Monsanto Emails Raise More Questions About Collusion and Roundup Safety

On August 2, 2017, documents released as part of a lawsuit against Monsanto raised more questions over whether or not the mammoth biotech company suppressed information about the potentially carcinogenic nature of its Roundup weedkiller and its primary ingredient, glyphosate. [1]

Glyphosate is one of the most widely-used weedkillers in the world and is available for both agricultural and home use.

It came to light in early 2017 that the same EPA official responsible for evaluating the cancer risk associated with glyphosate may have colluded with Monsanto to tilt research on glyphosate in favor of Monsanto’s claim that the chemical is not carcinogenic to humans.

The allegations led the EPA’s inspector general to launch a probe into the matter in May, 2017.

As of August 2, 2017, more than 75 documents containing over 700 pages, including text messages and discussions about payments to scientists, were posted for all the world to see by attorneys who are suing Monsanto on behalf of people who allege Roundup caused them or their loved ones to develop a type of blood cancer known as non-Hodgkin lymphoma. [2]

Read: Widow Sues Monsanto for Husband’s Wrongful Death

More than 100 of the lawsuits have been consolidated in multidistrict litigation in federal court in San Francisco. Similar lawsuits are pending in state courts, including Missouri, Delaware, and Arizona.

The lawyers claim they will send copies of the documents to European authorities, the EPA’s OIG, and to the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA).

The OEHHA is being sued by Monsanto for officially listing glyphosate as a carcinogen under the state’s Proposition 65 law.

According to the newest document leak, Henry I. Miller, an academic and outspoken supporter of genetically modified (GM) crops, asked Monsanto to draft an article for him that all but mirrored one that appeared under his name on Forbes’ website in 2015. [1]

Miller is a notorious American lobbyist who tried to discredit scientists who linked tobacco use with cancer and heart disease to protect the industry.

In the Forbes article, Miller attacked the findings of the International Agency for Research on Cancer’s (IARC), a branch of the World Health Organization (WHO), which labeled glyphosate a probable carcinogen in 2015. Several other regulatory bodies have challenged that finding, and Monsanto tried to get the IARC to retract the link to cancer.

The documents show that when Monsanto asked Miller if he would be interested in writing an article on the topic, he responded:

“I would be if I could start from a high-quality draft.”

The article was published under Miller’s name, with the assertion that “opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own,” and with no mention of Monsanto’s involvement in the writing of the piece.

Scott Partridge, vice president of global strategy for Monsanto, defended Miller’s Forbes article by calling it a “collaborative effort, a function of the outrage we were hearing from many people on the attacks on glyphosate.”

Partridge went on:

“This is not a scientific, peer-reviewed journal. It’s an op-ed we collaborated with him on.”

Forbes removed the article from its website on August 2, 2017, and said that it ended its relationship with Miller over the matter.

Mia Carbonell, a Forbes spokesperson, said:

“All contributors to Forbes.com sign a contract requiring them to disclose any potential conflicts of interest and only publish content that is their own original writing. When it came to our attention that Mr. Miller violated these terms, we removed his blog from Forbes.com and ended our relationship with him.”

Even former Monsanto employee John Aquavella appeared to view the “collaborative effort” as dishonest and unethical, writing in a 2015 e-mail to a company executive:

“I can’t be part of deceptive authorship on a presentation or publication.”

He added:

“We call that ghost writing and it is unethical.”

A Monsanto official said Aquavella’s remarks were based on a complete misunderstanding and that the situation had been “worked out.” Aquavella has changed his story, as well, saying in an e-mail to The New York Times that “there was no ghost writing” and that his remarks had actually been about an early draft and a question over authorship that has since been resolved.

The documents also suggest that Monsanto scientists weren’t wholly confident in the safety of glyphosate or the other ingredients in Roundup – at least not confident enough to guarantee Roundup does not cause cancer.

Read: Dangerous Surfactants in Glyphosate Herbicide Slip Passed EU Regulators

In an e-mail dating back to 2001, a company scientist wrote:

“If somebody came to me and said they wanted to test Roundup I know how I would react – with serious concern.”

In 2002, a Monsanto executive wrote in an e-mail:

“What I’ve been hearing from you is that if this continues to be the case with these studies – Glyphosate is OK but the formulated product (and thus the surfactant) does the damage.”

A different Monsanto executive said in a 2003 e-mail:

“You cannot say that Roundup is not a carcinogen … and we have not done the necessary testing on the formulation to make that statement.”

