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Monsanto Leaks Suggest It Tried To Kill Cancer Research On Roundup Weed Killer (rt.com)
Danny Hakim reports via The New York Times (Warning: article may be paywalled; alternate source): Documents released Tuesday in a lawsuit against Monsanto raised new questions about the company's efforts to influence the news media and scientific research and revealed internal debate over the safety of its highest-profile product, the weed killer Roundup. The active ingredient in Roundup, glyphosate, is the most common weed killer in the world and is used by farmers on row crops and by home gardeners. While Roundup's relative safety has been upheld by most regulators, a case in federal court in San Francisco continues to raise questions about the company's practices and the product itself.
The documents underscore the lengths to which the agrochemical company goes to protect its image. Documents show that Henry I. Miller, an academic and a vocal proponent of genetically modified crops, asked Monsanto to draft an article for him that largely mirrored one that appeared under his name on Forbes's website in 2015. Mr. Miller could not be reached for comment. A similar issue appeared in academic research. An academic involved in writing research funded by Monsanto, John Acquavella, a former Monsanto employee, appeared to express discomfort with the process, writing in a 2015 email to a Monsanto executive, "I can't be part of deceptive authorship on a presentation or publication." He also said of the way the company was trying to present the authorship: "We call that ghost writing and it is unethical." Mr. Miller's 2015 article on Forbes's website was an attack on the findings of the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a branch of the World Health Organization that had labeled glyphosate a probable carcinogen, a finding disputed by other regulatory bodies. In the email traffic, Monsanto asked Mr. Miller if he would be interested in writing an article on the topic, and he said, "I would be if I could start from a high-quality draft." The article appeared under Mr. Miller's name, and with the assertion that "opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own." The magazine did not mention any involvement by Monsanto in preparing the article.
The documents underscore the lengths to which the agrochemical company goes to protect its image. Documents show that Henry I. Miller, an academic and a vocal proponent of genetically modified crops, asked Monsanto to draft an article for him that largely mirrored one that appeared under his name on Forbes's website in 2015. Mr. Miller could not be reached for comment. A similar issue appeared in academic research. An academic involved in writing research funded by Monsanto, John Acquavella, a former Monsanto employee, appeared to express discomfort with the process, writing in a 2015 email to a Monsanto executive, "I can't be part of deceptive authorship on a presentation or publication." He also said of the way the company was trying to present the authorship: "We call that ghost writing and it is unethical." Mr. Miller's 2015 article on Forbes's website was an attack on the findings of the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a branch of the World Health Organization that had labeled glyphosate a probable carcinogen, a finding disputed by other regulatory bodies. In the email traffic, Monsanto asked Mr. Miller if he would be interested in writing an article on the topic, and he said, "I would be if I could start from a high-quality draft." The article appeared under Mr. Miller's name, and with the assertion that "opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own." The magazine did not mention any involvement by Monsanto in preparing the article.
The point is that they tried to suppress the research.
The question is how risky is glycophosphate that they felt the need to try to suppress research.
This is like Donald Trump and Jared Kushak's meeting with the russians.
A) no meeting reported...
B) there was a meeting with one russian lawyer about adoptions and was meaningless.
C) uh.. okay so there was a meeting with 2 russians.
DEF) Increasingly more russians.
G) Okay so it was supposed to be about russians providing damaging clinton/DNC information
H) Uh.. Okay so I do have a relationship with the participants going back for years and I did say, "I love it!" when I thought it was about clinton.
I) Oops.. some of the russians are ex intelligence officers and/or have intelligence training.
Monsanto is at step B).
Is it going to turn out that glycophosphates are as carcinogenic as saccharine (not much/really have to literally eat the stuff by the handful) or is it going to be as carcinogenic as dioxins (which were also wonderful and safe until they were not).
Do we stop at step B.. or are we going to step R?
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Or lock the farmers into having to buy their seeds from one certain manufacturer. Essentially, GMO allow a few companies to control the world's food supply.
And then there's lawsuits due to patent and other forms of IP issues. "Sorry, you're gonna starve now because you infringed our copyright."
That's not what he said or implied though. He pointed out that there are ways in which GMOs can be used correctly and for the benefit of everyone to get better food with less energy/demand on the soil.
The whole problem with the GMO-discussion is that people mix up 2 things, namely the scientific process of genetic modification, and the gigantic corporations that seek to make profit using the process - sometimes in ethically questionable ways.
All of the food we eat is 'genetically modified' in the sense that we've been breeding and artificially selecting for desirable traits in plants and animals for millenia, now it's just become possible to do it at way faster timescales and increasing accuracy. The fact that there is corporate greed and instances seeking to take advantage of this process for their own personal benefit at the expense of other people does not invalidate the process of gene modification itself anymore than criminals and scammers using the internet for malicious ends makes the whole of the internet a bad thing.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
The real problem is not discovering yet another corporation lying about how dangerous their product is. The real problem is nothing is being done about it. There's not a fucking thing that will come out of these latest "shocking" revelations. Never has. Never will.
You want to know how insane it is? If sanctions were actually taken against Monsanto for poisoning food crops and killing people, their lawyers would point to the tobacco industry and say, "Hey! No fair! How come they get to kill people and we can't?!?"
Greed N. Corruption runs capitalism today, and the lack of action taken against deadly corporations shows that it is sanctioned at the highest levels. The reason is quite simple; resource management is a responsibility held by every government, and population control is a key component of that responsibility.
Before you label that a conspiracy, take a good hard look at how many deadly products are legal today. Why would Greed ever want to cure cancer? There's trillions to be made treating it instead and it ensures deaths. Outlaw tobacco? Yeah right. That's another Win-Win industry.
Death is no longer merely a side-effect of life. It is now manufactured.