Dow Jones | October 15, 1999 | By Stephen D. Moore, Staff Reporter
Since raising questions about the safety of genetically modified foods 15 months ago, British researcher Arpad Pusztai has been assailed by many eminent peers but feted by luminaries such as the British Medical Association and the Prince of Wales.
Dr. Pusztai is getting mixed reviews once again this week as the latest issue of the U.K.'s leading medical journal, the Lancet, belatedly publishes results of his controversial experiment in which rats appeared to develop unexpected biochemical and immunological effects after being force-fed a diet of genetically modified potatoes.
The results of that experiment were quickly overshadowed, however, by the way the 68-year-old native of Hungary divulged them. Flouting the traditional research code, Dr. Pusztai vaulted into the limelight by revealing his findings on British television - and warning that the public was being used as guinea pigs in the roll-out of new genetically engineered crops.
He was immediately suspended by his employer, the Scotland-based Rowett Research Institute. His data were confiscated and his research team disbanded. Then, in a scathing public denunciation, Britain's Royal Society claimed that Dr. Pusztai's experiment "was flawed in many aspects of design, execution and analysis and that no conclusions should be drawn from it."
The Lancet received a separate account of the experiment late last year from Dr. Pusztai and his associate Stanley Ewan. But the journal agonized for months over whether to publish it. In an editorial comment, Lancet Editor Richard Horton acknowledges that six specialist advisers brought in to review the data asked for three revisions from Drs. Pusztai and Ewan - and finally disagreed among themselves about whether the paper should be published.
Mr. Horton insists that publication isn't a vindication of Dr. Pusztai's earlier claims - but instead represents the first step in wider scientific appraisal of the safety of genetically modified foods. Many researchers and industry executives welcome such an open debate in Britain where public opinion has swung dramatically against genetically modified foods in recent months. Some analysts blame at least part of that backlash on the high-handed treatment received by Dr. Pusztai - and hints of a cover-up in the way his claims were quashed by his employer.
Dr. Putzai wasn't available for comment, and Dr. Ewan declined to comment until after the Lancet's official publication on Friday.
In this week's issue, the Lancet also includes an independent assessment of Dr. Pusztai's results by experts from the Netherlands' National Institute for Quality Control of Agricultural Products. The Dutch scientists describe the experiment as incomplete - and echo the Royal Society by criticizing the study for a lack of controls "that would show that genetic modification of potatoes accounts for adverse effects seen in the guts of test animals."
That verdict may cause Dr. Pusztai's recent celebrity to fade. But it isn't likely to allay serious questions about methods used by authorities to evaluate the safety of genetically modified crops.
Indeed, yet another Lancet article by researchers at Scotland's Dundee University show that a gene spliced into potatoes as protection against attack by certain insects may be able to interact with human blood cells in a way which previously wasn't considered possible. "People like Dr. Pusztai have been working in rats - but we don't know a lot yet about how (some transplanted genes) relate to humans," says Caroline Bolton-Smith, a Dundee University researcher.
"This is a simple set of experiments and we have no desire to make any major claims," she adds. But it's a potential warning sign - this this gene binds to blood cells there is potential for it to do things we don't want it to do in the human body. We're just saying `hold on a minute, we don't really know enough yet to say whether this is going to be safe.'"
Like many European scientists, Dr. Bolton-Smith is frustrated by the public furor in Britain where, she says, Dr. Pusztai's case "blew everything out of proportion." And at the moment "people are trying to make claims and counter claims based on thin air," she says.
Tackling remaining gaps in knowledge through pragmatic research such as the experiment by her group could help defuse "the mass hysteria side of things," Dr. Bolton-Smith believes. "A truly scientific approach by independent researchers - without vested interests - has been incredibly lacking in this field. A little more of that in the future might work wonders."
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