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Monsanto and PCBs
blamanj writes: "While
this story isn't about the gadgetry that typically appeals to /.ers, it's worth a look. The Washington Post has acquired documents showing how a
Monsanto Corp. PCB plant polluted a small town in Alabama with full knowledge of what it was doing. Their own tests showed that when fish were placed into a local stream, "Their skin would literally slough off." They showed no concern for the residents, only about potential expensive regulations or bad publicity. Why is this relevant? Well, Monsanto is currently one of biggest proponents of GM (genetically modified) foods." Very thorough investigative article about how a corporation reacts when a profitable business line is threatened, or a cautionary tale about wonder technologies, take your pick.
Where is she when Alabama needs her?
Be not surprised by this sort of actions. These people are so bottom line centered, they hired a private investigator in Canada to determine if a farmer was using their GM seed for a crop without their permission (or without paying a fee...something to that effect).
I love the smell of greed in the morning. It reminds me what a miserable bunch of animals humanity really is...
-- The Hollow Man
Non illegitimati carborundum
...fuckwits. They should be made to move to the town they polluted. With their families.
Reliable, Great Value Hosting: $7.95/mo 2.4G/120G
I never thought companies like Monsanto existed outside of the paranoid writings of science fiction writers or in surreal alternate reality fantasy stories until I found out about their infamous Monsanto Terminator Seeds?
Selling third world farmers infertile seeds so they have to keep buying your seeds with the full knowledge that these sterile seeds could spread and render entire regions infertile is so nefarious, mere words cannot convey the feelings of disgust I feel.
Monsanto is the Microsoft of the ag world. They are constantly buying up smaller seed and chemical corporations and/or their patents. They have no regard for safety, only their bottom line financial figures. Some of their more scary research and development involves genetically engineered plants (and seed) that reacts to only certain (Monsanto-brand) chemicals and fertilizers.
This is certainly a company to be watching. At least Microsoft only fiddles around with computers and home entertainment gizmos. Monsanto plays god with our food supply at all levels. It's scary and it gets more scary each year.
i see a link back to the previous article, "attack of the clones."
......it seems the pollution is worse than we know.
slashdot: bringing the latest news on mutant invasions across Alabama! ^_^
There was a plus side, I thought, for the terminator technology. If its sterility genes are dominant, it can't pass on GM traits to other species of plant. *THAT* is one thing taht a great many activists are worried about.
Food for thought there...
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
Unfortunately, stuff like this happens all too often. Here in Ohio our EPA is so bad that they actually fired someone for reporting that a school was built on a Military waste dump. I work for a group that deals with these political and corporate problems everyday, and it's really eye-opening to see the disregard some people have for public health and the enviroment.
It's a wonder the government still has the environment on the back burner. Sure, we have the EPA and other agencies, but the fact of the matter is we're not doing as much as we can to reduce emissions and really go after those who are illegally dumping and poisoning the ecosystem.
:D
And no, I'm not some wacko tree-hugger, I'm just really angrified.
"All art is quite useless." -- Oscar Wilde
Why is this relevant? Well, Monsanto is currently one of biggest proponents of GM (genetically modified) foods.
It should be obvious, but it probably needs to be said:
To claim that GM foods are bad because a corporation that have done evil things is a proponent of it, is no more valid an argument than claiming that since Hitler claimed that 2+2=4, the real value must be something else.
If there are any real factual arguments against GM foods, by all means present them. But if this is the best argument, it's a big endorsement of GM foods.
Philip Morris is currently one of the biggest proponents of Macaroni and Cheese; it even markets this product to children! (Kraft is a subsidiary of Philip Morris, a company widely considered to have manipulated nicotine content in cigarettes and marketed addictive cigarettes to children).
Study the safety of genetic modifications, sure, just don't assume that because a corporation has been evil, everything it touches magically turns cold and dark. In other words, just because they concealed what they knew about PCB's, there's no reason to trust Monsato more or less than any other genetically modified crop producer.
More interesting and relevant from the article is the premise that they were aware as early as the late 1930's that they were doing lasting damage--and worked very hard to keep that from surfacing--since they had a complete monopoly on PCB's period. And production continued until two years before PCB's were banned for good in 1979.
Good corporate citizenship it wasn't. Worse, at the level intimated in the article (if true,) that particular factory and its overseers were committing mass murder. One has to wonder about our corporate law structure on that note.
Are fines and clean-up measures a reasonable response?
From the story:
The EPA and the World Health Organization classify PCBs as "probable carcinogens," and while no one has determined whether the people in Anniston are sicker than average, [...]
Yet, earlier, they say that millions of pounds of PCBs were dumped in or near Anniston.
If PCBs are any more "carcinogenic" than water, everyone near there or downstream should have cancer.
Something smells, and it isn't just the PCBs.
Randall.Property law should use #'EQ, not #'EQUAL.
Monsanto also holds patents on the bovine growth hormone (BGH) used to increase milk production in cattle. If you poke around on the web, at Disinfo for instance, there is a considerable literature about the various ways in which standard procedure was violated by both Monsanto and the FDA itself during the testing and approval of the use of BGH on dairy cattle. The story is enough to cause you to switch to "organic" milk and milk products.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
OK don't get me wrong here, I think it is totally repugnant that they pump this shit into waterways wherever they can get away with it. In a local sense this is a tragedy of major proportions.
BUT... We have a major multi-national manufacturing corporation polluting the environment and being worried only about public image. This is hardly newsworthy. In a global sense, so what?
In and of itself, that has nothing to do with their genetic engineering division, does it? Sure, it may say something about the overall corporate morality (yeah, I know. oxymoron and all that) of Monsanto, but is it really news?
Unless of course, Monsanto are genetically engineering a whole range of crops that are either resistant to or actively break down PCB's. Their polluting activities take on a whole new, somewhat darker perspective under those circumstances, don't they now?
Ahh - My eye!
The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
I'm sorry, but what's the relevance of this to Monsanto's GM crops?
Sure, it's important for its own sake. The people at Monsanto who did these tests and realized that they were dumping dangerous levels of PCBs and didn't do anything about it should be held responsible. They should be criminally prosecuted if possible.
But the people who are working with GM foods today are, for the most part, a different set of people. There's no point in blaming them for what other people within the organization called 'Monsanto' did.
There is no 'Monsanto'. It's just a large group of individuals getting together and coordinating some of their actions. Giving the organization a name is convenient for them, and occasionally convenient for their critics, but it doesn't shift moral responsibility from the people who poisoned Anniston to anyone else.
Write your representatives and demand the institution of a Corporate Death Penalty.
Corporations have made huge strides in gaining "personhood" rights, with none of the responsibilities.
They have evolved to become wholly irresponsible citizens of the nations. This must stop. Either send the corporate structure back two hundred years, withdrawing all the privileges they've gained in that time; or make them take on the responsibilities that all other citizens must accept.
Write your representative. Make a difference.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Slashdot had a link to a story on the Percy Schmeiser case a long time ago. It may also be worth checking out this site on his continuing conflict with Monsanto; whois records indicate it's run by a relative of Percy, and it seems rather thorough.
Monsanto is nasty corporation that fights dirty and wants to control everything it touches. It's Microsoft crossed with tobacco companies. Monsanto was one of the companies that produced the Agent Orange defoliant for the US military during 'Nam, and currently produces Roundup and Roundup Ultra. The latter is being indiscriminately dumped on various locations around Colombia as part of the US War on (Some) Drugs. This doesn't even get into Monsanto's legal and technical games with genetics.
Monsanto is also a candidate for being "first up against the wall" when "the revolution" comes. Whatever that turns out to be, it can only mean good things for life on Earth to evolve and exist outside of manipulation for profit.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
I was doing a little light reading a week back and discovered that an absolutely RAGING but hopelessly ignored debate regarding the toxicity of Nutrisweet and the apparently spectactular corruption throughout the food manufacturing/safety industry.
Get this: Aspertame is apparently highly unstable, especially in fluid form, (the reason they put best before dates on Diet Pepsi).
Did you know that when Aspertame breaks down, about 10% of the by-product is Methyl Alcohol!, --which in turn breaks down into Formadyhide, which in turn causes a mess of neurological damage including the dissolving of the optic nerve.
--One of the ways the Monsanto P.R. people deal with this is to quickly point out that there's more Methyl Alcohol in a glass of Tomato juice. --But further research explains that Tomato juice also naturally contains more than enough Ethyl alcohol to neutralize the effects of the wood alcohol, which Nutrisweet does not.
Anyway, there's a TON of information on this and it makes for fascinating reading. Do yourself a favor and spend twenty minutes with Google over this.
-Fantastic Lad
While it could be said that Win XP is useless because it was brought to us be the makers of edlin, it doesnt validate the argument, regardless of your opinions on either.
GM foods can be a good thing (see golden rice), and pollution is a bad thing (see earth), please be carefull not to base any futher flames on the fact that one company is guilty of both.
yeah. and we all know how well the Chinese public respects the concept of intellectual property. look at software piracy there!
Do you really think any one would pay for the "real" seed if they could get second generation seed (unregulated/uncontrolled) from Joe "3rd world farmer" Schmoe?
A company spends their time and name and other fortunes in a gamble to reinvent themselves (remember BST - the milk-production hormone -- that was Monsanto as well) in an effort to benefit humanity, and they shouldn't be allowed to protect their investments? Do you really think that they should develop a technology only to give it away? The bulk of Monsanto's current research focuses on making crops disease and pest resistant. Solutia is the spin-off of what was previously Monsanto's chemical making business.
The article cited in this story has its focus at a different time in this nation's history (late 60's).
It is unbelievable how much naivete exists in this forum. Companies exist generally to make profits. Lately, only a few of them have been able to do that, especially in the tech industry. If there's nothing stopping you, you are going to try to maximize profit. With all the bitchers here about Microsoft having an unfair monopoly, you'd think the concept of profit maximization would be understood.
erm, mod parent up.
Buckets,
pompomtom
"There's an exception to every rule. Except for some rules"
If Monsanto would be allowed more leeway on what they can patent, they wouldn't have to resort to this kind of research! Stop being so anti-intellectual property and start caring about lives, please!
For those who don't know, Neil Stephenson's 2nd novel is Zodiak, about a drug-abusing, hell-raising, hippie chemist who makes life miserable for polluters in Boston harbor. He also finds monstrous amounts of PCBs in the water, and the story goes on from there.:)
/. much more than PCBs. :)
Also, Neil's been mentioned here on
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
Not only does Monsanto have no respect for the environment, they are also dishonest:
And it's not like activists haven't been fighting Monsanto. Early as 1967, Dr. Denzel Fergusen reported Monsanto's mercury discharges where killing nearby fish. The same article links to a 404 at Annistonstar (a newspaper for one of the highly affected areas), but a quick search reveals several relevent articles:
At least Monsanto is doing something about their situation. Paul and Joyce Guldin, residents whose backyard includes Choccolocco Creek, received a $999.33 settlement check from Monsanto. Hopefully, many more checks are to come.
What do you think of MusicCity now?
MON is looks like a good day trading stocks this year. Specifically, It seems highly cyclical with a very short cycle. It's still on the decreasing part of the cycle, so you might still manage to short it (or sell it god forbid you own it). If I cared to day trade this I would go look at how GE preformed during it's PCB issues (course GE poluted something lots of people care about).
Anyway, I feal that some limited ammount of polution problems like this are acceptable as "growing pains," *but* the additude of corperate America towards these sorts of problems is truely dispicable. "we did a studdy and surpressed the results" or "we choose not to do a studdy because we knew what the resutls would be" are totally unacceptable behaviors. The natural deduction is that corperations are simply not being held sufficently accountable, but I think this could be incorect. People, not faceless abstractions, are making these decissions. The problem is that the faceless abstraction, and not the people, are being held accountable. Here are two proposals:
1) Make is easyer to throw corperate executives in jail for "statistical manslaughter," i.e. shortening a number of people's lives.
2) Remove the limited liability for shareholders, i.e. corperations would issue a one share "liability dividend" for each share of voting stock; these liability shares could be traded on the open market, but they would caust money to get rid of; those holding the liability shares for the relevent years get tagged for all clean up expences. Alternativly, you could just remember who voted that years and tag those people for the cost of the clean up (people who voted would buy inshurance). Anyway, the point is that share holders would get used to seeing the financial fall out of ignoring their companies enviromental policy.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
This is perhaps what struck me the most of all in the article as it speaks to all the naiveté that creates problems like the Monsanto Dump or Love Canal. THe point he tries to make is akin to saying, "Hitler or Stalin did some pretty bad things, but that was fifty years ago and times were different!"
forma3
Corporations arent immoral or bad, theyre just amoral, since they have no soul as such. Besides monsanto has a background of doing nasty things, and its must be more common than is actually revealed. If you dont keep a tight hold on corporates, they'll do whatever they please(the stockholders), which is make more money, at any cost. Anything else is entirely irrelevant.
So..they lied and cheated about PCB so just because they support GM, GM is bad?
hmm..ok..
The KKK is ruthless and cruel, and they believe in J.C. and support the Bible. hmm...bible bad?
Just glad to see this on slashdot. I would've submitted it myself if I thought it had any chance of being posted. Some of my favorite tidbits are....
.pdf or something. To put it simply, I trust the corporate media about as much as I trust Mosanto. And when the quotes trail off as if to say "I love.............hitler", I find the word-chasm annoying. I'm sure it's not misrepresentation in this case, but goddamnit, they have the full version and I don't see why they can't put that out......
1. 'The (Mosanto) committee even drew up graphs charting profits vs. liability over time.'
2."It is our desire to comply with the necessary regulations, but to comply with the minimum,"
3. "Please let me know if there is anything I can do . . . so that we may make sure our Aroclor business is not affected by this evil publicity," (hazard warnings)
4. "It only seems a matter of time before the regulatory agencies will be looking down our throats,"
5. '...the memo did not go so far as to propose a cleanup -- "only action preparatory to actual cleanup."'
To raise a little dissent, I have to say that I really despise the way this story is put out, apparently without any copy of the 'confidential' documents. It seems like a routine thing with most stories of this nature. God forbid they put up a
All throughout reading the article, the movie "Erin Brockovich" kept playing in my head...
Déjà vu...
These kind of corporate tactics do not surprise me though. Money will always be the primary factor for coorporate morality and tactics.
GOD BLESS AMERICA, where NPR is supported by Monsanto while NPR reports about their unethical tactics.
We had to destroy the sig to save the sig.
FYI. Ethanol is broken down into ethanal by alcohol dehyrdogenase (an enzyme), if ethanol is there, competitively inibits the methanol, so you get ethanal or ethanoic acid or something. (Can't find it in my notes, can't be bothered searching). That's how ethanol neutralises the effects by stopping the conversion. But really how much methanal is being formed? Surely it can't be that much?
When reading your post, I noticed a few things. I think it's funny how you continue to read slashdot, post comments, and take an active part in slashdot, yet you seem to love to bitch about it. No one is forcing you to continue to read slashdot, if you are upset with the political agenda of the editors, STOP READING, simple enough? While you may not care about world politics and such, many people do, and slashdot gives an outlet to express those viewpoints. Also, I noticed how you comment on the quality of slashdot discussion, yet you do not seem to want to contribute anything useful. Why not worry less about the editors and be happy that you have a free news service that is interested in technology.
Wow! Do I dare explore the wonders if fruit's inner space? No, I dare not.
Miracles from Molecules are dawning every day.
To create mutants and to snuff the light of day.
A neverending search is on by men who have no life...
Making modern miracles, or else they'd have to face their wives.
Fuck makes me want to get an MBA after college and work for them. The promise of power corrupts all men.
Do yourself a favor and spend twenty minutes with Google over this.
