Talk:MON 863

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Wow, this needs help
There's a truckload of bias in the article, such as: "Monsanto defended its corn's safety in ways that disregarded accepted scientific methods and principles and claimed that the results of this study were not statistically significant."... with no citations, it winds up bein heavily slanted in tone. Ronabop (talk)


 * Speaking as someone deeply sceptical of Monsanto, I thoroughly agree. I cannot say if the article is factual or not, but it conjures up visions of tin foil hats and weasel word lies, simply because it doesn't bother to (or cannot) provide inline citations —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.132.248.93 (talk) 01:14, 12 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Excluding the one-liner intro, I have completely rewritten the article from scratch. If anyone wants to reintegrate the old content, it may be seen in the following section. —  C M B J   05:10, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Old content
{{collapse| In 1989 a 90-day rat-feeding trial done by the FDA, 40 rats that were fed the Bt corn developed multiple reactions typically found in response to allergies, infections, toxins and diseases. Seralini et al. reviewed the study as part of the French Commission for Biomolecular Genetics and said that the response by the rats were similar to reactions caused by pesticides. Although the Bt-toxin is a pesticide, he points out that animal research on pesticide-producing corn is nowhere as thorough as that required for approval of pesticides. Follow-up studies on these serious findings were demanded from organisations worldwide. None were conducted and the corn was approved.

Monsanto defended its corn's safety in ways that disregarded accepted scientific methods and principles and claimed that the results of this study were not statistically significant. Monsanto researchers used six additional control groups, each fed commercial corn varieties with quite different genetics. While such comparisons are suitable for commercial studies, they are entirely inappropriate for safety assessments. Monsanto claimed that since some reactions were no longer significant when compared to these other groups, the changes were unimportant. For some results, that remained statistically significant even when compared to these irrelevant controls, Monsanto claimed the changes fell within a wide range of variability that is normal for rats. They stated, for example, that a 52% decrease in immature red blood cells (reticulocytes) was "attributable to normal biological variability", and a 10% increase in blood sugar levels was biologically insignificant. According to Arpad Pusztai an allowance of 5% variability is the norm in food experiments and a 10% rise in blood sugar has serious ramifications, given the epidemics of obesity and diabetes. Several changes were still significantly outside the generous range that Monsanto defined as normal and acceptable. For some of these, they claimed that the health effects were not diet-related because the reactions were not consistent between males and females. (Scientists studying cancer and endocrinology, for example, have established that genders can respond to toxins and disease quite differently). Monsanto also dismissed other findings on the basis that the intensity of reactions was greater in rats fed a diet with 11% of MON 863 compared to the group that ate 33%. (In endocrinology and immunology research responses are not always consistent with dosage. For example, a small amount of a hormone can cause a woman to ovulate, while a larger dose can make her infertile.)

An Appeal Court action in Germany (Münster) allowed public access in June 2005 to all the crude data from the original 90-day rat-feeding study.

In 2007, a reanalysis of the data provided in 2002 by Monsanto stated that "with the present data it cannot be concluded that GM corn MON 863 is a safe product." The French biomolecular engineering commission, the Commission du Génie Biomoléculaire (CGB), reviewed this study at the request of the French Ministry of Agriculture, but concluded that there were no new elements proving the toxicity of MON 863 in this new analysis, the statistical significance of the initial samples provided by Monsanto being too weak.

The Australian government analyzed the data and determined that the variations found were due to normal physiologic variation in test animals and also licensed MON 863 for food and feed use.

Contested deletion
This page is not unambiguously promotional, because while the article is far from perfect, it describes a product that has been the subject of a great deal of controversy, and does so in a fairly NPOV, encyclopedic way, with plenty of RS - indeed not a single source is from Monsanto, the company that created the product. The user who tagged this article for speedy deletion has a very expansive idea of what constitutes "spam", if one reviews his edit notes. Jytdog (talk) 17:02, 10 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I only used that tag because there isn't one for notability. Feel free to merge the material into another article that covers this product. It is definitely not notable enough for its own article and just looks like a free advert for Monsanto.--Canoe1967 (talk) 17:06, 10 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Notability is defined by mention in secondary sources, of which this article has plenty.Jytdog (talk) 17:33, 10 September 2013 (UTC)
 * See ORGDEPTH "The source's audience must also be considered. Evidence of attention by international or national, or at least regional, media is a strong indication of notability. On the other hand, attention solely from local media, or media of limited interest and circulation, is not an indication of notability; at least one regional, national, or international source is necessary." Also see PRODUCT and Articles for deletion/MON 802--Canoe1967 (talk) 19:30, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

I removed the tag, because I am not the creator of the page (per WP:CSD), and because I do not believe that it qualifies for speedy deletion. The page makes claims of notability, and although it is somewhat promotional, it does not really fit the criteria for CSD:G11, because it is not unambiguous in that respect. It's ambiguously promotional, rather than unambiguously so. It's obvious that there would also be objections to proposed deletion. However, I think that this page is a strong candidate for deletion with discussion. Canoe is correct that there are similarities to the page about MON 802. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:44, 10 September 2013 (UTC)
 * How on earth is this article considered spam? bobrayner (talk) 22:10, 10 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi, Bob. Welcome to my world! --Tryptofish (talk) 22:13, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

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