Dr. Andreas Carrasco remained in the
locked car and watched with fear as the crowd beat the vehicle and
shouted at him — for two hours. His friends who didn’t make it into the
vehicle were not so lucky. One ended up paralyzed. Another unconscious.
The angry crowd of about 100 were likely organized by a local rice
grower who was furious at Carrasco for what he was trying to do that
day. Carrasco’s crime? Telling people that Roundup herbicide from
Monsanto causes birth defects in animals, and probably humans.
Carrasco is a leading embryologist at the
University of Buenos Aires Medical School and the Argentinean national
research council. He had heard the horrific stories of peasant farmers
working near the vast fields of Roundup Ready soybeans — plants
genetically engineered to withstand generous doses of Monsanto’s
poisonous weed killer. The short-term impact of getting sprayed was
obvious: skin rashes, headaches, loss of appetite, and for one 11 year
old Paraguayan boy named Silvino Talavera, who biked through a fog of
herbicides in 2003, death. But Carrasco also heard about the rise of
birth defects, cancer, and other disorders that now plagued the peasants
who were sprayed by plane. He decided to conduct a study.
Exposing Roundup’s 30 year cover-up of birth defects
Carrasco injected minute amounts of
Roundup into chicken and frog embryos, and sure enough, the offspring
exhibited the same type of birth deformities that the peasant
communities were seeing in their newborns. A report by the provincial
government of Chaco soon followed, confirming that those living near soy
and rice fields sprayed with Roundup and other chemicals did in fact
have higher rates of birth defects — nearly a fourfold increase between
2000-2009. (Child cancer rates tripled during the same period.)
Regulatory agencies had given Roundup a
green light years before, claiming that it was free of such problems.
However after Carrasco’s findings were published, European authorities
quietly pushed their official re-assessment of Roundup, due in 2012,
back to 2015. And the German Federal Office for Consumer Protection and
Food Safety, charged with responding to Carrasco’s findings, issued a
statement claiming that the Argentine scientist must be mistaken;
earlier studies conducted by manufacturers of Roundup (including
Monsanto) had already demonstrated that Roundup does not cause birth
defects.
But in June 2011, a group of
international scientists released a report detailing a massive cover-up
that went back to the 1980s. The very industry studies cited by the
German Consumer Protection office in fact showed just the opposite.
Roundup did increase birth defects. Using scientific sleight of hand,
Europe’s regulators had ignored statistically significant increases in
birth defects, and so did every other regulatory agency worldwide.
Monsanto has relied on these misleading statements of safety by
regulators ever since, using them to deny that Roundup causes birth
defects.
Monsanto secretly poisoning the population, again and again.
Covering up toxic effects of their
products was not new for Monsanto. They’re experts at it. In 2003 the
company paid $700 million in settlements for secretly poisoning the
population living next to their PCB factory in Anniston, Alabama. Court
documents showed the arrogance of Monsanto executives made aware of the
product’s effects: “We can’t afford to lose $1 of business,” was the
written response in a secret company memo.
Leaked documents also revealed that EPA
scientists had charged Monsanto with fraudulently hiding the toxic
effects of Agent Orange — effectively preventing Vietnam veterans from
collecting compensation for cancer, birth defects, and other symptoms of
exposure.
When Carrasco first reported his
findings, he got the usual treatment. His results were vehemently
denied, and he was attacked in the press by biotech advocates. Four
highly aggressive men showed up at his office and tried to interrogate
him, but he wasn’t physically attacked. Not until he tried to give a
speech on his results in the small Argentine farm town of La Leonesa on
August 7, 2010. That was unusual.
Punishing messengers worldwide
When Dr. Irina Ermakova came to her
office, the meaning of the charred remains of papers on her desk was
unambiguous — it was yet another attempt to intimidate or punish her. So
was the theft of samples from her laboratory, and the continuous verbal
attacks by biotech advocates. Her crime? She fed rats genetically
modified Roundup Ready soy, and reported the results.
Those results were clearly not what the
sellers of GM soy wanted us to hear. After female rats were fed GM soy,
more than half their babies died within three weeks. The rat pups were
also considerably smaller, and in a later experiment, were unable to
reproduce. Offspring from mothers fed non-GM soybeans, on the other
hand, died at only a 10% rate, and were able to mate successfully.
Journal ambushes scientist
After Ermakova presented the results as
“preliminary” at an October 2005 conference, the biotech industry’s
damage control teams kicked into high gear. At the center of the
coordinated attack was the editor of the journalNature Biotechnologyand
four biotech advocates. According to Ermakova, the editor contacted her
and told her he was going to include a description of her study as a
sort of essay in the journal. She was then asked to summarize her
research over the phone, or if she preferred, in writing. Ermakova, a
senior scientist at the Russian Academy of Sciences, was surprised by
the request and asked instead to properly submit the findings for peer
review and publication. Oh no, the editor insisted, he just wanted a
summary. She sent it in, and the journal sent Ermakova back a proof of
the article, with her named as the author.
