The world according to Monsanto : pollution, corruption, and

the invention of gmos 151produced in December 1988, turned out to contain five different transgenesand a large number of impurities. 32Then began a strange battle about the origin of the disease, which everythingindicated was directed primarily at discrediting the hypothesis that thedisease could have been triggered by genetic manipulation. Some researchersargued that the problem could have come from a change in the filter used byShowa Denko to purify the product, but it was later shown that this changehad not taken place until January 1989, after the outbreak of the epidemic.Others suggested that L-tryptophan itself was the problem, but as the expertGerald Gleich pointed out, “Tryptophan itself clearly is not the cause ofEMS in that individuals who consumed products from other companiesthan Showa Denko did not develop EMS.” 33 Only Showa Denko was sued,and after settlements negotiated in 1992, it paid more than $2 billion indamages to more than two thousand victims.Nonetheless, the FDA had decided in 1991 to permanently prohibit thesale of L-tryptophan, even if it was produced conventionally, and in subsequentofficial reports it does not even mention the fact that the strainsinvolved were transgenic. 34 But one man at the FDA had very seriouslyconsidered the hypothesis that EMS might have been caused by the techniqueof genetic manipulation: James Maryanski.In September 1991, six months before the FDA published its regulationon GMOs, according to a declassified document of which I have kept acopy, Maryanski met GAO representatives “at their request.” They wanted“to discuss issues related to food biotechnology for the studies they are conductingon new technologies,” he wrote. “They asked about L-Tryptophanand the potential that genetic engineering was involved. I said that we . . .do not yet know the cause of EMS, nor can we rule out the engineering ofthe organism.” 35When I met the former FDA official in July 2006, he did not know that Iwas aware of this document. “The FDA had considered the use of geneticmanipulation, but it had no information indicating that the technique itselfcould create products that would be different in terms of quality or safety,”he said with assurance.“Do you remember what happened with L-tryptophan in 1989?”“Yes,” he mumbled.“It was a genetically manipulated amino acid. In theory, we know aminoacids very well.”