Science Is No Longer Truth: Death of
Democracy and Knowledge
August 25, 2015
Story at-a-glance
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The federal government and US state land managers use
glyphosate preferentially to “battle” non-native plant
species
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While creating a war against invasive plants (many of which
are beneficial to the environment), genetically modified
crops were touted as a sustainable solution
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DuPont hid the toxic health and environmental effects of its
non-stick chemical PFOA for decades, even though they had
evidence showing it caused cancer, birth defects, ulcerative
colitis, thyroid disease, and more
By Dr. Mercola
You’ve probably heard of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide. One of the
most widely used herbicides in the world, in the US it’s used most
often on
genetically modified (GM) Roundup Ready crops.
The chemical can be sprayed directly onto the GM crops, which are
modified to withstand it, while other living plants in the vicinity
wither and die.
What may come as a surprise is the fact that Roundup isn’t only
used by farmers growing GM crops (not that that’s a small group
– Roundup Ready soybeans make up 94 percent of US soybean acreage,
for instance).1
The federal government and US state land managers also count
themselves among Monsanto’s clients, as
glyphosate – the active ingredient in Roundup – is the “weapon
of choice for battling all sorts of invaders.”2
As noted in a Harper’s Magazine expose, a 2014 study by
the California Invasive Plant Council revealed that more than 90
percent of the state’s land managers used the compound.3
On what, exactly? The fight against non-native and “invasive”
plants – a fight that is itself mired in controversy because many
non-native plants are actually beneficial and some have been around
for centuries…
US Government Spends $1 Billion a Year on Glyphosate and Other
Chemicals to Kill Off Plants
According to Harper’s, “Last year, the federal
government spent more than $2 billion to fight the alien invasion,
up to half of which was budgeted for glyphosate and other poisons.”4
This includes the eucalyptus tree in California, which was
brought from Australia during Victorian times, the Monterey cypress,
and more than 450,000 other trees in the Oakland/Berkeley area of
the state that are slated to be destroyed for “wildfire-risk
reduction.”
The federal government even describes invasive species as one of
the most serious threats to the environment yet, as Harper’s
explained:5
“Defining ‘native’ and ‘invasive’ in an ever-shifting
natural world poses some problems. The camel, after all, is
native to North America, though it went extinct here 8,000 years
ago, while the sacrosanct redwood tree is invasive, having snuck
in at some point in the past 65 million years.
The National Invasive Species Council defines the enemy
as ‘an alien species whose introduction does or is likely to
cause economic or environmental harm or harm to human health.’
But the late, great evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould
dismissed such notions as ‘romantic drivel.’
Natives, he wrote, are simply ‘those organisms that first
happened to gain and keep a footing,’ and he ridiculed the
suggestion that early arrivals ‘learn to live in ecological
harmony with [their] surroundings, while later interlopers tend
to be exploiters.’”
The “invasive” eucalyptus tree, for instance, was planted by the
hundreds of thousands in the 1870s, as it was renowned for its grace
and appearance. The tree can withstand fires and irrigates soil by
absorbing moisture from fog through its leaves and funneling it
through its roots, which sounds more like an environmental
benefit than a threat…
Residents Outraged by New York’s Plan to Destroy 200-Acre Reed Marsh
Phragmites, or the common reed, is accused of crowding out
plants, fish, and wildlife to the extent that, in Delaware,
glyphosate is sprayed and re-sprayed annually on a 6,700-acre area
of the Delaware River estuary.
In 2013, residents of Piermont, New York also learned of the
state’s plans to douse a 200-acre reed marsh with glyphosate – a
natural area residents said they loved and viewed as a “beautiful…
living environment with lots of wildlife.”
The state had planned to use heavy spraying of glyphosate,
despite the fact that the marsh sat next to two playgrounds. And
these are but two examples. As Harper’s continued:6
“Many states maintain invasive-plant councils (and
sometimes exotic-pest-plant councils) to monitor and eradicate
alien invaders. Last year, the North Carolina Invasive Plant
Council gave its annual Certificate of Excellence to two forest
rangers who had detected a small patch of cogon grass.