Or you can ignore all the ravings of web lunatics, and read this page which gives some useful information and links about this crapola.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Hey, Michael, exactly what would you know about "profitable business?" By the way, I'm sorry to hear about the drop in banner advertising revenue... it must suck, not having a real business model and all. Why don't you go ban a few more IPIDs to make yourself feel better, you homosexual hypocrite Hitler?
Just because a company did something terribly wrong doesn't mean that the whole concept should have a black eye. GM plants could also save lives. And what about the fact that humans have been modifying plants for *ages* now. We now have the technology to make specific changes... that sounds better and more controlled to me.
Farmers don't have to buy the seeds if they don't want to. Maybe GM foods will become easier to modify and some competing company will come out with seeds that grow good seeds. GM is still a new technology and it will probably get even better.
with the full knowledge that these sterile seeds could spread and render entire regions infertile
Would you care to explain how sterile seeds can "spread"?
I would be very interested to find out whether the majority of benefits of GM products isn't just to rememdy earlier technological blunders (eg. RoundUp).
-
They knew about PCBs since '37 it seems. Just 40 years from now what will we find out they hid about GM foods? Maybe its best to avoid them for that reason. I've supported GM foods. I think that a lot of the mentioned benefits are real. But this makes me see things a little differently.
The free market line is that corporations won't deliberately hurt their consumers because that's how they make their money. This needs rethinking. Maybe it works out economically in some weird way for corporations. The effects are too distant, and so long as no one finds out for 40 years or so the exceptional profits over that time outway any possible criminal charges.
There is also the failure of the EPA to consider in this whole situation. The EPA isn't the oldest institution around, remember it was Nixon who signed off on it. Wouldn't a survey of all water ways have been on the agenda of an organization that is supposed to protect the environment? Why are they just figuring out the PCB levels in this town now?
There are two things to learn from this whole debacle:
I heard some other posters mention a corporate death penalty. Sounds good to me. But just a quick web search didn't turn up much actual investigation into the subject other than people saying "Sounds good to me." Anyone reading this who knows of actual legislation that has been proposed would do well to paste a link.
I agree totally with the above rant and maybe, just maybe it is flamebait. But until /. has a public forum for feedback where else should people object to the editoral comments.
/. is only interested in generating page views so they can justify their ad revenue.
/. or it's editors, see this page for a comment on Mikeys ethics. Then try and get it posted :-)
/. is the fact that a site that is supposed to attract intelligent people in reality swamps any thoughtful comments with group think moderation.
But ranting about Mikey, and for that matter Katz and Timmy, is not going to do any good.
/. will not post stories that criticise
What is most sad about
Remember, a little power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
"You're making our fish fall apart into fleshy bits!"
"Well, we're sorry. By the way, have you checked out our new line of OmniFish? Guaranteed not to dissolve in water!"
This is no different than Microsoft making crappy software, then selling updates to fix it.
Two claims I want to tackle here:
- Monsanto is not a person, just a group of people (some good, some bad). Its a long argument, but I think that the fact that corporations over the world are counted as legal persons recognises an important fact: they exhibit a collective purpose. Management within a company plays the role of trying to get everyone to line up behind a common mission. Management sets a corporate culture, a climate where certain behaviours are acceptable, other unacceptable. If you work for a company, you can't fail but notice this, and if you see that your company's culture is unethical, its YOUR responsibility to do something - leave, object, whatever.
- Secondly, GM crops feed the starving of the third world. Prove it! At the moment the vast majority of GM planting is not in the third world. And the traits which would make a crop interesting to third world farmers - e.g. drought resistance - do not exist in GM strains. The trend in GM is to engineer things which are useful in a very first world context - e.g. the ability to withstand a higher dose of herbicide (Roundup). GM crops fit well within the existing first world agribusiness paradigm, which involves industrialisation and high inputs, large farms and monoculture. In the third world, where most farmers lack the cash to engage in the first world style of agriculture, GM crops will have a much harder time taking off. Specifically, existing small and subsistence farmers will have to be dispossessed to make way for the kind of farming where GM is workable. They will have to be replaced by larger, cash cropping, export oriented farmers, and the main problem that the poor of the third world face - being seperated from the means of their own survival - will be further, not closer, to being solved.
PeterThus GM fits in well with the global agribusiness scenario - the consolidation of worldwide agricultural production within networks oriented around the large agribusiness multinationals - but has bugger all to do with solving third world hunger.
Vandana Shiva has been protesting the interference of Monsanto with local communities for years. Biodevastation, Water Rights.
Also watch out for Bechtel, using the same tactics in South America Water War Victory.
These corporations are changing the face of the planet for a quick one-time profit. They lack any ties to the local communities they despoil. Take the money and run... Yet the after affects will be long lasting and world wide. And people wonder why we have a cultural image of mad scientists. Once again, proprietary science has allowed itself to create a monster it thought it could control. We'll see...
"I have a cunning plan..."
Would you care to explain how sterile seeds can "spread"?
Under certain conditions the pollen from a "terminator" plant could be used to cross-pollinate other plants as shown in this BBC article
Regardless of the truth or non-truth of the comment, it's more important to realize that this is the same company that produces NutraSweet. I don't care what it does or doesn't do to you. I'm not buying it anymore.
If only subjects could be moded up without the associated comments...
Before this discussion gets biased, we must present equal time for the Libertarian side of the argument:
If the people of Anniston simply stopped buying products from Monsanto, then they could use their "market forces" to stop this kind of activity.
If all we do is ask for "government regulation" then companies will just start producing thier deadly chemicals outside our borders. Then America would lose twice!
So remember, kids: Trust the market, it is perfect.
And don't eat the fish.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Umm, since monsanto basically was the main producer of agent orange and thousands of other "wonderful" chemicals, this comes as no surprise. I'm not sure how they're still allowed to stay in business seeing as how they have a blatent disregard not just for humans, but everything.
I couldn't agree more. Ordinarily I roll my eyes when I see articles about "corporate evil" on Slashdot, but Monsanto is an exception. Unequivocably, without doubt, Monsanto's corporate charter should be revoked, the CEOs should be stripped of all but their posessions but $500 and a suit, their assets should be auctioned and checks cut to any shareholders who are not involved with day-to-day decision making.
They are just pure evil. I already knew about the terminator seeds, and as shocking as the PCB article was when I read it this morning, it didn't surprise me.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Now you may just be trolling here, but your story pegged my bullshit meter. This story is an important story, and probably should have been posted at an hour where more US readers would have seen it.
This may technically be true, but it could also be said that many of the large companies which create genetically modified foods are also causing much starvation by not allowing developing countries to become prosperous. By creating self-destructing vegetables, farmers are lured into being forced to pay for seed year after year after year. Instead of being able to save a small amount of seed for the next year's crop and becoming self sufficient, Monsanto is forcing farmers in these poor countries to come back to them year after year and beg for more seed.
Nope, it belongs to the people who own the site. They have entrusted Michael with editorial powers and the ability to post stories. If you do not like this fact, then I suggest you should probably take it up with the owners, instead of the readership at large.
But that's not the exclusive focus on this site, now is it? If you remember, this site is "News for Nerds, Stuff That Matters," not "All Tech News, All the Time." I don't know about you, but stories about the continued health of the planet that I live on is definitely newsworthy. If you don't like the fact that this story shines a light on a subject certain parties want to keep secret, then tough. Sometimes the most important stories aren't all that pretty.
A strong person is willing to have their values checked. I for one try to make it a point of looking at things from the other side. Do you have that same courage and strength?
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
The burden of proof that GM foods (or any other products, for that matter) are safe in the long term for consumption and the environment rests entirely on the shoulders of their proponents, the people who want to release those organisms into the environment. And biotechnology and ecoology are such new fields that we really can say very little about long term effects.
Personally, I think most GMOs are likely to be non-poisonous and non-invasive. But I think they will be harmful indirectly--by allowing human populations to push further into previously non-arable lands. Ultimately, GMOs don't hold the answer for hunger or human suffering; at some point, we have to limit our growth, and we might as well do it as long as there is still a little bit of earth left.
No, not really. This is a political article, plain and simple. It's about the legal and social aspects of a corporation's actions. Alluding that this article even deals with the ethics of science is a little misleading.
Monsanto had some people who appear to have either made a tragic mistake, or purposefully ignored harm they were causing to others for their own purposes. A classic moral dillema, just on a larger scale than normal.
It's fine by me to see slashdot thinking about more socially relevant topics than Beowulf clusters (obviously, excepting all the YRO stuff) but we shouldn't kid ourselves into calling another "big corporations are evil" article "science."
With a little luck this will hit about 3 years after the baby boomers create a second great depression by retiring.. :)
No, baby boomers retiring should free up jobs, not make them more scarce. Plus, retired baby boomers will probably be busy consuming goods such as motorhomes and other retirement toys, creating new jobs.
Retired baby boomers may cause inflation, since there may be more people (dollars) chasing goods than people producing them (limited goods). But I fail to see how they could create the severe deflation that marks the great depression.
"This segment was brought to you by GM, bringing evil into every part of your lives. Remember, GM: if you hate us you're a terrorist."
--
I like to watch.
Many Southern states used to welcome with open arms polluting industries banished from other parts of the country to pump up the local economy. The alternative was to improve the education of the citizens and this was considered an unacceptable risk to politicians' careers.
While surrounding states have tried to break out of that trap, Alabama, as usual, lags behind. The Alabama Department of Environmental Management is unabashedly pro-industry.
The history of this state includes the Triana DDT poisoning of the 1970s and the infamous Emelle waste dump. Both of these environmental, uh, "issues" just happen to have taken place in impoverished and/or predominately black areas of the state. While the Monsanto PCB dumping appears to cross racial lines for a change, the overall attitude of willful ignorance on the part of local and state officials and the public makes our state a polluter's dream come true. Which is a shame, for there is still unexpected beauty in Alabama.
-- It Came from C. L. Smith's Unclaimed Mysteries.
The General Electric Company - owners of the NBC television broadcast network - has been doning this for YEARS.
/. editors have been living under a rock. Either that or they were born yesterday.
This link shows this sh*t going on for Years. What's the big deal with Monsanto? What makes them any worse? Sometimes I think our erstwhile
I'll probably burn the little karma I built up, but what the heck.
I think writers of these headlines should try to maintain a certain level of objectivity and integrity when posting it. Let's separate the issues.
1st: Monsanto is a big corporation that does bad things.
2nd: Monsanto is a Biotech company.
The author most likely isn't very fond of the idea of GM food, I quote:
However, this has nothing to do with the fact that Monsanto produces GM seeds. If it were some chemical plant, it would be just as relevant .
Maybe I'm overreacting, it's just that a lot of people bash genetic modification as a "bad thing" perse, which is something I don't agree with.
Meneer de Koekepeer
If PCB's are toxic, I need to get out of the computer biz!
-- he's not heavy, he's my sysadmin!
We know full well that Slashdot is operated by a bunch of pseudo-intellectual nerds with ultraliberal tendencies. Of course all the people they hire to post news would also be communist faggots. And all the interviewees and all the sources they quote are also from leftist trash. Quit whining, if you want unbiased opinion go somewhere else.
And when's the last time there was a non-leftist slant on any issue here by the editors? It's obvious that the administration is too weak to ever present opposing viewpoints, since those opinions wreck their worldview with little trouble and the thought of that makes them very uncomfortable indeed.
I have begun to consider corporations a separate evolving lifeform. Corporations have committed many acts inimical to human life. Tobacco companies, Monsanto, Hooker Chemicals - all acted to maximize their selection function (profit). Every superfund site has a similar corporate story. Unfortunately for those of us who have to live on this planet, maximizing health (human, animal or environmental) is not a part of their fitness-selection function.
Employees in cash stressed companies knows that in questions of "cash" vs "morals", cash usually overrules.
Corporations have totally warped the political process in the US since the mid 1970s when they were granted "equal" free-speech right in the political forum. Deep pockets and harassment lawsuits have allowed them to drown out public discourse and common sense.
Our problem is corporate survival has nothing to do with human survival.
This is typical of what we have come to expect from these enormous corporations, profit is everything and worth ANYTHING to get... just look at the fucked-up ness of the world at the moment and i bet you can see corporations in there exploiting it.... like the $20 billion of US arms sales to countries last year, countries which now, funny enough are at war... The future is one of corporate government, get ready to be assimilated.
The dangerous effects of PCBs were reported (http://www.nrm.se/mg/publ-69.html.se) already in 1969. Don't American authorities read scientific articles?
In general, all hybrid seeds are "infertile", in that the seeds of the plants grown from them do not have the desirable properties of the hybrid. This is a fact about hybridisation. Of course, if you produce new kinds of seed through genetic modification rather than hybridisation, then the resulting seed will not be a hybrid and will "breed true". By putting the terminator gene into their roundup ready seeds Monstanto were actually restoring the status quo ante rather than unleashing some new horror on the world.
Second, farmers
Finally, your assertion that "sterile seeds could spread and render entire regions infertile" is interesting. I was not previously aware that sterility was a hereditary property. In any case, if "sterile" seeds spread, all you would have to do would be to plough the "sterile" seeds into the ground and plant a different kind of seed. It's done all the time with weeds.
My main problem with this is that there are huge, massive problems with Monsanto - a total disregard for safety testing, obsession with secrecy and a tendency to corrupt governments, encouragement of the overuse of pesticides, etc - and this obsession with "Terminator [wooooh!] Genes" obscures it. It implies that if only Monsanto would stop making terminator genes, there would be nothing wrong with the rest of the GM industry.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
The reasoning here:
PREMISE A - Corporations only care about profit and nothing else. After all, without profit they're not going to be around for very long. And they seem capable of doing anything to protect the profitable product lines (see Pinkertons beat up union organizers, PCB cover-up, Microsoft strong-arm tactics, Just Following Orders, etc.)
PREMISE B - We're capable of manufacturing products of incredible potency: carcinogenic chemicals, genetically modified organisms, and someday self-replicating nanotech bots that can reduce North America to chum.
PREMISE C - Corporations tend to be the ones manufacturing these products.
PREMISE D - Some of these products have a negative impact on our quality and length of life, the number of limbs our children are born with, and the aesthetics of the world around us.
CONCLUSION - Perhaps we should be a little worried about the impact free market rules have on the world around us and our own livelihoods. When corporations have the ability to let loose technological advancements purely in the name of profit, the results may be less than desirable.
-- "Sucks to your ass-mar"
As long as agriculture has existed, plants have been genetically modified to produce harvests with particular attributes, including resistance to pests, resistance to harsh climate, or resistance to disease. The process of genetic modification was done by combining the seeds of two or more plants that had the desired traits.
The plants produced by this genetic manipulation weren't called "genetically modified," they were called "hybrids." Still, the end result is the same: the genetic structure of a plant was purposefully changed by humans to produce a new plant that had desired traits.
Ever eaten corn? It's a genetically modified plant. The corn you eat is not "natural." It was made, through trial and error.
How about potatoes? The potato itself is a natural plant (well, tuber.) However, farmers have modified potatoes for 1000s of years to produce different strains that have resistances, or have a higher nutritional value, or keep longer, or have a different taste.
Ever seen a white orchid? Not natural. Genetic modification. Orchids are not white by nature. (Granted, you're not supposed to eat orchids, but I think you get my point.)
So, what's the big to-do about genetically modified foods? It's not a new science, merely a new approach to an ancient art.
However, I will agree that Monsanto is a perfect example of a sleezy coorporation. But I also think that Micheal needs to lay off the scare-tactic propoganda. That, or he should go work for Microsoft as Chief FUD Officer.
