Tufts University’s Fraudulent China Golden Rice “Experiment”
By LARRY ROMANOFF – September 17, 2020
The US Department of Agriculture and the US military used Tufts University as a tool under the guise of conducting innocent food health research, to carry out an illegal, deplorable and fraudulent biological weapons experiment on unwitting Chinese children. This is part of that story.
Many groups have experimented with gene-splicing technology, inserting unrelated DNA into various seeds. In one case in Canada, a government department discovered an "anti-freeze" gene contained in the blood of fish living in Arctic waters, permitting them to survive in waters of sub-zero temperature. The scientists spliced this gene into Canadian wheat crops, permitting the wheat to withstand freezing temperatures without damage. An American research lab spliced the genes from fireflies into tobacco plants, producing a tobacco field that glowed in the dark. These examples may be harmless, but others are much less so.
The US Defense Department has invested huge sums in research directed to splicing lethal genes into these GM crop seeds, including smallpox, bird and swine flu viruses, the plague, AIDS, and more. As a military weapon, such science is priceless. Why bother with a shooting war when Monsanto can sell them rice, corn and soybeans that contain smallpox and the H5N1 virus? When the seed is harvested and passes into the nation's food supply it could, within weeks, exterminate 50% or more of the population without firing a single shot and with no risk to the aggressor. I have seen US military documents that even included a handy "cost per death" chart, demonstrating that seeds are far cheaper and more effective than bombs in the search for military domination. The report also noted that
"As well, genetic weapons can be dispersed in a multitude of ways, using virus-infected insects or bacteria, or spliced into GM seeds. These weapons are difficult to detect and identify, and often a treatment or vaccine could be years in the making." (1)
There is no shortage of direct evidence that GM seed was conceived, financed and developed by the US military in conjunction with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) for its potential use as a biological weapon or, more precisely, a weapons delivery system. The ability to splice pathogens into GM seed is now beyond dispute, and has formed a major part of the US military's bio-chemical warfare development programs. (2) A question no one seems to have asked is why, for more than 50 years, the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (AMRIID) has been part of the US military's notorious bio-weapons labs at Fort Detrick, Md., under the pretense of researching "infectious" diseases. This was the source of the US military's weaponised anthrax, among many other pathogens.
The entire American Golden Rice program was funded by the US military through the USDA, a Department known to frequently cooperate with the US military especially in the production and development of bioweapons. The USDA was not only heavily involved in financing Golden Rice research but was clandestinely growing its own undocumented strains of this GM rice in its own private hydroponic systems, strains which were subsequently tested on unknowing populations. The dangers of GM seed for military use were recognised decades ago. In 1998, Time Magazine published an article which detailed the worldwide search for genetic material that might offer remarkable military applications. (3) (4)
•Vitamin A
Vitamin A is not one thing, but rather a large group of related nutritional elements that include retinoids and carotenoids, retinol, retinoic acid and things like β-Carotene (beta-carotene). Foods that are high in Vitamin A include sweet potatoes, carrots, dark leafy greens, peppers, fish, liver, and tropical fruits. Most of these are part of the daily diet in China, requiring no artificial supplements, most Chinese obtaining all they need simply by eating a normal diet.
Like most vitamins, Vitamin A is essential for body health, but this one is unique in many respects in that its presence affects the body's immune system and genetic functioning. It regulates gene transcription, which involves breaking the bonds and separating the two strands of a body's DNA and re-combining and splicing the nuclei of cells, and thus plays a critical role in cell functioning. Portions of Vitamin A and its related compounds are used as medicines to modulate a body's gene functions. This is not trivial, and is the subject of much very high-tech biological research today. It is also true that while even massive doses of other vitamins may not be harmful, excessive Vitamin A is toxic to the human body, especially to pregnant women and, given its extraordinarily complex genetic DNA functions and its effects on the body's immune system, is not a chemical to be either under- or over-dosed.
