Also Known As - Eliza Dunn, S. Eliza Dunn, S. E. Dunn, Eliza Dunn Halcomb, Eliza Halcomb, S. Eliza Halcomb, Sarah Eliza Halcomb

Sarah Eliza Halcomb, MD, assistant professor of emergency medicine, Washington University School of Medicine ¹⁾

Board Certified Emergency Medicine, American Board of Emergency Medicine; Medical Toxicology, American Board of Toxicology Assistant Professor Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO Section Chief Medical Toxicology Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO

Dr. Halcomb is frequently invited to lecture and present Grand Rounds in emergency medicine and toxicology. She has authored several scientific articles and a chapter in Goldfranks Toxicologic Emergencies. Dr. Halcomb is also a consultant to the Missouri Regional Poison Control Center.²⁾

Dr. Liza Dunn is an emergency medicine physician and medical toxicologist with a long-standing interest in global health. After completing her toxicology fellowship at NYU in 2006, Dr. Dunn returned to Washington University in St. Louis and started an Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education ACGME accredited fellowship in Medical Toxicology.

Over the following ten years, Dr. Dunn became increasingly involved with global health and humanitarian relief projects. She organized a relief mission to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, started the scholar track in Global Health for the Washington University Division of Emergency Medicine, and is one of the Global Health Scholars for the Department of Internal Medicine.

Over the years, Dr. Dunn began to realize that in order to have a sustainable impact on global health, there needed to be an effort to focus on creative ways of addressing malnutrition and insect-borne illness, two of the most commonly encountered public health problems in developing countries.

With that in mind, Dr. Dunn started working as the Medical Affairs Lead for Bayer, a global seed and chemical company with innovative technology that has great potential to remediate malnutrition. Dr. Dunn has lectured nationally and internationally on a diverse range of topics in medical toxicology and global health. ³⁾

The Toxicology service actively collaborates with the Missouri Poison Center. The fellows spend multiple afternoons a week there and work with the poison center medical director and specialists in poison information (SPIs). They participate in education and reviewing protocols among other activities.

We developed a telehealth service for toxicology in 2012, one of the first in the country. We are currently providing telehealth services in our outpatient clinic as well as Missouri Baptist (one of our affiliate hospitals) with plans to expand to other BJC hospitals in the near future.

The Division also serves as the HAZMAT physicians for the Saint Louis Urban Search and Rescue Team, as well as assists with medical direction at the Cardinals and Blues games. We work closely with the toxicologists at Bayer and the herpetologists at the St. Louis Zoo. We also serve as toxicology specialists for industry. One of our former toxicology faculty members, Dr. Eliza Dunn, works as a toxicologist at Bayer.

Physicians board-certified in Medical Toxicology and/or Addiction medicine evaluate patients weekly in addition to managing patients with toxicologic exposures (e.g. lead). Patients exposed to a chemical or toxin at home or at work, that were envenomated, or looking for an independent medical exam are evaluated in the clinic. ⁴⁾

Dr. Eliza Dunn: Crop Protection Materials are Good for Humanity February 6, 2020

Dr. Eliza Dunn is the Medical Sciences Outreach Lead For Bayer Crop Sciences. She has served in third-world countries as a medical doctor and knows first hand the effects of malnutrition and insect borne illnesses. She explains how crop protection materials, including glyphosate, can protect human populations from food insecurity and illnesses.⁵⁾

This installment of Dixie Forum will feature two officials from the agricultural company Monsanto, which helps large and small farm operations grow food more sustainably, according to a press release from Dixie State University.

Dr. S. Eliza Dunn (Halcomb), Monsanto’s medical science and outreach lead, will kick off the lecture with “Food for Thought: How GMOS are Made and Regulated.” Following Dunn’s lecture, Dr. Greg Watson, the company’s global crop protection policy lead, will offer “Brief History of Monsanto and dsRNA-based Projects as Innovation.”

As global trends reshape agriculture and create an urgency for continued innovation, Monsanto is developing solutions such as double-stranded RNA-based projects that employ a naturally occurring mechanism to improve crops and manage important agricultural pests.

According to the press release, Monsanto has been collaborating with external scientific experts to help guide these development projects, following the initial 1998 discovery of the dsRNA-based RNA interference mechanism that led to awarding a Nobel Prize to discovering research team in 2006.

Dunn is a practicing emergency medicine physician and medical toxicologist with a long-standing interest in global health. She also is a faculty member at Washington University, where she taught a course that compared the medical system in the U.S. with the medical system in China.

