Unveiling the Monsanto Legacy – Glyphosate, GMOs, and the Shadow of Corporate Deception
An independent research done by Anthony Samsel, a science consultant and Dr. Stephanie Seneff, a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reveals how ‘Glyphosate’ destroys human health and greatly aids in the development of multiple chronic diseases and conditions, such as: Autism, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Colitis, Infertility, Obesity, Depression, Chronic diarrhea, Cardiovascular disease, and Cancer.
Their report was published in the journal, Entropy, highlighting the issue of glyphosate residues found in the most common foods, like, corn, sugar, wheat, and soy, as to how this dangerous herbicide produced by Monsanto under their patented brand ‘Roundup’ enhances the damaging effects of other food-borne chemical residues and toxins to disrupt the normal bodily functions and induce disease.
Meanwhile, Monsanto obviously claims Roundup is completely harmless to both humans and animals. You may wonder why animals are included in their claim. Most people are totally unaware that even animals are fed these GMO foods laden with this dangerous herbicide. So in case you eat meats, there is a double dose of Roundup finding its way into your body to cause even greater harm. To justify this is harmless, Monsanto claims that the mechanism of action it uses to kill weeds is the shikimate pathway, which is absent in all animals.
What they fail to tell you is that the shikimate pathway is very much present in bacteria, which is the key to understand how it causes intense harm to both humans and animals. The bacteria in our bodies outnumber the cells by a ratio of ten to one, which means for every cell there are ten microbes, and all of them have the shikimate pathway. So the mechanism of action, which Monsanto claims that it uses to kill weeds, will also kill your healthy cells.
What Monsanto as the leader of the modern biotech industry has done to amass unimaginable amounts of wealth is to turn food into poison. Forget about the harmful effects of Roundup, the genetic alteration of a crop itself leads to major health problems. With all the GMO crops there are two hazardous factors to contend with; the genetically modified seeds, and the toxins from Roundup. In their quest to control the world food market they have left nothing untouched; from mustard to okra, rice, soya, cauliflower, oil, sugar, corn, potatoes, wheat, and many other crops. Forget about vegetables, rice, or oil, even meats are laden with these harmful ingredients as animals are being fed the same diets.
Once they convince the farmers or the relevant authorities of any nation, the route to amassing wealth forever is established, as the GMO seeds can be owned as their property and royalties collected for an indefinite period. The farmers will have to depend on them for every seed of every crop they grow. If Monsanto control the seed, they control not only the food markets, but the populations of the world. This is a power beyond any wildest insane imagination and much more powerful than controlling the human race through guns, nuclear arsenals or dictatorial regimes.
The story of Monsanto’s GMO’s began in the highly elite circles of American politics, where they got its way by exerting undue influence over policymakers. One of their Attorney, Michael R. Taylor, was first appointed as deputy commissioner for policy in 1991 at the FDA—the US Food and Drug Administration that is responsible for all food approvals. Then he was moved to USDA-United States Department of Agriculture in 1994 as Administrator of the Food Safety and Inspection Service. During his tenure at both places he made crucial decisions that led to the approval of GMO foods and crops without proper testing as per the laid out rules and regulations. After completing this assigned work at FDA and USDA, this gentleman returned to Monsanto in 1996 as the company’s vice president for public policy. Then in the year 2000, he published two important documents on which USA aid for African agriculture is based to promote GMO seeds.
The surprising element is that these genetically modified foods and crops were adopted without proper testing and consumer labeling, in spite of serious unanswered questions over their safety. Monsanto’s influence stretched to such an extent that the US Food and Drugs Agency completely ignored warnings of their own scientists about how these genetically modified crops could cause great harm to human health. Their connections and political clout was clearly demonstrated when President Obama appointed the same Michael R. Taylor in January 2010 as Deputy Commissioner for Foods at FDA. The plot further thickened when Obama signed the short-term spending bill in March 2013 to prevent Government from shutting down. Neatly slipped inside this bill was section 735 called the Farmer Assurance Provision or the Monsanto Protection Act, which would allow USDA to approve planting of GMO crops even if the judiciary declared them unsafe for human health.
On their website Monsanto claims to be an Agriculture company, who aims to help farmers produce healthier food to meet the needs of a growing population, to protect and preserve this planet we call home, and to help improve lives everywhere. But these claims are far away from actual reality and their past history, and to stifle concerns about their products they’ve always indulged in misleading advertisements, concealment of scientific evidence, and in many cases, bribery. The real story of Monsanto began in 1901, when the company was founded by a chemist. It went on to become one of the largest chemical companies of the 20th century with their bestselling and most controversial
product known as PCBs, which were chemically created oils used worldwide as coolants and lubricants for electrical equipment. For over four decades Monsanto minted millions of dollars from PCBs, until they were banned in the USA in 1977 and all over the world in the early 80’s.
The ban came after years of protest from various circles and groups, due to which the relevant authorities in the USA and other countries were forced to conduct tests to determine how harmful the PCBs were on human health and the environment. It’s not as if Monsanto didn’t know how harmful they were, as clear documented evidence has been unearthed to confirm they hid decades of pollution and harm inflicted on the people and the environment of the town where these dangerous products were produced. In January 2002, the Washington Post published an article highlighting how Monsanto polluted and poisoned the city of Anniston in Alabama, where they produced PCBs at a local factory. The article illustrates a long chain of deceit, greed, and secrecy that was maintained for over 40 years to produce this highly toxic product. During this period Monsanto regularly poured toxic waste into Anniston creek and offloaded millions of pounds of PCBs into open-pit landfills.
In 1966, their managers found that fish in that creck were turning belly-up, spurting blood and shedding skin, but they kept this secret. Later, they found fish in another creek with 7,500 times the legal permissible level of PCBs, but Monsanto decided there was no reason to use expensive means to limit discharge of the toxic waste. To stifle down the concern of the managers, they eventually hired a biologist named Denzel Ferguson to conduct studies around Anniston. Ferguson came in with tanks full of bluegill fish and submerged them at various locations. All the fish turned on their sides within 10 minutes and were dead in less than 4 minutes.
It was as if they had been dumped into battery acid. Ferguson concluded that the waste water flowing from the Monsanto plant was extremely toxic and represented a potential source of danger to children, and he advised them to clean up the creeks and stop dumping further waste. But Monsanto did not do that, even though the warnings continued. Eventually they were forced to spend over 40 million dollars on cleanup efforts and over 700 million on legal settlements on various lawsuits, which uncovered documents that revealed the story of secret corporate actions to hide the gross damage these chemicals could cause to the environment and human health.