•Golden Rice
This GM (genetically-modified) food has been controversial for more than a decade, from concerns that, like many other GM foods, it may be unsafe. GM food is especially controversial in China, with no consensus as to its safety, is under strict regulation and, given the substantial trust issues involved, is even more so when foreign entities or researchers are involved. So-called "Golden Rice" (for its yellow color) was developed to be rich in Vitamin A and therefore ostensibly of benefit especially to children. The rice does not actually contain any Vitamin A, but rather β-Carotene (sometimes called pro-vitamin A) which the human body synthesises into the vitamin. Golden Rice was developed jointly in the early 1990s by a Swiss professor of plant science named Ingo Potrykus, and a German professor of cell biology named Peter Beyer, with grants from the Rockefeller Foundation. This latter information is both discouraging and moderately frightening. Here is an explanation by one internet commenter:
"These are the same people that let millions die in the US over a period of 30 years from a simple lack of Niacin. Where were they then, if the Rockefellers want to save the lives of the poor? Why wouldn't they begin in their own country, especially when it was widely known the disease [Pellagra] was easily curable? From all the available evidence, and in spite of all the propaganda and hype, I have seen nothing that tells me the Rockefeller Institute has ever been interested in anything but schemes for population reduction. And that means if they are financing projects to insert beta carotene into rice, it will be as an adjuvant for yet another GM sterilisation technique."
I am compelled to agree with the above assessment, since it is indisputably true that the Rockefeller Foundation has been for most of a century at the forefront of concocting schemes of worldwide birth control, fertility reduction and sterilisation in all non-Western countries, all for the stated purpose of severely reducing the undeveloped world's population. It is also true that for many decades the Rockefeller Foundation (and the US government) did indeed observe millions dying in the US from a simple lack of Niacin (Vitamin B3, or nicotinic acid), and could easily have devoted resources to eliminating this scourge since the cause was well-known. They chose to ignore it because the deaths were almost entirely in the poor and black populations.
•The Golden Rice Propaganda Train
The promotion of this Golden Rice and the active public support of its field trials and human experiments arise not only from the Rockefeller Foundation, Syngenta and its so-called Golden Rice Humanitarian Board, but by the usual list of suspects that include Monsanto and Bayer, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Several authors have noted that Golden Rice has been heavily promoted by these major players in both the GM and population-reduction industries, but the rice achieved its primary fame for exhibiting what scientists refer to as "wildly erratic results".
Even though Syngenta and other supporters sometimes viciously attack detractors, most aid agencies and a great many reputable scientists have consistently claimed that "Golden Rice is a technical and dangerous fix for a non-existent problem" since necessary vitamins can be easily provided by common vegetables. As Dr. Brian John wrote,
"Although the GM industry trumpets Golden Rice as the savior of humanity and the potential preventer of millions of cases of blindness or death, even the World Bank has stated that consumption of local green leafy vegetables and fruits have for more than 20 years dramatically reduced any deficiency of Vitamin A "in very cheap and efficient ways"." (5)
The US FDA, perhaps surprisingly, stated clearly that GM Golden Rice has no nutritional value, that the beta-carotene in carrots and spinach is 40 to 50 times greater and more easily and safely absorbed. It further noted that the beta-carotene in Golden Rice is very short-lived, being exceptionally unstable in the presence of Oxygen and degrades by 90% within about two months. (6)
According to David Schubert at the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences La Jolla, California, Golden Rice can be particularly dangerous because of unpredictable enzyme mutations and that many clinically toxic effects cannot even be identified or measured by today's technology. It was stated further that excessive retinoic acid is "exceedingly dangerous, particularly to infants and during pregnancy", that it can accumulate in the body and cause various birth defects. Results from these and many other longer-term studies indicate that "genetic modification is inherently dangerous". It seems that only the biotech industry has consistently found genetically-modified seed and food as safe, perhaps in large part due to their very short-term studies, whereas a great many other industry researchers have found in their animal tests an almost consistent pathology related to consumption of these foods.
This transgenic Golden Rice has been heavily promoted worldwide by a strategy of guilt-inducing fear-mongering. We're told that millions of children suffer blindness each year and millions more die, from a simple deficiency of Vitamin A. GM Golden Rice, the savior of the world's children, can prevent this. It is a matter of life and death. If you refuse GM rice in your country or frustrate the attempts of Bill Gates and the Rockefellers to consume it freely in every (poor) country, you are personally responsible for those millions of little tragedies. The fact that those children could have been saved by spinach or carrots is irrelevant; neither spinach nor carrots have been appointed by god or Bill Gates to save the world; only Golden Rice has this imprimatur. Even if you don't want GM soybeans or maize to feed your pigs and depopulate your country, how can you be so heartless as to refuse GM Golden Rice that will prevent millions of deaths and injuries? In this context, Golden Rice has substantial propaganda value because it can function as the poster child for GM food, curing disease while feeding the world, a claim that cannot easily be made by other GM foods.