"The dead do not shoo-bop-aloo-bah." -- Kai, 'Lexx'
It's like the Nazi's who said they were just following orders. If your boss asks you to sweep a toxic chemical into the drain and you do it... you're just as guilty.
I think if these criminals get prison terms for the rest of their natural lives I think we might get a few whistle blowers among our friends working on GM foods...
Cynic inside me {
Of course that's about as likely as getting the president that won the election (No I didn't vote for him, but I can tell an election from an appointment.) }
"But further research explains that Tomato juice also naturally contains more than enough Ethyl alcohol to neutralize the effects of the wood alcohol, which Nutrisweet does not" Cool! I new there was a reason to spike every drink with everclear.
There are at least 209 kinds of different PCBs, some of which are highly toxic, some of which are reasonably inert, but the results of studies have time and time again shown increased cancers in populations of humans exposed to PCBs. The risk is real people.m l#human
One of the scary things ive heard is that the average American has borderline danger levels of PCBs already...
Check this URL: http://www.foxriverwatch.com/cancer_pcb_pcbs_1.ht
To those who wonder what GM crops have to do with PCB/chemical dumping, they're missing the point. The point is that if a company has a history of putting profits over public safety and have blatant disregard for human life, then how can you trust them when they say GM crops are safe? They may be safe, they may not be, but I for one do not find their opinions credible.
Show Summary:
Surveys of public opinion show that the majority of Americans believe that the government is making sure that they are protected against harmful chemicals. Is their understanding justified? Journalist Bill Moyers and producer Sherry Jones report on how the chemical revolution of the past 50 years has produced thousands of man-made chemicals that have not been tested for their effect on the public's health and safety. The report is based on documents never before published and interviews with historians, scientists, and physicians who are exploring how chemicals affect the human body.
Here are some quotes from industry documents from transcript of Trade Secrets. I'll let you interpret them yourself:
September 28, 1981. Government Relations Committee. Pebble Beach.
"The Committee believes that the new climate in Washington is more reasoned and responsive. ...The election of the Reagan Administration appears to have produced changes which bode well for our industry."
"President Reagan directed EPA to delay proposing or finalizing regulations until it could be determined that they were cost-effective and necessary."
January 11, 1982. CMA Board of Directors. Grand Ballroom, Arizona Biltmore. "Just ten days ago, TSCA celebrated its fifth birthday. The first five years of TSCA have seen numerous rules proposed by the Agency. To date, we have seen none of these types of rules finalized."
[TSCA: the Toxic Substances Control Act, one law intended to give the Environmental Protection Agency broad authority to regulate toxic chemicals]
[Fact:To this day - almost 25 years after the Toxic Substances Control Act was enacted - only five types of chemicals, out of thousands, have been banned under the law.]
passetspike!
If you look at the article, there's an email this story link which enables you to send the story off to someone of your choice, along with comments. My choices were: NPR and PBS, both organizations which rely heavily upon corporate donations, notably the Monsanto Corporation. In the comments, I requested that they consider refusing donations from Monsanto, which would have the dual effect of making a public stand for what is right as well as denying Monsanto a hefty tax write-off. Like they need it. I agree with a previous poster who compared them to Microsoft. No doubt a merger is in the works :)
Other good choices for the email link would, of course, be your state and national representatives, particularly if you live in a state which Monsanto has operations in (Like, almost anywhere?)
Fortunately, the Post is a big paper with a good reputation. Stories like this need to see the bright light of day. It is what evildoers fear most.
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
The question is how far we should go to help them or allow them to make those profits.
Nestle sold latin american mothers on how great their baby formula was, and dumped it on the market long enough for them to stop lactating. See for yourself
So, yah, sure, we'll tell 1B chinese that they're SOL if they can't afford next year's seed prices, and the lazy Africans with HIV can darn well get jobs and pay as much for their meds as the patent holders think they ought to. Have to protect shareholder value, after all.
--Just the place for a snark!
The company has simply no regard for how they affect the public health, when they could potentially have disastrous effects on it. Couple Monsanto's disregard for the public health with current loopholes in the testing of genetically engineered food (FDA isn't allowed to test that the food is totally safe, but rather, because some of the products naturally produce pestidicides, it is tested by the EPA for "reasonable certainity of no harm").
http://www.organics.org/features/god_garden.htm
Many (many) years ago I took a B-School class (Organizational Behavior) where I read a great article called "On the Folly of Rewarding A While Hoping for B" (still have it, it's by Steve Kerr if you want to read it). It gave numerous examples of skewed reward (or regulatory) systems and their consequences. One example was pollution regulation, where a simple calculation would show that it was to the companies benefit to risk the fine, rather than clean up the problem. Kerr's solution was to change the reward system as follows: The President of XYZ Corporation had to choose between a) spending $11 million dollars for anti-pollution equipment or b) incurring a fifty-fifty chance of going to jail for five years.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Thing is, these corporate types can poison a community, or sack tens of thousands of workers, rip-off millions of common folks - not to mention the crimes corporations commit in the third world... and after all this they resign or are sacked with enormous pay offs of millions of dollars!
...Only the kids can't afford rich lawyers.
There is something very wrong, there noses should be rubbed in the filth they create, just like kids these days are made to clean their graffiti off walls.
Try this Google Search as a starting point. You might switch to Mineral Water (not genetically engineered) after reading some of that stuff.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
actually, Printed Circuit Boards ARE toxic... they contain fiberglass embedded in epoxy, and as we all know, prolonged exposure to fiberglass dust is believed to cause lung cancer.
The rule... when cutting them, use a dust mask.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
... and the perps are long retired or dead already. And even 1977 is already mightly long ago. Prosecution of the Nazis was a little bit easyer, as it started right after the war, rather than half a century later.
Say no to software patents.
Agent Orange was made by Dow Corning and a few other companies.
Mod this up admins!!
Let's face it... Corporate America sees beyond the simple current reality of nation-states or even a united nations unified earth. They realize the only way to advance the human race is to make Earth so unlivable that we will be forced into space and colonization of other planets... why can't the geek community grok this clearly advanced meta-vision? And while we're busy fucking our biological basis up, we're going to need to speed up that super-slack process called "natural selection" up by a couple 100 thousand years with some advanced genetic engineering... fuck what we *really* could use now is some alien DNA to play around with by splicing it into fetal brainstem clones.
You do not have sufficient knowledge to comment on this subject.
If they don't complay with any kind of polution control why should the operate in the first place? Is this the kind of industry that Bush want to protect from Qyoto aggreament?
Monsanto is also the company that wishes to monopolise the world's water supplies.
They are, without a doubt, a company that should be put out of business immediately.
Mr. SilentStrike,
Please read my comment again. I was not denying that Monsanto is not exactly behaving correctly. I even acknowledged that they are bad. Maybe I wasn't clear enough, so let me rephrase:
Enviromental pollution *by dumping waste* [by Monsanto] has nothing to do with the fact that they are producing genetically modified seeds/crops.
[off topic rant]
Although I'd love to discuss the various degrees of risks that are associated with GM foodstuff, it's off-topic, and I'll resist the temptation.
[/off topic rant]
Meneer de Koekepeer
And when's the last time there was a non-leftist slant on any issue here by the editors?
Uh... maybe because that is the conclusion any thinking and feeling human being inevitably comes to? And those kinds of logical and moral conclusions are labeled as leftist by right wing nuts?
How come the right wing nuts always post as anonymous cowards?
Who gets to play the hero? John Travolta or Julia Roberts this time?
Well, lets lookies what the trading is like for the BD.
http://biz.yahoo.com/t/m/mon.html
And the ceo is a 60yo dude, http://biz.yahoo.com/p/m/mon.html
Hugh Grant, 42
Exec. VP, COO????????????
>> "I'm really pretty proud of what we did," Kaley said. "Was it perfect? No. Could we be second-guessed? Sure. But I think we mostly did what any company would do, even today."
Err, you polluted thousands of acres so badly that fish would die in a few seconds. You poisoned tens of thousands of people. And you are proud. Probably because you made a lot of money doing it. And you knew the whole time exactly what you were doing, but bought off the people that were supposed to be regulating you.
People like you make me sick. And that's not just the PCB poisoning either.
--
If I ever know anyone like this I am going to kill them and make it look like an accident. After all, it is me and mine or them. It's just self defense.
--
The scarely thing is that not only is he not not sorry for what he did, he says that he would do it again, and that there are thousands of companies doing the very same thing right now. And he is probably right.
I think that every CEO and board member and their entire families should have to drink a cup of the waste that they release from their companies everyday. I bet it would always be clean then.
If I get cancer I'm going to kill as many of these people as I can. I bet I can take a couple of dozen with me.
The most telling quote is, I believe,
The critics understand unchecked capitalism all too well. If monetary profit is all that matters, then the evidence clearly demonstrates that people suffer. This is yet another datum.
There is absoloutely no guarantee that an unregulated market will lead to an optimal outcome for actual people. On the contrary, some people will suffer greatly.
Frankly, we can't trust an invisible hand.
Do you even realize the multi-million dollar P.R. bullshit you're parroting?
Did you even read the page you linked to? It didn't hold any actual core information, but it did suggest that you read through the available papers before rendering judgement.
Now maybe there has been a mountain of new data made available since you last looked at the question. But from my searches, based on the thousands of documents collected over the last thirty years from every imaginable level of the medical/scientific/governmental community, the conclusion you reached seems to me, frankly, ill-considered to say the least.
It seems to me that you are jumping very, very quickly to pre-set conclusions, your thought processes masquerading under the guise of scientific rationale. Sorry Charlie. You may have read a few clever books, but Real scientists aren't made into fools by the P.R. jockeys.
Honestly. People think that just because the X-Files were stupid that bad things don't actually happen in the world. "I don't believe in Conspiracies." Well genius, do you believe in "Corruption"?
Go look at the fish in Anniston.
Better hurry, because in another year, there'll be some new & dangerous fool just like you, sir, declaring that it never happened because he's been programmed since birth to reject everything but the 'official' story.
Do you even understand the basic principals behind advertising and mass persuasion?
Sheesh.
-Fantastic Lad
There used to be a Monsanto plant in Everett, MA a couple of miles from where My grandmother lived. On hot summer days the smell from the plant would give you migranes. I meal literally the whole neighborhood would get sick from the smell. It had to be even worse closer in! You could see all kinds of different colored smoke wafting up into the air from various vents at the plant. The newspaper looked into it and was basically blown off. Fortunately, the plant closed in the mid 70's, but I still wonder what they were putting out into the air and if anyone suffered permanent damage from it. Based on this story that just may be the case.
I could not believe my eyes when I read this quote, "Robert Kaley said it is unfair to judge the company's behavior from the 1930s through 1970s by modern standards."
Of Coures you judge a company by the past. It's the same as saying sure he killed 100 people in the 1960's and then spent years hiding it. But hey he's a nice guy now so let's forget about it.....
It's just another case of Big Bussiness sticking it to the little guy and not caring what the out come is.
If it isn't broke, tinker with it till it is!
Your comment contains a number of falsehoods which I will be more than happy to address:
,always buy new seed every year, because retained grain is a poor and inefficient way to grow your pants [must control bad jokes...]
1. all hybrid seeds are "infertile"
This happens to a false and incorrect statement. With canola it is difficult to create hybrids that are fertile and increase crop yield. Please note that this does not mean infertile; it just means difficult to reproduce. Cross-fertilized plants are rarely fertile. But that's nowhere close to never fertile.
2. farmers
(By the way, how does your first point of "all hybrid seeds are infertile" tie in with your second point of "new seed comes from new healthy hybrids grown for seed"? If the hybrids are all infertile, why would I grow hybrids for seed)?
While, yes, as a farmer I supplement my existing gene-lineages (both plant and animal) with external lines for hybrid vigor and outside traits every year; I also breed my existing plants and animals for specific traits. If I started off with one line of genes, and attempted to maintain that line forever, yes, I might have problems. But I don't. I select outside strains to enhance certain qualities that I believe my strains are deficient in. However, assuming I made a good starting selection of lineages, I don't need to acquire outside stock. You're talking about a minimal initial genetic selection that doesn't allow for cross-breeding over a number of generations. Sorry, but I'm aware that this could be a problem and either: start off with a reasonable selection of different genetic strains, or supplement my breeding stock every year. But if I start off with a good selection, I don't need to buy new seeds every year.
3. our assertion that "sterile seeds could spread and render entire regions infertile" is interesting
Seeds aren't the issue here. Pollen is. For example, corn cross-pollinates. If I've got some sterile corn that swoops across the pasture and cross-pollinates with my good "breeding" corn, I've got a problem. And we haven't had a chance to get to the seed part yet.
And, also, sterility is the final "hereditary property". If I've got a ewe that hasn't bred by the time she's two, I'm going to cull her. And, guess what, all of the genes that I've worked on breeding into her are gone.
By the way, if I plough the "sterile" seeds into the ground and plant a different kind of seed, I've lost time, money and productivity. The things that I grow aren't comparable to "weeds".
However, that doesn't mean there is absolutely no role for the EPA, or a similar agency. Libertarians recognize the need for police to defend against damage to the community from crime... they just wish the police didn't have to waste time arresting "consensual criminals" like prostitutes and drug users.
Prosecuting criminal investigations in the environmental arena requires expertise not normally found in the local cop-shop. So the EPA can have a valid role, even for Libertarians. However, most would prefer that the agency be slimmed down quite a bit, and/or perhaps merged with the "normal" police forces.
Sure, there are extreme elements in the LP, just like anywhere else. And many of these call for the outright dissolution of the EPA and other such agencies. But that doesn't mean they represent the mainstream of the movement, nor does the party platform seem to call for such action.
--jrd
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Yes and I'd like to hear some examples of these so-called self-evident leftist opinions. Your reasoning is flawless, Slashbot.
Having worked as a hired hand in my youth, and my father working in a grain elevator for >20 years. I can say with complete certainty, farmers do grow their own wheat seed for next year. Normally keep a few truckloads off to the side, pay the elevator to get it cleaned properly (removing as much of the impurities as possible). True, they don't do it for tens of years on end, but saying they do it every year or every other year is very much a false statement.
In todays grain market there is no way that a single family farmer could buy grain every year, he would be out of money in very short time.
If we made Monsanto spend every dime it has on cleaning up the mess that the company created in the first place, in effect a corporate death penalty, then every other corporation in the world would take note that they could face the death penalty too and act accordingly.
Why is it that people like you have no problem killing possibly innocent humans that are on death row, but can't even conceive of confiscating the entire wealth of a corporation as a punishment? Even when the corporation has killed hundreds of people in real life, as a direct result of liver damage from PCB exposure.
If I had gone around setting hundreds of people on fire then I would be facing the death penalty. And if my only defense was that it was too expensive to not burn those people to death, then I would be easily convicted.
Hell, the police would probably just shoot me and leave me in the street to die, I doubt I would even get a trial.
There is nothing wrong with the idea of putting BT into corn/cotton.
So long as Monsanto and the farmers who plant it have the insurance to cover the future claims of farmers who wish to use organic methods and can not use BT on plants to kill the pest species. And Monsanto has to pay for genetic contamimation of non-Monsanto crops.
If Monsanto and the farmers who plant BT enabled corn had to have insurance to cover the future losses of the organic farmers, and have to pay for the contamination of non Monsanto crops, Monstanto would go after other markets. Like carpet fibers.
Mea culpa...
--jrd
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Saying farmers hardly ever buy new seed every year is a bit of a mis-statement. In most cases with oilseeds (canola, flax and other oilseeds)new seed is purchased because it is treated to facilitate growth, or it is a new variety, or a number of other reasons, which aren't practical for a farmer to follow financially.
