The world according to Monsanto : pollution, corruption, and

monsanto weaves its web, 1995–1999 183adding insecticidal proteins to rat food. The potatoes implicated thereforehad nothing transgenic about them.” 5 “It was terrible,” Pusztai told me, stillupset. “And I didn’t even have the right to defend myself.”James attacked on a second front: he asked a committee of scientists toconduct an audit of the study. One wonders why. If the experiment was distortedby a mistake concerning the lectin used, then there was no reason toconsider its results any further. And yet, on October 28, 1998, the RowettInstitute published the results of the audit: “The Audit Committee is of theopinion that the existing data do not support any suggestion that the consumptionby rats of transgenic potatoes expressing GNA has an effect ongrowth, organ development, or the immune function. Thus the previous suggestion. . . was unfounded.” 6But the affair had caused such a stir that the House of Commons asked“the dissident” to testify, thereby forcing James to grant him access to thedata from his study. Pusztai then decided to send the data to twenty scientistsaround the world with whom he had worked in the course of his longcareer and who agreed to prepare a report comparing the data to the auditconducted for the institute. Published on the front page of The Guardian onFebruary 12, 1999, the conclusions of the report were hard on the committeeset up by James. After noting that the audit had deliberately ignoredsome results, the authors of the report specified that they “showed veryclearly that the transgenic GNA potato had significant effects on immunefunction and this alone is sufficient to vindicate entirely Dr. Pusztai’s statements.”7 They took the occasion to criticize “the harshness of his treatmentby the Rowett [Institute] and even more by the impenetrable secrecy surroundingthese events,” and they called for a moratorium on the cultivationof transgenic crops.The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee began itshearings a few days later. When the committee members pointed out thecontradictions, James took refuge behind a new argument, one that had alreadybeen used by Monsanto spokesman Colin Merritt in an interview inThe Scotsman: “You cannot go around releasing information of this kind unlessit has been properly reviewed.” 8 In other words, what the head of theRowett Institute now criticized Pusztai for was having spoken before thestudy was published according to normal procedures.The argument clearly did not persuade Dr. Alan Williams, a member ofthe committee. Speaking of the role of the advisory committee charged with