Chair of this program. It is my pleasure to extend a special welcome to the club members that are here. We will enjoy your membership and look forward to see you later. At this time turn off all cell phones and other noisemaking devices. The event is being recorded for podcast, so we dont get any extraneous sounds. There are many upcoming programs, i invite you to check our website for complete listing of eventss, please register for 24 hour reservation venture to genetically engineer our food has subverted science, corrupted government, and systematically deceived the public will be for sale in the lobby after this program. Also if you have any friends wanting to hear this program and were unable, the podcast should be online in about a day. Cspan here is to record it for tv and he is speaking in palo alto thursday at the community center. If you want to find out more online you can go to the Silicon Valley health institute. That is a good place. In terms of questions, question cards on all the seats. When you fill the question cards out pass them to the islands pass them up, i will be sitting here, then i dont have to go down to the island block the tv and cameras when they are questioning, recording this. I will start the program officially. Greetings and welcome to todays meeting in california. I am bill grant, cochair of the health and medicine for him and chair of this program. It is my pleasure to introduce our distinguished speaker, steven druker. Steven druker is a Public Interest attorney who initiated a lawsuit against the fda revealed the agency covered up scientist warnings about the risk of genetically engineered food and misrepresented the facts. He served on the Food Safety Panel conducted by the National Research council and fda, spoken at numerous universities such as harvard and cornell, and included the heads of food safety for the uk, canada, france, ireland and australia. He was elected to California Law review and the legal honor society. Articles on genetically engineered food appeared in several respected publications including the Congressional Quarterly researcher and the Financial Financial financial times. His influential book venture to genetically engineer our food has subverted science, corrupted government, and systematically deceived the public was released in march of 2015, hailed as one of the most important books in the last 50 years was among the other scientists at the Salk Institute for biological studies called it incisive, insightful and truly outstanding. He received the luxembourg peace prize for outstanding promotion of environmental piece. Steven druker. [applause] i appreciate the opportunity to speak to such a Great Organization and i would like to begin by asking you to tell me what you would think that the snap of my fingers everybody in the world instantaneously became aware of all the facts about genetically engineered foods and everybodys opinions became aligned with our best scientific knowledge . If you adhere to the proponents of these products we would have to predict such a worldwide wave of enlightenment would cause all opposition to vanish because in the rendition of reality they propose all of the opposition is based on ignorance and all of the concerns about risks are due to an improper understanding of science. And reality in this world we actually inhabit, the phenomena and that would quickly vanish is not the opposition to the foods, but the food themselves. If the actual facts became widely known, the entire food venture would quickly collapse, that is why pretensions about wanting to educate the public, proponents of genetically engineered foods routinely suppressed or distorted critical facts. Case after case, eminent scientists and scientific institutions have stooped to deception to enable the ge food venture to advance. Basic fact of biology have been twisted. The process of creating genetically engineered foods has been deceptively described in order to make it a fear far less disruptive and far more precise than it actually is and false statements have consistently been issued about the test on these foods to cover up troubling results. The evidence that demonstrates the distortion of the evidence is solid and its solidity had been attested by many experts. A Professor Emeritus on Agricultural Economics university of missouri stated the evidence presented in my book is comprehensive and irrefutable. Molecular biologist david schubert, professor at the Salk Institute for biological studies hailed the book as scientifically solid and truly outstanding. He also stated and this is a quote, it dispels the cloud of misinformation that is misled people into believing ge foods have been adequately tested and dont entail abnormal risk. The irrefutable fact that the facts have been misrepresented, concrete evidence of how strongly the evidence weighs against the soundness of the ge food venture. If the evidence were truly supportive of the ventures safety there would be no need to distort it. That is a nobrainer. If the facts are on your side you are not afraid of them, it is your joy and privilege to present them. It is only when the facts weigh against you that you resort to trickery. During the next 25 minutes i will point out the key distortions and falsehoods and clear up the confusion they created. In the process it will become evident that there is strong, sciencebased reasons for reach the teaching four basic conclusions. Producing new foods through recombinant dna technology, which is the technical term for genetic engineering, is an inherently risky process. 2, every genetically engineered food poses an abnormal level of risk. 3, the safety of those on the market has never been adequately established. 