It is extremely expensive to buy need seeed every year for hundreds if not thousands of acres in an operation. For many grains (not usually oilseeds) some seed is bought the year before and grown and then that seed is held over the next year to seed a larger amount of acres.
There are many varieties of oilseeds out there that are not genetically modified and grow very well. Well enough so genetically modified seeds are not needed in my opinion. The world won't starve if GMO seeds were not there.
The biggest problem that I see with GMO seed that I see is that nature doesn't care whose land that it blows GMO seed on to cross pollinate fields that don't have GMO seed on them.
Some farmers have specifically chosen not to grow genetically modified seed for either ethical reasons, i.e. they just don't feel comfortable using it, or they may be organic farmers and GMO seed is not allowed.
If they have to plough down a field that does have GMO seed that they are not licensed to use can mean financial ruin plus there is no guarantee that the GMO seed will not come back again. Seed can lie dormant in the ground for years and grow back again.
With the evil of corporate image being presented, I can't help but ask...what are we going to find out on Microsoft in 37 years? :)
Scary to think about eh?
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
Why don't we assume that all new chemicals and techniques are dangerous at even 1 part in a trillion until proven safe?
Why don't we only allow a patent on chemicals and GM's once they have been proven safe? The patent can even start on the day that the approval is granted.
We also need to have the death penalty for any researcher that under reports the effects of a chemical that results in the death of a human being.
And you know what? Maybe the reason that these corporations act so immoral is that they only have a couple of decades to make back their investment on developing the chemicals. After that point the patent expires and everyone will be making the chemicals. They really don't care about what happens after that point.
And I think that patenting living creatures and living processes is just wrong. I think that God released life with a GPL license, not a BSD license. Just kidding.
These are all excellent and serious points, and much more important than the fabricated controversy over "terminator genes".
-- the most controversial site on the Web
He said we should be concerned about the results of too much capitalism. Not that we should ban capitalism.
I got more of a feeling that he was saying that should have capitalism, but we need to watch it carefully and have full monitoring of what every corporation is doing.
I personally think that any company that is making things that could be hazardous to humans should have full disclosure of all these papers that we don't find out about until 40 years later.
Read again, you comprehensive idiot. The word "infertile" in my post is contained in scare quotes and followed by the phrase "in the sense that descendants do not have the desirable properties of the hybrid". Any decent English teacher ought to be able to help you understand the significance of these facts, and their role in the meaning of the sentence. Hybrid plants are produced by hybridisation, not grown from seed.
While, yes, as a farmer I supplement my existing gene-lineages (both plant and animal) with external lines for hybrid vigor and outside traits every year; I also breed my existing plants and animals for specific traits. If I started off with one line of genes, and attempted to maintain that line forever, yes, I might have problems. But I don't. I select outside strains to enhance certain qualities that I believe my strains are deficient in.
Just one question; while you, as a farmer, personally, yourself, are carrying out this attractive Mendelian exercise, who's looking after your fucking farm? Monsanto sell their products to real farms, run to make a profit or for subsistence, not to loony thought experiments.
If I've got some sterile corn that swoops across the pasture and cross-pollinates with my good "breeding" corn, I've got a problem
No you haven't, because as we discussed earlier, you'll be buying new seed next year.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
The author doesn't like GM food. Wow.
What the hell does that have to do with PCBs?
True enough, for small values of "farm" and first values of "world". But this isn't what we're talking about. The emotional rhetoric about terminator genes is all in the context of the third world, where the grain is sold much cheaper, because otherwise nobody could afford to buy it. And Monsanto only sells in the third world to large-scale farming businesses of the scale where they do buy new seed every year; this picture of subsistence farmers being drawn into a hellish spiral of terminator seed isn't right.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
And that the corporation that they were running had all its assets confiscated?
We need to "arrest" corporations when we even suspect they have done wrong, by seizing their bank accounts during an investigation. It is hard to bribe officials when they have no access to funds.
I'm an environmentalist, but I'm coming to the aid of a corporation on this one. Far too much blame is placed on Hooker Chemical for the Love Canal disaster.
First off, Hooker wasn't the entity that started dumping in Love Canal; the US government used Love Canal as a dump before hooker bought the land. The US even dumped remnants from the Manhattan project in the canal. One can hardly blame the government because they didn't know how dangerous most of the things they were putting in the land were. Similarly, Hooker wasn't always aware of the danger some of the chemicals they disposed of were. All the dumping by both Hooker and the US government was legal by the standards of the time.
Secondly, Hooker was reluctant to sell the land back to the government. It was only after authorities threatened to invoke eminent domain that Hooker sold the land at a ridiculously low price. One of the conditions of the sale was that the land would be capped. Essentially, Hooker wanted the government to use it as a parking lot because they knew the chemicals in the soil were a liability. They even included a clause in the contract saying they were not liable for any damage done for inappropriate use. Use as a parking lot or another similarly capped area would have greatly reduced the potential harm to people who occupied the land. The government went against Hookers recommendation and ignored the warnings and built a school on the land anyway.
When all was said and done, the people in the government who approved the land purchase and use got off with little or no repercussions. Hooker had to pay for damages including relocation of families affected despite the liability clause in the contract.
I haven't heard any good rumors about Monsanto, they have all been bad. There is the rumor that they manufactor Nutrasweet and that product causes tons of illnesses.There is also the lovely terminator seed which is designed to make sure that farmers can't reuse their seed and are forced to buy new seeds from Monsanto every season. This news doesn't suprise me, this corporation really needs to reigned in!
What was the consequence of killing a bunch of people when they just dumped the waste? Almost none.
What happens if they find out that their GM plant causes cancer too? I bet you a silver dollar that they just hide those reports too.
Because that is the corporate culture and that is what gets rewarded with money.
It's kind of like how the sun rises every morning... I can't prove that it will rise tomorrow, but I will bet you that it does.
for no good reason? That was in the article too. The mortician claimed that he was burying waaaay too many children.
I've been interested in Monsanto for some time, ever since I had a very bad experience withdrawing from aspartame (the sweetener in Diet Coke). I won't go into details but suffice it to say that I was extremely sick for a month and didn't fully get over it until about eight months after I quit my 3-diet-cokes-a-day habit. It turns out that Monsanto (which held the aspartame patent) had done some interesting political manipulations to get aspartame approved by the FDA during the Reagan administration despite the fact that they were unable to do so in the Carter administration because of concerns about aspartame's safety (because, among other things, part of aspartame gets metabolized into formaldehyde in the body). Since then, every time I hear of a company doing really, really horrible stuff to the environment and/or trying to get some unsafe technology legalized despite the objections of concerned scientists and lay people, as often as not the company is Monsanto. They appear to be completely shameless and willing to do anything, no matter how immoral, to make money. This should not be surprising given that they brought us Agent Orange. Now they're trying to ram genetically-engineered food down our throat (as if normal food isn't good enough). Please, people, GET INVOLVED AND FIGHT THESE BASTARDS!
Robert Kaley, Monsanto's whore, mentions 2 things that are really interesting: (environmental affairs director for Solutia who also serves as the PCB expert for the American Chemistry Council)
"Did we do some things we wouldn't do today? Of course. But that's a little piece of a big story," he said. "If you put it all in context, I think we've got nothing to be ashamed of."
Then another gem at the end. . .
"I'm really pretty proud of what we did," Kaley said. "Was it perfect? No. Could we be second-guessed? Sure. But I think we mostly did what any company would do, even today."
Now if this doesn't scare you I'm not sure what will. No remorse, nothing. Sad thing is that opinions like this end up getting to politicians after getting campaign contributions.
Hmm.. also, I wonder who introduced micheal to www.fark.com.. Quite a few stories have been taken off their front page today (i.e. all) Anyways...
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There are even a few movies out that deal with these kinds of issues: Erin Brockavich, Born Yesterday, etc. People probably just think it these kinds of things don't happen. Businessmen with senators in their pockets, companies poisoning their residential neighbors with thier toxic chemicals. Wake up people - America is fscked!
ZERO ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ONE! Just brushing up for my next big invention: Ethernet over Voice (EoV)
Killing people by poisoning them is wrong.
Selling third world farmers infertile seeds so they have to keep buying your seeds with the full knowledge that these sterile seeds could spread and render entire regions infertile is so nefarious, mere words cannot convey the feelings of disgust I feel.
It is more offensive that they use planes to spray herbicide over fields of farmers who refuse to buy their product, just to see if their crop is resistant, and then sueing those farmers whose seed stock was pollenated by their neighbours monsanto patented GM crop.
Patenting genes is infinitely more evil than software patents...
The last statement in the article is from Monsanto's PR guy:
"I'm really pretty proud of what we did," Kaley said. "Was it perfect? No. Could we be second-guessed? Sure. But I think we mostly did what any company would do, even today."
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
So wait a minute, this company is being blamed for creating delicious, easy-to-eat skinless fish?
Seems kinda unjust to me...
------
Today's Top Deals
Do you all remember the Challenger Disaster? After that, many memos were released detailing how one of the seals would absolutely fail at the temperatures and pressures at which the shuttle was to be launched that day. I have a very strong feeling that this is the same thing. Some engineer was doing his job - reporting the facts. Some one in that plant, in order to not make himself look so bad, buttered it up a little - maybe this stuff isn't so great after all. And so it goes, until we reach where we are today. As far as anti-GM foods go, I say all that is a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap. We are not talking about breeding man-eating vegetables (although it would give vegetarians a run for their money). We are talking about doing the same thing that farmers have been doing for centuries - breeding better crops. Only now, instead of it taking generations of growing and flowering and cross-pollenating, it is being done with genetics. Isn't technology and the advance of it what so many of you support?
once again, i'm surprised that so many of you are surprised! even though i'm sure this one will never make it to the top of my list i'm really in my element now so please pay attention.
.. okay.. great.. now type in 'CNMI abuses' and hit search again. whoa! all of this stuff happening on 'american soil', right under our noses!? yeah..
this is nothing new! monsanto has been up to this kind of no-good for years. the company was founded near the turn of the century to bring saccharin to our country. saccharin, for those of you with your heads stuck perilously far up your asses, is the first artificial sweetener. oh yeah, it's been positively linked with lukemia and numerous other types of cancer and for some reason they still put it in EVERYTING sugar-free.. hmmm?
let's see... monsanto.. monsanto.. what else have they manufactured that causes cancer? how about agent orange? guilty.. it was their product and they've paid hundreds of millions to former employees stricken with rare forms of cancer and other strange diseases. rBGH is theirs too.. you know, the stuff that the uninitiated end up drinking in their milk because it's forcibly injected into our livestock. it's been shown to cause the production of a hormonal by-product called IGF-1 (proven to cause cancer in human cells) as well as udder infections and other disturbances in livestock. for this reason and others rBGH is banned in canada and europe.
this is outrageous! how can they get away with this!?! 1st, they have a legal department that rivals phillip-morris.. they're yet another sue-happy american corporation bent on manipulating information and political agenda for their own financial gain. 2nd, we live in a society where so many people bend to that kind of bullshit that you never get a chance to hear what's really going on (unless it's too late and someone else is serving the lawsuit).
..and monsanto is small potatoes..
if you're upset or interested enough to do some more reasearch on your own try this: go to google.com and type in 'CNMI' (commonwealth of the northern marianas islands)
also, there's a great book called 'If the Gods Had Meant Us to Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates' by Jim Hightower.. those of you familiar with his work know that he can get a little far left in his rantings, but the book is packed with information and is a great read. (so great that i could only set it down when i became so disgusted that i was forced to)
i leave you with a quote from a previous rant of mine posted to a different site:
"In this country, literally 90% of the wealth is controlled by the richest
1% of the population. These are the people and organizations that finance
our political campaigns.. the people and organizations that own our
country. The United States frequently dispenses propaganda, domestically
and abroad, to justify 'military action' in wars that are waged to protect
the financial interests of American corporations. We covet our neighbors'
goods enough to kill innocents to prevent increases in our oil prices.
It's painfully obvious to me that the almighty U.S. dollar, which has
ensconced us in the position of the last world 'super-power', has perverted
our political processes and twisted our country into a monstrous entity.
Much of the world has good reason to fear and even hate us.
To say that the 1,400-some people dead of a heinous and cowardly act of
terrorism ought to be dead would be insane. However, I hope people can see
that the attacks on our nation's sanctity were not unprovoked."
-j0nah
strange but i think i remember one of the Simpsons episode when they made the boss of that local nuclear plant eat a three eyed fish!!!
Monsanto reminds me of that big corporation in robocop, remember OCP?
if the sites slashdot links to get slashdoted, how come slashdot itself never gets slashdoted??
If you think this is bad, check out what American comanies do outside America. In 1984 gas leaking from a tank in a Union Carbide factory in Bhopal, India IMMEDIATELY KILLED 8000 people, with the death toll subsequently rising to 16000 over the last 15 years. 40% of the women pregnant at the time of the disaster spontaneously aborted. Many children were born with severe permanent disabilities. Nearly 1/5 of the population of 500,000 are TODAY suffering from a myriad of exposure-related diseases. Chromosomal abberations have also been found in the exposed population, suggesting congenital malformations in the next generation.
Union Carbide settled with the Indian government for $470 million, 1/10 of what Exxon were fined for their pollution of the Alaskan coastline. The chairman of Union Carbide is indicted for culpable homicide, but has absconded and is known to be living in a beach house in Florida.
Source: Bhopal.org, NOT Union Carbide's own site, which is much slicker and comes top of a Google search on union+carbide+bhopal.
"Monsanto Co. routinely discharged toxic waste into a west Anniston creek and dumped millions of pounds of PCBs into oozing open-pit landfills."
Could this be the cause of the ubiquitous "redneck"?
[BTW, I've lived within 25 miles of the Decatur, AL Monsanto/Solutia plant for over 15 years. Used to be 8th most polluting plant in the nation.]
One day I approach you with a plain looking box
and then I stick you in the eye with a pencil.
The next day, I approach you again, with a different box, and stick you in the eye with
a pencil.
On the third day, I approach you and do
the same. Over and over and over again.
Why was I able to do this to you? Because
you were focussing on the box and not the
messenger, who had long ago proven that
he was untrustworthy, no matter how grand his
packages were.
Be careful in your life, grasshopper, as you
tread the path of the gullible and are a magnet
to those with treachory in their hearts.
My default expansion for 'PCB' is Printed Circuit Board - especially when I see a story on Slashdot! Just to let everyone know this is about Poly-Chlorinated Biphenyls - I think thats two carbon rings with lots of chlorine in there.
Baz
> I was not previously aware that sterility was a hereditary property.
It sure is!
Everyone knows that if your parents didn't have any children, you won't either!
"All representatives are busy. The estimated hold time is one..hundred..sixty..four..minutes." Detroit Edison, 02/01/02
So it's like testing for witches in the middle ages?
Take a suspected witch, tie them up in a burlap sack, throw them in the lake. If the sink and drown, they're an innocent normal human!
And they do this much like the middle ages, without the permission of the suspected witch?
"All representatives are busy. The estimated hold time is one..hundred..sixty..four..minutes." Detroit Edison, 02/01/02
I'm married to an x-environmental researcher who worked on ways to clean PCB's. I practically took half her classes during grad school, since I would discuss everything she read, at lunches and dinners.
I don't know actual numbers of how much chemicals are dumped by the military, but it is not small. The current legislation from my limited understanding only requires the military set aside part of their funding for research into cleaning. No actual cleaning is required! Most of the political structure in the military continuously fund research and never implement the procedures. Corporations aren't stupid, they use the same exact trick to avoid real action. Mobile refineries in southern california have used the excuse it's too expensive to retrofit their facilities because it is cheaper to pay the fine.
