or incorporate into the genes of the host — and we are the hosts!

Conceivably, bacteria living in the guts of humans and animals could pick up a gene resistant to antibiotics from a GM plant before the DNA is completely digested in the body. In fact, this phenomenon of gene-jumping from bacteria into humans was first described in 1959 and is known as Horizontal Gene Transfer (HGT). HGT is considered to be the primary reason for antibiotic or bacterial resistance. HGT is known to be responsible for antibiotic drug resistance passed on from one species to another bacterial species. Thus, eating a GMO containing antibiotic resistant bacteria could infect our DNA, in effect causing antibiotic drug resistance. GMO produced antibiotic resistance is not all that different from doctors overprescribing and incorrectly prescribing antibiotics to people, which caused the antibiotic dilemma in the first place. I predict that the pro-GMO industry will contribute to the present health crisis by promoting products that exacerbate the problem of antibiotic resistant bacteria. It is more critical than ever before to avoid GMOs, focus on healthy non-GMOs and practice healthy lifestyle habits — all toward maintaining optimal immune function. Given this problem, it’s best to just say NO to Frankenfoods!

Many uneducated or misinformed people seem to believe GMOs are safe to eat because the government has approved them. What most people do not know is that the FDA does not assess the safety of GMOs and leaves safety studies and assessments up to the GMO industry itself. In the early days of the introduction of GM products to the market, the FDA “gave up” suspiciously easily on overseeing GMOs. Some of the reasons the FDA handed over our food safety to the GM seed manufacturers are reviewed throughout this book.

Most studies I have reviewed that claim GM crops are safe are industry linked and therefore biased. The few independent studies conducted on humans and the many studies conducted on animals involving the effects of consuming GM crops show many health risks. In a study where human volunteers were fed a single GM soybean, GM DNA survived digestive processing in the stomach and was detected in the digestive tract. Soybean DNA may prove to have the ability to be inserted into human DNA. Disrupted DNA is a necessary step towards aberrant health processes such as cancer, diabetes, autoimmune diseases and otherwise poor health.