Reuters | October 15, 1999 | By Patricia Reaney
LONDON - The scientist at the center of an international uproar for raising safety concerns about genetically modified (GM) food said he hoped the publication of his work in a leading medical journal would lead to more research and tests.
Dr Arpad Pusztai stood by his claims that the effects of GM potatoes need to be looked at more closely and said the decision by The Lancet to publicize the data Friday added respectability to his research.
"I wouldn't be human if I said I didn't feel elated," he told BBC radio, adding that he felt he had been wronged by the scientific community.
"What is important is that we are talking about the issue. I hope it will be a sort of push in the right direction. These things need to be tested."
Pusztai was sacked from his job at Scotland's Rowett Institute and ostracized by many other scientists more than a year ago for publicly voicing his concerns about GM foods before his research was published in a peer-reviewed journal.
In a research letter in The Lancet, Pusztai and Stanley Ewen, a pathologist at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, said the studies of rats fed GM potatoes containing a protein called lectin - which is found in the snowdrop and increases the plant's resistance to pests - had harmful effects on the animals' internal organs.
EXPERT ADVISERS
Six expert advisers reviewed the research before it was accepted by The Lancet. The majority agreed it deserved to be published but two criticized the study, saying it was incomplete, lacked adequate controls and did not support the conclusions reached by Pusztai and Ewen.
Harry Kuiper and his colleagues at the Netherlands State Institute for Quality Control of Agricultural Products reached a similar conclusion.
"The results are difficult to interpret and do not allow the conclusion that the genetic modification of potatoes accounts for adverse effects in animals," they said in a commentary on the research.
Lancet editor Richard Horton defended the decision to publish but said it was "absolutely not a vindication" of Pusztai's earlier claims, which were discredited by Britain's prestigious science academy, the Royal Society.
"In fact we've seen already in the past 24 hours that his earlier claim that GM foods could stunt the growth of rats has had to be withdrawn and I think this is one very important beneficial effect of putting this paper through careful peer-review publication," he told the BBC.
Horton said there was genuine scientific difference of opinion and more research needs to be done to confirm or refute what he called very preliminary and findings that could not be generalized.
"We are at the bottom of a very steep learning curve of research. We're only in the foothills," Horton added.
The Royal Society stood by its earlier criticism of the research and slammed The Lancet's decision to publish it.
"The Royal Society would not have published this paper ... since it confirms the society's original judgement that the experiments on which this paper is based were flawed," its president Sir Aaron Klug said in a statement.
Copyright 1999 Reuters Ltd. All rights reserved.