4, some of them have already been shown to be harmful. I will also explain how the ge food venture is not only abnormally risky from the standpoint of biological science but outright reckless when viewed from the perspective of Computer Science, and bio technicians of utterly disregarded hard learned lessons Computer Science gained about the inherent risks of altering complex Information Systems. Lets first examine one of the biggest falsehoods that has been perpetrated in defense of ge foods. The routine assertion that there is overwhelming consensus that they are safe, then this consensus is based on extensive scientific evidence. The strength of this purported consensus is claimed to be on par with Expert Consensus about the reality of humaninduced Climate Change. However, although there truly is a genuine Expert Consensus in the case of Climate Change, there has never been one in regard to ge foods. Every group of experts that is examined the data related to Climate Change has reached a common conclusion, many well credentialed experts have raised cautions about ge foods, several respected scientific institutions have done so as well. In 2001 the Royal Society of canada issued a major report concluding the default prediction for each ge food should be the genetic alteration has induced unintended and potentially harmful side effects, and it is scientifically unjustifiable, those were there words, to regard any ge food as safe unless it safety is established through a course of testing far more rigorous than any regulators have required. That report has never been revised nor refuted and is relevant today as when it was first issued. The British Medical Association and editors of a premier medical journal expressed concerns about the risks and Public Health association of australia e called for a complete moratorium on planting and marketing of ge foods. The scientific experts at the us fda have likewise recognized ge foods entailed abnormal risks. This came to light in 1998 when my organization, the alliance for bio integrity, led a lawsuit compelling the fda to hand over 44,000 pages of its internal files on ge foods. With that trove of documents are a number of memos in the agency have scientists expressing concerns about the unusual risks of the genetic engineering process and the need for all the foods it produces to undergo rigorous safety testing capable of detecting potential harmful side effects. The pervasiveness of the concerns is attested by an fda official who studied the expert input and declared, quote, the processes of genetic engineering and traditional breeding are different. According to the technical experts in the agency a lead to different risks. The fdas own biotechnology coordinator acknowledged there was not a consensus about safety in the Scientific Community outside the agency either. The fda has an admitted agenda to foster biotechnology. Whether it issues its policy, in may 1992, having received that input, claimed it was not aware of any information showing foods derived by genetic engineering differ from other foods in any uniform or meaningful way. It asserted there was overwhelming consensus among scientists the ge foods are so safe they dont need to be tested at all even though it knew no such consensus existed. The fda allow ge foods to enter the market without requiring a smidgen of safety testing. If the fda told the truth and disclosed extensive concerns of its own experts, the subsequent history of the ge venture would surely have been very different and might well have been very short. At the least, any ge food that did reach the market would have been subjected to much more rigorous testing to regulators anywhere in the world. That is one claim. What about the claim that no product with genetic engineering has ever been linked to a human Health Problem. That is also baloney. It is starkly at odds with reality. The technologys very first injectable products caused a major epidemic, it killed dozens of americans, seriously sick and between 4000, 5000, hundreds of those people are still invalids to this day. That product with a food supplement of essential amino acid ltryptophan derived from genetically altered bacteria. Although it met standards for phonological purity, like all other supplements it contains minute amounts of impurities. Unlike the conventionally produced supplements, one or more of its accidental additions with highly toxic even at extremely low levels. None of the supplements produced via nonengineered bacteria had ever been linked to disease and because genetic engineering can create unintended disruptions in the altered organisms, there were legitimate reasons to suspect the engineering process had induced the formation of the toxic substance that caused the calamity. Consequently proponents of genetic engineering strove to convince the public the technology was blameless. To do so they had to issue a string of deceptive statements. Those deceptions have been so successful, despite the fact the evidence points to genetic engineering the most likely cause of the toxic contamination, most people who know this tragedy are under the illusion that technology has been completely exonerated. Worse, because ge proponents routinely claim none of its products have been linked to a Health Problem most people arent even aware such a catastrophe happened. That includes most professionals in Public Health with whom i have spoken, completely oblivious to the fact that the first injectable products of genetic engineering caused a major epidemic in the United States. It is important to note the toxic tryptophan incident has serious implications for all foods produced through genetic engineering. Those bacteria have not been altered with foreign genes. Rather, they were merely endowed with extra copies of some of their own and were not engineered to produce anything but a beneficial substance they ordinarily make. The forced overproduction