But Golden Rice has a second and more important purpose, which is to function as a kind of Trojan horse. If you don't know, this metaphor emerged from a story about the Trojan War between ancient Greece and Troy. The Greeks had besieged the city for a decade but were unable to subdue it, so they constructed a huge wooden horse which they filled with soldiers, left the horse at the city gate ostensibly as a farewell gift, and appeared to sail away. The Trojans naïvely pulled the horse into their city and, during the night, the Greek soldiers emerged, overcame resistance and opened the city gates to the Greek army who had quietly sailed back to Troy. The Greeks destroyed Troy (from the inside, rather than by external attack) and won the war. And this is the true function of Golden Rice - to force nations by fear and guilt to open their Gates (sorry, gates) to all GM food, removing import restrictions under the guise of humanitarian aid, overcoming internally that which cannot be overcome by direct external attack.
The Journal Science published an opinion paper authored by a group of respected international scientists, which stated the US needs to provide better justification for military involvement in GM seed creation, instead of the US State Department merely claiming "the project is for peaceful purposes and does not violate the Biological Weapons Convention." Guy Reeves, a biologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Germany, and one of the authors, said this technology "is more feasible as a weapon - to kill ... than as an agricultural tool. Another co-author, Todd Kuiken, a senior research scholar at North Carolina State University, said, "The pure fact that this is a military program would naturally raise ... questions". (7)
•The Tufts University Experiment
The official narrative of Golden Rice is that it can provide citizens of poorer nations with their daily requirement of Vitamin A. In 2012, Tufts University in Massachusetts conspired with the US Department of Agriculture, the US State Department and unknown other agencies, to conduct a Golden Rice experiment on Chinese children in China, ostensibly as a field trial to prove these claims. But this was done in a secretly-arranged and conducted experiment that had already previously been prohibited by China's health authorities, and which was riddled with deplorable ethics and illegalities. It is of more than usual concern that the US government and an American university would presume to surreptitiously conduct a clearly unethical and illegal test of a GM food on Chinese children. (8)
For this study, the Tufts researchers followed the standard American template for their "China" tests, which is to enlist a native-born Chinese researcher on staff to contact low-level officials in a poor Chinese province to obtain their cooperation in an American research project for which the real purpose is seldom if ever disclosed. I know from experience that these local officials are often badly misled as to the real intent of these studies, are without exception wined and dined, and are probably often paid as well. And, in virtually every case I've examined, the Chinese participants in these studies (I usually refer to them as "victims") were never informed of the fact of the trial being an experiment, sometimes not informed of the trial at all, simply being unwitting participants, and not once therefore being in a position to provide consent - informed or otherwise. This case was not different. In fact, Chinese journalists found an email to the research team urging the organisers "to not speak openly" of the fact the children were being fed GM-modified food because the topic was deemed to be "too sensitive" to reveal to the childrens' parents. (9)
To conduct the tests, Tufts University sent unidentified personnel to China who may or may not have been Tufts University staff but may have been employed by the USDA, a US Pharma company, or another branch of the US government that could include the military. They arranged with local officials in a poor school district to feed their Golden Rice to a group of about 100 small children daily for several weeks, during and after which they conducted unidentified and undetermined blood and other tests on the children, then packed their data and returned to the US.
Tufts and the USDA might have escaped with their duplicity and deceit, but for Greenpeace who noticed an article published in August of 2012 in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, which claimed that GM Golden Rice had been used in an experimental test on Chinese children in Hengyang City in China's Hunan Province. Greenpeace informed China's CDC of the tests, claiming "the parents likely were completely unaware or misinformed" of the fact and/or purpose of the study, an accusation that proved to be true. Questioning the trial’s legitimacy, and condemning the research as exposing the children to health risks, Greenpeace said the trial contravened a Chinese Ministry of Agriculture decision in 2008 to abort plans for the project, was a breach of scientific and medical ethics, and asked the government to launch an investigation. Fang Lifeng at Greenpeace said it was "incredibly disturbing" to think that an American institution had used Chinese children as the subjects of its experiment. "Chinese agriculture authorities stopped the same trial four years ago. How did the research come to be revived after that emphatic ban?"
