by Madison Ruppert
2011
from EndTheLie Website

Part One

GMOs, Roundup and The Monsanto Monstrosity

July 10, 2011
 

Informed consent is one of the most basic aspects of patient-physician relations, as well as subject-researcher relations in the case of research studies.

This involves making the patient aware of and verifying that they understand the risks, benefits, facts, and the future implications of the procedure or test they are going to be subjected to.

In the case of genetically modified organisms we have not been made aware of the risks. In fact, the GMO industry has deliberately hidden the real dangers behind the seeds and herbicides they peddle.

The Food and Drug Administration of the United States of America has defined informed consent in the following bureaucratic jargon:

Except as provided in 50.23 and 50.24, no investigator may involve a human being as a subject in research covered by these regulations unless the investigator has obtained the legally effective informed consent of the subject or the subject’s legally authorized representative.

 

An investigator shall seek such consent only under circumstances that provide the prospective subject or the representative sufficient opportunity to consider whether or not to participate and that minimize the possibility of coercion or undue influence.

 

The information that is given to the subject or the representative shall be in language understandable to the subject or the representative.

 

No informed consent, whether oral or written, may include any exculpatory language through which the subject or the representative is made to waive or appear to waive any of the subject’s legal rights, or releases or appears to release the investigator, the sponsor, the institution, or its agents from liability for negligence.

Under all of these definitions, including the exceptions which you can peruse at the above linked official website, what Monsanto is doing with GM crops and their Roundup products are ethically wrong and illegal.

Some might say,

“So what? It doesn’t matter since genetically modified products are perfectly safe! Why would I care, if it helps farmers, and it is safe, then what is wrong with doing it without informed consent?”

Well, so many people disagree that after much argumentation, the United States was forced to drop their opposition to the labeling of products that have genetically modified ingredients.

Unfortunately, this step forward was a very small one, as this is completely voluntary. Since many consumers do not want to eat these products, it is almost guaranteed that we won’t see them on the ingredient list on our food labels any time soon.

This would be quite hilarious if it wasn’t so dangerous: the new “guidance” approved by the Codex Alimentarius Commission simply,

“allows countries to label genetically modified foods without [breaching] international free trade laws.”

That is, of course, unless the people of America start realizing the real dangers that these products pose and demand that all companies be legally required to identify if any ingredients were genetically modified anywhere along the line of production.

This means that if corn was grown from a Monsanto GM seed, the producer would be forced to identify that the corn is indeed genetically modified on the label.

Are there real health risks, or is this just a bunch of hype attempting to defame the good name of the multinational giant known as Monsanto?

In this article we will review the scientific findings and compare them to what we are told by the media and government about the total safety of these products.

In a report published in June 2011 in Earth Open Source, written by several professors and researchers from across the world entitled, Roundup and birth defects: Is the public being kept in the dark? significant evidence is presented showing that the best-selling herbicide Roundup is indeed linked with birth defects.

Roundup, a product of Monsanto, is comprised mostly of the isopropylamine salt of glyphosate, which is the most used herbicidal chemical in America. Monsanto’s Roundup has been outselling every other herbicide worldwide since four years after its introduction to the market in 1976. For those who are not familiar with the history of Monsanto and their Roundup product, I highly recommend the documentary entitled The World According to Monsanto.

Roundup is far from the only dangerous GM product, as you will see as this article continues.

So what exactly are the dangers of Roundup? Should you be worried about your food source using it or using “Roundup” ready genetically modified seeds?

To put it simply: yes, in fact you should be very concerned and this article will lay it out so anyone can understand exactly why we need to get active and fight back against the monster that is Monsanto and the gargantuan genetically modified organism market.

First I must describe what a “Roundup ready” genetically modified crop entails.

The GM plant has been specially engineered to be able to handle the incredibly toxic herbicide Roundup. It does not resist the herbicide but instead it has been modified so it can uptake the poison and still live. The Roundup then makes its way into your system, and anyone will tell you that eating a ton of glyphosate is not a good idea.

Roundup is not backed by any impartial, independent, rigorous scientific research. The studies used to back up the claims of governments around the world and especially in the EU are unpublished industry studies.

The real research shows a very different picture.

In 2002, a scientific research paper was published in Chemical Research in Toxicology, a publication of the American Chemical Society, entitled Pesticide Roundup Provokes Cell Division Dysfunction at the Level of CDK1/Cyclin B Activation. This bombshell paper reveals the real inherent dangers of the world’s most popular systemic herbicide.

The model they used to test the effects of the glyphosate based Roundup was an embryonic sea urchin in the first cell divisions after successful fertilization. This is suitable for an analog study (meaning that it can be applied to human cell division) because these first divisions represent the universal cell cycle regulation.