But that was just a “dummy proof.” What
was actually published was quite different. Instead of an essay, the
journal had inserted scathing criticisms from the four biotech advocates
after nearly every paragraph. Many of Ermakova’s citations were also
stripped off and replaced with those chosen by the biotech detractors —
to weaken her case. It was an academic lynch mob, conducted by four
biotech apologists: Bruce Chassy, Vivian Moses, Val Giddings, and Alan
McHughen. All acknowledged that they had no personal experience in the
type of research they were condemning, but that didn’t stop them from
throwing every type of challenge they could think of at Ermakova.
The purpose of the attack was
transparent. It allowed the biotech industry to claim from that point
forward that the study showing high death rates was officially refuted
and discredited. It also served as a warning: if anyone wanted to defend
Ermakova (or do similar research) they too would be mercilessly
attacked.
The problem was that nearly all their
criticisms were utterly baseless. About 75 % of their arguments, for
example, were simply complaints that she didn’t provide sufficient
detail. Now remember — she was told toonly provide a summary.
Her request to the editor to submit complete details was denied. It was
quite a setup. When the details of this ambush were made public,
independent scientists chargedNature Biotechnologywith an unethical “premeditated attack.” At least one letter called on the editor to resign.
It didn’t happen. Instead, international
pressure against Ermakova got so intense, her boss told her not to do
any more studies on GMOs. One of her colleagues even tried to comfort
her by suggesting that perhaps the GM soy could solve the human
overpopulation problem. (She wasn’t comforted.)
Real life confirms research:
GM soy = High Infant Mortality for rats
The main valid criticism against
Ermakova’s research was that she failed to conduct a biochemical
analysis of the feed. Without that, we don’t know if some rogue toxin
present in the bag of soy flour might have been responsible for the
astonishing death rate and stunted growth in her experiment. But
subsequent events at her laboratory suggest otherwise.
After Ermakova repeated the test three
times with similar results, the supplier of rat food used at the
facility began using GM soy in the formulation. With all the rats now
eating GM soy, Ermakova couldn’t conduct any more experiments (she had
no controls). After two months, however, she asked her colleagues at the
lab about the mortality rate in their rat experiments. It turned out
that 99 of 179 (55.3%) rat pups whose parents were fed GM soy-based rat
chow had died within the first 20 days. Thus, whatever caused the high
death rate does not appear to be confined to the one batch of GM flour
used in her experiment. Both the study, and the subsequent
laboratory-wide mortality rate, are published in the Russian
peer-reviewed journal Ecosinform.
Horrific reproductive disorders
Other studies on Roundup Ready soy also
show scary reproductive problems. Ermakova showed that the testicles of
rats fed GM soy changed from the normal pink to blue (not published).
Peer-reviewed research from Italy also showed changes in mice testicles,
including alterations in young sperm cells. A Brazilian team found
changes in the uterus and ovaries of female rats. The DNA of mice
embryos functioned differently, compared to those whose parents were fed
non-GM soy. And when hamsters were fed GM soy for two years, by the
third generation, most lost the ability to have babies. The offspring
grew at a slower rate and the infant mortality rate was 4-5 times that
of the non-GM soy group. Many also had hair growing in their mouths.
When the Austrian government tested
Roundup Ready corn (which was also engineered to produce an
insecticide), mice had fewer – and smaller – babies.
It’s not possible to know if the
reproductive damage was due to the genetic changes in the GM crops, the
high residues of Roundup in the GM soybeans and corn, or some other
reason. But the American Academy of Environmental Science is among the
medical organizations that don’t need more animal studies before issuing
a warning. They urge all doctors to prescribe non-GMO diets to
everyone.
Omnipresent Roundup literally falls from the sky
Although eliminating Roundup Ready soy
and corn from our diet will certainly reduce our intake of Roundup, a
recent study suggests that getting our exposure down to zero is not
possible. In the Midwest during the growing season, Roundup is found in
60–100% of air and rain samples, as well as in streams.
The omnipresence of Roundup in the US is
due in large part to the more than 100 million acres of Roundup Ready
crops. As farmers pour on Monsanto’s weed killer, weeds are learning to
adapt and withstand the poison — so farmers pour on more. In the first
13 years since GM crops were introduced, the use of herbicide-tolerant
crops resulted in an additional 383 million pounds more herbicide. And
due to the emergence of superweeds (now found in 11 million acres), the
increased use of Roundup is accelerating dramatically.
USDA solution? Even more Roundup
The USDA has a unique response to this mounting threat:Add more Roundup.
In January 2011 they deregulated yet another Roundup Ready crop,
alfalfa — which is widely used for animal feed. Only 7% of the more than
20 million acres of this crop typically gets any herbicide applied to
it. But that’s about to change, since Roundup Ready alfalfa will soon be
drinking Roundup in a hay field near you.
Not content with just the alfalfa, on July 1 the USDA told Scotts
Miracle-Gro that it could introduce Roundup Ready Kentucky Bluegrass to
lawns, golf courses, and soccer fields around the nation, without any
government oversight.
So now we have Roundup in our food,
animal feed, air, rain, and streams, and soon it will be sprayed in high
doses where our children play on the grass. It’s not just birth defects
that may soon plague America as a result. Roundup is also linked to
cancer, endocrine disruption, lower sperm counts, abnormal sperm, human
cell death, miscarriages, and other disorders. But it’s also linked to
billions in profits for Monsanto. No wonder they are working overtime to
silence the scientists and cover-up the findings. .......What if people knew
the truth?
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