Researcher Reveals Monsanto Has
Known Since 1981 That Glyphosate Promotes Cancer
July 05, 2015
Story at-a-glance
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Researcher finds internal Monsanto documents
revealing they knew over 30 years ago that
glyphosate caused adenomas and carcinomas in the
rats that they’ve studied
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Glyphosate is patented as an antibiotic, and
research shows Roundup damages your gut flora. In
addition to chelating vitamins and minerals,
glyphosate disrupts bacteria-manufacturing amino
acids
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Secret documents and unpublished industry studies
clearly show Monsanto knew in 1981 that glyphosate
causes tumorigenic growth and carcinomas in multiple
organs and tissues
By Dr. Mercola
Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto's best-selling
herbicide Roundup, is one of the most commonly used herbicides
in the world.
An estimated one billion pounds a year is sprayed on our food
crops,1,2
resulting in the average American eating several hundred pounds
of glyphosate-contaminated food every year.
How might that affect your health? Dr. Anthony Samsel is an
expert in this area, and in this interview, he reveals a number
of glyphosate's adverse effects.
Armed with this understanding, you'll likely be far more
motivated to eliminate this pernicious toxin from your diet—and
to take action to get it out of our food supply so that everyone
can be protected.
Dr. Samsel is a research scientist who is passionate about
farming, gardening, and agriculture, making him particularly
suitable for investigating glyphosate.
"I was with the 'think tank,' Arthur D. Little (ADL)
in Cambridge, Massachusetts for many years working as a
research scientist on many types of projects, from product
development to environmental sciences to later switching to
health sciences," he says.
He's also done contract work for the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA), and as a hazardous materials expert, he's worked
for the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), the
United States Navy (USN), and the United States Coast Guard
(USCG).
For example, Dr. Samsel was one of the authors of the
Chemical Hazard Response Information System (CHRIS) manual
for the US Coast Guard. He is also a valuable contributor to
our article comments section (Vital Votes).
Besides his career in science, he also owned and operated
several farms in New England, and it was this first-hand
experience that led him to begin investigating the
effects of glyphosate in the first place.
"I started using glyphosate myself commercially
around the farm and my properties back in the late '70s or
early '80s, when it first came on the market," he says.
"I believed the hype like all the other farmers and
people around the world do, that glyphosate is as safe as
salt and that it broke down into harmless chemicals that did
no harm. I believed all that stuff until I started studying
the chemical.
Being a research scientist, a chemist, I knew what to
look for. Having worked in public health, I was familiar
with how chemicals had effects on the human body and on
animals. So I started approaching it from that aspect.
As far as my own health, it started to suffer. That's
what put me on the road to take a look at this chemical
because I was using it."
Human Urine Turning into Herbicide...
One interesting experience that got him thinking was when he
tried to deter deer from eating his crops. He'd run out of
coyote urine, which is an effective deterrent, so he used his
own
urine.
Curiously, he noticed the weeds where he'd sprayed his urine
were dying, despite the fact he'd not sprayed any Roundup there.
He then realized his own urine was acting like an herbicide!
"I did some controlled experiments in the greenhouse
with some plants and the same thing happened. Those plants
died. Then, I started looking at my diet," he says.
"The only organic food I was eating was out of my own
garden and the stuff that I would can and preserve. But for
everything else, I'd go to the supermarket and I ate boxed
food and what-not. I started to put two and two together;
that maybe this was the reason why I wasn't feeling good.
Then I started looking into glyphosate because I was
using it. That was my primary chemical exposure other than
my food.
Then I realized they were using [glyphosate] on
genetically engineered crops, and I started looking at the
US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to see what food would
have glyphosate or glufosinate in them.
[Glufosinate] is similar to glyphosate and used in
genetically engineered crops. It's not as widely used as
glyphosate, but that's still a problem to public health. All
herbicides are 'a' problem to public health. There should be
no herbicides in our food supply. None."
90 Percent of Soybeans Found to Contain Glyphosate Residues
Unfortunately, testing for glyphosate and glufosinate is
expensive and is the excuse the USDA uses for not testing for
it, and no contamination data was available for Dr. Samsel to
review.
Eventually, he convinced the USDA to release the results of a
series of tests in 2011. In all, they tested 400 samples of
soybeans, and they found more than 90 percent of the soybeans
had glyphosate residues in them.
However, when the agency sent him a pre-publication copy of
the report, he noticed they were only reporting on 300 out of
the 400 samples.