This was an invasive unwittingly imported from Asia in packing
crates, which the Vietnamese call ‘American weed,’ because it
spread on land defoliated by Agent Orange.
As it happens, an erstwhile supplier of Agent Orange, the
Monsanto Company, also manufactures America’s most popular
remedy for cogon grass: glyphosate… Discussing
Phragmites australis, the reed found in wetlands throughout the
country, Massachusetts conservation officials similarly tout
this ‘effective’ weed killer.
Pennsylvania urges glyphosate’s deployment against purple
loosestrife, while Illinois recommends it for Japanese knotweed.
The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries prescribes it
for cogon grass but warns that ‘multiple applications for full
control’ may be required.”
How the Fight Against ‘Invasive’ Plants Came to Fully Support the
Introduction of GMOs
It might seem strange, first, that non-native plants showing
environmental benefits – such as soil remediation and protection
against erosion – are considered such an imminent threat.
Harper’s noted:7
“David Theodoropoulos, a California naturalist, seed
merchant, and the author of Invasion Biology: Critique of a
Pseudoscience, is blunt about what he sees as a deadly inversion
of environmental priorities.
‘Thirty years ago,’ he told me, ‘the greatest threats to
nature were chain saws, bulldozers, and poisons. Now the
greatest threats are wild plants and animals. And what do we use
to fight them? Chain saws, bulldozers, and poisons. Who does
this serve?’”
Stranger, still, is the fact that the US embraces the use of GM
crops – which are clearly not natural – while denouncing
decidedly more natural non-native plants. It wasn’t always this way,
but in the 1990s a Biodiversity and Ecosystems Panel was established
to consider the emerging threat of invasive species.
At its helm was Peter Raven, the director of the Missouri
Botanical Garden who quickly became the most powerful botanist in
America.
While spreading views that accelerating extinction of plant and
animal species meant we were past the point of preserving the
world’s sustainability, he also stressed a need for biodiversity
while blaming (diverse) invasive species and human activities for
the ongoing “extinction event.”
But there was one silver lining to the dark clouds –
genetically modified organisms (GMOs), which Raven fully
supported and endorsed. According to Harper’s:8
“…Raven (who retired in 2010) and Monsanto were close,
both geographically and financially. The Missouri Botanical
Garden was located just a few miles from Monsanto headquarters
in St. Louis, and it owed much of its explosive growth to the
beneficence of the corporation, which was in the process of
changing its public identity from a chemical manufacturer and
purveyor of Agent Orange to a ‘life sciences company’ — one
heavily invested in GMOs.
In April 1996, Monsanto CEO Robert Shapiro joined Raven
to break ground for the Monsanto Center, a four-story structure
designed to house the garden’s unique collection of botanical
books and dried plants. Monsanto had contributed $2 million
toward the center’s construction, and had also donated the land
and $50 million for the Danforth Plant Science Center, another
GMO-intensive research facility.
‘Monsanto loved Raven,’ a former senior executive at the
company told me. ‘They were always showing off the Missouri
Botanical Garden, bringing important visitors down to meet him,
having him give tours, talks. He was definitely our showpiece.’
For his part, Raven spoke publicly about the virtues of
GMOs. The company’s grand scheme was to genetically modify crops
— particularly corn, soybeans, and cotton — to render them
immune to the glyphosate in Roundup. This would allow farmers to
spray weeds without killing the crops.
… I asked Raven whether his efforts to protect the
natural world didn’t clash in some way with his support for
something very unnatural: GMO technology. ‘What’s natural
anymore?’ he replied. ‘If we’re going to play God, we might as
well be good at it.’”
As acceptance of GMOs grew, so too did the fight against invasive
species. Soon the National Invasive Species Council was created, and
a founding member included Nelroy E. Jackson, a weed scientist and
product-development manager at Monsanto who, according to
Harper’s, “had helped to develop Roundup formulations
specifically for “habitat-restoration markets” — that is, for
eradicating invasives.”
