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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.
When a discussion about genetically modified food comes up, I always say that the technology itself is great, but also, the management and some stock holders of Monsanto need to get a one way ticket to Siberia.
The other is that the pro-GMO people insist that anti-GMO means that if you eat GMO, that you die.
GMO is bad because of mono crop issues.
GMO is bad because resistance to herbicides induces over-use of them.
GMO is bad because GMO has been used to have plants make toxins. So GMO food can contain poison. And there are no regulations about this or any other use of GMO.
GMO is bad because it has been used to make kill-genes, even if only in the lab, and between that and mono-crop the results of a wide-spread release could cause massive destruction.
GMO is bad because Monsanto claims it's harmless, and when Monsanto says something, the opposite is more likely true.
But the pro-GMO crowd doesn't talk about the reasonable objections. Instead, it's all about the strawman.
Learn to love Alaska
Those that cling to "glyphosate causes cancer" and "Monsatan is the devil" are the same folks who believe in chemtrails, vaccines causing autism, and countless other health conspiracies.
Not true. I don't know enough to have an opinion on glyphosate as a carcinogen, I don't believe in chemtrails, I advocate childhood vaccination, and I get flu shots every year. And I still say Monsanto is evil, because they've proved it over and over again. BTW, thanks for the "Monsatan" moniker - I'm definitely going to use that.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Sorry to break it to you, but plants are whores. Pollen season is literally mass plant jizzing everywhere trying to find any and all possible mates. So, it's basically impossible to do GMO properly if it depends in any part on wild plants not cross breeding.
Uh, yea, good luck with that. Seriously, your suggestion only makes sense if one starts with the premise that all of humanity has been forced underground and the only means of production is reliant on artificial light. Otherwise, there's no amount of your suggestion that works to scale that's containable. Everything else and you're basically putting up wire fences and crossing your fingers that your algae doesn't fall into the ocean or a nearby lake because of a tornado, flood, etc.
Yes, energy is key. Do you have an idea of how much energy is collected by plants currently to produce the food supply and how much energy would be required to make a much more compact system of waste processing to provide for your hypothetical system? Look into all the Biosphere projects that failed horrible. Get back to me when you're not just hand waving about energy as if even that is a solvable thing.
This is yet another technology where there is a clear need for strong regulation, IMO. Gene manipulation is a technology that has huge potential implications, both good and bad; it can - and probably will in the future - be used to improve crop yields and add disease resistance, and it is of course already being tried out in gene therapies for a number of serious conditions. We could produce many important chemicals - drugs and other - in a cheap and easy way by modifying a suitable micro organism. But as Monsanto and others have demonstrated, companies and individuals driven by short-sighted greed can potentially cause enormous harm, not the least of which is the damage to public trust in this technology. Maybe this is too radical, but I am probably in favour on a complete ban on the commercial exploitation on gene editing technology until we have a set of strong and clear, global regulations in place; all research into this should be publicly funded and published in open access journals.
"I buy it because it's a shortcut to confirming that a food product is all-natural."
You've been mislead by marketing bullshit and you'd better go re-read the entirety of the USDA certification for Organic status.
Because plenty of non natural things are allowed.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.