Social media users in recent days have falsely claimed genetically modified corn isn’t safe because it’s been found to cause cancerous tumors and other health complications in rats.
Most posts point to a decade-old study by Gilles-Eric Séralini, a molecular biologist at the University of Caen in Normandy, France, that generated fierce debate within the scientific community when it was first released in 2012, only to be retracted and republished elsewhere.
“Remember, GM corn proven unsafe for human consumption in chronic toxicity study from 2012,” wrote one Instagram user.
The lengthy post, which has been liked a few hundred times, goes on to say that the test subjects, some of which were also given pesticides in their drinking water, died from “horrendous tumors in their cleansing organs” within months.
But the Séralini study was retracted by the academic journal Food and Chemical Toxicology the following year amid criticism from other scientists.
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Subsequent studies by other scientists have also been unable to replicate Séralini’s data or conclusions, according to Richard Goodman, a food allergy researcher at the University of Nebraska who was an editor at Food and Chemical Toxicology when Séralini’s article was retracted by the journal.
In fact, a 2019 study published in the Archives of Toxicology using a different strain of rat found “no adverse effects” from feeding the animals genetically modified corn, Goodman noted.