They found that a solution containing just 8 mM (millimolar, or 8/1000 moles) of glyphosate,

“induces a delay in the kinetic of the first cell cleavage of the sea urchin embryos.”

This means that the initial cell division, which starts with cleavage of the single cell zygote is delayed, something which could prove destructive in human beings.

Anyone who has taken a biology course can tell you that the human reproductive cycle is a beautiful, finely tuned, and remarkably elegant system. When this system is upset, say by toxins in the mother’s blood, the results are not pretty.

They further reveal,

“The delay in the cell cycle could be induced using increasing glyphosate concentrations (1-10 mM) in the presence of a subthreshold concentration of Roundup 0.2%, while glyphosate alone was ineffective, thus indicating synergy between glyphosate and Roundup formulation products.”

While the effects of the toxin were “not lethal,” it still induced “a delay into M-phase of the cell cycle.”

CDK1 and cyclin B universally regulate the cell’s M-phase, and Roundup delayed the activation of these compounds in vivo.

Furthermore,

“Roundup inhibited also the global protein synthetic rate” and “affects cell cycle regulation by delaying activation of the CDK1/cyclin B complex” which leads to the ominous conclusion: “our results question the safety of glyphosate and Roundup on human health.”

Why is this not headline news? Why are the people of the world not up in arms about these toxins being present in our foods, possibly affecting the embryonic development of our children?

Shockingly, this is not the only scientific study published in the prestigious journal Chemical Research in Toxicology.

In 2009, two French researchers at the University of Caen in France out of the Laboratory for Estrogens and Reproduction in the Institute of Biology published Glyphosate Formulations Induce Apoptosis and Necrosis in Human Umbilical, Embryonic, and Placental Cells.

For those unfamiliar with the terms, Apoptosis is the natural process of programmed cell death that allows human fetuses to develop fingers, toes and other features. This is distinct from necrosis because the cells break up into fragments that are easily consumed by phagocytic cells (cells that consume other cells) which quickly remove the dead cell fragments before they can cause damage to surrounding cells.

Necrosis, on the other hand, is the premature death of living cells and living tissues, which is not naturally occurring and necessary process like apoptosis. Unlike the vital process of apoptosis, necrosis can prove fatal. Necrotic tissues are not consumed by the phagocytic cells, which means that the tissues usually have to be “debrided” which is the surgical removal of the necrotic tissue.

If you want to witness the effects of necrosis and have a strong stomach, you might want to search for images of necrosis online; although I must emphasize that you should have a strong stomach before viewing these images.

This study was especially conservative, evaluating the toxicity of four different glyphosate-based herbicides in Monsanto’s Roundup products in solutions diluted 100,000 times. This is clearly far below the level at which it is used in agricultural applications, which therefore corresponds to the low levels detected in food for human consumptions as well as animal feeds.

To make the study even more scientifically rigorous, they tested it on three distinct human cell types, embryonic, placental, and umbilical as well as testing both glyphosate alone and the Roundup formula.

Unlike glyphosate alone, all of the heavily diluted Roundup formations caused total cell death within twenty four hours through necrosis. It was also found that Roundup induces apoptosis, causing DNA fragmentation, shrinkage of the nucleus, and fragmentation of the nucleus.

As I briefly outlined above, apoptosis is a necessary part of the human development process, however, when it is artificially induced, danger arises.

While Roundup induced complete cell death, glyphosate alone induced only apoptosis. They found conclusive evidence that the Roundup adjuvants (an agent that modifies the behavior and activity of another agent, while having few effects on its own) change the permeability of the three human cells studied.

This amplifies the toxicity already induced via glyphosate, proving that the adjuvants in Roundup are not inert.

They conclude the abstract of the paper with the following ominous sentence,

“Moreover, the proprietary mixtures available on the market could cause cell damage and even death around residual levels to be expected, especially in food and feed derived from [Roundup] formulation-treated crops.”

Now that you know the horrors of Roundup and the inherent dangers of this systemic herbicide, would you like to eat it? I doubt it. If you don’t like the idea of consuming this necrosis-inducing toxin, you must know what contains the poison and what does not.

Unfortunately, without proper labeling practices, you cannot be sure unless you buy all of your food from farmers you know and trust and/or have a home garden that can sustain you.

Until these practices are put in place, I highly recommend that you seek out as much locally grown organic food as humanly possible. Inform your friends and family about the real dangers of Roundup and the hard science this is based upon.

When more people around the world start demanding that their food be properly labeled with warnings just like cigarettes or alcohol, some real change can occur.

If we continue to sit back and hope our governments will actually represent us instead of their corporate interests, we will continue to be subjected to the largest human experiment in history, in which you never have to give informed consent.


 

Part Two

Why Europeans (and Everyone Else) Should Be Worried

July 14, 2011

In part one of what will become a long-running series I briefly outlined two recent papers published in the renowned peer-reviewed journal, Chemical Research in Toxicology, which revealed the horrifying effects of Monsanto’s best-selling glyphosate-based Roundup herbicide.