"I started looking at the data. I noticed that the
amount of aminomethylphosphonic acid (AMPA), which is the
metabolite of glyphosate, was greater than that of the
glyphosate itself.
If you analyze the glyphosate, you're going to get
glyphosate if the residue is in the crop, but you're also
going to get the metabolite AMPA. But looking at the
numbers, they just didn't make sense. I believed they've
cherry-picked the data so that the data didn't exceed the
EPA residue limits," he says.
Unfortunately, when he tried to get an explanation for the
discrepancy in the data, his USDA contact was no longer working
there, and he hasn't been able to find him since.
Advocacy Group Now Offers Testing for Glyphosate in US
While the USDA does not test food for glyphosate residues,
this may soon change. The US Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) recently announced US regulators may start testing for
glyphosate residues in the near future3,4,5
due to rising consumer concerns about the health impact of this
chemical.
Meanwhile, the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) has joined
forces with the Feed the World Project, launching the world's
first
glyphosate testing for the general public.6,7,8,9 As
reported by the OCA:
"The project, with specific focus on women and
children in the US, is offering the first-ever validated
public LC/MS/MS glyphosate testing for urine, water and soon
breast milk... The testing OCA, Feed the World and many
other organizations will begin offering [on April 22] will
allow everyone who wants to know whether or not, and to what
extent, they personally have been exposed to glyphosate.
We expect that once the public learns how widespread
the exposure has been—in the context of the recent report
from the World Health Organization that glyphosate is a
probable human carcinogen—public pressure will eventually
force governments worldwide to finally ban Roundup."
The Importance of Bacteria for Optimal Health
Dr. Samsel understood that his gut problems were related to
bacteria and that just as healthy soil needs beneficial
microbes, so does your gut. This was something instilled in him
by his grandfather, who taught him that healthy bacteria in the
soil help grow healthy crops. Not surprisingly, when he cleaned
up his diet, his gut dysbiosis cleared up, as did a number of
neurological problems he'd started experiencing.
At that point, he began delving deeper into the science of
the human microbiome. Many are unaware of the fact that
glyphosate is patented as an antibiotic. It's designed to kill
bacteria, which is one of the primary ways it harms both soils
and human health. Recent research has even concluded that
Roundup (and other pesticides) promotes
antibiotic resistance. Dr. Samsel was actually the person
who dug up the patents showing glyphosate is a biocide and an
antibiotic.
"Some of the pathogens, like Salmonella and
Pseudomonas, are resistant to glyphosate. When we ingest
residues of glyphosate, glyphosate in the acidic environment
dissociates. The acid glyphosate then is able to do a number
on the bacteria, the same as it does in plants. It kills
plants and bacteria in our plants.
Our gut has a beautiful 'lawn' of upwards of a
thousand various species. Each species of bacteria has a
specific function. We might liken the bacteria of our
microbiome to mining and manufacturing companies. You might
visualize the bacteria with mining helmets and pick axes.
They mine the minerals in your biology that your body needs
as co-factors for various biochemical processes. Your
bacteria also manufacture vitamins and other biomolecules
that are essential.
Even some of your fatty acids, which serve as
signaling molecules, are manufactured by your bacteria. Our
bacteria manufacture most of our B vitamins – B6, B9, and
B12, which is cobalamin – essential to our neurology.
Bacteria also manufacture vitamin K and some of your vitamin
C. We have a symbiotic relationship with these bacteria. We
help them and they help us. They take the food and they
don't just break it down and obliterate it to unrecognizable
things. They dismantle the food, and they utilize everything
that's in the food."
Bacteria Also Produce Essential Amino Acids and More
Bacteria are also responsible for producing essential amino
acids such as tryptophan, phenylalanine, and tyrosine. So in
addition to chelating out various vitamins and other important
elements, glyphosate also disrupts bacteria manufacturing
aromatic amino acids. It also disrupts methionine, a sulfur
amino acid crucial for detoxification, and glutamate. All of
this can have a profound influence on your biology. For example,
as Dr. Samsel explains:
"Glyphosate disrupts the aromatic amino acid
tryptophan, and tryptophan is necessary for the production
of serotonin. Of course, from serotonin, we make melatonin
and from melatonin, we make melanin. There are several
biomolecules that are very important to your health and
biology. Serotonin regulates and controls blood sugar. It
also regulates IGF-1, which is insulin-like growth factor.