Local officials initially denied the claims, stating there had instead been a study on the transformation of vegetable carotene into Vitamin A in children, and that the study had been conducted by the Chinese CDC in its Hunan branch. According to Xinhua News, the officials further stated that the study had not involved any American institution, that all parents had been notified and approved of the "experiment", that the study "did not involve GM rice or other GM food", that all food used in the experiment had been purchased locally and, finally, that all results from the study had been immediately submitted to the China CDC upon completion. According to them, the study was approved by the ethics review committee of the Zhejiang Academy of Medical Sciences, with both parents and pupils consenting to take part in the study.
The Chinese government did indeed look into the matter immediately, and the China CDC conducted a three-month investigation that included sending representatives to the US to interview researchers at Tufts University and to obtain copies of the blood samples and other data that were removed from China without authorisation. Upon discovery of the facts, the government applied severe sanctions against the individuals involved and provided substantial compensation to the enraged parents and children who were victims of this clandestine experiment. Several Chinese scientists who participated in the scam were dismissed from their posts, including two members of the CDC staff itself and the head of science and technology at the Zhejiang Academy of Medical Sciences.
The apparent leader of this experiment, a native Chinese named Tang, was the director of the (USDA-financed) Carotenoid and Health Laboratory at Tufts University. When the China CDC began its investigation, Tang insisted that the study had been conducted with all required regulatory approval, whereupon Tang was asked to provide a detailed report of her research and supporting materials to document her authorisation. The CDC discovered that Tang did not make the necessary application to the government to conduct her experiment, neglected to apply for ethical evaluation of the study, but instead fabricated (i.e., forged) all the government approval documents.
Another serious ethical violation was that the consent forms did not mention GM rice and parents they were shown only the signature page of the consent form. Moreover, it appears that at least some consent forms from a local nutritional study had been dishonestly used to support this illegal Tufts study, and further that many other consent forms and supporting documentation had been either back-dated or forged in total. The CDC also discovered that Tang and Tufts University brought their Golden Rice from the US into China illegally, without declaration to Chinese Customs or other relevant authorities. The CDC stated that the American collaborators in their little conspiracy "meticulously concealed the reality" that the experiment involved golden rice. In summary, the CDC accused all participants at Tufts of concealing the main facts, shading the truth, repeatedly creating interference to discovery of the facts, and illegally obstructing the investigation.
The entire American Golden Rice program at Tufts was funded by the US military, through the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), from which originated these illegal experiments in China. Even more, the USDA was clandestinely growing undocumented strains of this GM rice in its own private hydroponic systems. It was in cooperation with, and perhaps at the specific directive of, the USDA, that Tufts researchers initiated the study on Chinese children, presented as an independent Tufts academic research project to disguise its true origin and purpose.
Further, and more seriously, the USDA wasn't the only government body involved in this experiment with Chinese children. Another US government health group called the NIDDK was heavily involved in financing and publicly defending this experiment, and therefore as well in the strategy and planning. The same NIDDK revealed that the US State Department had given approval and clearance for this China experiment after reviewing it for "any potentially negative foreign policy implications." This latter quote is of enormous significance since the State Department is never involved in such matters except in conditions involving international illegalities or the contravention of national sovereignty, or perhaps the prospect of a public revelation of military subterfuge as for example a clandestine test of a biological pathogen on the citizens of a foreign nation.
For this medical trial which, on the surface, was apparently innocuous and almost trivial, to have required and obtained White House and State Department approval is virtually irrefutable proof that something much more important was occurring than the absorption of Vitamin A.
