Prestigious science journal retracts findings on ill-effects of GM maize

Author's supporter plans to publish study in another journal

A year-after the prestigious ‘Food and Chemical Toxicology’ Journal published a study which concluded  that biotech maize and herbicides can cause “severe adverse health effects including mammary tumours and kidney and liver damage, leading to premature death,” the journal has announced retracting the piece for want of sufficient data.

 

The study, which was conducted by a team of researchers from the University of Caen (France) led by Gilles-Eric Seralini, had concluded that biotech maize and herbicide can be severely detrimental to human consumption. 

 

The team had based their analysis on a series of studies conducted on rats fed with biotech maize. However,   many pro-GM groups had severely criticized the analysis on the grounds of insufficient evidence. 

 

The Journal, which is one of the most prestigious publications, on science constituted a panel to look into the data published in the study and found that there were questions on the quality of the data submitted and hence recommended its retraction. 

Seralini, meanwhile, has planned to sue the journal and one of his supporter plans to publish another article in Statistical Models and Methods for Reliability and Survival Analysis, sometime in December 2013/January 2014 edition in support of Seralini’s findings. 

 

The Food and Chemical Toxicology is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering issues related to food safety, chemical safety and other aspects of consumer product safety. It is published by Elsevier and was established in 1963. Elsevier is the publisher of well-known scientific journals like Lancet and Cell.