However, she added that “we can make that statement about glyphosate and can infer that there is no reason to believe that Roundup would cause cancer.”

handshake

Additionally, the documents show that A. Wallace Hayes, the former editor of the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology, has had a contractual relationship with Monsanto – something which Hayes vehemently denies.

In 2013, while Hayes was still editor, he retracted a crucial study which found that Roundup, and GM corn, could be carcinogenic to rats, causing premature death. Biotech trolls and shills point to this deceptive retraction as proof that any research indicating that glyphosate causes cancer is bunk.

In an interview, Hayes said that he was under no contractual obligation with Monsanto at the time of the study’s retraction, and was paid only after he left the journal.

He explained:

“Monsanto played no role whatsoever in the decision that was made to retract. It was based on input that I got from some very well-respected people, and also my own evaluation.”

Hayes was fired from the journal in 2015, after hundreds of scientists queried the publication to find out why the Roundup study had been retracted, and arguing that it was giving into pressure from the biotech industry.

Sources:

[1] The New York Times

[2] The Huffington Post

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About Julie Fidler:
	Julie Fidler is a freelance writer, legal blogger, and the author of Adventures in Holy Matrimony: For Better or the Absolute Worst. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and two ridiculously spoiled cats. She occasionally pontificates on her blog.

Forbes attacks self-reliant homesteaders as delusional moochers

It’s always interesting reading when someone smug and sanctimonious writes a clueless diatribe about another group of people being smug and sanctimonious. So when I saw that an economist for Moody’s and Forbes had written an op-ed calling self-reliant homesteaders “delusional,” I knew I’d be in for some misinformed hilarity.

The article, entitled, “Dear Homesteaders, Self-Reliance Is a Delusion” was published a couple of days ago on the Forbes website. You’ll be forewarned that the article won’t be deep in the first paragraph, when the author presents his claim to knowledge about self-reliant living comes from the fact that he is “a big fan of shows about doomsday preppers, homesteaders, survivalists, generally people who live off the grid.”

And the well-informed opinion of this arbiter of self-reliance?

…there’s a central delusion in these shows that is never far from my mind when I’m watching these shows: off the grid people are not self-reliant, but instead are mooching off of the civil society, government, and safety net the rest of us contribute to…

The people in these shows often describe a very romantic vision of the lives they have chosen the ethos underlying it. They describe themselves as fully self-reliant, and criticize the rest of society as being dependent and lacking in this self-reliance. It is morally superior, the story goes, to provide for yourself, take care of your own needs, and often, be prepared to survive if society collapses.

First, let me segue a little bit and tell you about the author. According to his bio on Economy.com:

Adam Ozimek is an associate director and senior economist in the West Chester office of Moody’s Analytics. Adam covers state and regional economies, as well U.S. labor markets and demographics. Prior to joining Moody’s Analytics, Adam was Senior Economist and Director of Research for Econsult Solutions, an economics consulting company. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Temple University and his bachelor’s degree in economics from West Chester University.

So, based on this, I’m going to guess that homesteading and off-grid living aren’t his jam. I mean, he might head down to the Westtown Amish Market there in Pennsylvania, but I’d be willing to place money on that being his closest brush with any real, live, self-reliant homesteaders.

His ill-conceived argument seems to be mostly focused on health care. He is baffled about what will happen if a homesteader becomes ill or gets injured.

On Live Free Or Die, a man in his mid sixties named Colbert lives in the Georgia swamps alone….I always wonder what will happen if he slips and falls, and can no longer provide for himself. He’ll likely end up receiving hospital treatment paid for with Medicare, and perhaps end up in an assisted living center paid for by Medicare as well.

Or…

Another example from Live Free or Die is Tony and Amelia, a couple who live on a simple, off-the-grid homestead in North Carolina. When I watch them I wonder what would happen if one became extremely sick, and simple, off-the-grid home medicine couldn’t treat them. Would they say “we’ve chosen our fate, and now we die by it”, or would they seek treatment in a hospital they couldn’t afford which would be covered by the hospital’s charity care or perhaps Medicaid?

One thing that Dr. Ozimek is missing is the fact that most homesteaders are tax-paying citizens. Does he think that living on a homestead exempts one from property taxes? Does he suppose that their vehicles don’t have license plates or that their fuel is purchased without the requisite state gasoline tax? Or that maybe they have some special card that lets them buy things like feed without paying sales tax? Perhaps homesteading equipment like tractors and tools and off-grid appliances are likewise purchased without any gain to “society.”

As well, he’s under the assumption, based on his vast body of knowledge gleaned from watching TV, that self-reliant homesteaders don’t make any money or have any insurance. I know homesteaders who are retirees from other jobs who have a fine pension and excellent health insurance. I know others who make a good living with their homesteading endeavors. And there are still others who live simply after working for years to pay cash for their homestead, or families in which one spouse works a full-time job to support the homestead.