I should note here that the above State Department quotation is not unique. It has been used in situations where the US military has planned bio-weapons experiments and field tests on an unwitting public, sometimes in foreign countries and often against American citizens. When US Defense Secretary Robert McNamara planned and executed his 150 simultaneous and different top-secret bio-weapons programs in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the wording then was the same. As I noted elsewhere, McNamara ordered the military Joint Chiefs of Staff "to consider all possible applications" of these agents against enemy nations in a coherent plan for a total "biological and chemical deterrent capability", the plan to include cost estimates and an "appraisal of international political consequences". I have little doubt the above review by the US State Department for "potentially negative foreign policy implications" has a similar origin.
It is not a secret that Tufts' Golden Rice efforts in the past have been covered with scandals, both in the US and China, with their US trials attracting condemnation. In an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Tom Bartlett noted that "This isn't the first time research on Golden Rice at Tufts has been criticized." Tufts University had already done the same in New Zealand and other countries, and had attempted to conduct precisely such studies in China in prior years but were refused permission. A similar study that had begun in China in 2008 was discovered and ordered aborted, these particular trials and experiments then being specifically banned by China's national government.
The Americans, whether Tufts researchers or USDA/Military officials, did not bring their GM Golden Rice into China through normal channels. Instead, they smuggled it into the country without declaring it to Chinese Customs officials. You don't need to be a lawyer to recognise this as an illegal act of some magnitude, since the import of seeds and most foodstuffs is heavily regulated by all countries and, if caught, these people would almost certainly have been imprisoned. This is not normal conduct one would expect from a highly-regarded American university and a Department of the US government conducting a legitimate vitamin field trial.
The Americans cooked the rice before smuggling it into China, an action bereft of rational explanation, and to my best knowledge Tufts has refused to provide one. Since the rice was to be mixed with normal rice and eaten by the children during school lunches, both varieties should have been cooked at the time, immediately prior to eating. Given the clandestine nature of the entire affair, I see only a few possibilities for this, one of which may have been a questionable attempt to evade China's prohibition on the import of GM products by claiming that cooked rice does not fall under this definition. A more serious - and more likely - possibility is that the rice was cooked to disguise viral or other biological material which may have been spliced into the rice DNA, and which would have been easily detectable in uncooked rice but perhaps detected only with difficulty in the cooked version. A third is that for this experiment a chemical or biological additive was necessary in the cooking process, which would have been problematic if done in China in the school kitchen, under the observation of Chinese staff.
Contrary to the claims of Tufts University that no harm had been done, there were repeated reports of children suffering reactions to the rice, such as nausea, upset stomach, vomiting and similar, with many children developing dizziness and fever during the trial. One mother reported that her daughter aged 11 was a participant in the program, receiving this GM rice for 15 days, but withdrew her from the tests after the girl developed a severe fever on at least three occasions. None of these are normal reactions to uncontaminated rice, and strongly suggest the possibility of an undisclosed biological pathogen. She also noted that the children received frequent blood tests without explanation, being informed the blood would be sent to the US for testing. As more than one set of parents asked, "If it’s safe, why did they need to deceive us into this?" Moreover, why would the childrens’ blood samples need to be spirited out of China (illegally) and sent to the US for testing?
It is not the result of excessive suspicion that these physical reactions, combined with the inordinate secrecy and overall illegality, have all the hallmarks of the delivery to the children of some kind of substitute vaccine or similar. Given the serious genetic role played by Vitamin A in the human body, and its role in the human immune system - or immune-suppression system - I find all of this worrying. I do not know what tests China's CDC performed on these children during their investigation, but I would be surprised if further testing failed to reveal the existence of antibodies that should not be present. It would also be mandatory to examine whether the future fertility of these little victims had been compromised in any way by the USDA's version of Golden Rice. It is possible these children may have been rendered sterile.
•The Pathogenic Nature of the Tufts Experiment
There is one additional matter relating to the perpetration of this GM rice on Chinese children, that of the inherent pathogenic nature of all genetically-modified food. The fact that the USDA was so determined as to make repeated attempts over many years to secretly conduct this Golden Rice experiment on Chinese children in China, raises many warnings. If this were a simple matter of testing a spinach substitute for its Vitamin A content, there would be no need for secrecy or smuggling. The simple fact that these experiments were not conducted openly is sufficient proof in itself that the USDA was hiding something, perhaps even from the researchers themselves. And that 'something' will almost certainly be pathogenic. It is of even more concern when we consider the USDA's determination to conduct these trials specifically in China and not in any other nation, leading immediately to a suspicion the pathogens were race-specific.
