I took a look at ref 12 in the list- it stood out to me because of the journal it was published in. Turns out it is a letter/interview by a scientist who conducted a well publicized but unpublished (at the time) study about the affects of GMOs on fertility and mortality. What is interesting is that for each of her points, there is a rebuttal by other scientists. One by one they question her results. Some of the issues that they raise: there is a much higher than normal death rate among newborn rat pups in the control group, and lower weights in controls than is normally found in these rats. This was a rad-flag to them that there was something wrong with the way these rats were taken care of during the experiment, which raises questions on any conclusion made from the study – when the background death of controls is abnormally high, it is hard to conclude that the even higher death rate in the experimental group is due to whatever they claim. Another issue, since rats were grouped together several in a cage and the food given out freely, sometimes along with regular food, they have no way of knowing how much of the GMO each rat actually consumed. Also, The GMO food was not matched to the control in terms of strains, type of food, nutritional content etc, so there are other factors that can affect the results besides whether it was GMO or not. Basically, hard to know if the results are meaningful since proper protocols for taking care of the animals, for feeding them, for determining the origin of the food and the actual GMO content were not followed.
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