monisins (and both rodent and human studies indicate it may cause human cancer), there?s powerful evidence it causes fatal birth defects.
A study published last year in the Journal of Nutrition found, ?High incidences of neural tube defects in newborns occur in some regions of the world where substantial consumption of fumonisins has been documented or plausibly suggested.? These include spina bifida, wherein the spine fails to close during pregnancy, and anencephaly in which a large part of the brain is missing.
It also discussed a published survey of 409 Mexican-American women in the Brownsville, Texas, area. Of these, an incredible184 had birthed babies with such defects.
Women who ate several ?home-grown? tortillas a day early in their pregnancies were 2.5 times more likely to have babies with NTF than those who ate only one daily. Those eating the most actually had a lower NTF rate, but co-author Dr. Katherine Hendricks of the Texas Department of Health suggests that could be because their fetuses were so badly damaged they were spontaneously aborted.
?There?s reasonably good epidemiological evidence correlating the corn consumption and the birth defects, and we?ve clearly seen it in rodent studies,? says Bruce Chassy, associate director of the Biotechnology Center at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. ?Further, we?ve found a mechanism,? he told me. ?Fumonisin seems to block the mother?s uptake of folic acid and we know folic acid deficiency causes NTF.?
Highlighting the potential danger from organic corn, British authorities in 2003 yanked10 brands of organic corn meal from supermarkets because they were contaminated with anywhere from four to 33 times the European Union safety limit.
What if it had been biotech corn withdrawn for any reason? Blimey! The Brits would have gone stark, staring bonkers! But it wasn?t; so the media ignored it.
In fact, biotech corn isn?t just safer than organics but even than the conventional stuff. One U.S. Agriculture Department study found fumonisin levels were 3,000 to 4,000 times higher in Bt corn than in non-biotech varieties.
Mind you, most organic food is quite safe. So is most organic corn. But the organic industry is all about spooking consumers into paying more for getting less. Don?t buy it.
Michael Fumento is a Senior Fellow at Hudson Institute ( mfumento[at]pobox.com ), author of BioEvolution: How Biotechnology is Changing Our Word, and a nationally syndicated columnist with Scripps Howard News Service.