But, Ozimek, whose informed point of view comes from only the most extreme of the group featured on for-profit-and-ratings television shows, doesn’t understand that. He continues to espouse the superiority of the non-agrarian lifestyle:

If we all lived “self-reliant” lives like Tony often implores us, spending most of our time on basic agricultural subsistence, then modern hospitals couldn’t exist. It’s only because most of us choose to not live agrarian “self-reliant” lifestyles that this care would be available to Tony, Amelia, and perhaps someday, their children. And what if both of them become too injured to work the land anymore? Would they starve to death, or would they survive off of the social safety net our government provides, like food stamps?

In fairness to Tony, Amelia, and Colbert, perhaps they would refuse the modern medical care and modest safety net in the case of an accident or illness, and would simply choose to die. I don’t think most homesteaders would, but we don’t know.

Yeah, because homesteaders can’t do anything but homestead.

Some people are producers and other people are consumers.

Ozimek thinks that someone with the extensive skills required to live off the grid would be completely unable to find employment and would have no option but to become a welfare recipient should their homesteading endeavor fall apart.

What he’s missing is that his cushy “civilized” lifestyle is completely reliant on the type of people he scorns. He forgets that someone, somewhere is growing his food. Someone, somewhere, is assuring that his energy reaches his home. Someone is ensuring that his plumbing works, someone is repairing his furnace if it breaks, and someone is transporting the goods he purchases to the store, where someone will sell him those goods.

But, that’s what happens when someone is only a consumer and not a producer. They think that producers are somehow less worthy, and that if they couldn’t produce what the consumers consume, they’d be totally out of options.

The cool thing about self-reliant homesteaders is that we aren’t one-trick ponies. We can produce all sorts of things and provide all kinds of services. It’s called “having skills.”

Most self-reliant homesteaders aren’t reality TV stars.

Since his entire argument is based on the TV programs he watches, the author doesn’t understand what self-reliance means to those of us who aren’t reality television stars.

It means:

• We provide a lot of our own food because we prefer to know where it comes from.


• We raise our own meat because we object to the way factory-farmed animals are treated.


• We use our own sources of power because maybe we’re green at heart or maybe we just prefer not to be tied into the “smart” grid.


• We learn to make our own products for cleaning, bathing, and making life pleasant because we don’t want to bring chemical toxins into our homes.


• We’d rather skip the middle man and spend our time actually making the things that most people work for hours to purchase from someone else who made them.


• We are far less likely to spend time at the doctor’s office because a) we aren’t huge fans of pharmaceuticals, b) we can take care of small things ourselves, and c) our healthier lifestyle means we tend to be less likely to be ill. (Although this isn’t always the case – even self-reliant homesteaders can get sick. And when we do, we use our insurance or we pay for it with savings. Just like everyone else.)


• We don’t need as much money because we just don’t need as much stuff.

But to someone who buys all of their food and other goods from the store and gets all of their medicine from the pharmacy, it can be difficult to understand the satisfaction that comes from evading those places.

But, safety…

Of course, if self-reliant homesteaders pass all of the Forbes columnist’s other tests, he can still dismiss their achievements by going full-blown statist.

Yet even if one refuses help and care, however, they still benefit from the modern civil society thanks to the private property protections, rule of law, and military that provide them with safety and security.

Many off-the-grid folks like to fantasize that their personal fire arms collection and self-defense skills are actually why they are safe. But how far would this take them in a society without the rule of law, an effective government, and law enforcement? The homesteader who is confident their security is in their own hands should go live off-the-grid in Syria and find out how far self-protection takes them.

And it’s not just police and a military that keep homesteaders safe. It’s also widespread prosperity. In the developed world, a basic education is available to all, and most people who want a job can find one. Living in a prosperous, modern economy means that homesteaders can take a good bit of their own safety from violence for granted and roving bandits are not likely to take their homes from them.

So, by the mere fact of our existence in this country, according to Ozimek, none of us are self-reliant. It boggles the mind that this fellow successfully wrote and defended a doctoral thesis.

This is how reliant people justify their reliance.

I guess what it boils down to is that this is what helps Ozimek and people like him justify living their lives without any practical skills. If things did go sideways in a long-term kind of way, who is going to be better off: a person who can claim a Ph.D. in economics or someone who can actually produce food?

The fact is, the less we require from society, the less power that society has over us. Our lifestyles give us some distance from the hustle and the bustle. We don’t have to make as much money because we don’t live in the consumer matrix that engulfs so much of society. We are content to live simply instead of hustling from one non-productive activity to another.

