Hey Jo – I’m not sure how much Dr. Wymore has weighed in on the agrobacterium angle. My thoughts on the possibility of GMO foods being involved are based on many things and they really seem to keep adding up. For one the timing is right (GM crops were started in the 1970’s and the technology has become very widespread now). Another thing is that there have NEVER been any long term tests done on these GM foods – we are the lab rats and previously unknown diseases like CFS, fibromyalgia, lupus, and several other multi-symptom, systemic diseases just seem to keep increasing in occurrence (and it makes a lot of common sense that food would play a critical role in such diseases because everyone eats food and the “system” that is the body can’t function without foods, which now aren’t the same as they were 40 years ago).
Additionally, these GM crops have been approved based on the “research” of the companies that produce these products and obviously stand to benefit greatly from a financial perspective – this is not what I would consider an unbiased source of information and with no actual testing to back up the research, I have absolutely no trust that these products are as safe as is claimed. Of course I can’t say that GM foods are definitely involved with Morgellons, but it seems more and more like a sure bet the more I read on it. Here’s a link to some information from the UK on the approval process for GM foods – it sounds like the “scientists” and government officials involved ignored the actual results from studies and declared that GM food was safe for consumption in spite of some actual testing done showing that the DNA from GM foods was actually transferred to bacteria in the human gut (not broken down as was claimed). This was interesting reading to me.
GMO: technical information
Dr. Citovsky is apparently a fine authority on agrobacterium as he has done numerous scientific papers on it over the years and is apparently a very well respected authority on the subject. For me, it’s the overall picture that makes me believe that Dr. Citovsky seems to be doing an “about face” here. Apparently there has been no history of agrobacterium in its “natural state” infecting humans in any way although it was known to cause crown gall in some plants in the early 20th century. Here are some quotes that are indirectly from the MRF and can be found at this link (although you will have to read a lot to find the actual quotes):
Agrobacterium -- Citovsky's 1/14/07 MRF Update
Until quite recently, the genetic engineering community has assumed that Agrobacterium does not infect animal cells, and certainly would not transfer genes into them. But this has been proved wrong.
A paper published earlier this year reports that T-DNA can be transferred to the chromosomes of human cancer cells [1]. In fact, Agrobacterium attaches to and genetically transforms several types of human cells. The researchers found that in stably transformed HeLa cells, the integration event occurred at the right border of the Ti plasmid's T-DNA, exactly as would happen when it is being transferred into a plant cell genome. This suggests that Agrobacterium transforms human cells by a mechanism similar to that which it uses for transformation of plants cells.
The “paper” referenced above notes that Dr. Citovsky was a contributor:
1. Kunik T, Tzfira T, Kapulnik Y, Gafni Y, Dingwall C, and Citovsky V. Genetic transformation of HeLa cells by Agrobacterium. PNAS USA, 2001, 98, 1871-87.
Here’s a quote from the MRF website (from the same lymebusters archive noted above):
In a CNN interview, Dr. Citovsky stated, "when I look into the skin of these Morgellons patients, I see DNA from something that could only come from a plant." Agrobacterium may very well be the pathogen that distinguishes Morgellons disease. If these results are confirmed, it would be the first example of a plant-infecting bacterium playing a role in human disease.
While Dr. Citovsky doesn’t specifically state that the agrobacterium may be coming from GM plants, it seems to me that it would be a very logical choice for the source of this agrobacterium (it wasn’t even known that agrobacterium had the capability of transferring genetic information to human cells until Dr. Citovsky discovered it a few years ago in his research for genetically modifying plants).
And this information from a recent article makes me have very strong doubts that agrobacterium is actually “killed” by antibiotics in these mutated plants (at least that it is reliably killed and actually verified to be killed by proper testing in most cases). Here’s the link:
Agrobacterium and Morgellons Disease, A GM Connection?
Scientists at the Kinsealy Research and Development Centre in Dublin, Ireland, and the Scottish Crop Research Institute in Dundee, Scotland, were concerned that the inserted genes in plants would spread to wild populations by cross-pollination or by horizontal gene transfer to unrelated species, which was by then well-documented in the scientific literature.
They considered it “imperative” to address the risk posed in using Agrobacterium as a tool in genetic engineering [17], given its ability to transfer genes to plants. The transformation procedure involves inoculating the cells or tissue explants with Agrobacterium and co-cultivation the plant cells and bacterium for a short period, followed by the elimination of the bacterium with antibiotics.
However, if all the bacteria were not eliminated, then “release of these plants may also result in release of the Agrobacterium [with the foreign genes]”, which will serve as a vehicle for further gene escape, at least to other Agrobacterium strains naturally present in the soil.
Although various antibiotics have been used to eliminate Agrobacterium following transformation, the researchers stated that “very few authors actually test to ensure that the antibiotics succeed.”
The difficulty is compounded because the bacterium can remain latent within the plant tissue. So putting transgenic plant material into culture medium without antibiotics and finding no Agrobacterium is no guarantee that the transgenic plant is free of the bacterium, as was often assumed.
In their study, they investigated the ability of antibiotics to eliminate Agrobacterium tumefaciens after transformation in three model systems: Brassica (mustard), Solanum (potato), and Rubus (raspberry). The antibiotics carbenicillin, cefataxime and ticaracillin were used respectively to eliminate the bacterium at four times the minimum bactericidal concentration, as recommended. They found that none of the antibiotic succeeded in eliminating Agrobacterium.
The contamination levels increased from 12 to 16 weeks to such an extent that transgenic Solanum cultures senesced and died. Contamination in shoot material decreased over 16 to 24 weeks possibly because only the apical node was used in further culture, but even that did not eliminate Agrobacterium from all the samples; 24 percent remained contaminated at 24 weeks.