IGF-1 is necessary for neurogenesis, for your ability to
produce new neurons throughout life, and also for regulation
of your physiology. Serotonin also activates the enzyme
endothelial-derived nitric oxide synthases (eNOS), which is
responsible for insulin secretion."
Serotonin also catalyzes nitric oxide (NO) production in the
vasculature providing airway tone and smooth muscle relaxation,
and 90 percent of your serotonin—which is known as a
neurotransmitter—is actually produced in your gut by
certain bacteria, not in your brain.
Today, millions of prescriptions are being written for
selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), which are
designed to increase serotonin in your brain. Yet 90 percent of
it is manufactured in our gut! Dr. Samsel gave another excellent
interview with Zen Honeycutt10
in 2013, in which he describes the impact glyphosate has on your
gut bacteria, so for more information, please listen to the
following helpful interview as well.
Monsanto Has Known for Nearly 35 Years That GMOs Promote Cancer
Dr. Samsel eventually asked the EPA for Monsanto's trade
secret documentation, as most of the approval process for
glyphosate was based on studies Monsanto had done by outside
contractors. That process began in the late 1970s and concluded
around 1983 with the registration of the chemical. Since then,
it's gone through a couple of re-reviews. But Dr. Samsel wanted
access to those documents to investigate what the EPA and
Monsanto really knew about glyphosate from the very beginning.
"I asked EPA, as a research scientist, to be able to
access those documents in my research. I was denied by the
Environmental Protection Agency, initially," he says.
"It finally took Senator Shaheen's office, here in New
Hampshire, to move the EPA... They sent [the documents] to
me on a disc. I had to sign for them. I was also told that I
could not share them with foreign nationals under a penalty
of law...
However, I've been going through 12 to 14 of these
documents in the file. They represent thousands and
thousands of pages of data on studies that were done on
laboratory animals. What amazed me was that Monsanto
knew in 1981 that glyphosate caused adenomas and carcinomas
in the rats that they've studied... The
highest incidence of tumorigenic growth occurred in the
pituitary gland... the second highest levels were
in the breasts of the female rats, in the mammary glands...
Thirdly, the next highest tumorigenic growth was found in
the testicles of male rats.."
In essence, Monsanto's research of glyphosate showed similar
findings as Dr. Gilles-Éric Séralini, whose damning lifetime GMO
feeding study11 was
wrongfully retracted12,13,14,15largely
due to Monsanto's influence. (Séralini's paper was later
re-published with open access in the Springer Group journal
Environmental Sciences Europe.16)
Monsanto's own research also supports the WHO's International
Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) determination that
glyphosate is a Class 2 A "probable human carcinogen."17,18,19
--a determination Monsanto is now trying to get retracted.
What's more, the research shows that lower doses of glyphosate
tend to have a greater effect than higher doses, and the doses
at which damage was found to occur are comparable to the
glyphosate levels found in wheat, sugar, corn and soy in the
American diet.
Monsanto Never Published These Negative Findings
So how did Monsanto and Biodynamics—the company doing the
research—hide these inconvenient facts? According to Dr. Samsel,
they cancelled out the controls and the damning findings by
using historical control data from unrelated studies. It's also
worth noting that these negative findings were never published
in the peer-reviewed literature or submitted to the EPA or the
Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Cancer was clearly shown in
their 26-month long feeding study, but the only studies Monsanto
has published are studies done in less than three months, which
hides the consequences of eating glyphosate and genetically
engineered foods over the course of a lifetime.
"I'm looking at a Biodynamics report here as Project
number 77-2062, 'A Lifetime Feeding Study of Glyphosate in
Rats,' and every page of this document says, 'Contains trade
secret or otherwise confidential information of Monsanto
Company.' I have a letter here from Monsanto's health and
safety officer. He was the head guy at Monsanto at the time,
back in 1981. In his letter, he asked the US EPA to seal the
documents and to treat them as trade secret. I personally
feel that this is a violation of the public review
process...
Now that I've looked at Monsanto's trade secret
documents that the public doesn't have access to, I'm in the
process of writing the Environmental Protection Agency and
I'm asking them to release those. They have no right to
withhold that information from the public. Because what I've
seen in those documents, it clearly shows that
Monsanto knew in 1981 that glyphosate caused tumorigenic
growth and carcinomas in multiple organs and tissues...
At the rate we're going, we're going to kill billions of
people," Dr. Samsel says.
Removing Glyphosate Is Imperative to Protect Human Health and
Future Generations
According to Dr. Samsel, we're seeing the effects of
glyphosate in human disease statistics now. His work with Dr.
