Genetically modified food - armageddon on the horizon?

ProdiGene to develop plant-based HIV vaccine
ProdiGene, a Texas-based biotechnology company that is developing a number of edible plant vaccines, has received an NIH grant to develop a plant-based HIV vaccine. The HIV grant will allow the company to engineer maize seed (corn) that expresses HIV gp120. According to ProdiGene's president John Howard, the corn seeds could also be designed to express codon-optimized genes and DNA vaccines and to be part of any corn product (cooked or uncooked), including cornmeal. Plant vaccines offer several potential advantages: they are cheap to produce, do not need refrigeration; can be grown in virtually every country and require no needles to administer.

Howard also presented data at the Millennium Second World Congress on Vaccines and Immunization, held on 29 August -1 September 2000 in Liege, Belgium, showing that a corn vaccine against porcine gastroenteritis virus seemed to offer some protection (measured as longer survival) in immunized pigs. At the same meeting, researchers from Cornell University (New York) reported that edible potato vaccines for E. coli, Norwalk virus and hepatitis B have entered human trials, and that all three generated measurable immune responses.

(from http://www.aegis.com/pubs/iavi/2000/IAVI2000-0912.html )

In other words, our food supply has been modified to include Hep B, Norwalk virus, and E coli, and also HIV.

Brings new meaning to a "balanced meal", eh?

Remember, genetically modified food products are NOT LABELLED as such, in the US, and approximately 70 percent of all us corn and soybean is now genetically modified in some way.

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/...gm-food/dn3436

As the US prepares to tighten its rules governing the production of pharmaceuticals and chemicals in genetically modified plants,. But there are suspicions that ensuring food safety is not the only motive for big companies such as Monsanto.

Fears that drug-laced plants could end up in food have led to growing criticism of the US Department of Agriculture's regulations governing pharming. The issue came to a head in 2002, when maize modified to produce a pharmaceutical protein was found growing in fields of normal soybeans in Iowa and Nebraska.

This happened after the Texas-based company ProdiGene left seeds in the field after harvesting a crop of modified maize. In December, ProdiGene was ordered to pay around $3 million in clean-up costs and fines for violating its permit.

So, Prodigene modified maize was released into the fields, and wound up in a normal, unmodified food crop field.

Prodigene, inventor's of "HIV Corn" (aka MAIZE....)

That was 2003, by the way...