Given all the secrecy, the denials and cover-ups, and the documented fact that many of the Chinese children suffered physical reactions, in some cases rather serious, leads one to question the actual content and intent of Tufts' experiment in China. This concern is exacerbated by the fact that the USDA created and produced this particular undocumented strain of Golden Rice in its own labs, and grew the rice itself in its own hydroponic stations. There is therefore no documentation or proof of precisely what was fed to the children, beyond only a vague claim by Tufts researchers that this strain contained large amounts of pro-Vitamin A, a claim that tells us precisely nothing about the genetic manipulation performed on the plants. Again, given the negative physical reactions by the children to this rice, reactions that would be impossible with normal rice, it is reasonable to theorise that the children were actually fed not a pro-Vitamin but a pro-pathogen. And, given the USDA's suspicious repeated determination to conduct this experiment specifically in China on Chinese children (rather than in India on Indian children, or in Japan on Japanese children), it is also reasonable to theorise that the pathogen was race-specific.
One of the dangers voiced by many scientists is that the various strains of this Golden Rice were apparently made with 'genetic modification techniques' "that cause uncontrollable mutations and other collateral damage to the host plant genome, with many unintended, uncharacterized effects". More frighteningly, ISIS wrote that the viral sequences "created for enhanced horizontal gene transfer and recombination, the main route to creating new pathogens." Another ISIS article titled, The 'Golden Rice', An Exercise in How Not to Do Science, stated that the science involved was being promoted not for human health but "to salvage a morally as well as financially bankrupt agricultural biotech industry", concluding that these clinical trials of "uncharacterized, unapproved, experimental (Golden Rice) on children ... is morally inexcusable."
A group of acclaimed international biologists and other scientists wrote a strongly-worded letter of protest to Professor Robert Russell at Tufts University, stating in part, "We are writing to express our shock and unequivocal denunciation of the experiments conducted by your colleagues which involve the feeding of genetically modified Golden Rice to (Chinese children) . . . These unethical and potentially dangerous trials MUST be stopped." (10)
A news release by Dr Brian John at GM Free Cymru stated that these trials ... "are shrouded in mystery, and may even have been illegal since Golden Rice has no regulatory approvals either in the USA or elsewhere for cultivation or use as a food. There are not even any published animal feeding trials. Other research results are shrouded in mystery and secrecy. It is almost unbelievable that any human feeding trials of Golden Rice should be contemplated by Tufts University and the American authorities, since this is a GM variety which is acknowledged to be very unstable and unpredictable in its behavior, and which has no authorizations for cultivation or food use anywhere in the world. The use of children in these experiments is profoundly disturbing, since they are in no position to understand the implications or the risks to their long- term health that might arise from eating an untested GM variety. The ethical issues are even more disturbing ... the feeding of an untested GM rice to vulnerable and sick children is absolutely unforgivable."
In an ISIS report, the agency wrote that "One major hazard inherent to GM organisms is enhanced horizontal gene transfer and recombination (which) is considerably worse with transgenic plants like Golden Rice because ... (it provides) a ready vehicle for ... horizontal gene transfer to all species ... including human cells. In general, horizontal transfer of transgenic DNA facilitates the creation of new pathogens. The identification of (these) sequences ... raises questions as to whether the widespread use ... in genetic modification has indeed resulted in creating a new pathogen for humans." One of India's most respected biotechnologists, Dr. Vandana Shiva, was a speaker at an international biotechnology conference where she said a Syngenta representative told her Syngenta's goal was to "control food" by the end of the century. (11)
•Denial, Lies and Cover-Up
Following the public disclosure of their illegal experiment and prior to China's CDC investigation, Tufts University followed the standard American pattern (as exemplified by Harvard University in Anhui, China, for example) of denial, then repeated lying about the facts, followed by the typical obfuscation and mis-statements to cover up their ethical failures and illegalities. Then, as is also so typical, when finally forced to face the indisputable truths, Tufts exonerated themselves then blamed the Chinese for their lack of ethics. (12)
Tufts did finally effectively admit it had used small Chinese children as guinea pigs in a GM food experiment without disclosing either the fact or the nature of their project, and admitted their researchers "were out of compliance" with multiple regulations and requirements. That's a rather mild statement, considering that many of their actions were not only unethical but clearly criminal, but Tufts "firmly defended their experiment" even while confessing they "violated ethics rules", though their definition of this violation was that "one researcher in China broke the rules" - by failing to inform parents of the fact of an illegal GM food experiment on their children, and by failing to obtain consent. Tufts' statement clearly - and falsely - implies without stating that it was a Chinese researcher who committed these violations.
