Another Cosmos script Neil deGrasse Tyson read maybe he should have paid
more attention to regarding the situation with short-sighted
corporate monopolies misusing cherry-picked science to promote
their profits at the expense of all of us and the only planet we’ve got.
Talking about the fall of the ancient Mesopotamia civilization, the script Dr. Tyson read for Cosmos Episode 11, The Immortals, says: Continue reading
In his recent misstatements about GMO foods,
Neil deGrasse Tyson has fallen for what he called the misuse of the
authority of science, in
Episode 7 of Cosmos, the Clean Room, which recounted Clair
Patterson’s discovery of lead pollution by leaded gasoline.
That use of lead had been promoted and defended
by Robert E. Kehoe’s “scientific” papers.
The script Tyson read (but did not write) said: Continue reading
With GM crops come herbicides, which breed resistant weeds.
This has happened in about a decade for the worse mutants.
We can reverse the problem by reversing the spraying,
using plowing, cultivation, and crop rotation instead.
Mark Jeschke wrote for Pioneer Dupont, Crop Insights: Weed Management in the Era of Glyphosate Resistance, Continue reading
Pesticide poisoning has rapidly increased in Argentina as Monsanto-seed pesticided crops ramped up. Meanwhile in Georgia, 90+% of common crops already are doused in pesticides. What effects are all those poisons having on our own children and adults?
Michael Warren and Natacha Pisarenko wrote for AP today, Argentines link health crisis to agrochemicals,
Argentine farmworker Fabian Tomasi wasn’t trained to use protective gear as he pumped pesticides into crop dusters. Now at 47, he’s a living skeleton.
Schoolteacher Andrea Druetta lives in a town where it’s illegal to spray agrochemicals within 550 yards of homes, and yet soy is planted just 33 yards from her back door. Recently, her boys were showered in chemicals while swimming in their backyard pool.
Sofia Gatica’s search for answers after losing her newborn to kidney failure led to Argentina’s first criminal convictions for illegal spraying last year. But 80 percent of her neighbors’ children surveyed carry pesticides in their blood.
Meanwhile, German researchers found pesticides in all samples of urine, and back in the U.S.A. and Canada, researchers found pesticide metabolites in 95% of schoolchildren tested.
90+% of cotton, soybeans, peanuts, and corn around here are doused in agrochemicals, and even Continue reading
Will we listen to French farmer Paul François, who sued Monsanto for nerve damage due to inhaling Lasso weedkiller, and won last year? Monsanto appealed, but François just won
“Farmers need to understand that those who speak for them are businessmen who defend other interests, very lucrative for the businessmen, who do not care about farmers’ health or the health of those around us.”the appeal, too. Now the court is gauging losses to determine penalties for Monsanto.
This after back in 2009
France convicted Monsanto of lying
about its claims that Roundup was “biodegradable” and “left the soil clean”.
And Argentinean tobacco farmers
are suing Monsanto in New Castle County Court, Delaware, saying
Monsanto
“knowingly poisoned them with herbicides and pesticides and subsequently caused ”devastating birth defects” in their children”.
These same Monsanto herbicides and pesticides are sprayed
on most fields around here, and they’re just as much
poisons here as in Argentina or France.
Paul François answered questions from Pierre Penin for Sud Ouest (southwest France) 8 February 2013,
Continue readingThere’s quite the controversy about that recent study that shows that “inert” ingredients in Roundup are actually toxic. Apparently Dr. Séralini hit a nerve.
Some critics are making up stuff:
“The EFSA requested access to the raw data” —Jon Entine
That turns out not to be true:
No. EFSA has not requested raw data for the study as this information is not required at this stage of the review process.” —EFSA.
Who previously actually did refuse to release raw data?
Monsanto only released the raw data after a legal challenge from Greenpeace, the Swedish Board of Agriculture and French anti-GM campaigners.
Here’s the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA)’s rather vague statement about the recent study and EFSA’s FAQ clarifying that statement.
Here’s a much more substantive response from scientists supporting the Séralini cell toxicity study. The last item of that response:
CRITICISM: GM has been in the food chain for years in the US. Why isn’t there evidence of people and animals suffering more tumours or dying earlier? Why aren’t Americans “dropping like flies?”
RESPONSE: Most GM crops are fed to farm animals, which have relatively short lives either for meat or dairy production and so there is probably not enough time for tumours to develop.
Americans have been eating GM food (soya, maize) for only a relatively short time in significant quantities in processed foods. So it may be too short a period for long-term effects such as tumour formation to be noticeable. However, we should also note that there is no labelling of GM foods in the USA and no monitoring of the population for ill-effects, so if GM food were causing ill health this would be going undetected.
Ill effects of Roundup went mostly unstudied until scientists in places like Austria (the first study above) and France (the second study) and Canada and Continue reading
Roundup (you know, the stuff that’s sprayed on cotton, soybeans,
peanuts, and corn and drifts across the road) causes DNA damage
even when diluted down to 450 times less than what’s used in agriculture,
according to a scientific study from February 2012.
Cytotoxic and DNA-damaging properties of glyphosate and Roundup in human-derived buccal epithelial cells, by Verena J. Koller, Maria Fürhacker, Armen Nersesyan, Miroslav Mišík, Maria Eisenbauer and Siegfried Knasmueller, Archives of Toxicology Volume 86, Number 5 (2012), 805-813, DOI: 10.1007/s00204-012-0804-8.
Glyphosate (G) is the largest selling herbicide worldwide; the most common formulations (Roundup, R) contain polyoxyethyleneamine as main surfactant. Recent findings indicate that G exposure may cause DNA damage and cancer in humans….
Since we found genotoxic effects after short exposure to concentrations that correspond to a 450-fold dilution of spraying used in agriculture, our findings indicate that inhalation may cause DNA damage in exposed individuals.
It’s probably not even the “active” ingredient, glyphosate, that’s causing this DNA damage, more likely one of its “inert” ingredients.
Sayer Ji wrote for Greenmedinfo 15 October 2012, Research: Roundup Herbicide Toxicity Vastly Underestimated,
Continue readingSo, we now know what pesticides are doing to bees. What are they doing to humans? Well, we know that, too: lower IQ in children, organ disruption, miscarriages, birth defects, and infertility.A recent study conducted by a German university found very high concentrations of Glyphosate, a carcinogenic chemical found in herbicides like Monsanto’s Roundup, in all urine samples tested. The amount of glyphosate found in the urine was staggering, with each sample containing concentrations at 5 to 20-fold the limit established for drinking water.
-jsq
According to
Americas Program Report:
A study released by an Argentine scientist earlier this year reports that glyphosate, patented by Monsanto under the name “Round Up,” causes birth defects when applied in doses much lower than what is commonly used in soy fields.Why should Argentina care? Continue readingThe study was directed by a leading embryologist, Dr. Andres Carrasco, a professor and researcher at the University of Buenos Aires. In his office in the nation’s top medical school, Dr. Carrasco shows me the results of the study, pulling out photos of birth defects in the embryos of frog amphibians exposed to glyphosate. The frog embryos grown in petri dishes in the photos looked like something from a futuristic horror film, creatures with visible defects—one eye the size of the head, spinal cord deformations, and kidneys that are not fully developed.
“We injected the amphibian embryo cells with glyphosate diluted to a concentration 1,500 times [less] than what is used commercially and we allowed the amphibians to grow in strictly controlled conditions.” Dr. Carrasco reports that the embryos survived from a fertilized egg state until the tadpole stage, but developed obvious defects which would compromise their ability to live in their normal habitats.