A major flaw in all the studies Selleck SCH772984 reviewed was the lack of any definition of toxicity or signs of pathology. Of all the studies generally assessing rat health on a GM diet, not one explained how the study would adequately show that the crop is safe for human and/or animal consumption. Furthermore, all the studies reviewed failed to justify or give reason for the choice of methods used. Yet, most studies concluded that the investigation did not reveal any meaningful differences between animals fed the GM or non-GM feed. One study even stated that “since no meaningful differences were observed, no further microscopic examinations were deemed necessary” (Hammond et al., 2004). However,

the absence of meaningful differences in a preliminary investigation does not mean that further analysis would not find meaningful differences. In addition, the authors did not small molecule library screening support this statement with proof since they provided few details as to what their microscopic examinations entailed or found. Therefore, they give very little evidence that their study adequately

assessed the safety of consuming the GM crop. Another common remark in these publications was that all changes observed were not diagnostically significant, were within the normal range, or are common to this strain and age of rat. The six studies that made this remark gave little evidence to support this conclusion (Hammond et al., 2004, Hammond et al., 2006a, Hammond et al., 2006b, Healy et al., 2008,

Qi et al., 2012 and Teshima et al., 2000). Most gave no evidence at all. For example, Qi et al. (2012) referenced a study by Tang et al. (2012) to support their notion that “microscopic observations occurred spontaneously in Sprague–Dawley rats of this age.” However, the referenced study made no mention of microscopic observations occurring spontaneously and the study did not even use Sprague–Dawley rats. A very common statement found in the reviewed studies was that since the lesions or changes were observed in both groups, they were not deemed to be diet-related (Healy et al., 2008, Sakamoto et al., 2007, Sakamoto et al., 2008 and Wang et al., 2002). For example, in two studies (Hammond et al., 2006b and Sakamoto et al., 2007), there was Meloxicam a brief mention of gastric gland dilatations being observed in both the GM and non-GM fed groups. Gland dilatations can occur in aged rats (Frantz et al., 1991), but they can also be a pathological occurrence for example in alendronate-induced injury (Şener et al., 2004), ulcer healing (Tarnawski et al., 1991) or underlying neoplastic lesions (Frantz et al., 1991). In these pathologies, the dilatations are large, they may sometimes extend into the submucosa and they may become dysplastic (Kikuchi et al., 2010). In the two publications (Hammond et al., 2006b and Sakamoto et al.