Watson has spent his career working on the development and regulation of crop protection tools, working with the North American Free Trade Agreement, the European Union and global regulatory affairs. Watson also has been active in the founding of two industrywide task forces and served as chair of the Pesticide Registration Improvement Act Implementation team and several committees within Crop Life America.

Additionally, he has been selected by the Environmental Protection Agency to serve on two Federal Advisory Committee Act work groups. Watson has a bachelor’s degree in biology and master’s and doctoral degrees in plant pathology. ⁶⁾

Hi. How does gmo affect alergens in food?

Answered By S. Liza Dunn - Nov 06, 2019

A: Thank you for your question! Many people ask if GMOs cause allergies. In order to address this question during the early years of GM development, the FDA decided to evaluate using transgenic methods to introduce DNA in plants because some crops (soy) are allergenic. Therefore, regulatory requirements were established for evaluating the allergenicity of GM crops (EFSA, 2006; CODEX, 2009; Hoekenga et al., 2013).

Since 1992, over 1300 separate assessments by regulatory agencies around the world have reviewed safety data on various GM crops and concluded that they are as safe ⁷⁾

'GMO Answers' website launched by biotech industry Published: 30 July 2013

The GM industry's latest PR drive includes a new website aimed at combating mounting opposition to GM foods.

You need to register to be able to post comments. Go to www.GMOAnswers.com to do so and challenge each of their misleading entries, so members of the public who check out the site get a better picture of reality.⁸⁾

Pesticide Facts July 2019 - ‘Pest MD:’ Medical Doctor Finds Cures in Agriculture

Three years ago, I left emergency medicine for a career in agriculture. The surprise amongst my colleagues was palpable. Questions swirled: “What is an ER doc doing in ‘Big Ag?’ Don’t you miss medicine? Don’t you want to help people?”

The answer is simple. I became a physician after meeting a starving child in Haiti in 1989. Twenty-one years later, I returned to Haiti for a relief mission after the 2010 earthquake; sadly, nothing much had changed since my first trip. Again, I saw the impact of grinding poverty, food insecurity and insect-borne illnesses. It then dawned on me that addressing those issues would have a much more lasting and meaningful effect on people in developing countries than any brief relief mission I would make as a doctor.

Two Tiers of Health

About 10,000 years ago, an innovative farmer decided to give up the hunter/gatherer lifestyle and stay put on a plot of land. This was the dawn of agriculture, which led to the birth of civilization and remains at its roots. Food security is the first tier of health. Once it is met, people can pursue education, which leads to knowledge and innovations that benefit individuals, their families and society.

The second tier of health comes from avoiding preventable diseases. Over the millennia, plants, animals and humans have evolved to produce their own protective mechanisms in order to survive and reproduce. Since plants cannot run away from predators, they make their own pesticides to defend themselves. It turns out that pesticides are critical for plant, animal and human health.

The word “pesticide” is an umbrella term that refers to any chemical, natural or human-made, that is designed to kill another organism. Regarding human health, this term covers the following classes of chemicals: insecticides kill bugs like ticks, fleas, lice and mosquitoes; fungicides control the growth of naturally occurring toxins in crops; and antibiotics like penicillin are chemicals secreted by molds that kill bacteria.

In agriculture, insecticides target crop-eating insects, herbicides control weeds that compete with crops for resources, fungicides prevent fungal diseases and rodenticides ward off rodents in crop storage bins. We use such products regularly to protect crops and keep our families and pets healthy. Many of them are analogues of natural pesticides that organisms make to protect themselves. For example, permethrin is a synthetic insecticide that is derived from pyrethrum, a natural chemical made by certain species of the flowering plant chrysanthemum.

Some people worry about ingesting trace amounts of pesticides on food crops. The fact is that when we eat a plant-based diet, we are eating many of the natural chemicals that plants produce to protect themselves. According to research,[1] 99.99 percent of pesticides consumed fall into this category and are commonly found in concentrations thousands of times higher than most synthetic pesticides used in agriculture.

Since we know that fruits and vegetables are essential to a healthy diet, we don’t worry about eating these natural pesticides. Nor should we worry about consuming synthetic pesticide residues because if they are present at all, they are in very trace amounts (parts per billion). Plus washing produce in clean, running water significantly reduces any residues.

