Árpád Pusztai

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Árpád Pusztai (born September 8, 1930 in Budapest , Hungary ) is a Hungarian - British biochemist . Árpád Pusztai and his wife Susan Bardócz found a weakening of the immune system and changes in the internal organs during feeding experiments with genetically modified plants on rats . This sparked a lively controversy about the handling of genetically modified crops in agriculture. Pusztai's contract was subsequently not renewed. In 2005 he was awarded the Whistleblower Prize of the Association of German Scientists for his conduct in the matter.

Scientific career

Árpád Pusztai studied chemistry at the Budapest Eötvös Loránd University , which he graduated in 1953. He then worked at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences , also located in Budapest , until he emigrated to Great Britain via a refugee camp in Austria because of the failure of the Hungarian uprising in 1956 . There he obtained a doctorate from the Lister Institute in London .

From 1963 to 1999 he worked at the Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen , Scotland , a formerly independent research institute that has been part of the University of Aberdeen since 2008 . In 1988 he was made a "Fellow" of the Royal Society of Edinburgh .

Pusztai is one of the leading international experts in plant lectins and is the author of 270 scientific papers and three books on this topic.

Pusztai affair

Pusztai carried out a feeding experiment with twelve rats in which six animals were fed genetically modified potatoes for ten days, six as a control group with normal feed. In August 1998 he made the preliminary results public in an interview on BBC television before the publication appeared in the medical journal The Lancet . The ensuing argument about the validity of the research results became known as the Pusztai affair . Pusztai's employment contract was no longer renewed because of the violation of publication guidelines and the Rowett Research Institute excluded him from participating in further investigations.

Pusztais concluded from his research that the consumption of genetically modified potatoes could cause damage to the immune system and altered organ growth in rats. Its results were examined by the Rowett Institute on October 22, 1998 as part of an audit following the widespread media attention due to the previous publication in the media. As a result, the scientists concluded that the data from the experiment did not support Pusztai's conclusion.

In addition, a group of 23 scientists led by the environmental organization Friends of the Earth , including Professor Ian F. Pryme from the University of Bergen, independently examined the research report of the Rowett Institute and Pusztai's experiments. In a memorandum, the scientists involved publicly called for the rehabilitation of Pusztai. They confirmed that the assumption is justified that the consumption of genetically modified plants could also have significant health effects on mammals.

Several months later, the Royal Society also examined Pusztai's experiments. After investigation by a number of anonymous independent investigators, she came to the conclusion that Pusztai's investigations were methodologically unusable. The study is poorly designed, contains uncertainties in the composition of the feed, uses incorrect statistical methods and generally uses an insufficient number of rats. The Royal Society 's review group also regretted that Pusztai had approached the public directly rather than abandoning the regular peer review process and exposing himself to scientific criticism. This would have made the informed and unbiased public discussion much more difficult.

Puztai's findings were published in The Lancet in 1999 after controversy . The Lancet examiners involved were divided on the quality of the study when it was published. The version finally published in the Lancet found significant biological effects on the animals fed GMO potatoes; effects on the immune system were not mentioned.

The Pusztai case was taken up in the series of publications of the Center for Technical and Business Ethics and examined by Dieter Deiseroth in the form of a case study on ethics in science . In conclusion, Deiseroth raised the following questions:

  • What prompted the Rowett Institute and its clients to give up research and to force Pusztai out of the institute instead of supporting their employees in the controversy with involved scientific-political and economic interests and pushing ahead with research?
  • Why did this approach not meet with protest from the Royal Society and from many specialist colleagues - with the exception of 20 international scientists (including the German Ökoinstitut)?

Deiseroth referred to the research work on the transgenic maize MON 863 and the controversies surrounding Gilles-Éric Séralini and suggested identifying similar underlying power and influence structures. He called for measures to ensure that dissent in science does not become a personal existential risk for scientists who enter into dissent out of professional ethical responsibility.

Appreciation

Filmography

credentials

  1. ↑ Page no longer available , search in web archives: Whistleblower - Award ceremony Arpad Pusztai@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.vdw-ev.de
  2. ^ Ted Goertzel: Conspiracy theories in science . In: EMBO reports . tape 11 , no. 7 , July 2010, p. 495 , doi : 10.1038 / embor.2010.84 , PMC 2897118 (free full text).
  3. ^ Report of Project Coordinator on data produced at the Rowett Research Institute (RRI) . Archived from the original on October 2, 2013. Retrieved October 23, 2013.
  4. ^ Nina Vsevolod Fedoroff and Nancy Marie Brown. Mendel in the kitchen: a scientist's view of genetically modified foods. p. 178.
  5. ↑ Arte Archimedes: Dispute over the potato ( Memento from July 1, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ).
  6. ↑ Gaskell, George and Bauer, Martin W., editors, Biotechnology, 1996-2000, the years of controversy , The GM food debate, National Museum of Science and Industry, ISBN 978-1-900747-43-1 , p. 295
  7. ↑ Rebecca Bowden: Examiner comments for Pusztai study. ( Memento of July 31, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) E-mail from the Royal Society to Pusztai on May 10, 1999, accessed on February 19, 2010.
  8. ↑ Murray, Noreen et al., (1999) Review of data on possible toxicity of GM potatoes (PDF; 22 kB) The Royal Society, June 1, 1999, accessed February 19, 2010
  9. ↑ Stanley WB Ewen, Arpad Pusztai: Effect of diets containing genetically modified potatoes expressing Galanthus nivalis lectin on rat small intestine . In: The Lancet . tape 354 , no. 9187 , October 1999, p. 1353 , doi : 10.1016 / S0140-6736 (98) 05860-7 .
  10. ↑ Martin Enserink: The Lancet Scolded Over Pusztai paper . In: Science . tape 286 , no. 5440 , October 22, 1999, p. 656-656 , doi : 10.1126 / science.286.5440.656a .
  11. ↑ Matthias Maring (Ed.): Case studies on ethics in science, economy, technology and society (PDF; 4.3 MB); Scientific Publishing

Further literature

  • Prof. Dr. Árpád Pusztai, Prof. Dr. Susan Bardócz: Security Risk Genetic Engineering . Ed .: Jürgen Binder. orange-press, 2009, ISBN 978-3-936086-50-8 , p. 177 (Hungarian: A genetikailag módosított növények és a belőlük készített élelmiszerek és takarmányok biztonsága . Translated by Peter Schmidt, with DVD Árpád Pusztai, whistleblower from DENKmal-Film GmbH, Munich).
  • Dieter Deiseroth , Annegret Falter (ed.): Whistleblower in genetic engineering and armaments research. Award ceremony 2005: Theodore A. Postol, Arpad Pusztai . VMW, 2006, ISBN 978-3-8305-1262-2 .
  • Jeffrey M. Smith: Trojan Seeds. Genetically Modified Food - Genetically Modified Human. Afterword Christine von Weizsäcker. (Original title: Seeds of Deception) Publisher: Riemann, ISBN 978-3-570-50060-6
  • L'affaire des pommes de terre transgéniques ( Memento of May 20, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Étude d'une polémique scientifico-médiatico-politique Août 1998 - Octobre 1999 Mémoire présenté par Clément Deshayes sous la direction de Baudouin Jurdant (Université Paris 7 - Denis Diderot) (fr.) Accessed on November 2, 2011
personal data
SURNAME Pusztai, Árpád
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pusztai, Arpad (English + German)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British biochemist
DATE OF BIRTH September 8, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Budapest