The following are important links Jeffrey talks about in the video above:
- Glyphosate and Roundup disturb gut microbiome and blood biochemistry at doses that regulators claim to be safe
- Genetic breakdown of molecular mechanism underpinning GM “sterile” insect techniques
- Survey: EU citizens reject genetic engineering of wild species with gene drives
Transcription: Jeffrey’s Take: Glyphosate Nails Your Microbiome, Sterile GMO Insects Become Fertile and Why Gene Drives are Massively Dangerous
This transcript has been edited slightly for clarity
Jeffrey Smith (00:15):
Hello, everyone. This is Jeffrey Smith. I’m going to give you some new information.
(00:26):
It is the beginning of February 2021, and some new news is on our plate. I want to share it with you so that you all get a sense of what’s going on in the world as far as GMOs and Roundup are concerned. First of all, Dr. Michael Antonio has been doing some great work for years on GMOs and Roundup. He is a molecular biologist. He is a genetic engineer. He does human gene therapy research, and he’s massively against the way GMOs are used in agriculture and outdoor releases. He’s aware as a scientist that the science used to justify GMO foods is completely erroneous and that it’s putting humanity and the environment at risk. This is my interpretation of what I’ve read from his work and talking to him through the years. He led a fantastic study. It took him three years with his team to test the impact of glyphosate and Roundup on the human gut microbiome, and they concluded and found out for sure that it damages our gut critters–no surprise there.
(01:34):
What was a surprise, was that looking for the mechanism, he found it wasn’t the traditional antibiotic mechanism (because glyphosate is patented as an antibiotic), but rather it’s the same mechanism that is used for killing the plants as an herbicide. Monsanto has been very clear about this. It blocks the shikimate pathway, a particular pathway that plants have, but humans don’t. But they left out that our gut bacteria use the shikimate pathway, and that glyphosate shuts it down–which can damage the diversity and health of the microbiome. Damaged and imbalanced microbiomes can lead to most diseases, according to experts. I interviewed Kiran Krishnan, who did research also on the human gut microbiome exposed to Roundup and found lower diversity, lower overall counts, which means it can lead us to specific diseases.
(02:43):
In fact, I asked Kiran about 28 different conditions that people reported getting better from when they switched to non-GMO and largely organic foods. He said, based on the changes that occurred in his gut research, it could explain every one of those conditions and how it contributes to those conditions, ranging from digestive problems and anxiety and fatigue to cancer and diabetes and autism, etc. We now have new information from Dr. Michael Antonio doing a very detailed analysis–in this case that of the human gut microbiome, but on a lab animal, I believe rats–and he showed in his research that not only does Roundup damage the microbiome, but confirmed once again that the regulatory agencies ignore these types of changes, do not require the most sophisticated and state-of-the-art techniques to be used, therefore are consciously looking the other way at what might go wrong in order to accommodate GMOs and Roundup, and perhaps to protect their butt from having approved it for so many years.
(04:01):
Other researchers in China, Germany, United States–scientists all over, discovered that the mechanism used to create genetically engineered sterile insects can spontaneously change back, creating fertile insects. They did this research on a laboratory fly, but it makes sense because we know that Oxitec released genetically engineered mosquitoes in Brazil, one of the five countries that they’ve released mosquitoes in. They promised up and down that it wouldn’t cause a change in the natural gene pool. Well, guess what it did. I remember arguing with their scientist, Derek Nimo. He insisted that there’s no way that their mosquitoes could survive, but it’s possible that the same mechanism used – flipping a sterile switch to a fertile switch – allowed their introduction of genetically engineered mosquitoes to then contaminate the gene pool forever, changing the structure of the gene pool for the local mosquito species.
