Depopulation Corn: The forgotten element in the GMO debate

© Reuters/Thierry Roge

Evil corn.

It's been called contraceptive corn and spermicidal corn. A San Diego company called Epicyte developed it.

Here's a brief backgrounder from The Guardian, Sept. 9, 2001; "GM corn set to stop man spreading his seed," by Robin McKie:

"Scientists have created the ultimate GM crop: contraceptive corn. Waiving fields of maize may one day save the world from overpopulation.

"The pregnancy prevention plants are the handiwork of the San Diego biotechnology company Epicyte, where researchers have discovered a rare class of human antibodies that attack sperm.

"By isolating the genes that regulate the manufacture of these antibodies, and by putting them in corn plants, the company has created tiny horticultural factories that make contraceptives.

"'We have a hothouse filled with corn plants that make anti-sperm antibodies,' said Epicyte president Mitch Hein.

"...The company, which says it will not grow the maize near other crops, says it plans to launch clinical trials of the corn in a few months."

I love that last line. Gene drift from plant to plant, field to field, food product to food product? Apparently, Epicyte never heard of it. Every food scientist in the world knows about it, but not Epicyte.

So what happened to the company?

In 2004, it was bought out by Biolex, a North Carolina biotech firm. Then, in 2012, Biolex filed for bankruptcy. Before it did, it sold some of its technology to Synthon, a Dutch drug company that makes Paxil, known for causing birth defects.

The depopulation corn technology? It could be floating around in a number of places by now.

In April of this year, Russia announced it would ban imports of GMO food products. By the end of July, China had stopped importing corn from the US.

Of course, no mention was made of Depopulation Corn. Russia and China are fully aware of, what shall we call them, the conventional dangers of GMO food.

However, China and Russia might check on the "other thing" while they're at it - the spermicidal genes - to see whether they've been importing that type of corn.

You might think China would welcome Depop Corn. I beg to differ. If they're going to do Depop, they want to engineer it themselves. And then there is the fact that corn is omnipresent in hundreds of thousands, even millions of processed food products. Chinese leaders themselves would thus become subject to Depop without even knowing it.

And what about the USA? Why haven't I mentioned it?

Because in America, the high-minded campaign is all about labeling GMOs, not banning them. It's embarrassing.

And with gene drift, in which all sorts of biotech genes float on the wind across the land, and settle into plants of every kind, to say nothing of factories, where processed food is manufactured, what are the chances that labels are going to save the day?

Several counties in the US have enacted bans on growing GMO crops, and as I've been detailing, the voters of Maui recently struck a major blow and decided to stop Monsanto and Dow from launching new GMO experiments.

But Monsanto and Dow immediately sued, and the county government of Maui is on their side - and against their own voters.

Press coverage of this ongoing battle is weak, soft and small.

The majority of anti-GMO activists in the US have been brought into the labeling movement, because they think and hope that Shopping Moms will stage a revolution and bring Monsanto and Dow to their knees.

The Moms, that is, who aren't too busy with their husbands trying to get pregnant through exotic high-tech strategies, because, for some odd reason, the normal time-tested methods aren't working.