Moreover, pesticide residues are heavily regulated by government authorities such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Environmental Protection Agency. These agencies set maximum exposure limits for each pesticide, which is about 100 to 1,000 times lower than the allowable daily intake calculated from animal studies. Therefore, we can say with certainty that any low level of pesticide exposure that comes through the diet poses no risk of adverse health effects assuming pesticides are used as labeled. Yet the benefits of consuming healthy, whole foods are numerous.

Synthetic pesticides that protect our crops are highly tested for human and environmental safety before being approved by regulatory authorities. Additionally, many organic farmers use approved pesticides – mostly from natural sources but a few synthetic – which when applied properly, will not cause adverse health effects either.

Sustainable Agriculture, Sustainable People

• In summary: 1) a secure food supply is the foundation of civilization;
• 2) pesticides are critical for human health because they augment food security and protect people from insect-borne illnesses;
• 3) plants have evolved to make their own pesticides to protect themselves;
• 4) residues left by plant-made pesticides are much higher than synthetic pesticides;
• 5) residues of any type do not have adverse health effects on humans and
• 6) the nutritional value of eating healthy crops like fruits, vegetables and nuts far outweighs any hypothetical risk of pesticide residues.
• So why did I leave medicine? The answer is simple: Innovations in agriculture are fundamental to human health. They protect the food supply and lift people out of poverty to help them lead healthy and productive lives. How much better can I do than that?
• S. Eliza Halcomb, M.D., F.A.C.M.T., is medical sciences and outreach lead at Bayer U.S. Crop Science in Chesterfield, Missouri.
• [1] Ames, B et al. Dietary pesticides (99.99% all natural). 1990. PNAS; 87:7777-81.

⁹⁾

Substantial funding from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to a full spectrum of NGO actors and PR Front Groups discussed in detail in the report.

GMO Answers History (p. 41)

In 2013, the Council for Biotechnology Information (CBI) — a trade group funded by Bayer, Corteva (formerly Dow - DuPont), Syngenta, and BASF — hired Ketchum to lead the GMO Answers campaign, a marketing and PR effort to promote GMOs and pesticides using the voices of academics (discussed in Tactic 5).

FTI Consulting, along with Red Flag and Lincoln Strategy Group, are also identified in Monsanto documents and news reports as key players in Bayer and Monsanto’s efforts to defend glyphosate from cancer concerns.

All these PR firms have histories of using covert tactics to defend polluting industries, including working for tobacco and oil companies. In the 1980s, for example, FleishmanHillard helped convert a tiny air ventilation company into the Healthy Buildings Institute, a promotional group that received hundreds of thousands of dollars from tobacco industry lobbyists “to spread the message that secondhand smoke was a symptom, not a cause, of indoor air pollution,” Washington Post reported.256

FleishmanHillard also used espionage tactics against public health and tobacco control advocates, sending industry spies to conferences and secretly tape recording sessions despite explicit instructions from conference organizers not to do so, according to a study by Ruth Malone in the American Journal of Public Health. 257

Ketchum — owned by the same parent company, Omnicom, as FleishmanHillard — also did work for the tobacco industry and has a history of subterfuge

¹⁰⁾

Jul 12, 2021 · Dr. Liza Dunn is a toxicologist, medical doctor and employee of the Bayer corporation. She sits down with Vance Crowe to talk about emergency medicine in the developing world, the value of pesticides in crop production, using testosterone and psychedelics, and why the US medical system is falling behind the French and Irish systems. ¹¹⁾

@DrLizaMD ER MD, Medical multitasker, mythbuster and storyteller, former @StLouisBlues MD, @Bayer4Crops, Medical Tox, Boy Mommy. Tweets are my own. St Louis, MO - Joined Feb 2017

Substack - Steve Kirsch - January 13, 2023 Pro-vaxxer tacitly admits: They cannot find an error in Norman Fenton's paper We win. This is a perfect example of how blue-pill doctors dismiss arguments they don't like: they think they found a flaw and that is their excuse for ignoring the result.

Pro-vaxxer Liza Dunn, MD just posted on Twitter that Fenton’s analysis has appeared on Twitter “a gazillion times” her claim that it doesn’t show the excess deaths were in the vaccinated. It’s mind blowing to me she thinks this disproves Fenton’s conclusions as he never claimed this. He only claimed that the more you vaccinate, the higher the excess mortality.

I’ll dissect her claims below.

Bottom line: They can’t attack Fenton’s analysis. We win decisively ¹²⁾

Pitch Competition: Bold Ideas to Accelerate Prediction, Prevention and Response for Epidemic-Prone Diseases

The 3rd Annual Innovations Pitch Competition at the ASTMH 2020 Annual Meeting will focus on the innovative solutions to improve children’s current and future health and well-being in low-resource settings, for a healthier, more sustainable world.