These two independent and highly rigorous studies found that Roundup caused critical cell damage including necrosis, a horrendous process in which cells break down and release their contents into the surrounding area, creating widespread, unmitigated cell death.

The Monsanto formulation was found to be much more devastating to human cells than the glyphosate herbicide alone.

The studies that comprised the bulk of part one of this series were published in an American journal, yet the people of the United States seem, on the whole, ignorant of the dangers of Roundup and the specifically modified Roundup Ready genetically modified seeds made to be able to absorb the toxin and live.

Unfortunately, the problem is not an isolated one, and Americans are not the only people who should be attempting to tell as many of their fellow citizens about these dangers as possible. While Americans need to become vocal on this issue and make it clear to our representatives that we will not stand for anything less than mandatory genetically modified organism labeling requirements, Europeans are now on the front lines of this battle as well.

In the summary report published in June of this year, Roundup and birth defects: Is the public being kept in the dark?, there is thorough evidence of the European Union attempting to deceive and betray their constituents as our so-called representatives have here in America.

The EU Commission responsible for representing the health of the people of Europe had dismissed credible and thorough scientific research showing considerable dangers associated with glyphosate and Monsanto’s Roundup.

They recently dismissed a study published last year in which it was observed that frog and chicken embryos developed birth defects when exposed to solutions of Roundup and glyphosate much more diluted than the solutions utilized for home gardening and agricultural applications.

This dismissal was based solely upon a report manufactured by the German Federal Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety (BVL) which cited “unpublished industry studies” to legitimize their claims.

We also learn that,

“The Commission has previously ignored or dismissed many other findings from the independent scientific literature showing that Roundup and glyphosate cause endocrine disruption, damage to DNA, reproductive and developmental toxicity, neurotoxicity, and cancer, as well as birth defects. Many of these effects are found at very low doses, comparable to levels of pesticide residues found in food and the environment.”

(P. 5)

Unsurprisingly, the undemocratic European Union has delayed a thorough review of the toxic systemic herbicide Roundup and its main ingredient, glyphosate.

All of this was done behind closed doors without any input from the people of Europe who will suffer the consequences of these deadly toxins.

The EU Commission has willfully put the lives of millions of Europeans and their future children at risk knowing full well the inherent dangers in these GMOs. Apparently the lure of power and money has made those responsible for such actions forget that they themselves will be subjected to these so-called foods.

Typically, safety reviews are conducted every ten years, the last being in 1992. Instead of conducting a review of the peer-reviewed independent scientific literature next year, the Europeans have decided to delay it at least another three years.

Due to the serious health risks involved in these products, the Earth Open Source report recommends that the EU Commission utilize what power they have to remove Roundup and glyphosate products from the market until real investigation takes place.

I seriously doubt that the endless coffers of Monsanto will be outweighed by a little bit of common sense or human decency on the part of the fascists responsible for the closed-door dealings that are all-too-common in the European Union.

The aforementioned study published in 2010 that found Roundup caused chicken and frog embryos to grow abnormally was conducted by the lead researcher for the Argentinean government research group CONICET, Andres Carrasco.

Professor Carrasco was inspired to carry out this research by the reports of unusually high rate of birth defects, similar to those found in the chicken and frog embryos, in the regions of his native Argentina that cultivate genetically modified Roundup Ready soybeans.

The idea behind a Roundup Ready GM seed is that, unlike all other vegetation, the Roundup Ready (RR) plant can tolerate the herbicide without withering away.

It is important to note that this does not meant that the crop actually resists the toxin, instead it is able to absorb and live, passing the atypically high levels of glyphosate to your dinner table.

The major soy producing countries of South America have embraced GM RR soy with open arms as the report reveals on page 7,

“In Brazil, nearly 90,000 tons of glyphosate-based pesticides in 71 different commercial formulations were sold in 2009. In Argentina, over half the cultivated land is given over to GM soy, which is sprayed with 200 million liters of glyphosate herbicide each year. Spraying is often carried out from the air, causing major problems of drift.”

Drift is when the airborne particles of the Roundup herbicide travel unknown distances to water sources, farms in which they do not use GM RR seeds, and to homes. In all of these cases the consequences can be dire.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization said in a 2005 report of the Joint meeting of the FAO Panel of Experts on Pesticide Residues in Food and the Environment and the WHO Core Assessment Group on Pesticide Residues that while the maximum residue limit for glyphosate in food for human consumption and animal feed products in the European Union is 20 mg/kg while soybeans have been measured to have glyphosate residue levels at 17 mg/kg.

Knowing the UN and their countless sub-organization, one would not be wrong to speculate that it is likely the case that much less than 20 mg/kg is dangerous to human health.