A close friend is a contractor who used to clean up toxic dumps. Often we would have coffee and talk about how corrupt and messed up the EPA is. For those who know, the EPA for the most part goes after gas stations, because that's the only businesses that can't afford big shot lawyers. Until our social values place human life before convienance and price, I doubt any of this will change.
The "large" fines are usually around a few million dollars to maybe 10 million dollars.
A fine of 1 million dollar per DAY they'd knowingly poisoned the environment with this stuff might be a starting point, as they'd know since the late 30's.
And that's just starting money. They also have to pay for the clean-up etc.
"But that'll ruin the bussiness!" - tough fucking luck!
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
Thank you, this is something that needs to be repeated again and again for many fields. When in doubt seek advice at the local university, read a few editorials in peer reviewed magazines, do anything but throw your hands up and say, "No changes!". Any technology can be used for evil purposes. The more powerful the technology and the sturcture using it, the more evil that can be done. It would be better to force good things to happen instead.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
This is true, we should be very suspicious of Monsanto's use of GM foods if they have proven themselves dishonest. This is akin to never trusting a convicted felon with money or a weapon. Broken trust should not be forgoten.
It does not make GM inherently evil any more than money or weapons are because they have been misused by a felon. You might ask the biochem folks at the local university about all the good things that can be done with GM and why people might dedicate their careers to making it happen.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
All of what jayed_99 says is true.
However, the original idea with terminator seeds was that they would (I'm not sure how well it works - I gather it doesn't but Monsanto policy seems to be that objective truth is foreign to their religion) produce non-fertilising pollen. So, the seeds that monsanto sells are a hybrid of line A (fertile) and line B (fertile) which produces line C, which they sell, and which doesn't produce fertile pollen OR fertile seeds. In addition to meaning that you can't grow up line C yourself, or make your own lines that include whatever favorable genes where transgenically introduced into line C, this means that line C's pollen can't contaminate non engineered crops nearby, which is a huge problem with other GM foods (pause, looks askance at my Dorito.)
Now, terminator seeds are basically a dead issue because folks like jayed_99 simply refused to buy them.
This means that people are growing up (or being forced to grow up, by cross polination) the GM crops that Monsanto sells without paying for new seeds each time.
So, the next part of Monsanto's evil plan is to make their money selling chemicals (which they also make) instead of the GM crops themselves. Enter roundup ready Corn. You want evil, there's your classic Monsanto evil. The idea is that they can go ahead and give away the GM crops (although they'll continue to charge while they can), because the only thing the GM crops are good for is buying mroe roundup.... from Monsanto.
So, the trend in agro genetic engineering is to do stuff like that. Genetically engineering crops that resist perishability better, or which inherently resist pests, or are more nutritious, may be a losing proposition because the product is a living thing that is not easily controlled. However, genetically engineering pesticide resistance lets you sell more of your pesticide, which is where the big money is, anyway.
Of course, as a medical geneticist, I may have an unfair bias against evil (which seems to be Monsanto's position vis a vis the union of concerned scientists)
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
When I was 8 years old I went to a Monsanto PR booth during an ecology festival at the local museum. My first question was "How could you be so concerned for the environment if everything in that area smells like paint?" He didn't seem to have an answer except for "We're obey all federal laws blah blah blah". It was very discouraging. My Chemistry teacher in high school used to work night shift at the plant when he was young and inclass he would tell us stories about guys who would drop deap in the middle of the shift from the fumes.
I dont like Monsanto.
You reek of elitism. Right, the poor farmer should shut up and keep slaving in the fields, and leave it to the intelligent scientists to keep him in business. What scum-sucking yuppie twits like you don't know is that farmers, like fishermen of all stripes, and folks in a lot of other professions that keep you from starving, have an intense interest in science relating to their fields. Sure, they are focused on applications and not on basic research, but their financial well-being depends on not being passive grunts. Breeding is not a loony thought experiment to them, but something that affects their bottom line year by year. And they could give a rats ass whether you think they must be blue collar and ignorant. They know things the eggheads often don't - for instance, fishery stocks have in some places been grossly underestimated simply because no one could find the fish for a few years, and when they came back, they were mature, not young as if the stock was simply rebounding. Fishermen knew this from daily observation, and eventually scientists realized they were on to something. Go back in your cave.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
"I'm really pretty proud of what we did," Kaley said. "Was it perfect? No. Could we be second-guessed? Sure. But I think we mostly did what any company would do, even today."
This statement hits the nail on the head and shows why pure Libertarianism would fail in real life. Pure capitalism produces companies that have no regard for the environment.
The level of disregard for human and non-human life displayed by this company is disgusting. I don't care about context, or how this report was taken without regarding the times which Monsato was operating. Basic common sense tells you that if you dip a fish in water and its skin falls off that you should not be dumping that shit directly into the river. A complete disregard for the tens of thousands of people and their children. These people should be tried as criminals because they knowingly allowed the release of obviously harmful chemicals. There are no excuses for this behavior. They knew what they were doing was wrong because they had to cover their own internal memos. What an extreme disgrace. I'll stop ranting now because I could go on for hours.
JOhn
Campaign for Liberty
Remember, DDT was in use for 75 years before it's harmful effects where discovered.
Paul Anderson
"I drank WHAT?!" -- Socrates
Don't just blame corporations, several governments have recently been uncovered to have conspired against UN anti-polution conferences and programs.
9 91734
Britain, the US, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and France.
Don't believe it?
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99
At least there are no PCB's in my foods. PCB's are very very toxic and persistent material (they don't break down). Good old General Electric is going to have to dredge the Hudson river to clean up the PCB mess it made years ago, and hopefully it will cost about 500 million $$ so hopefully it will discorage them and others from this kind of pollution. Seems fines are the only remedy corporations understand which is sad...
The times has a short abstract about the GE cleanup.
Zodiac - Neil Stephenson, an action/sci-fi focused on the escapades of a "Granola James Bond" and his fight against the evil polluting corporations ;) Its just as good as any of Stephenson's other works (Cryptonomicon, etc) and high entertaining.
i was looking at monsanto's website and came across this interesting tidbit:
it's the 1990 Monsanto Pledge! though i'm tempted to forward the link to the parent article to them i'm sure they'd just ignore me.
My main problem with this is that there are huge, massive problems with Monsanto - a total disregard for safety testing, obsession with secrecy and a tendency to corrupt governments,
It's irresponsible to make that kind of broad accusation without background. Here's some:
Round up ready corn contaminating other crops.
The 60 minutes story about how they covered up the fact that working with PVC monomer melts people's bones. This isn't the best possible link, unfortunately.
Ooh! Here's a whole page dedicated to how wicked monsanto is. You can learn about how Monsanto tried to cover up that fact that DDT was wiping out all the birds in California (yes, the evil corporation is the classic Silent Spring is none other than Monsanto.) They also made agent Orange, which had health effects that they tried to cover up.
Those really interested in the subject of chlorinated organics should read Pandora's Poison. The up-shot is that they are a technolgy which simply isn't safe, and that we should abandon them entirely, especially chlorine based pesticides. The book is highly informative, and also a good introduction for someone who's background is more in, say, computers.
So, the long and the short of it is that this is nothing new. Monsanto has been doing lots of stuff like ever since its inception.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
In general, all hybrid seeds are "infertile", in that the seeds of the plants grown from them do not have the desirable properties of the hybrid. This is a fact about hybridisation. Of course, if you produce new kinds of seed through genetic modification rather than hybridisation, then the resulting seed will not be a hybrid and will "breed true". By putting the terminator gene into their roundup ready seeds Monstanto were actually restoring the status quo ante rather than unleashing some new horror on the world.
Not even close. The terminator seeds work quite differently. They insert a trait that expresses a lethal toxin during the germination process that makes sure that apparently normal seeds will die as they germinate.
They swear that these terminators won't cross with non terminator crops to produce similarly self destructing seeds, but this is the same company that saw no problem with rendering fresh water lethal to fish (within 3.5 minutes) in a populated area and keeping quiet about it.
Put simply, would you trust Jim Jones to mix the KoolAid served to your children?
Then check out this Mining Company Gets Protection in Legislation Pushed by Daschle from the NY Times. Missing from the article was the amount that Homestake mining paid to Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota for this.
Yes I know that there is science involved, but I question which came first, the science proposal or the liability protection legislation.
PCBs are regarded as a "*probable* human carcinogen". Epidemiological studies of this kind of thing are always *choked solid* with confounding factors. The only absolutely clear data come from lab work, using animal models.
PCBs have been confirmed to cause cancer in rodents, but rodents appear to generally be more susceptible to some carcinogens than humans. There are known cases of rodent carcinogens which are *not* regarded as "probable human carcinogens".
The science in these areas is *far* from done. Recent genetic differences found between rodents and primates raise the very real possibility that humans are virtually non-susceptible to some rodent carcinogens. It is my understanding that, for this very reason, gene-splicing is being investigated to produce rodents whose cancer susceptibilities are more like humans.
-- Mike Greaves
Monsanto, the Microsoft of agriculture. Where do you think Bill Gates gets his evil ideas? It's not like he has original ones. I'd tell you all the evil things Monsanto has done to people over the years but I just ate some genetically modified corn and my eyes are melting.
...I'm a lot more annoyed about their way of pushing artificial sweeteners (i.e. aspartame) that people are supposed to EAT, despite ninety-plus well known medical effects ranging from rashes to blindness.
See http://www.dorway.com/ (yes, spelled like that) for some light on this... the site is rather one-sided, but the facts I have checked have held water. Shocking to say the least, and corporate greed at its worst.
...can be found in Toxic Sludge is Good For You, a fine investigation into the Public Relations industry and the evils it protects. Monsanto is covered in great detail.
Hint: it's not an "evil corporation."
The problems that we have with companies like Monsanto and, to a much lesser extent, Microsoft, are symptoms of a deeper cultural and legal problem.
In the USA (I'm sure this applies to other western countries too; I'll just talk about the one I'm familiar with) publicly traded companies have a legal obligation to maximize profits for their shareholders. Think about that. They have a legal obligation to ignore any ethical or moral issues in favor of putting dollars in the pockets of their shareholders, primarily people who are already wealthy. It seems obvious to me that this will lead to corporate cultures with ethics that are upside down from anything sensible. If we're obliged to maximize profits at the expense of all else, doesn't it make sense that successful companies will establish corporate cultures in which the dollar is almighty? In which the the health of non-shareholders is of insignificant importance compared to the profits of the company?
In my opinion, publicly held companies and our notion of the corporation as a legal entity equivalent to a person exacerbate the already existing problem of corporate greed a hundred-fold.
The problems that we have with companies like Monsanto and, to a much lesser extent, Microsoft, are symptoms of a deeper cultural and legal problem.
In the USA (I'm sure this applies to other western countries too; I'll just talk about the one I'm familiar with) publicly traded companies have a legal obligation to maximize profits for their shareholders. Think about that. They have a legal obligation to ignore any ethical or moral issues in favor of putting dollars in the pockets of their shareholders, primarily people who are already wealthy. It seems obvious to me that this will lead to corporate cultures with ethics that are upside down from anything sensible. If we're obliged to maximize profits at the expense of all else, doesn't it make sense that successful companies will establish corporate cultures in which the dollar is almighty? In which the the health of non-shareholders is of insignificant importance compared to the profits of the company?
In my opinion, publicly held companies and our notion of the corporation as a legal entity equivalent to a person exacerbate the already existing problem of corporate greed a hundred-fold.
Second, farmers ,always buy new seed every year, because retained grain is a poor and
inefficient way to grow your pants.
Well, that does it.
I'm not going to stand at the bottom of the grain silo with the spout aimed down my waistband anymore...
Scary. What other stories get killed before we get to see them?
"There is no Linux for drinking water, you know."
Well from a spectrum of mainstream to full on radicals there are these organizations:
Sierra Club
Greenpeace
Earth First!
As point of fact, I am a scientist and I played a direct role in engineering a virus based biopesticide (baculovirus). I am absolutely convinced that biopesticides and engineered plants can be a safe component of farming technology. I am also convinced that corporations can not be trusted to design the best comprehensive technologies and certainly should not be trusted with our seed banks. If this topic concerns you, then send some funding to, or roll up your sleeves with, one of the above organizations.
First entomology, then virology, and finally bioinformatics systems. Bugs follow me wherever I go.
genetically modified foods != intentional pollution of bodies of water.
Do us a favor and go start an anti-WTO riot in Tienamen Square.
"I see worries in the fact that we have the power to manipulate genes in ways that would be improbable or impossible through conventional evolution. We should not be complacent in thinking that we can predict the results." - Colin Blakemore
"If we win the battle with nature we will find ourselves on the losing side." - EF Schumacher
It's pretty clear that Monsanto is the 'evil company' that people fear. It makes Microsofts misdeeds look like a form of community service in comparison.
There's nothing more damning than corporate memo's. May Monsanto and the thugs that ran/run it burn in hell.
-
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
Sauget is a small town located just across the Mississippi River from St. Louis. It has a pretty sad history, as you may have gathered from the article. One of my favorite (now-defunct) bands, Uncle Tupelo, wrote a song about it entitled "Sauget Wind." Give it a listen if you can find the MP3 anywhere. Lyrics/guitar tablature are here.
I knew that Monsanto was responsible for the demise of Sauget, but I had never heard the full story until today. Very interesting.
One of the reasons that I became a lawyer was to avoid ever having to hire one. -SPYvSPY
At the very end of the article is the scariest quote, from a Monsanto 'environmental affairs director':
"I'm really pretty proud of what we did," Kaley said. "Was it perfect? No. Could we be second-guessed? Sure. But I think we mostly did what any company would do, even today." [emphasis added]
They're simply a test market for the new Monsanto self-scaling fish!
In theory GM foods would be a great improvement.
In practice...
1) The developers control who will benefit from it. And they don't appear to be interested in benefits to either the farmers or the consumers.
2) If there are several different approaches, then a choice must be made between them based on the expected value returned. If a centralized control exists for the system, then the choices will tend to be made to favor that centralized controller. (see point 1)
3) Monoculture is known to encourage the development and spread of diseases and pests. But it's expensive to develop a GM food strain, and cheaper to develop only a few varieties. So if the entity developing the strains has any control over the process, only a few will be developed. Therefore monoculture will flourish. Therefore diseases and pests will proliferate. And by a curious coincidence the same company that developes the plant strains is also developing chemicals for pest and disease control.
4) Soybeans have certain isoflavins that are suspected to contribute to health. But the beans store longer if these are reduced. So GM strains are being created to reduce these chemicals. But one can't tell by looking at the bean whether or not these chemical are present. So it may be impossible to choose the healthier variety. The benefits traditionally expected by the addition of soy to the diet are thus defeated, but in a manner undetectable not only by the consumer, but also by the food manufacturers (without expensive testing of each batch of beans). So even reasonably conscientious food processors won't know.
5)...
.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Well, I don't claim to know all the details of why this Union Carbide gas tank exploded - but it sounds much more to me like an accident than something willful on the part of the U.C. management/owners.
Quite frankly, here in the U.S. - we regularly have issues with homes exploding from natural gas leaks. It may not kill thousands at a time, but local gas companies have their lines running into most homes in America -- not concentrated in just a few tanks someplace. Most people consider it an acceptable risk because they like the benefits of natural gas (hot water, dry clothes, heat in the winter). What benefits were people getting from the product U.C. was producing in India?
When things go wrong, we're always quick to point fingers at the companies - but we sure do like to buy their products when they benefit us. Double-standards.....
Actually, the only reason I responded to your post was in an attempt to be the first post showing up on the list, karma ho that I am. Those nasty slashcoders defeated me, though. I hang my head in shame.
this is completely gay. get a life. ur not funny u nerd.