of this normally benign substance apparently put abnormal stress on those organisms that led to the creation of an unintended and highly toxic byproduct, and almost every genetically engineered food organism is being compelled to overproduce one or another chemical and for that reason alone poses an unusual risk. The standard claim that the safety of ge foods thoroughly established by reliable testing, do not describe scrutiny either especially considering many well conducted studies published in peerreviewed journals detected harm to the animals that consume ge food. A systematic review of the toxicological studies in ge foods then was self published in a peerreviewed journal concluded the results of most of them indicate the products, quote, may cause pancreatic, renal and reproductive effects and may alter hematological, biochemical and immunologic parameters the significance of which remains unknown. Another review that encompassed additional studies published up until august 2010 also provided cause for caution. It concluded an equilibrium between Research Groups suggesting ge props are as safe as their nonge counterparts, and raising serious serious concerns. Obviously the fact that 15 years after ge foods first entered the market, have the published studies remained serious concerns in the eyes of objective scientific reviewers undermined the claim that their safety has been decisively established. This is fortified when we examine some of the specific results accrued before and after that date. A team of European University scientists published a paper in 2011 in which they reviewed the data from 19 of the feeding studies on ge, soy and corn varieties that have gone through the regulatory process, were on the market and comprised 83 of the ge foods people had been regularly eating. What they found was disturbing, 9 of the measured parameters not just blood and urine biochemistry. Were significantly disrupted in the animals that had eaten the ge feed. Moreover, the greatest disturbances, and the livers of the females and scientists emphasize because livers and kidneys are the major reactive organisms in cases of chronic food toxicity, these results should be viewed as danger signs, something regulators had not seen fit to do. When the negative results are so disturbing they cannot be ignored, they are vehemently and unjustly attacked. This is misrepresented, a prominent role in this Misinformation Campaign has been played by the uks oil society, the worlds oldest and most prestigious scientific institution. The society recently declared no Research Indicated the genetic engineering process itself has caused any harm amid all problems attributed to the specific gene introduced to particular agricultural practices. This assertion is flatout false. One major study did specifically link the ge process with harm. It was published in the eminent journal lancet and revealed ge potatoes producing a foreign protein that is safe for mammals to eat caused a problematic effect in the rats that consumed them. Compared to rats that ate the nonge counterparts. Even though the nonge potatoes have been spiked with the same level of protein produced in the modified potatoes. Accordingly researchers concluded that some aspect of the ge process was significantly responsible for the result because they ruled out the other possible factors. So it is only through the systematic misrepresentation of the facts that respected institutions and their willingness to disregard the ominous implications of the evidence that the ge food venture has been able to continue. This disgraceful activity is being carried out in the name of science when it is subverting the basic principles of science. The extent to which the ge food venture failed to be evidencebased and has rested on the denial and disregard of the evidence has been vividly summarized by michael antonio, molecular geneticist at Kings CollegeLondon School of medicine. The kind of detrimental effects seen in animals fed ge food were observed in a clinical setting the products use would be halted and further research to determine the cause and find solutions. However, what repeatedly happened this in the case of ge food is despite increasing evidence of serious Adverse Health test results, government and industry continue unabated with the development, endorsement and marketing of these foods as if nothing has happened to be point they seem to ignore the results of their own research. So even this short summary revealed from the standpoint of biological science the ge food venture is significantly unsound. When it is analyzed from the standpoint of Computer Science the picture becomes even more troubling. Such an analysis is highly relevant because both genetic engineering and Computer Science are engaged in altering complex Information Systems and Computer Science have learned a lot about the risks of making such alterations. Moreover it is learned that these risks are inescapable, inescapable. Software engineers have learned when software Information Systems they themselves created become large and complex there is no way to alter them with complete precision. Even when the alteration is a small refinement designed to improve the systems performance, the mere process of revising it is such an ostensibly minuscule manner is likely to disrupt one or more of its other parts. This is an amazing phenomenon. Software systems are designed to be linear which means there is structure so specific operation only produces a specific results. Operation x should only produce why. However, despite programmers best efforts, their systems transcend the intended limits and to a significant degree behave in a nonlinear manner. There is a very high likelihood that some of the parts will interact in ways that were not planned and cannot be predicted meaning o