Altered Genes, Twisted Truth

Altered Genes, Twisted Truth - How the Venture to Genetically Engineer Our Food Has Subverted Science, Corrupted Government, and Systematically Deceived the Public

• Synopsis

This book tells the fascinating and frequently astounding story of the biggest scientific fraud in history, and how it has maintained its force in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence. It describes how the massive enterprise to restructure the genetic core of the world’s food supply has routinely violated the standards of science and how for more than three decades, hundreds of eminent biologists and scores of esteemed institutions have systematically contorted the truth in order to conceal the unique risks of its products – and get them onto our dinner plates.

Altered Genes, Twisted Truth reveals how this elaborate fraud was crafted and how it not only deceived the general public, but Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Barack Obama and a host of other astute and influential individuals as well. The book also exposes how the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) became a key accomplice – and how it covered up the warnings of its own scientists, broke the law, and repeatedly lied in order to usher genetically engineered (GE) foods onto the market without the safety testing that’s required by federal statute. Consequently, for fifteen years, America’s families have been regularly ingesting a group of novel products that are not only being sold illegally, but were determined to be unduly hazardous by the FDA’s own scientific staff.

By the time this gripping story comes to a close, it will be clear that the degradation of science it documents has not only been unsavory but unprecedented – and that in no other instance have so many scientists so seriously subverted the standards they were trained to uphold, misled so many people, and imposed such magnitude of risk on both human health and the health of the environment.

Steven M. Druker is a public interest attorney who initiated a lawsuit that forced the FDA to divulge its files on genetically engineered foods, which revealed that these novel products had entered the market through a colossal fraud. In organizing the suit, he founded the Alliance for Bio-Integrity and assembled an unprecedented coalition of eminent scientists and religious leaders to stand with it as co-plaintiffs – the first time scientists had sued a federal administrative agency on the grounds that one of its policies is scientifically unsound.

He is a prominent commentator on the risks of GE foods and has served on the food safety panels at conferences held by the National Research Council and the FDA; given lectures at numerous universities (including the Biological Laboratories at Harvard, Tel Aviv University, and the University of Copenhagen); and met with government officials world-wide, including the UK’s Environmental Minister and the heads of food safety for France, Ireland, and Australia. He also conferred at the White House Executive Offices with an interagency task force of the President's Council on Environmental Quality.