GMO Crops Drown Out Diversity
Ironically, but not surprisingly, Monsanto’s GM crops didn’t turn
out to be a boon for diversity. Instead, monoculture (or
monocropping) is defined as the high-yield agricultural practice of
growing a single crop year after year on the same land, in the
absence of rotation through other crops. Monoculture is at the heart
of
GMOs, and it destroys biodiversity. Pests are becoming resistant
to the plants engineered to produce their own pesticides, while
beneficial insects such as honeybees and
Monarch butterflies suffer collateral damage from the copious
amounts of glyphosate sprayed.
Weeds are rapidly developing resistance to the herbicide, and
superweeds – like the native horseweed, which was once prized for
its medicinal properties and now grows up to eight feet tall and is
impervious to glyphosate – are spreading. Not to mention, it’s now
known that
glyphosate promotes cancer.
The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on
Cancer (IARC) has determined that glyphosate is a Class 2A "probable
human carcinogen,” and internal Monsanto documents revealed they
knew over 30 years ago that glyphosate caused adenomas and
carcinomas in the rats they’ve studied.
And adding even more insult to injury, many farmers are now
spraying glyphosate not just on GM crops but also on non-GM crops,
simply to kill off the fields and produce early harvests.
Harper’s reported:9
“‘You can imagine the residue levels on the damn wheat,’
said Charles Benbrook, an agricultural economist at Washington
State University. ‘If you buy whole-wheat bread, the glyphosate
will be ground up with the whole-wheat kernel and it will be
part of the flour. It’s a very high exposure. When they make
white flour, the bran gets separated out and is used in the food
supply in other places. That bran will have three or four times
the concentration of glyphosate, because that’s where the
residues are lodged. It’s insanity.’”
DuPont Knew Health Risks of PFOA but Kept Making It Anyway
It’s not only non-native plants, GMOs, and glyphosate that are
intertwined in a deceptive, health-harming web. PFOA,
perfluorooctanoic acid (also called C8), was an essential
ingredient in DuPont’s non-stick cookware for decades. It’s since
been used in hundreds of other products, from microwave popcorn bags
and fast-food wrappers to pizza boxes and waterproof clothing. The
chemical is now the subject of about 3,500 personal injury claims
against DuPont, the first of which are scheduled for September 2015.
The legal process has uncovered hundreds of internal documents
revealing that DuPont knew of the chemicals danger to the public and
employees, yet continued using it, despite the known risks. In fact,
10 years ago, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) fined
DuPont $16.5 million for withholding decades' worth of information
about health hazards associated with PFOA. As noted in a report by
the Environmental Working Group (EWG):10
"DuPont had long known that PFOA caused cancer, had
poisoned drinking water in the mid-Ohio River Valley, and
polluted the blood of people and animals worldwide.
But it never told its workers, local officials and residents,
state regulators, or the EPA."
At the time, that fine was the largest the EPA had ever assessed,
but it was still too small to act as a deterrent. In 2005, a panel
of three scientists was ordered as part of a settlement in order to
determine the chemical’s effects on people. After seven years of
research, the panel linked PFOA to ulcerative colitis,
high cholesterol, pregnancy-induced hypertension,
thyroid disease, testicular cancer, and kidney cancer. Its
health effects were deemed to be widespread and occurred even at
very low exposure levels. As reported by The Intercept:11
“Another revelation about C8 makes all of this more
disturbing and gives the upcoming trials… global significance:
This deadly chemical that DuPont continued to use well after it
knew it was linked to health problems is now practically
everywhere. A man-made compound that didn’t exist a century ago,
C8 is in the blood of 99.7 percent of Americans, according to a
2007 analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control, as
well as in newborn human babies, breast milk, and umbilical cord
blood.
