Email Address : geoff.seavers@bbsrc.ac.uk
Telephone : (+44) (0)1275 392181
Fax : (+44) (0)1275 394007
>August 13 1998 BRITAIN
>
>Scientist's potato alert was false, laboratory admits
>
>BY NIGEL HAWKES, SCIENCE EDITOR
>
>The Times (UK)
>
>WARNINGS about genetically modified food issued by a scientist earlier this
>week were improper and misleading, a top British nutrition laboratory
>admitted yesterday.
>
>The scientist involved, Dr Arpad Pusztai, 68, has been suspended by the
>Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen and will retire. He had claimed that
>experiments with genetically modified potatoes had shown immune-system
>damage in rats that ate them for more than 100 days.
>
>The Rowett said yesterday that this was not true. The data to which Dr
>Pusztai had referred, first in an interview with World in Action and then
>with The Times and other media, did not involve genetically modified
>potatoes. Rather, it involved feeding trials in which a protein from the
>jack bean, a lectin, was added to a potato-based feed. Since this lectin is
>known to harm the immune system, the damage was not surprising. ....
>
>Last night Dr Pusztai said ... : "I do not want to speak right now because
>I have effectively been sacked."
>
>Dr Pusztai is thought to have arrived in Britain from his native Hungary in
>1956. He is a leading world expert in lectins and, according to institute
>sources, has an "enormous international reputation". He has worked at the
>institute for 20 years.
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