Latest on the latest anti-GMO scare: Dangerous plant GMO is in your blood

The truth is that there may or may not be plant DNA in your blood. The single research paper making this claim, on which the news article is based, is yet to be replicated. But it is more important to note that, even if there is plant DNA in your blood, there is no evidence that it poses a risk to you.

The paper, by Sandor Spisak of Harvard Medical School and colleagues, was published in the journal PLOS ONE in July 2013. The authors claimed to have found the evidence that pieces of plant DNA, large enough to harbour full genes, circulate in our blood.

Circulating DNA is called cell-free DNA (cf-DNA) and the reason for its presence in blood and its function, if any, remains a mystery. The science presented by Spisak is peer-reviewed – that is, it has been assessed by experts in the filed – and seems to have been done in an acceptable way. So I am ready to give their case a hearing.

But their study does not imply that consuming GM foods is dangerous or that GM scientists are doing “bad science”, which the news article claims. If foreign DNA from foods we consume circulates in our blood, it must have done so throughout evolutionary history. The fact that we have noticed it only now is interesting.

Read the full original article:  There may be plant DNA floating in your blood (but that’s OK)

 

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