A growing group of scientists have been tracking the
chemical’s spread through the environment, documenting its
presence in a wide range of wildlife, including Loggerhead sea
turtles, bottlenose dolphins, harbor seals, polar bears,
caribou, walruses, bald eagles, lions, tigers, and arctic birds.
Although DuPont no longer uses C8, fully removing the
chemical from all the bodies of water and bloodstreams it
pollutes is now impossible. And, because it is so chemically
stable — in fact, as far as scientists can determine, it never
breaks down — C8 is expected to remain on the planet well after
humans are gone from it.”
PFOA Dubbed the ‘Tobacco of the Chemical Industry’
DuPont, along with seven other companies, including 3M, were
involved in producing PFOA over the decades. The chemical is being
called the “tobacco of the chemical industry” because of the
decades-long corporate cover-up of its health effects, the lawsuits
pending, and how difficult it is to make companies accountable for
producing disease-causing products, even after the evidence is
clear. In DuPont’s case, they had animal evidence of harm – from
liver toxicity and kidney damage to death – for decades, but the
company did not alert regulators of a potential problem.
Then there were the company’s workers, some of whom gave birth to
babies with birth defects after working in the company’s PFOA
division. DuPont knew of the problems and was tracking its workers
for such health effects, but again failed to inform regulators of
their findings.
Worse still, when 3M submitted a troublesome rat study to the EPA
suggesting harm, DuPont told the EPA they believed the study was
flawed. While continuing to study the chemical’s effects on its
workers, DuPont was also tracking the chemical’s spread into nearby
waterways, as well as its emissions into the air through
smokestacks.
At first DuPont disposed of PFOA by dumping it in the ocean and
later moved to disposing of it in unlined landfills and ponds. They
knew the chemical was spreading widely into the environment and
convened a meeting to discuss what to do about it… but decided to
keep using the chemical anyway. According to The Intercept:12
“ … [F]rom that point on, DuPont increased its use and
emissions of the chemical… the plant put an estimated 19,000
pounds of C8 into the air in 1984, the year of the meeting. By
1999, the peak of its air emissions, the West Virginia plant put
some 87,000 pounds of C8 into local air and water. That same
year, the company emitted more than 25,000 pounds of the
chemical into the air and water around its New Jersey plant...
Essentially, DuPont decided to double-down on C8, betting
that somewhere down the line the company would somehow be able
to ‘eliminate all C8 emissions in a way yet to be developed that
would not economically penalize the bussiness [sic]’… The
executives, while conscious of probable future liability, did
not act with great urgency about the potential legal predicament
they faced. If they did decide to reduce emissions or stop using
the chemical altogether, they still couldn’t undo the years of
damage already done. As the meeting summary noted, ‘We are
already liable for the past 32 years of operation.’”
When Science Is No Longer the Truth…
Our society is largely built on the idea that science can help us
make good, solid decisions. But now we're facing a world so rife
with problems caused by the very sciences that were supposed to keep
us healthy, safe, and productive, it's quite clear that we're
heading toward more than one proverbial brick wall. In a sense, the
fundamental role of science itself has been hijacked for
selfish gain. Looking back, you can now see that the preferred
business model of an industry was created first, followed
by "scientific evidence" that supports the established business
model.
When the science doesn’t support the company’s economic gains,
it’s swept under the rug, even if people are dying and the planet is
becoming irreparably poisoned as a result. Today we live in a world
where chemical companies and biotech giants can easily buy and pay
for their own research studies, as well as the lobbying to support
whatever legislation they need passed in their favor. Conflicts of
interest have become the norm within virtually all fields of
science, which creates a completely unworkable – and dangerous –
situation in the long run.
If you’re interested in learning more, I suggest reading the
Harper’s and
Intercept stories in their entireties. These are but two
examples of what happens when science is no longer truth and
corporate interests instead dictate the future health of the planet
and its population. The first step toward change is awareness that
there’s a problem…
© Copyright 1997-2015 Dr. Joseph Mercola. All Rights Reserved.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2015/08/25/monsanto-glyphosate-invasive-plants.aspx
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