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    Are Anti-GMO Campaigners Blocking Gluten-free Wheat that Could Help Celiac Sufferers?

    Reviewed and edited by a celiac disease expert.
    Are Anti-GMO Campaigners Blocking Gluten-free Wheat that Could Help Celiac Sufferers? - Wheat grows in a field. Photo: CC--Roger Karsten
    Caption: Wheat grows in a field. Photo: CC--Roger Karsten

    Celiac.com 09/25/2015 - Are anti-GMO campaigners blocking gluten-free wheat that could help people with celiac disease?

    There's an interesting blog post by Daniel Norero in Open Original Shared Link. The blog post claims that a type of GM wheat that may improve the quality of life for celiac patients has faced opposition from anti-GMO campaigners who oppose approval and commercialization of the product.

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    Certainly, producing a variety of gluten-free wheat offers one alternative to avoiding gluten. However, it is difficult, if not impossible, to create a baking-quality gluten-free wheat strain using conventional techniques such as selection and hybridization.

    That reality led a team of Spanish scientists, headed by Dr. Francisco Barro, to use RNA interference (RNAi) to deactivate or delete the genes in wheat that produce the gliadin proteins. By 2011, the team had created four strains of wheat with particularly low amounts of gliadins, which produced in people with celiac disease a reaction up to 95% less toxic than the one produced by standard wheat.

    Two of those wheat strains, E82 and D793, showed gliadin reductions of about 96% and 97% respectively. For people with celiac disease, this would equate to a safe maximum daily consumption of bread up to 43.6 and 66.9 grams per day.

    The blog entry goes on to say that, despite the opportunity presented by this GM crop to improve the quality of life of celiac patients, problems have arisen at the approval and commercialization stages, largely due to opposition from Spanish and European anti-GMO activists.

    Norero then quotes from blog post by Jose Miguel Mulet, a Spanish plant scientist from CSIC:

    "How can it be that a technology created with Spanish public funds end up in the hands of a private American company? Because of the aberrant anti-GMO European law. No European or Spanish company is interested in commercially developing this wheat due to obstacles in the authorization process…The result: licensing rights have been acquired by the…Dow Agrosciences, given that the authorization process in the United States is much easier."

    Norero makes an interesting read. It's certainly possible that some type of genetic modification could benefit people with celiac disease. However, it's unclear how a wheat with a 95-97% reduction in gluten toxicity would relate to the current 20ppm total gluten allowed by U.S. law, or exactly what the nature of the alleged benefits for celiacs might be.

    What do you think? Should genetically modified wheat be permitted if it's helpful to people with celiac disease or gluten intolerance? Or no, should there be no GMO wheat, no matter the claimed benefits? 



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    I am celiac and reject GMOs. Humans have gone way too far in fighting nature and remaking it in their own image. GMOs are a dangerous new frontier in that one-sided war against nature and they rightly have faced opposition since their very beginning. I don't need genetically modified wheat proliferating across the globe just so I can have a wheat cracker. I'm willing to go without that very unnecessary thing.

    Also, this article is very one-sided. There is literally no discussion at all of the concerns about GMOs or why people are against them and to the uneducated reader, it appears that there are just all these irrational people who are crazy and want to stop celiac sufferers from seeking "relief" from their condition. It could've used the slightest attempt at a sentence or two addressing these things or a link to an anti-GMO organization so that at a minimum the reader could look into the issue further if they wanted to hear "both sides" of the issue. Yeah, it's not surprise that there's less hurdles to developing GMOs in America v.s. Europe. America barely regulates anything. There are also thousands of harmful chemicals that are disallowed from being added to products in Europe and there's a small handful disallowed in America. I'd feel a lot safer using products that had greater restrictions put on the manufacturer to prevent them from cost-saving and corner-cutting measures that involves poisoning the user. America's greater "freedom" for corporations means nothing for me, a regular person. It makes me less free and less healthy.

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    trents

    I am neither for or against GMO. I think each individual GMO needs to be evaluated on it's own merit and risks. Behind the anti-GMO push is the philosophy that everything natural is necessarily good and it's corollary, that whenever humans alter nature, the outcome is necessarily bad. 

    As a Christian and a student of scripture, I am aware that the curse of sin has corrupted both nature and humanity. Nature's processes and their outcomes are not always flawless and the same is true of humankind's interventions. But neither do humankind's interventions in natural processes always make things worse.

    In Genesis 2:28, before the Fall and the corruption from the curse of sin, the Creator commanded the first humans to "subdue the earth." One commentator explains the import of this very well by saying, "The military terminology in no way implies hostility and resistance from the earth, for it was all “very good” (Genesis 1:31). It suggests, rather, intensive study of the earth and its creatures (that is, “science”) and then application of that knowledge (that is, technology and commerce) for the optimum benefit of mankind and the animals, and for the glory of God." So again, from my perspective, GMO is neither always good or always bad and therefore each GMO product must be evaluated on it's own merit and risks.

    And there is nothing to say that if a GMO product is developed to allow celiacs to consume wheat products that it will become the de facto standard for all wheat-based products everywhere. It's very likely it may be confined to a niche market of wheat products catering to the needs of those with gluten-related health issues. I certainly would embrace that as long as it did not present other significant health dangers while giving me back the delight of some delicious and aromatic culinary delights I used to enjoy before celiac disease.

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    Jefferson Adams

    Jefferson Adams is Celiac.com's senior writer and Digital Content Director. He earned his B.A. and M.F.A. at Arizona State University. His articles, essays, poems, stories and book reviews have appeared in numerous magazines, journals, and websites, including North American Project, Antioch Review, Caliban, Mississippi Review, Slate, and more. He is the author of more than 2,500 articles on celiac disease. His university coursework includes studies in science, scientific methodology, biology, anatomy, physiology, medicine, logic, and advanced research. He previously devised health and medical content for Colgate, Dove, Pfizer, Sharecare, Walgreens, and more. Jefferson has spoken about celiac disease to the media, including an appearance on the KQED radio show Forum, and is the editor of numerous books, including "Cereal Killers" by Scott Adams and Ron Hoggan, Ed.D.

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