This year’s competition will highlight tools and methods that will improve vaccine acceptance, accessibility and delivery, diagnosis and treatment of high impact diseases in the pediatric population living in low resource settings. Innovators are from a person or team currently working and residing in llow- and low-middle income countries (LMIC), and/or have a partner based in an LMIC who is actively involved in the development of the innovation.

Many thanks to the Ronald McDonald House Charities (RMHC) and Roche for their funding contributions.

A special thank you to Past President Peter Hotez, MD, PhD, FASTMH, FAAP, recipient of the 2019 RMHC Awards of Excellence, for sharing his grant award with ASTMH.

Food for Thought: “Food Evolution” – Narrated by Neil DeGrasse Tyson, featuring Bill Nye, Mark Lynas & Michael Pollan Sponsored by Bayer Grand Ballroom Tuesday, November 17, 3:45 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. This film explores the importance of scientific innovation in agriculture to ensure that the expected population of 9.5 billion people have access to adequate nutrition.

The film also reviews how these advances can decrease the need for pesticides while at the same time improve disease resistance and the nutrient profile of crops. The film also discusses the current controversies and challenges facing agriculture and farmers all around the world. Of note, the production of this film was independent of industry funding.

Co-Chair: S. Eliza Dunn Medical Affairs Lead, Bayer, St. Louis, Missouri, USA ¹³⁾

Mark Lynas is a former journalist turned promotional advocate for genetically engineered foods and pesticides who makes inaccurate claims about those products from his perch at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation -funded Cornell Alliance for Science.The public relations campaign based at Cornell University trains spokespeople and creates networks of influence, particularly in African countries, to persuade the public and policymakers to accept GMOs and agrichemicals. ¹⁴⁾¹⁵⁾

S. Eliza Dunn's 5 research works with 30 citations and 374 reads

S. Eliza Dunn's research while affiliated with Monsanto Company and other places ¹⁶⁾

“Reversible Parkinsonism” following glyphosate exposure Article Jun 2018 - Daniel A. Goldstein - S. Eliza Dunn - Katherine Karberg -Request full-text

Biochemical and clinical studies of putative allergens to assess what distinguishes them from other non-allergenic proteins in the same family - Aug 2022

Glyphosate Levels in Older Adults Article - Apr 2018 - Katherine Karberg - Daniel Goldstein - S. Eliza Dunn

To the Editor The study on excretion of glyphosate in older adults¹ was analyzed inappropriately. First, Table 1 reported levels above the limit of detection (LOD). To report quantifiable values, a limit of quantification (LOQ) is required. Only values greater than the LOQ are reliably quantifiable. Levels greater than the LOD and less than the LOQ…Request full-text

Comment on: Evaluation of a Food and Drug Administration Mandate to Limit Acetaminophen in Prescription Combination Products - Article Jan 2018 Michael E Mullins - S. Eliza Dunn - Request full-text

The allergenicity of genetically modified foods from genetically engineered crops Article Full-text available Sep 2017

S. Eliza Dunn - John L. Vicini - Kevin Glenn - Matthew J. Greenhawt

and a knowledge of the allergenic status of the organism from which the protein was sourced, in combination with targeted IgE serum screening, has resulted in no documented cases of allergenicity to any newly expressed protein in any commercialized genetically engineered crop.

31 Independent of the digestive stability of the candidate protein, these screening results are used to assess the potential elicitation risk for the protein. Thus, digestive stability is not used in any practical scenario as a differentiator for the acceptability of the elicitation risk for a newly expressed protein in a genetically engineered crop. …

Reference: Slow alignment of GMO allergenicity regulations with science on protein digestibility

The allergenicity of genetically modified foods from genetically engineered crops Citing article - Sep 2017 S. Eliza Dunn - J.L. Vicini - Kevin C. Glenn - David M. FleischerMatthew Greenhawt

Top co-authors (18) Katherine Karberg - Bayer CropScience Kevin Glenn - Aulora Technologies, LLC Daniel Goldstein - Monsanto Company Michael E Mullins - Washington University in St. Louis David M Fleischer - Children's Hospital Colorado Soon Goo Lee - University of North Carolina at Wilmington John Sw - Monsanto Company Andre Silvanovich - Bayer CropScience, St Louis USA

Relation Between GM Organisms and Allergy A Systematic Review

The first part of this review detailed the history of GM product use and the immunology behind the mechanisms used to achieve genetic modification.