Stephanie Seneff and Dr. Nancy Swanson show that chronic disease
rates are at an all-time high, including the specific tumors
found in Monsanto's 26-month feeding study, as well as the
Séralini study and others—specifically pituitary, kidney,
breast, testicular, thyroid tumors, and thymic hyperplasia.
"There was some work that was recently done where
they looked at the CT scans of patients who had thyroid
disease and also found that they had thymic hyperplasia.
Well, guess what? In the rat study, they found high
incidence of thymic hyperplasia as well as thyroid adenomas
and carcinomas," Dr. Samsel says. "If we don't take
this chemical out of the food supply, everybody will be
affected. Everybody that is eating the Western diet.
Everybody.
Now, for some diseases, the incidence rate among rats were
slightly less than 50 percent—some were as high as 80 percent of
the treated group. Obviously, we're not seeing 80 percent of
people in Western populations coming down with tumors. But we
might eventually... Rats have an average lifespan of two to two
and a half years, whereas the human lifespan is around 80. We've
only been eating GMOs for about 15 years, but already disease
statistics are clearly rising, and rising dramatically. Dr.
Samsel believes there's no doubt genetically engineered (GE)
foods will shorten the human lifespan.
"In the 20th month, the rats had an 80 to 90 percent
survival rate. But when we got to around 24 months, more
than 50 percent of the rats had died. When we got to month
26, I think they only had 30 percent left."
While correlation is not causation, were we to extrapolate,
it would suggest that unless we stop eating glyphosate and
genetically engineered foods, the vast majority of us will
contract a life-threatening disease in our late senior years,
and few will die from plain old age. Other non-life threatening
diseases are also cropping up at a furious rate—neurological
disorders such as autism, attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder (ADHD), and a wide variety of behavioral problems.
When I began practicing medicine in the early '80s, the
autism rate was one in 10,000. Now it's as low as one in 30,
according to some estimates. According to Drs. Samsel and
Seneff's estimations, in the next decade, half of all
people born will have some form of autism! "That's correct,
if we continue on the same trajectory, it will be one in two,
which is frightening," Dr. Samsel says.
Studies May Be Using Contaminated Controls...
On a side note, it's important to realize that when studies
are done, they do not test the control diet for the presence of
glyphosate, which may dramatically skew results and effectively
hide harmful effects. According to Dr. Samsel:
"They are continuing to do that. As I look deeper
into the studies, they didn't analyze the water. They did
not analyze the feed for other contaminants. I contacted
Purina and asked them for a comment about their animal chows
and their laboratory feed. They do analyze for some of the
basic pesticides and fungicides, like malathion, some of the
other organophosphates, and some of the fungicides.
But they don't analyze for glyphosate in those feeds.
Going back to when they did these studies back in 1978 and
1980, they didn't analyze the feed, but the most popular
pesticides used at the time in growing corn and soy for
those animal feeds, were the organophosphates. Some of the
organophosphates were carbaryl and lannate.
What's interesting is that I also turfed up many
synergy patents. I've read all of Monsanto's patents, plus
patents from other companies that have also done work with
glyphosate. Glyphosate is a synergist with other
antibiotics, with fungicides, and with most of the chemicals
that I've seen it used in combination.
I even wrote about it being synergistic with
imidacloprid, the systemic pesticide that's been implicated
in harming the bees. The effects they saw in the Biodynamics
studies in the controls, they were feeding contaminated feed
to these animals...which are known to induce some of the
tumorigenic growths. But the fact that the glyphosate-dosed
animals had higher incidences...shows that there was a
synergy with whatever was in that feed."
Clearly, this is something the EPA and FDA must address. When
laboratory tests with animals are done, they really need to look
at the residue levels of glyphosate and other chemicals in the
animal chow because it's skewing all the laboratory results, and
making the risks appear non-existent.
The Problem with Genetically Engineered Plants
According to Dr. Samsel, glyphosate is only one-half of a
two-part problem. The other half is the genetically engineered
plants. For the past two years, he's been conducting field
experiments and laboratory analysis of 33 varieties of
genetically engineered corn. This year, he's branching into soy.
Not only are there Roundup-resistant GE crops, there are also Bt
crops, which produce their own internal pesticide called
Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). But there are also glyphosate
and glufosinate toxins involved, because in many GM crops, the
genes are stacked.