(05:13):
I don’t have to remind some of you who’ve been paying attention, that the EPA approved the release of the same company’s mosquitoes in South Florida in the Keys, which they plan to do this year over the objections of local groups. Again, they promise that the sterilization link is going to work, even though now we have detailed information about how genetics can flip. The researchers pointed out that this does not bode well for gene drives. Let me explain what a gene drive is. Normally a female and a male will mate, and they’ll have offspring, and half the genes come from the male, half the genes come from the female. If you have a particular trait in the female, it will be distributed probably to, on average, half of the offspring. And then those halves that have the trait mate with another organism that doesn’t have the trait, and roughly half of their offspring will carry the chain.
(06:22):
So it will halve for the first generation, it’ll then halve again, making it one quarter. In every single generation the trait is reduced in its frequency under normal circumstances when there’s only one parent that has the trait. With a gene drive, it forces all offspring to carry the trait. So the female may carry a gene drive, mate with the male and all the offspring now carry that trait along with carrying the gene drive. So all of their offspring carry the trait, along with the gene drive. You’ve seen those genealogical tables–all of them underneath the gene drive, male or female, all of them get the trait and the genes drive. Now, why would they do this–to change the nature of nature, to take a species and say, We don’t like the species as it is.
(07:24):
In fact, let’s wipe it out. Let’s knock a trait through that system so that it will kill all of the offspring after they mate, which will wipe out that species. And there are plans to do that for unwanted rats on islands, for mosquitoes that carry malaria, etc. And they’re using a technology which is known to be leaky. What do I mean by leaky? Consider the last study. The sterility trait turns off and comes back to fertility. Also leaky is you intend for one trait to be added, but because of the chromosomal mayhem (as it was described in one study on the effects of gene editing on human embryos), it can cause all sorts of unpredicted side effects. So imagine creating a mosquito designed to be sterile—or let’s say kills out all the males, or kills all the females’ offspring, or some way that it’s supposed to limit the population–
(08:30):
It turns out that you’ve also somehow–because it’s an unpredictable technology–you’ve increased the ability of that mosquito to carry disease or to withstand insecticide or to take over a niche from another particular type of mosquito or insect. You’ve made that mosquito more virulent, more dangerous, accidentally. Now that the genetic switch switches from on to off, there’s no longer stability –it’s now fertile. What you’ve done accidentally is you’ve changed the nature of nature, but in a way that you had no way of controlling or predicting, and it could be a disaster. Now gene drives multiply. If you just introduce mosquitoes into the environment with a single trait, they can make mistakes, they can have all that genetic leakiness and affect a certain portion of the gene pool. But if those same mistakes–a company, a mosquito, or insect with a gene drive– then all of the offspring, all of that genealogical chart, becomes a potential nightmare.
(09:40):
There is now a battle going on, because there are companies that want to introduce gene drives outdoors. This is an infant technology where we have very little control–they want to introduce it outdoors. A recent study of 9,000 people in eight countries in the EU representing the 280 million EU citizens, asked people what they thought about gene drives, and it was overwhelming. I’ll read you the answers: 46 to 70% of the people had high levels of opposition, depending on the country. Seven to 16% supported the technology–very small support, very great opposition. So if anyone asks you in a survey, if you want to bring it up in a conversation, gene drives are a way that reductionist scientists using a technology that’s known to have side effects and unpredicted outcomes as its most popular and common outcome, are planning to tinker with the gene pool that could last absolutely forever, foisting their mistakes onto all future generations, even though we now know for sure that the technology and the fail-safes built in are not fail-safes whatsoever.
(10:49):
Those are just the three latest studies or latest reports from this week’s news, and you may want to do something about it. Go to protectnaturenow.com and take a look at our two-minute trailer and share it. I’ve also included a link in the description, which is the Facebook sharing link. Please share that. It’s got 200,000 views so far. The responses have been phenomenal. People love it. It’s a wake-up call. It is the first domino in our grand plan to establish a new global movement to protect nature now. And when you see that, please go to protectnaturenow.com ,sign up, and we’re going to share with you as they become available some amazing and significant new educational assets and plans that will be implemented around the world to stop the destruction and irreversible corruption of our gene pool.
So that’s it for today. Enjoy a healthy day, safe eating, and maintain the genetic integrity of our species and all species for all future generations.