The patent on Aspartame ran out a few years ago, and Monsanto sold off (or it has spun it off into a separate company that it controls) Nutrasweet as well...but I think I remember hearing that NutraSweet was bought by someone a year or two ago, too... (too lazy to check).
I'm looking at a bottle of diet Pepsi, and all it shows is "aspartame". no NutraSweet logo anymore. You can buy little blue packets of NutraSweet at the store, but you can get other packets of aspartame there now as well.
The corporate charter should be revoked. This is 1st degree homocide. Murder. So the death penalty should be applied. Revoke the corporate charter and issue a LARGE!!! fine. But primarily revoke their charter. Declare them to no longer be a corporation. They are clearly not worthy of it.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I've been reading /. for awhile and I'm glad to see this kind of story. I know we're all tech heads here but we don't live in a vacuum and nobody can ignore this kind of abuse.
/.
Keep up the good work
I've been a self-taught professional programmer for 20 years now, but at one point in time I decided to go ahead and get a degree. Wanting a challenge I was studying engineering. That is until I took an engineering ethics class. In it we studied situations that were exactly like this one with Monsanto.
What appalled me about this was that if an engineer works for a company and knows that they are violating regulations he is not allowed to report it to those with oversight, the EPA, etc., nor is he allowed to tell anyone in the press, even if his employer has been approached and refuses to do anything about it. His first responsability is to his employer and violating this confidence is grounds for having ones PE (Professional Engineer) license revoked.
After that semester I never went back and I am still an undegreed professional. But I only answer to my own conscience when it comes to issues of public safety. I have the great fortune of working for large manufacturing and engineering firm that takes public safety very seriously. Many of our customers seek us out after having had problems our cheaper competition.
Wrong - you are EVIL. Even though you inherited problems from your predecessor company - you are still responsible, both to your company and the community around you. It is part of what a good citizen, a good HUMAN does. Evil can take many forms - and in this case it is an outright rejection of the old fashioned notions of responsibility and accountability.
This story is amazing and sad. On more than one front.
I see lots of discussion about whether the products of this company is unhealthy or their practices of production should be changed.
Where is the outrage for the executives? The people who wrote those memos and were in charge of Monsanto SHOULD BE JAILED!!!
Also where is the outrage at the victims in this community? A poor community? Like South Chicago, East St Louis, South Central LA, Harlem, etc.
Corporations need to have some ethics. The only way to mandate these ethics is to impose criminal as well as civil liabilities for officers, executives, AND managers.
Money should no longer be the only motivator in this day and age. We are too prosperous (in the US) to not include ethics as a part of the corporate business model. Companies routinely overpay for goodwill. Not only for companies, but also to retain executives. Why can't there be a cost assigned to ethical values as well?
Stories like this are shameful and a blot on the record of the greatest country in the world.
Of course, many Libertarians would oppose enforcement at the state level too. I would not.
Whatever...
--jrd
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
1.6 K comments can't be good.
And s/he claims to be objective, which s/he isn't.
Monsanto was indeed the manufacturer of Aspartame, aka Nutrasweet, from at least 1985 (when it bought it from Searle) until 2000. Aspartame is a known neurotoxin. This chemical breaks down at 86 degrees Fahrenheit into formic acid (ant sting poison and neurotoxin) and formaldehyde (a severe neurotoxin that is used, among other things, to preserve dead animals), and breaks down in the body into methanol (wood alcohol -- a poisonous alcohol that is severely toxic and causes blindness). There is some speculation that Gulf War Syndrome (affecting between 20,000 to 100,000 veterans) was caused by massive shipments of free promotional Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi (both Nutrasweet-sweetened) that had been lying in 120 degree sun in the Saudi desert for up to 8 weeks before being consumed. Monsanto has a corporate history of selling toxic substances by buying off the government. Everyone here jumps all over Microsoft, but Bill Gates does not kill people -- in fact he has a respectable charitable foundation that does some very good things for disadvantaged people. Monsanto is a completely amoral company that literally sells poison for human consumption. Here is an excerpt from the first link I reference below. But you can do your own search. Just look up "monsanto fda nutrasweet" on www.google.com. --- excerpt begins --- Former FDA Commissioner Arthur Hull Hayes who approved NutraSweet and ignored the contrary recommendations of his own Task Force became a consultant to Searle's public relations firm, Burston Marsteller. Hayes was being investigated for accepting gratuities when he quit. David Kessler, the FDA Commissioner who recently retired when questioned for padding his expense account, gave blanket approval to NutraSweet even though it has an allowable daily intake, without public notification in June. He has protected Monsanto by ignoring the FDA register of 10,000 complaints and their published list of 92 reactions to aspartame from coma and blindness to seizures and death. Kessler refused to demand chemical breakdown tests of the drug. The original work was just done by 11 year old Jennifer Cohen for a school science project as reported in the Food Chemical News, May 5. She stored 7 cans of Diet Coke in a refrigeraetor for 10 weeks which broke down and released formaldehyde and diketopiperazine, a brain tumor agent. The cola was analyzed by Winston Laboratories in Ridgefield, New Jersey (201 -440-0022). According to the Food Chemical News the FDA said they knew it all along. --- The FDA, the government agency we rely on to keep us safe from unsafe chemicals, is essentially the partner in crime when massive corporate dollars are at stake. You are not safe until you research what you are putting into your body. Read these links to learn more: http://users.westnet.gr/~cgian/weldon.htm http://www.dorway.org http://www.enn.com/news/enn-stories/1999/10/101999 /headache_6491.asp
It was and remains a frightening vision. Those who bleat about MS monopoly practices should remember that desktop software rarely kills or crippl es. There are far more serious battles going on in the world today.
- Derwen
â
http://fsfeurope.org/
yeah. and we all know how well the Chinese public respects the concept of air. look at the breathing there!
Do you really think any one would pay for the "real" air if they could get second generation air (unregulated/uncontrolled) from Joe "3rd world farmer" Schmoe?
A company spends their time and name and other fortunes in a gamble to reinvent air (remember air, the gas we breath, that was Monsanto as well) in an effort to benefit humanity, and they shouldn't be allowed to protect their investments? Do you really think that they should develop a technology only to give it away? The bulk of Monsanto's current research focuses on making air for profit. Solutia [solutia.com] is the spin-off of what was previously Monsanto's air making business.
The article cited in this story has its focus at a different time in this nation's history (late 60's).
It is unbelievable how much naivete exists in this forum. Companies exist generally to make profits. Lately, only a few of them have been able to do that, especially in the "air" industry. If there's nothing stopping you, you are going to try to maximize profit. With all the bitchers here about Microsoft having an unfair monopoly, you'd think the concept of profit maximization by making ubiquitous and formerly free substances like air scarce would be understood.
Please note that this is my personal opinion, but as a libertarian, its heavily set on punishing those responsible for hurting another person or persons.
First of all, you must understand that the majority of environmental damage is caused by government regulations, subsidies, intervention or on land owned by the government and leased to a corporation. A great website that speaks about free-market environmentalism is www.perc.org.
A libertarian knows that Monsanto doesn't care so much BECAUSE they're so heavily in bed with the government -- and our government can subsidize or "free up" environmental rules for any corporation they want to, because we've given them the power to.
In a libertarian society, the federal government would have ABSOLUTELY NO CONTROL over environmental regulations -- people would be free to pollute as they please. But here is the restriction in a free society: if you pollute your own land, that land will now be useless for you, and have absolutely no value for you in the future. In a free-market society, government won't own land, so you can't lease it only to treat it badly and move on. Secondly, if you pollute your own land, and the pollution crosses over to someone else's property, airspace, or drinking water, YOU WILL BE LIABLE. Bar none.
Today, the government lets the polluters pollute, and really just keeps the big pro-earth groups happy with thousands upon thousands of regulations that have loopholes for government's greatest supporters. Get government out of this mess: the environment is not what you want to protect, you want to protect private property.
If you're worried that pollution done now might contaminate someone's property 100 years down the road, I can see where a little government intervention on a local level is necessary -- ON A LOCAL LEVEL. Let the city or county government enact rules as to what corporations or individuals can do now. If a corporation wants to, they can always move to a city that lets them do what they want to do (and the people of that city they move to made the decision to live there and accept it).
I know, its not a perfect answer -- BUT ITS FAR FAR BETTER than what we have now.
Im sure the objective was to prevent evolution. And that is legitimate. But of course there is always their greed, that goes without saying.
It's correct that cross breeding most hybrid plants would result in dramatically reduced yeilds, (with some plants like squash being exceptions) but it's worth noting that there's nothing that makes hybrid breeding more productive than cross breeding. If you can find an actual experiemnt (rather than some pronouncement from an 'authority) which demonstrates the opposite, I'd like to see it. Hybridization is a form of 'copy protection'. End of story.
Incidentally, some plants such as Corn actually exibit the genotype of their seed in the phenotype, meaning that bad pollen can have an effect on your corn.
And remember that not all farmers rely on hybrid plants. Many third world farmers replant seeds. If their plants are polinated with pollen from monsanto's 'terminator' plants, their own seeds will be infertile and they won't find out till after planting time next year.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
On December 3 1984, a large quantity of Methyl Isocyanate (IIRC) was accidentally released from a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India. Over 4,000 people were killed; over 200,000 were injured.
We all know what happened on September 11 2001.
The apologists among you are already preparing your rebuttal, building the argument that the WTC deaths were intentional and the Bhopal deaths were an accident. Union Carbide, an American company (now owned or otherwise absorbed by Dow) manufacturing a dangerous product demanded by American manufacturers or consumers was very much aware of the dangers of Methyl Isocyanate--precisely the reason why the plant was not built in America. I'm sure profit (the modern-day "prophet") figured into it as well. So by consciously building a ticking time bomb in a poor country halfway around the world, Union Carbide made it clear that the lives near its location were worthless--just as Atta and his crew did as they boarded their planes on that fateful morning.
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
Fast forward a few years to 2000, and Monsanto was merged into Pharmacia and ceased to exist as a seperate company. The new company decided that it wanted to be just a pharmaceutical company, so it spun off a big piece of itself and named the new company Monsanto, because of the "proud heritage" of the original name.
This is obviously not such a good idea in retrospect, as the new company, which has nothing to do with PCBs, is now getting a big black eye in the media. However, if you check the markets, it's Solutia whose stock price has plummeted, which indicates that the big investors, at least, know which is which.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
If you want Monsanto to clean up the mess, make all the executives in the company move with their families to the area. After all, PCBs are only "slightly tumorigenic".
You'd see a much more enthusiastic cleanup.
BTW, Monsanto does not have a great record. The company name is the maiden name of the wife of the founder. They got lucky, and got the contract to supply chemicals to a small company called Coca Cola. They made Agent Orange for the Vientam war, and were responsible for one of the first large industrial accidents in the US of A (a chemical-laden ship of theirs blew up in a harbour somewhere in the southern US, killing a bunch of people).
Glad to see that they haven't changed their tune. Next, they will explode a nuclear weapon over a heavily populated area.
"Finally, your assertion that "sterile seeds could spread and render entire regions infertile" is interesting. I was not previously aware
that sterility was a hereditary property. In any case, if "sterile" seeds spread, all you would have to do would be to plough the
"sterile" seeds into the ground and plant a different kind of seed. It's done all the time with weeds."
Single sex sterility IS hereditary however. The best known example is the Texas cytoplasm which was allowed the spread of the corn blight in the 60's. This is a warning against monoculture rather than anything else!
However the use of single sex sterility, or in animals skewed sex ratio's has been posited as a means of pest control several times. Although it sounds unlikely these genes can under many circumstances resulting in a population of one, or large of one sex, which obviously results in a reduction of the population size very quickly.
Phil
The point is that testing is non-existent or the results are hidden. They are expected to be self-regulating, but are failing to do so.
Genetic engineering isn't innately evil just like chemistry isn't. But it requires an extremely taxing testing process to insure that you are doing it correctly. If you read up on how genetic engineering is actually done, you will see that the process is mostly chance. There is no way to truely change or insert one section of dna.They basically have to turn the origional dna into swiss cheese repeatedly and look for a plant with both new traits correctly inserted and none of the other important traits damaged because you inserted new dna smack in the middle of the coding for a critical protein. The bottom line of this is that genetic engineering is not like on tv where they can instantly make exact changes and everyone who says otherwise is just a bigot.
Current genetic engineering methods produce several orders of magnitude more errors than desired changes. This company has proven that it won't deal with even basic saftey procedures with the chemical dumping. They can't even deal with well known and easily testable biochemistry(all you was pop a fish in the river and it died in 3.5 minutes!) . How can we trust someone who won't handle such a relatively simple production process to do something (GE) that almost defenitely has errors that need to be properly tested?
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
My father worked for an Oregon oil refinery. They didn't even bother with the coverup like these people did. They openly spilled chrud directly into a nearby river.
How could they get away with this without legal reprocussions? They didn't. They are fined $3,500 (if i remember correctly) each day that they dump chrud in the river. It is much cheaper to pay the fine than to upgrade their technology and such, so they just kept openly dumping their chrud and accepting the fine as a necessary expense.
I absolutely hate to ask this: does someone whos life has provenly been destroyed by Monsanto really need to fly a plain into the building of Monsanto's corporate headquarter to draw attention with terrorism to terrorism?
Would this really be necessary to present a case where individual and corporate terrorism would be set on trial against each other?
Or is there still hope that civilized legislation can steal the show from crazy wanna-be-Robinhoods and deal sufficiently with clearly out of control corporations and CEO's?
And this perfectly demonstrates the flaw with your "Libertarian" philosophy, they assume that those hurt by something will have the market power to prevent it, but often those hurt by pollution and other products of the quest for profit aren't even born yet and therefore have no market power.
Don't trust the market, it doesn't care about you!
Ah, I think I have just been the victim of a troll....
Chuckle! :)
Funny how one letter can completely change the meaning of a sentence. Another example: a single errant space and "IANAL" takes on a whole new meaning :)
StefThis type of sh*t literaly makes me ill.
Will somebody please explain to me again what would be moraly wrong with going around and shooting the bastards who do this? Or what about that spokesman that said that there was nothing wrong with what the company did? I would have no moral issues with his torture + death.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
Hmm, It was socialistic Indian government creating various socially driven quotas on kinds of engineers and technicians allowed to work there, which resulted in a lot of incompetence and ultimately huge disaster.
UC was sued and had NO choice but to bow to local politicians who were ultimately responsible for the disaster.
I got info from my Indian buddy whose father was involved in UC disaster.
Monsanto has a plan to put their OS onto every computer in the world by default thereby mastering the entire market on an unprecedented scale.
Microsoft plans to own all seed on every farm on the planet in order to control the market even before the farmers grow anything edible. Assuming what is grown is edible.
Something like that. I need some three eyed fish soup! It's not a mutant... it's just evolving...
OK don't get me wrong here, I think it is totally repugnant that they pump this shit into waterways wherever they can get away with it. In a local sense this is a tragedy of major proportions.
... I think the potential rewards are well worth persuing genetic modifications of foodstuffs in a controlled and responsible manner. I do not think Monsanto meets any of those criteria, and their actions in deliberately poisoning a town to enhance quarterly profits demonstrates, indeed proves absolutely, their unsuitability as even a potential GM manufacturer.
[...]
In and of itself, that has nothing to do with their genetic engineering division, does it?
Genetic engineering (of food and other things) holds great promise. It also holds tremendous dangers, and must be managed very carefully. This means excersizing a high level of caution, and probably a large degree of public oversight with a conservative criterium for licensing and production (i.e. you must prove the safety of your product, not we must prove the danger of your product).