"I'm looking at the untreated [genetically engineered
corn], and then I'm spraying it with the herbicide
[glyphosate]. I'm analyzing the fatty acids and the mineral
content. I'm also looking at the isomers of the vitamins.
What I'm finding is that there's a difference between those
treated with the herbicide and those that are not treated.
The herbicide influences the
mineral content of even the genetically engineered resistant
varieties, making them particularly more deficient
in manganese, cobalt, and copper, but particularly
manganese. I'm also finding that the fatty acids are being
skewed slightly but also the vitamins, particularly the
isomers of vitamin E, tocopherol."
He's found that GE varieties of soy, canola, and
corn oil contain mostly gamma-tocopherol opposed to
alpha-tocopherol (types of vitamin E). Alpha-tocopherol is
really beneficial to our biology whereas gamma-tocopherol
induces inflammation, particularly in your lungs. Hence Dr.
Samsel believes these GE oils may influence rates of asthma and
Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). On the whole, it
seems clear that hundreds of millions of people could improve
their health simply by avoiding glyphosate and genetically
engineered foods.
The Good News: You Can Get Glyphosate Out of Your System Fairly
Quickly
One important question many are likely to have is, once you
decide to avoid glyphosate-contaminated foods, how do you
detoxify? Here, there's good news because glyphosate is fairly
quickly eliminated via urine and feces—provided you're not
continuously putting more in. And if you need any more reasons
to stop eating glyphosate contaminated food, consider this: one
secret study Dr. Samsel reviewed found that glyphosate quickly
went into the bone marrow, which is where the formation of blood
cells takes place. The glyphosate remained stable in the bone
marrow for at least 10 hours.
The white blood cells produced during that time go to the
thymus and tonsils, where they mature. So glyphosate really
works on the molecular level, affecting not only your bacteria,
but also your blood cells. Importantly, glyphosate also both up
and down regulates genes. For example, in E.coli bacteria,
glyphosate up and down regulates about 1,040 genes, many of
which are involved with cytochrome P450 enzymes, as well as
glutathione S transferase, which is another first line of
defense your cells employ to detoxify.
How to Reduce Your Family's Exposure to Pesticides
Your toxic load is closely linked to your diet, as so many of
the chemicals you're exposed to on a daily basis are
contaminants in foods and/or its packaging. Non-organic
processed foods will expose you to the greatest amounts of
chemicals and potential toxins, including
pesticides and genetically engineered organisms (GMOs),
but virtually all non-GMO whole foods will tend to be
contaminated with pesticides to some degree as well. To reduce
your family's exposure to glyphosate and other toxic chemicals,
please consider the following advice:
- Buy organic fruits and vegetables.
Non-organic fruits and vegetables most likely to be grown
using pesticides include
apples, peaches, celery, and potatoes. For a full list
of the most and least contaminated produce, please see the
Environmental Working Group's shopper's Guide to Pesticides.20
- Add fermented foods to your diet. The
lactic acid bacteria formed during the
fermentation of kimchi may help your body break down
pesticides, so including
fermented foods can be a wise strategy to help your
body's natural detoxification processes. Also make sure
you're getting enough
fiber in your diet, as it too plays an important role in
detoxification.
- Choose seafood wisely. Opt for
low-mercury fish varieties, such as wild caught Alaskan
salmon, anchovies, and sardines, and avoid farm-raised fish,
which are often heavily contaminated with PCBs and mercury.
To optimize your
omega-3, you may also consider taking a krill oil
supplement.
- Filter your tap water.Municipal water
supplies can be contaminated with any number of potential
toxins, so filtering your water is always a wise idea. Be
particularly mindful of avoiding
fluoridated water when preparing infant formula.
- Replace your non-stick pots and pans
with ceramic or glass cookware.
- Avoid plastic food containers, bottles, and mugs.Instead,
opt for glass, ceramic, or stainless steel varieties.
- Avoid using dangerous chemicals on your lawn.
If you have a lawn care service, make sure they're not using
organophosphate pesticides.
- Check your school's/employer's pest control
policy. If they have not already done so, encourage
your school district/employer to move to Integrated Pest
Management, which uses less toxic alternatives.
- Switch to organic personal care products,and
avoid using artificial air fresheners, dryer sheets, fabric
softeners, or other synthetic fragrances. Any product
containing "fragrance" will typically contain high levels of
endocrine-disrupting phthalates.
© Copyright 1997-2015 Dr. Joseph Mercola. All Rights Reserved.
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