D
DZ
Guest
Ignoramus30282 <[email protected]> wrote:
> http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article337253.ece
[...]
> She found that 36 per cent of the young of the rats fed the modified
> soya were severely underweight, compared to 6 per cent of the
> offspring of the other groups. More alarmingly, a staggering 55.6 per
> cent of those born to mothers on the GM diet perished within three
> weeks of birth, compared to 9 per cent of the offspring of those fed
> normal soya, and 6.8 per cent of the young of those given no soya at
> all.
I found the table with the data from the experiment. The table is in
Russian (http://www.pcr-rus.com/article.html). Although the sample
sizes were moderate 44, 45, 33, the second column says that these
three groups were the offspring of only 4 (no soy), 4 (GM soy), and 3
(non-GM soy) rats (i.e. 11 rats split into 3 groups gave birth in
total).
Thus, these results are likely to be accounted for by the variation in
maternal and genetic effects resulted from the very small pool of
mothers. In population genetics, this is referred to as the effect of
genetic drift. The smaller is the population of breeders, the larger
are the deviations in various trait values in the offspring, due to
the random sampling of breeders.
I wouldn't get too excited about these results yet.
> http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article337253.ece
[...]
> She found that 36 per cent of the young of the rats fed the modified
> soya were severely underweight, compared to 6 per cent of the
> offspring of the other groups. More alarmingly, a staggering 55.6 per
> cent of those born to mothers on the GM diet perished within three
> weeks of birth, compared to 9 per cent of the offspring of those fed
> normal soya, and 6.8 per cent of the young of those given no soya at
> all.
I found the table with the data from the experiment. The table is in
Russian (http://www.pcr-rus.com/article.html). Although the sample
sizes were moderate 44, 45, 33, the second column says that these
three groups were the offspring of only 4 (no soy), 4 (GM soy), and 3
(non-GM soy) rats (i.e. 11 rats split into 3 groups gave birth in
total).
Thus, these results are likely to be accounted for by the variation in
maternal and genetic effects resulted from the very small pool of
mothers. In population genetics, this is referred to as the effect of
genetic drift. The smaller is the population of breeders, the larger
are the deviations in various trait values in the offspring, due to
the random sampling of breeders.
I wouldn't get too excited about these results yet.