It was especially troubling that Tufts and various US government agencies tasked with the investigation, and the entire US media, neglected to address the obvious illegalities like the smuggling into China of prohibited genetically-modified food, all the forged documents and the false statements, and glossed over with a mere mention the fact that the consent forms, to the extent they existed at all, had been forged and/or back-dated, and were clearly fraudulent. Their so-called investigation ignored the fact that Tufts researchers lied about obtaining approval from the necessary Chinese authorities, and neglected in total to address at all the huge carpet of lies issued in what was indisputably a shameful cover-up. They also totally ignored the fact that their duplicity and outrageous illegal conduct left China's national government with the responsibility of providing substantial compensation to all the enraged families involved in this affair.
I would end by stating that, given the repeated reprehensible ethical violations by American universities in China, no American university should ever be permitted entry to China for any research of any kind. All US universities and research institutions should be permanently banned from the country.
*
Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai's Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He can be contacted at: 2186604556@qq.com
Notes:
(1) Global Research, July 03, 2014; Monsanto’s GMO Food and its Dark Connections to the "Military Industrial Complex"; Steven MacMillan
(2) The Guardian, June 19, 1999, published an article titled "The seeds of wrath", in which was stated that GM seed was "Developed with the US government and military" participation and support. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/1999/jun/19/food.food
(3) Tim McGirk; "Gene Piracy"; Time Magazine; November 9, 1998
(4) In February of 2016, Director of US National Intelligence James R. Clapper, in presenting a "Worldwide Threat Assessment" testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, asserted that gene editing had become a global danger to humanity and included it in the section of his report dealing with weapons of mass destruction.
(5) THE "GOLDEN RICE" HOAX -When Public Relations replaces Science; http://online.sfsu.edu/~rone/GEessays/goldenricehoax.html
(6) GMO Golden Rice Offers No Nutritional Benefits Says FDA; Allison Wilson, PhD and Jonathan Latham, PhD
https://www.independentsciencenews.org/news/gmo-golden-rice-offers-no-nutritional-benefits-says-fda/
(7) Science, October 4, 2018; www.dailymail.co.uk
(8) Golden Rice Study Violated Ethical Rules, Tufts Says; September 17, 2013; http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/09/17/223382375/golden-rice-study-violated-ethical-rules-tufts-says
(9) According to China's Health Ministry, Tufts cooked the "golden rice" in the United States and brought the cooked rice to China on May 29, 2008, without due declaration to relevant Chinese authorities. Four days later, Tang and other research participants recooked the GM rice and mixed it with ordinary rice and served it for the children's lunch. The research team did not tell the children's parents or guardians that the test would be using GM food. http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2012-12/07/c_132025944.htm
(10) Scientists Condemn Human Experiment with GE Food; Thursday, 19 February 2009; http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0902/S00328.htm ; http://www.i-sis.org.uk/SPUCTGM.php
(11) GM Seeds and the Militarization of Food
https://fpif.org/gm_seeds_and_the_militarization_of_food_-_and_everything_else/
(12) This has been common practice by Americans in China. A few years earlier, Harvard University conducted an even more fraudulent study in China, this one ostensibly conducting asthma research. However, according to police officials, Harvard researchers forged all the relevant approval documents, claimed approval of their study from a non-existent medical authority, exposed countless thousands of Chinese to various potentially lethal pathogens, then illegally collected and shipped back to the US hundreds of thousands of vials of Chinese DNA. And, in a truly despicable libel, the US government then claimed the DNA was sent to the US because of "the risks of the Chinese government misusing sensitive genetic information".
Larry Romanoff is one of the contributing authors to Cynthia McKinney's new COVID-19 anthology 'When China Sneezes'.
Copyright © Larry Romanoff, Moon of Shanghai, 2020
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