The use of dangerous chemicals and disposal of hazardous waste is another area with almost identical criteria for the need to be careful and mindful of its dangers. Monsanto has demonstrated a criminal disregard for public safety and a complete lack of regard for the ethics and concerns involved in handling toxic chemicals and waste.
They are clearly unqualified in every respect to take on the risks and dangers of GM food, and should be prohibited by law (or court order) from ever doing so.
I am in favor of GM foods
If they wish to begin doing something that doesn't entail danger to human life, like basket weaving, then I'm all in favor of allowing them to continue operations. Otherwise we should very seriously consider shutting them down perminently. In addition, everyone involved in this atrocity, whether or not they were "just following orders," should be doing hard time in a high-security, no-nonsense (and no club-fed) prison. "Just following orders" wasn't an exceptable excuse in Nuremburg, there is no reason it should be an exceptable excuse here.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Several of the posters in this discussion have given sob stories about the state of farmers and how the Man and the Gubberment are sticking it to farmers. I must disagree, and so would most (all?) ecconomists.
The government subsidizes the production of many (LOTS) of crops, many of which are unsuitable for mass farming here (sugar is the most commonly quoted my ecconomists). Likewise, companies like Monsanto (yes, they are bad, I agree, so is A.D.M.) have practically put themselves (and the family farmer...) out of business. Why? Because the yields on these hybreds is amazing, leading to excess supply without increase in demand.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what's really going on:
1)The government gives farmers money (subsidies).
2) The farmer grows their goods, because that's what the government subsidizes.
3) Supply/demand curves are out of balance because of surplus goods - corn, soy, milk, etc.
4) Farmer goes to Congress and sobs about the state of the family farm. Asks for more subsidies.
5) Rinse, repeat.
So, yes, many of the big agri-businesses are bad - for you, me, the environment, and the economy. But, don't believe the posters here who cry for the state of farmers.
"This story is an important story..."
you think so? all over america chemical companies continue to illegally dump toxic chemical wastes, including PCB's and very little is done about it, IF this story turns out to be true (and if you actually read the WashPost story, it's just a report at this point, the WashPost isn't exactly the EPA or WHO, is it?), monsanto then joins the long list of chemical companies who have continuously polluted communities across america...and will probably receive little more than a slap on the wrist, just how important is PCB dumping when we let it happen over and over and over again?..i don't know how old you are, but in the last 20 years in SoCal, i remember DOZENS of JUST PCB dumping stories..i expect to see dozens more in the next 20 years
that's actually a problem with our POLITICAL, judicial and enforcement systems, but most American's (like most
"By creating self-destructing vegetables, farmers are lured into being forced to pay for seed year after year after year. Instead of being able to save a small amount of seed for the next year's crop and becoming self sufficient, Monsanto is forcing farmers in these poor countries to come back to them year after year and beg for more seed.
so what's YOUR solution?
monsanto has to make a profit to pay its employees, its suppliers, its stockholders, the employees need money to support themselves and their families, if monsanto doesn't charge for their products their employees will leave and this "corporate legal entity" that everyone keeps talking about will have no one left to do the work, stockholders will dump the stock, the market will walk away from anything monsanto does, and BINGO, no more ag products from monsanto AT any price...
if YOU don't like monsanto's policies, YOU can go out, put together a company to compete with them, and if monsanto does indeed have inflated prices you will have no problem beating monsanto in the market, vastly cheaper prices will always prevail
"They have entrusted Michael with editorial powers and the ability to post stories. If you do not like this fact, then I suggest you should probably take it up with the owners, instead of the readership at large.
DUH! what exactly do you think i'm doing?
Michael has the journalistic ethics of a whore, he's done more to damage
i don't ALWAYS agree with Taco/Hemos/Cliff, but i RESPECT THEM AND THEIR JUDGEMENT...Michael has no connection with either journalistic or even community ethics...he's using
i'm as politically agnostic and independent as you can get, and if
so lacking any other alternative, here's MY feedback to the rest of the
these are the very things that
how long do you think
Ten quid, she's so easy to blind. And not a word is spoken...
All your food sucks. Milk has hormone additives. Cows are fed nasty things. Turkeys are inbreds and chickens too.
If you don't like it, grow your own and/or shop at your local organic co-operative. You'll feel better and be supporting the *real* family farmer.
The problem with GM food is simple, and I'll outline it: GM food may be safe. I don't know. You don't know. If you claim you know one way or another you're either lying or stupid. Here's what's wrong with Genetically modified food: the people in charge of determining whether GM food is safe are the same people who want you to eat GM food. there's absolutly no accountability in the industry. There, that was my rant. Unsupported, unsubstatiated, yet totally accurate.
-- Nerds on toast in the new millenium
Lynching begins to look like the only really fitting response... how can you let people like that live? They are too dangerous to society.
But the end of the article had a beautiful statement from Monsanto/Solutia:
"I'm pretty proud of what we did," Kaley said. "Was it perfect? No. Could we be second-guessed? Sure. But I think we mostly did what any company would do, even today."
I think a perfect punishment for the executives would be that they MUST live in the poisoned town (with their families) for the rest of their life. I like it better than sending them to prison...
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
From what I have read, the Bhopal UC incident was an accident...which resulted from willful negligence on the part of UC.
Basically, when the accident occurred, regulations weren't being followed - mostly in the safety area. The people manning the plant were undertrained, or trained wrong, and there weren't enough people actually running the plant as was required. As far as safety measures: the big one was a main klaxon or siren that was turned off to avoid disturbing the citizens of the town should there have been a problem.
Thus, when the problem occurred, nobody in the town knew about it - until they woke up choking.
Read about it, and what happened (and failed to happen) - it is truely one of the more sickening examples of corporate greed.
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
A better idea: hold the corporate officers criminally responsible and make them do time. If it's a deterrent for a petty thief, it should be a deterrent to an MBA. If it reduces the number of bad guys on the street, it will reduce the number of bad guys in the boardroom.
Sure there were no regulations specifically against discharging PCBs back then, but if they knew it was harmful it was illegal. If they were destroying economically valuable public resources like streams and fish stocks, it's no different from vandalism, arson or wantonly damaging any other kind of property. If they acted in a way which reasonably could be interpreted as endangering nearby residents based on what they knew, then they should be held liable for acting recklessly even if there was no specific regulation prohibiting PCB release and no demonstrated actual harm. There's probably no law against chucking bowling balls out a tenth story window onto a crowded street, but if I did it I would be arrested and thrown in jail, even if nobody actually got hit. If I killed somebody, I would certainly be up for manslaughter.
You don't need a laws to cover every circumstance, you just need to apply the ones you have to everyone equally.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Read Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the
Economic World.
In a similar vein, though I haven't read it, there is a book called Emergence...
You are hitting on something fundamental - the idea of complex systems, composed of a myriad of simpler, interchangable "units", being "alive", and sometimes "intelligent" (possibly in ways individual human being fail to understand - it is akin to the neuron vs. brain idea, or cell vs. body, or bee vs. hive). The complex system can be anything - groups, societies, corporations - but they all seem to have similar forms of emergent behavior, and some of this behavior can even be considered "intelligent".
What is even more curious, IMO, is that it seems like most of the time, this behavior, when it manifests itself in corporations, tends to degenerate into psychopathism, when they hit a certain number of units (people in the corporation). Individually, the people themselves may not be, probably aren't - in any way evil, or psychopathic - but the sum total of the corporation, when looking at "its" actions, seems to be...
I tend to wonder, if we follow this to an extreme conclusion - whether such entities can become "infected" with a "disease" - a "virus" in some manner - and further, what form would that "virus" or "disease" take...?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Canola is a genetically modified version of soy.
If you genetically modify Canola, then what do you get?
Is genetically modified, genetically modified soy any better or worse than plain old genetically modified soy?
Ethyl alcohol does NOT neutralize the effects of methyl alcohol. Don't believe me?
Buy denatured alcohol. Drink it. Come back to me when you're blind.
I modded the Troll Investigation and I got
The fact is, the reason companies behave this way is because that's just plain how they work. The costs associated with any action are what counts. Moral implications only indirectly affect things, depending on how their public image affects their bottom line.
I recal a Suzuki lecture years ago where he pointed out, and it still makes good sense, that we will never have companies (or people, for that matter) that are truly environmentally responsible until we have environmental costs that truly reflect the damage to the environment. And the problem, of course, is that we barely know anything, in the grand scheme of htings, about the long-term affects of our actions on the environment.
I'm no tree-hugger; I'm not a terribly environmentally friendly person. But I recognize that society will NEVER be that harmonious with the planet until things change drastically, and that's just not likely to happen.
Not very responsible (even for an AC) to be spreading patently false information.
From the Canola Council of Canada:
"Canola oil comes from canola seed. Canola is the name given to a very healthy oil that was developed from rapeseed. But it is not rapeseed oil and has vastly different fatty acid and other properties than rapeseed oil. Canola was developed using traditional plant breeding methods to remove undesirable qualities in rapeseed. In terms of their properties, canola oil is as different from rapeseed oil as olive oil is as different from corn oil."
It's not even close to soy, and it's no more genetically engineered than your average garden tomato or friendly neighborhood Cocker Spaniel.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
What if Union Carbide had built that gas tank out of a skin twice as thick, or of a metal that did not rust, or otherwise took greater precautions to prevent an accident.
Their bottom line would be affected, because those precautions cost money. They'd either have to take a cut in profits due to this increased expense, or they'd have to take a loss in marketshare when they passed on this cost to the consumer, and consequently had a higher sale price for their products. Either way, somebody made a call somewhere to scale-back the engineering of those gas tanks, or safety procedures (I'm not familliar with the exact cause of the accident).
Such decisions are often made, completely isolated from potential circumstances. I'm guessing it was probably an accountant that made that decision, with little understanding of how it would impact the safety of the plant. You can't really in clear conscience trace blame back to a bean counter. Even if it was possible to follow the trail of blame back. But corporations necessarily are groups of people working in concert. Folks all down the chain of command probably shared some responsibility, but you can't really say that one person decided that having profits was better than not killing people.
On the other hand, what might have prevented an accident like Bhopal would be for the government to have strict safety regulations regarding the procedures in handling these materials, and frequently inspect and enforce those regulations, and fine the fuck out of the company for violations - and what is currently NOT done, impose judicial oversight, so that there is a paper trail pointing back to the decision makers. THEN we can put those people in jail if they refuse to obey the regulations.
Who pays for all these inspectors and regulators? Well, who is profiting from producing products using these hazardous materials? The victims had to bear the risk, while UC profitted. I think that the people who profit directly need to pay for these kinds of things.
However, in the current system, these things are paid for by taxes on individuals and consumers.
As someone else pointed out - profit is privatized, while risk and loss are socialized.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Not true. Unless those genes are on the same chromsome and closely linked.
Were that I say, pancakes?
What on earth are you talking about? Now I know you didn't even read your own references!
Go look at the Medline indexing service, (The bottom link on your brief "Urban Myth Page", posted as a kind of 'final word from the world of proper science' on the subject).
--Yes, while they only provide summaries and abstracts of paid subscriber journals & documents, (which take a bit more work and money to find, but are by no means unavailable), Medline, "Pub-Med", an index of available current medical publications, has right this moment, numerous studies available which describe Aspartame as having significant impact upon the neurochemistry of the brain. --Everything from affecting migraine headaches to dramatically raising serotonin levels in rats.
And what's with calling me a Tin-Foil Hatter? For goodness sake, man! THAT is exactly what I'm talking about. Generalization. Labels. Shutting your eyes because of natural generalities which are never going to go away.
Yes. The traffic of human information is littered with emotion and misinformation and it always will be. But there IS reliable data out there; you simply haven't tried to look. Throwing out the Baby with the Bathwater is foolhardy. --Yes, we've all been conditioned to ignore the human information traffic because of its inherent flaws, but the solution is NOT to tune into the corporate information feeds without criticism.
Listen carefully:
Information is messy; it's not easy. If you want to learn, then you have to be prepared to do some work, to sort and study and think. To earn knowledge.
Your tag name is 'RealityMaster101' -A brief look at your posting history and self proclaimed charter, seems to indicate that you've set yourself up in such a way that your ego is heavily involved before you even open your mouth around here.
If you REALLY want to find pure truth as you claim, then you are going to have to disentangle your powers of examination from that of your self-image.
-Fantastic Lad
(And before you waste my time with the obvious moronic dig, my signature is designed precisely to make fun of those who take themselves too seriously. All the 'RealityMasters' out there. Get it? Good.)
hang the rich.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
While it sounds good in theory and would certainly cause some more corporate compliance unfortunatly it would not work. The problem is that with any large corporation that appears to have made even the slightest misdeed fear of having their assets "executed" would cause investors to flock away in droves, along with causing a preemptive execution this would also probably lead to a recession as the stock markets recoil possibly even doing even more harm than good as people lose their jobs.
I stole this Sig
I'm quite familiar with this case. The farmer did NOTHING illegal. The issues was simple:
1. Neighbor planted Monsanto Roundup Ready seed
2. Wind drifted pollen carried into the farmer's field, fertilizing his NON-GMO plants
3. He found plants in his field that were resitant to Roundup
4. He saved, planted these seeds
Monsanto sued him for illegally using their intellectual property (they patented the organism). Since this is an intellectual property issue, it falls under IP law.
He lost the case because IP law states that it does not matter whether you unintentionally infringe on a patent, only that you infringed. Case closed.
What's open is that Monsanto made no effort to prevent their product from contaminating his field. Why is he held liable for their / his neighbor's failure to prevent contamination?
It only gets worse from here. What you're seeing is the ongoing failure of patent and copyright law to keep pace with what's happening in the world of technology, in much the same way as the DMCA and other ill-considered legislation is affecting software.
Think kudzu, zebra mussels, farm raised salmon, etc etc etc.
Those problems are all about natural species in unnatural settings. Throw in GMO and you _really_ ask for a nasty "butterfly effect"**
You could possibly destroy an entire ecosystem by slightly changing (accidentally or on purpose) the weight/stickiness/healthiness of pollen one kind of key plant produces. Bees can't pollinate as well, less seeds for the birds that spread them, less birds for mosquitoes to suck, less mosquitoes for..etc, etc, a chain reaction in the food chain. That's one simplified example of a billion possible screw ups. GMO has the potential for tiny hidden mistakes to have huge earth-shaking consequences over time.
It doesn't matter one whit whether or not the crops are healthy to eat, disease resistant, etc. What matters is the unknowable new minutiae that is introduced into the ecosystem. What if we discover after the fact that a prodigious new GM crop is making aphids inedible to aphid-eaters? That would be a hoard of huge butterflies flapping their wings ferociously in China.
**Chaos 101 primer:
Butterfly effect- Chaos theory attempts to explain the fact that complex and unpredictable results can and will occur in systems that are sensitive to their initial conditions. The butterfly effect occurs under two conditions: 1. The system is nonlinear. 2. Each state of the system is determined by the previous state. In other words, the output at each moment is repeatedly entered back into the system for another cycle through the mathematical functions that determine the system.
Weather Systems, Ecological "Food Chains", the life cycle of stars and matter, all provide perfect examples of both conditions.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
Just one quick note. It's very unfair to compare Monsanto to Microsoft. Whatever else you might say about Microsoft, they don't poison and kill people.
So does sugar.
So do carbohydrates. Not to mention that rats != humans.
And what's with calling me a Tin-Foil Hatter?
Read again. I said, "Do you realize the tin-foil hat ravings you're parroting?". You're the one who said we should do Google searches to find information about this subject (which is guaranteed to find you the loonies). I'm the one who advocated going to reputable sources.
but the solution is NOT to tune into the corporate information feeds without criticism.