Most of us don’t eschew all the benefits of living in a modern society. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Having a corporate job doesn’t preclude growing your own tomatoes any more than having a herd of goats precludes having health insurance.

There is a joy in making a meal that came entirely from your own backyard that these people will never get to experience, and having spent many years in the corporate world, I can tell you which provides the most satisfaction for me.

In this society where nearly everyone is digitally connected 24 hours a day, it’s nice to step away from all that and break the addiction to constant stimulation. It’s nice to not always be trading the hours in your day for the things that someone else made while you were working on something that, if we’re being honest, is kind of pointless in the grand scheme of survival.

If Dr. Ozimek wants to talk about delusions and superiority, he could find all the inspiration he needs by taking a look in the mirror.

Hat tip to The Survival Mom

Via The Organic Prepper 

How 8 Men Have Become Richer Than Half of the Entire World’s Population

January 18, 2017   |   Shaun Bradley

(ANTIMEDIA) Research and advocacy group Oxfam International released a new report on Monday that outlines the latest developments in global economic inequality. Unfortunately, the results validate previous concerns that these massive imbalances would only accelerate. The number of people who control more wealth than the poorest 50% went from 62 to 8 in just one year. With half the world’s net worth now in such few hands, it should be easier than ever to bring awareness to this ongoing trend — but finding a solution is far more complicated.

Oxfam used Forbes’ list of billionaires and new information from Credit Suisse to reach their conclusion. The eight individuals named are Bill Gates; Amancio Ortega, founder of fashion house Inditex; Warren Buffett; Mexican business magnate Carlos Slim Helu; Jeff Bezos; Mark Zuckerberg; Oracle’s Larry Ellison; and Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York.

Although many people with resources like these have made tremendous contributions to society, the question of how obligated they are to contribute to the common good still remains. After all, their fortunes have the potential to completely reshape the world for the better, but the problem arises when government dictates how much should be taxed and where that money will go. The public sector’s track record of wasting and mismanaging funds is unmatched and can only be rationalized by the economically illiterate. In an ideal world, bureaucrats would be fiscally responsible and impervious to corruption, but reality is never so utopian.

The rapid consolidation of wealth by so few showcases who the current government policies have benefited most. Artificially low interest rates and money printing, which have sent stock markets soaring for nearly eight years, have only helped solidify the elite’s hold on the financial world. They can borrow money for next to nothing and buy up huge stakes in companies, all while enjoying profits courtesy of the Federal Reserve’s stimulus programs.

Government regulations may stem from good intentions, but they can easily create a dragnet that ends up targeting those they were intended to help. While normal people are losing their jobs, seeing rent skyrocket and health care costs explode, the State has been propping up those it really serves.

In the report, Oxfam vaguely lays the blame at the feet of corporations:

“Businesses are the lifeblood of a market economy, and when they work to the benefit of everyone they are vital to building fair and prosperous societies. But when corporations increasingly work for the rich, the benefits of economic growth are denied to those who need them most. In pursuit of delivering high returns to those at the top, corporations are driven to squeeze their workers and producers ever harder – and to avoid paying taxes which would benefit everyone, and the poorest people in particular.”

Since the financial crisis began, the 1% has been scapegoated continuously, but complaining about an abstract hierarchy won’t help the millions of people living on less than $2 a day. If substantial changes are going to be made, the focus needs to be on finding hard evidence of tax evasion and unethical business practices on an individual level rather than demonizing anyone with substantial wealth. Verifiable information is what sways public opinion, just like the Panama Papers did by taking the first step in exposing some of the world’s richest people for utilizing tax havens and loopholes to avoid being held responsible. Instead of indiscriminately blaming all those who have achieved success, reports like this could act as a blueprint to help put names and faces to those anonymous adversaries who have avoided accountability.

In this age of information, the opportunity to seek individual justice lays with every journalist and activist. When people group others into left-right, rich-poor, or privileged-oppressed, for example, the uniqueness of each individual experience is lost. The inequality seen across the planet is heartbreaking, and any person with a shred of empathy should want to help. Unfortunately, the solution is rarely State intervention. The tool used to remedy this situation must come from grassroots origins. As government’s management of resources demonstrates, there is no other viable alternative. By inspiring others to take action voluntarily, we can build a foundation that doesn’t rely on the threat of violence and use of force for progress.

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This article (How 8 Men Have Become Richer Than Half of the Entire World’s Population) by Shaun Bradley is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Shaun Bradley and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article to edits@theantimedia.org.