This second part of the review investigates 2 fundamental questions often inquired about the use of GM products in our society: 1. Are GM products more allergenic than their conventional counterparts? 2. Is the use of GM products, compared with their conventional counterparts, associated with the development of allergic disease or a predicted risk of development of allergic disease? To answer these questions, we undertook a systematic review of the literature. Methods With the assistance of a research librarian (University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine Health Sciences Library), we conducted a literature search of multiple online databases,

The literature search initially focused on human studies involving GM products. (None Exist) However, after a precursory pilot search and in consultation with the research librarian, 2 of the authors agreed to expand the focus to include animal model studies..

The final group of articles for full-text extraction were reviewed for evidence synthesis, identifying 104 studies, of which an additional 21 were excluded, leading to 83 studies included in the final analysis (Figs 1 and 2). Monsanto employees, who authored the first part of this review, were not involved with the systematic review, had no access to the literature search, analysis, or findings, and never reviewed this portion of the report.

In reference to the first query (“Are GM products more allergenic than their conventional counterparts?”), we identified 83 studies addressing this question:

1. 23 studies of GM corn,32,33,39e59
2. 6 studies of GM wheat,60e65
3. 12 studies of GM rice,66e77
4. 14 studies of GM soy,26,57,78e88
5. 5 studies of GM peanut,89e93
6. 1 study of GM milk,94
7. 16 studies of other GM products (apple, kale, pea, broccoli, tomato, salmon, mustard, potato),95e110 and
8. 6 studies involving specific molecules and proteins used in genetic modification.111e116

No randomized controlled trials (RCTs) conducted in humans or in animals were identified in the literature search.

Thirty-four human studies were identified, 32 of which involved human serum used for IgE binding and inhibition studies.

We identified only 2 studies (1 observational and 1 quasi-experimental) that involved actual ingestion of a GM product. 26,31e33,48,56e58,60e63,69,70,73,78e80,83,84,90,91,93,96,98,103e105,107e110,112

Forty-nine animal model studies were identified, most of which were controlled. 39e47,49e51,53e55,64e68,71,72,74e77,82,84e88,92,94,95,97,99e102,106, 111,113,114,117,118

These animal studies were conducted in rat or mouse models and involved ingestion of a GM product and assessment of various safety and toxicity parameters, including measurement of serologic allergic or immunologic markers.

Studies demonstrating evidence of harm - No animal or human study was identified that demonstrated evidence that a GM food item was more allergenic than its conventional counterpart.

For the second query, we could not identify any controlled data that addressed the effect of consumption of GM products and the risk of developing food allergy.

There was an abundance of animal model studies supporting the safety of GM food products. Animal models, in particular rat and mouse models, are well-accepted surrogates for the study of allergic disease in humans.

However, because no human randomized, placebo-controlled, or controlled studies were identified, we did not attempt meta-analysis and instead present a systematic review of the findings. There would have been difficulty in pooling animal model data given the heterogeneous study design, model choice, and methodology.

Moreover, because the questions of greatest concern were related to the risk of food allergy in humans from GM products, we did not attempt meta-analysis of these data because of questionable relevance and generalizability of such pooled animal data to humans. We consider these limitations of our study.

Conclusion Based on the data to date identified in this systematic review, we conclude that, in reference to the first query, GM products do not appear more allergenic than their conventional counterparts as determined by IgE binding studies in well-characterized sera from humans with allergy and animal models, case series of direct provocation and ingestion, and simulated digestion studies.

These are methods approved by the World Health Organization for determining allergenicity of GM products.13 ¹⁷⁾

• References
• [1] Venter C, Pereira B, Grundy J, et al. Incidence of parentally reported and clinically diagnosed food hypersensitivity in the first year of life. J Allergy Clin Immunol. 2006 ;117:1118e1124.
• [2] Gupta RS, Springston EE, Warrier MR, et al. The prevalence, severity, and distribution of childhood food allergy in the United States. Pediatrics. 2011 ; 128:e9ee17.
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• [4] Faris JD. Wheat domestication: key to agricultural revolutions past and future. In: Tuberosa R, Graner A, Frison E, eds. Genomics of Plant Genetic Resources. Volume 1. Managing, Sequencing and Mining Genetic Resources. New York: Springer; 2014 :439e464.
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• biosociety/pdf/a_decade_of_eu-funded_gmo_research.pdf. Published 2010.
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• fao.org/3/a-a1554e.pdf. Published 2009.
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