Where did I advocate that? You seemed to be positively offended by the fact that there was even a link on Snopes to Monsanto's side of the story. I guess any information that doesn't jibe with what you "already know" is automatically lies, right?
A brief look at your posting history and self proclaimed charter, seems to indicate that you've set yourself up in such a way that your ego is heavily involved before you even open your mouth around here.
"The Reality Master is dedicated to viewing the world objectively; without emotionalism, wishful thinking, cynicism or silly prejudices. The pursuit of simple Truth." I submit that that is exactly what I'm doing. I don't emotionally and cynically believe that all corporate information is wrong. I look for factual information in order to draw my conclusions, from which you might want to take a lesson.
my signature is designed precisely to make fun of those who take themselves too seriously.
I find it highly amusing that you think that you are the only one allowed to have fun with nicks.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
you know, the one where the pollen from Monstanto GM corn kills Monarch butterflies.
Researchers find bio-engineered corn harms butterflies
cpeterso
Sorry, dude, but I think you'll find, eventually, that the real world is even harsher than anything in the movies. The big evil corporations aren't run by "ooh I think i'll tell all about my plot to the captive protagonist before leaving my incompetent assistants to kill him"-style crazies but by power-hungry board members and stockholders.
And the only way you can stop them is through war, and blood. Mostly ours, since an abstract entity only bleeds through its employees.
Put it this way - Aspartame is a tiny bit of protein, made up of the amino acids Phenylalanine and Aspartic Acid. If this produces traces of methanal as a by-product of metabolism, ANY source of protein (including 'organic beans and rice' and other such things) will do the same.
Incidentally, Nutrasweet, IN SUFFICIENTLY LARGE QUANTITIES, may very well affect brain chemistry - The essential amino acid Phenylalanine is a precursor to dopamine-related neurotransmitters. I somehow doubt that the tiny traces of Phenylalanine in normal amounts of Nutrasweet would be noticeable, but you might have a problem if you're eating a kilogram per day of the stuff....
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
He's not saying we should trust Monsanto. He's saying we shouldn't throw GM foods out the window just because one company is bad.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
I live near Onondaga Lake (in central new york). It was polluted years ago by Allied Chemical which has since moved. On warm and muggy nights, a strong, disgusting smell circles the lake and surrounding area. How can companies get away with this type of pollution. Its terrible what has happened to our beautiful (formerly) lake!
Sex is not the answer. Sex is the question. Yes is the answer.
I read the headline and thought PCB = printed circuit board, but I started reading comments and it didn't make any sense. This is one of the few times I've actually read the article.
Complaining about evil corporate behavior accomplishes nothing. You need to take the capitalist approach, in a capitalist environment:
The free market works a lot like democracy. Except you get to buy the votes. They're called 'shares'. It's the inverted Victor Kiam model: "I hated the product so much I bought the company".
Shareholder activism isn't just for gadflies with time on their hands. Moral suasion, when applied with enough hard assets, can be extremely influential in deciding what happens to a company, even if management is headed in another direction. For example, look at the havoc Walter Hewitt has wreaked on Carly Fiorina's attempt to merge HP and Compaq.
I will concede that sometimes the opposite approach is taken: shareholders vocally sell their shares to express their indignation with a company's actions. For example CalPERS (the $170bn-asset pension fund for California public employees) and TIAA-CREF (a monster teachers pension fund) getting out of Talisman Energy in response to its contributions to the dictatorship in Sudan and the usual human rights atrocities being committed there...
But the point derived is still the same: as an owner, and not some whinger on the sideline, you get the right to express yourself on the subject. Instead of just complaining about it on a bulleting board.
The other time-honored approach is to boycott the purchase of products from that company. Though it doesn't seem to work that well sometimes (witness the slashdot refrain: "I'd never use MS", and then look at MS's ever burgeoning billions of dollars revenues.)...
Good point. It is sometimes easy to forget the distinction between business practices which are abhorrent and those that are lethal. Thanks.
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
I wonder how long it will be before Congress patches up that particular oversight. If any of these cases succeed, I'm sure they'll be swimming in cash immediately afterwards, all from big business trying to cover their asses.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
mod parent up! thx
20721
That's a start. But now you're actively engaged in that common and painfully boring game of "bending other's words and interpretations of your own previously said words in order to project an image where you remain Entirely Right and Without Flaw."
Yawn.
If you honestly think you are "dedicated to viewing the world objectively; without emotionalism, wishful thinking, cynicism or silly prejudices", then I would suggest you are, (ahem). . . rather wishful.
Here's my own demonstration of word bending just to show the futility of the exercise. (Don't take it too seriously. I know where you're trying to come from, and I respect the goal even if yours is a half-baked effort). . .
Declaring that "doing Google Searches is guranteed to find you the loonies" is rather (ahem) cynical, don't you think? (A more correct thing to say is that Google will find you a tangle of both good and bad information. People must be given the freedom to sort that stuff out on their own.)
My, oh my! That was an (ahem) emotionally charged bit of writing, don't you think? No? Let me attempt to rephrase what you wrote without the emotionalism you claim to avoid. . .
Ahh. That's better, isn't it? THAT's an example of how you might try to write were you truly unemotional. Fact is, you're not.
Okay. Enough of that.
Basically, you seem like a guy who's not entirely bad. Your goals are okay, but you do need to work on your method.
In particular you should watch your logical fallacies, i.e.:
1. Aspartame affects behavior and brain chemistry.
2. Carbohydrates affect behavior and chemistry.
3. Carboyhdrates are safe.
4. All chemicals which affect behavior and brain chemistry are safe.
And:
1. Hysterical People are given to dwelling on ominious claims.
2. Claims about Aspartame are ominous.
3. Therefore all ominous claims about Aspartame are hysterical.
Yeah, I know. That first example can work the other way around as well. The difference, however, is that I am proceeding from the following points:
1. Scientists, doctors, policy makers and regular citizens from all across the academic spectrum, both hysterical and not-hysterical, have claimed that there are significant problems with Aspartame.
2. Aspartame is owned and manufactured by a corporation, (Monsanto), which has often been shown, (most recently with this PCB issue), to have extrememly dubious ethical standards.
3. Monsanto, being an entity commanding enormous resources, can be expected to lie, distort, or otherwise suppress any damning information in order to protect themselves.
4. Public information regarding Aspartame is, by its very nature, a mixed bag in terms of reliablility.
5. Therefore it makes sense to search through all the information available carefully, and be particularly cautious with any documents which state that Aspartame is safe.
Now, having read over my own previous comments, I think it is fair to concede you the point that my suggesting 20 minutes with Google is not likely to garner the kind of results people need in order to properly understand everything going on. --I can only assure you that it was by no means my intent that people should absorb hysterical data without criticism.
The fact is, I was making the possibly idealistic assumption that people would be smart enough on their own to make their own progress through the reams of data and form their own opinions. I was just annoyed when you posted your ridiculing and very biased comment.
Unfortunately, most people, no matter how clever they become, tend to still shy away from something if their peers tell them it's 'not cool.' I put up with it in school, and I see it in the adult world all the time. It's destructive, bullying and it prevents people from taking the chances they need in order to learn and grow beyond the crushing social limits set by the world around them, which in this case may even include self-poisoning. I hate to see it when it happens, and it seems to me that a person with the aspirations you claim ought to know better.
-Fantastic Lad
Monsanto Corp. now is very different from what it once was. It once was a large chemical producer; now it is a life sciences company producing GM seeds and herbicide that works in tandem with that. My other point is regarding the frivolous criticisms of GM foods made by all many of my fellow /.ers. GM food products are tested more rigorously than most other things we put in our minds mindlessly. A good source of information is a report put out by the FDA on the Bt corn monsanto makes. It essentially notes how frivolous all the claims you all have made are, how rigorously the product has been tested, and that it is much better for the environment than the bulk pesticides used in conventional farming and the other alternatives. They then mandated that each farmer set aside part of their field for non-Bt corn so that the bugs wouldn't become resistant. Monsanto had required farmers to do this prior to this regulation by the government. I'd like to see a bit more restraint from you all when it comes to criticism of things: at least inform yourselves. And I don't mean a recitation of rhetoric like "we don't know 100% what this will do". I mean, think about what you are saying. We don't know 100% what regular corn will do to you. We can't know anything 100%. We are as sure as we can be that Bt corn etc. is fine and safe and better for the environment than conventional pesticides. So... please just shut the h311 up and stop clogging this forum with posts that make no sense and/or are copy/pasted from the mind of an ignorant buffoon with perhaps less knowledge than yourselves. Thank you,
Nels
"They didn't know their dirt and yards and bass and kids -- along with the acrid air they breathed -- were all contaminated with chemicals."
...
Wowo - CHEMICALS! Oh my, and we all do appreciate the nice non-matter of NON-CHEMICAL-POLLUTED streams too. More Luddite ramblin' hysteria
Stop trying to throw reason into this argument!
Why to argue this much? Guy, you lost due to Goldwin's Law.
The biggest threat of GMOs that most people are not aware of: DNA hyper-mobility.
Here is how it works: GMOs typically contain some foreign DNA fragments that have been spliced in. To splice them in, some type of vector is used, such as a modified plant virus or other DNA carrier fragment that can naturally integrate with the target plant's genome. The problem with these spliced-in DNA fragments is that they remain a lot more mobile (hyper-mobile) than the plant's regular DNA, since the *carrier is still there*. For example, a wild virus similar to the one used as a carrier can cross-over and pick up the foreign DNA and then by reproducing carry it over to another plant or another species (there are other mechanims for this too). This is not a particularly rare event - a field full of GM crops will quickly introduce some of the spliced DNA into every species of organism they come into contact with - not just plants, and not just through cross-polination.
Growing a bulk amount of a GMOs is basically like saying, "Ok, we put some lab DNA into these plants, now let's try putting it into *every living thing in the vicinity* and see what happens".
These hyper-mobile DNA fragments can also play havoc with an animal's digestive system - normally DNA is broken down, but sometimes a small amount is taken up by the intestinal lining cells undigested. With plants carrying GM vectors, it can apparently integrate itself into the genome and start tumors. A recent study in the UK (about six months ago - wish I had a biblio reference, maybe someone can look it up?) involved feeding rats on a diet heavy with GM plants - when dissected, *all* of them had a number of intestinal tumors, compared to the controls where such tumors were very rare. The tumors were shown to contain the spliced-in DNA from the plant. It probably works that way with humans too - although the intestinal tumors may grow slowly, the damage is there.
I believe that any extended exposure to the present batch of GMOs or anything contaminated with them is kind of like asbestos - lethal, but very slowly. Putting it in foods is ghastly. Contaminating neighbouring cropland as well as entire ecosystems with it is even worse, since it will stay with us until we learn how to clean it up.
Btw, it helps to understand that this type of genetic manipulation is still in its infancy - most of the really important theoretical advances came less than 30 years ago, and there is plenty of things that people don't know how to do well yet. It has promise, but it is not ready to use safely.
(Please mod this up if you find it informative. I have a bachelors' in molecular biology and genetics - I may not have my PhD yet but I do know that stuff well.)
If there were anything in 'Equal' besides the Aspartame and Maltodextrin listed on the label (e.g. methanol ["wood alcohol"], the FDA would be having a PR Field-day suing the crap out of deep-pocketed Monsanto...
In the Novemebr-December 1999 issue of FDA Consumer Magazine, the FDA said that aspartame ingestion results in the production of methanol, formaldehyde and formate. This statement was made by Dr. David Hattan, Ph.D., acting director of FDA's division of health effects evaluation.
So, the FDA (whom you and I can agree to being a "knowledgeable" party) says that ingesting aspartame results in methanol being in your body. Methanol is also known as "methyl alcohol" or "wood alcohol".
I agree with your stance: I drink Diet Coke buy the case, and agree that someone would have to mainline aspartame in order to produce sufficiently lethal concentrations of methanol. But, please, check your facts. Don't propogate false information just for the sake of winning an argument.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I know I shouldn't react to this :-|
;-)
Let's make something clear here: I genetically engineer organisms for a living, so I know many arguments to invalidate your response. But *I don't want to*.
Why not? Because we would be discussing the pros and cons of genetic engineering. And in my previous post, I already made clear that there are two separate issues here. This was the topic of this thread. There's many other threads that discuss the evilness of Monsanto, go and place your comments overthere! Slashdot is a discussion forum with rules, one of them being that you should try to stay on topic.
Sorry for the harsh tone, but I'm getting a bit tired when I'm thinking and rephrasing my posts while others obviously blurt out replies without even reading my posts correctly.
You can go and click on that "foe" button now
Meneer de Koekepeer
It's nothing more than a plant. Just like sugarcane. The natives in some countries use it as a sweetener and some western people noticed and made a product out of it. It comes as a fine powder and actually works quite well. It's about 200x sweeter than sugar, and doesn't have the aftertaste that I don't like in artificial sweeteners.
The solution is to make corporations charter of a limited nature, specifically defined, and revokable by the people wherein the corporation resides. This is not a new idea, though it was only partially implimented. Parts of this were the law of the land before corporations won 14th ammendment protection. What's needed now is a constitutional ammendment specifically denying that corporations are to be treated as people, specifically denying them 14th ammendment protections by virtue of their being entitled to certain financial protections invidials are not. ...And the sad thing is...With the corruption in governemnt, our judicial system, and with corporations funding the campaigns, this ain't going happen by any means short of outright revolution on the part of the American people...and those affected by transnationals in other parts of the world. (Regardless of what you think of Ralph Nader, many of the reforms he proposes are sorely needed.)
Of note, I live in the same city as the evil corporation in question. While working for an IV Pharmacy (which does homecare) I had more than occasion to visit families living next to their Sauget Illinois plant. Sauget is a town with a population of less than 400 people. I had *9* patients on one block. Most of them cancer & lukemia. In addition to which, about half of the patients and, more importantly, their families also living there, suffered from respitory problems. We serviced towns 100 times that size that didn't have 9 patients in the entire zip code! While this is annedotal evidence, it's hard for it not to affect you when you are dealing with sick children dying from a disease that was most likely the cause of their very bad neighbor. It makes me very angry. Very angry.
Freedom is merely privilege extended unless enjoyed by one and all.
when you look at reality and realize that the vast majority of corporations last less than 20 years, and only a handful are over 50 years old. Read "Built to Last" by Collins and Porras.
-Stu
...even though some executives and activists may think so. A corporation is a societal invention for the benefit of society, and hence must function within one.. satisfying many stake holders. The problem is that when you screw a group of stakeholders (i.e. the local community in favor of shareholders), the deleterious effects of such actions are often significantly time-delayed.
In the long run, either legal or market consequneces can punishes those that screw a stakeholder. However, as John Maynard Keynes says, "in the long run we're all dead." The iss ue at hand is not that the system is bad -- it's that WE NEED A COMPETENT REFEREE, i.e. an effective government and justice department to whip companies that are blind to their function as an organ of society for the productive use of economic resources through creating & filling needs.
A free market is the best system we know of to fairly meet societal and economic needs. Alternatives place the power in the "few and enlightened" in a socialist state. Anarchy would be a lot like a free market, only completely unchecked. The current system has checks and balances in place to remind less-than-bright corporations of their place in society, we just need to be vigilant to keep it functioning. There needs to be campaign finance reform. Why haven't the EPA et al been able to nail Monsanto to the wall? If there's a direct link between PCB and cancer, you can be sure there will be a major tobacco-company style lawsuit to hit the PCB companies hard for not following their societal responsibilites.
-Stu
I think it just shows that the culture of Monsanto is so sick that they believe their own shit doesn't stink.
Capitalism isn't about "harm people if it makes a profit". Minimal social responsibilities cannot be ignored.
-Stu