In Carrasco’s study, he injected 2.03 mg/kg of glyphosate into the frog and chicken embryos, resulting in malformations.

While injecting glyphosate does not perfectly represent orally ingesting it through food, it is concerning that levels 10 times less than the maximum residue limit cause these defects.

In a 2010 interview, Carrasco stated,

“Bear in mind that Argentina is a unique case, with huge amounts of soybean acres – 19 million hectares – on more than half the cultivated area of the country, This is something rarely seen. So I say that, from the eco-toxicological point of view, what is happening in Argentina is a massive experiment.”

However, it is not only the people of Argentina that are being subjected to a massive experiment, inhabitants of every continent have been forced, without their consent or knowledge, into a dangerous human trial.

The fact is that the governments of Europe and the United States have not bothered to carry out thorough independent investigations of the levels at which average human beings and animals ingest this toxin.

With Europe importing from 35-40 million tons of soybeans and their derivatives every year from the United States, Argentina and Brazil, according to GMO Compass, there is a considerable amount of product being consumed, the safety of which has not been verified independently.

The EU does not cultivate the GM soy themselves as it is officially forbidden; instead they just import it and pretend that it is somehow different than growing the modified beans themselves. Indeed many of these soybeans are GM RR crops, and only three of the ten applications as foodstuffs and feeds have been approved.

In,

• the United States nine applications have been approved

• Canada has seven

• Japan has six

• Mexico and Australia have five

• Taiwan has four

• Brazil has three

• South Africa has two

• the Philippines and China have three

• Korea has two

• Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Colombia, Russia and Switzerland only have one application approved

What about the United States makes these genetically modified crops safer than the many other nations that have far less instances in which the untested GMOs can be used?

The answer is: there is no difference; it is just that we have the wonderful group known as the FDA that is quick to approve anything as long as there is money behind it.

Soon the EU will begin cultivating its own Roundup Ready “food,” Monsanto’s genetically modified Roundup Ready corn product called NK603. The EFSA (European Food Safety Authority) already gave the thumbs up to the GM RR corn, enabling the heavy herbicidal spraying that has been tied to increased birth defects in Argentina.

However, in September of last year, the startling research of Professor Carrasco was sent to the European Union’s Commissioner for health and Consumer Policy, John Dalli.

During the next month, the MEP of the Greek Green Party, Michail Tremopoulos questioned what Dalli was going to do about Monsanto’s NK603 application.

In response, Dalli said that he had heard from the German Government that Carrasco’s study was not applicable or important for the following reasons:

• The study was conducted under “highly artificial” conditions

• The existing “comprehensive and reliable toxicological database for glyphosate” is substantial enough to not question its approval

Resulting in the conclusion that it was not necessary to move to restrict or ban the use of the systemic herbicide.

This inference does not align with the peer-reviewed scientific literature or even EU law. According to the new pesticide regulation 1107/2009, enacted in June of this year, the EU cannot rely on studies that are kept secret from the affected public under the pretenses of “commercial confidentiality.” The law makes it clear that real, open, peer-reviewed scientific literature must be assessed, especially the open literature published in the decade before the assessment.

The report reveals,

“The entire decision-making process on the delay was done behind closed doors with a limited group of national representatives (mainly from the agricultural ministries of member states) and set into law without notifying stakeholders. This process is called “comitology” and is much criticized for being non-transparent, confusing (even to legal experts) and undemocratic.”

(P. 9)

The sad thing is that we need not be only concerned about Roundup being present in our food supply; we must also be concerned about the fact that any Tom Dick and Harry can get the highly toxic glyphosate-based herbicide at their local grocery or convenience store.

Those who do not go out of their way to get the real information on Roundup happily kill their weeds with the product since it is both easy and cheap.

Without the government making it clear that there are extreme dangers associated with this product, people will continue to spray their yards and gardens where their children and pets play. This is one case in which the government could actually do some good by stepping in and taking a firm stance, instead of just serving their corporate puppeteers.

The consequences of these widespread domestic and municipal uses have, as of yet, been completely ignored.

For those who are interested, please read (and download) the full review PDF here: Roundup and birth defects: Is the public being kept in the dark?

In part three of the series we will continue to break down this report and what it means for the people of the world. If you would like to review the report on your own before continuing with the series, please feel free.

However, it is not necessary as I plan to break this down in detail for those who do not have the time to read the entire document or do not have the background required to appreciate the gravity of the document.




 

Part Three

Laws? We don’t need no stinking laws!

August 01, 2011

In part two of this series I began to delve into the mire the European Union is now being brought in to but I only began to scratch the surface.

The EU Commission responsible for assessing the dangers of pesticides has delayed the review of glyphosate, the main ingredient of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, until 2015. This was done without a single person of the EU having input on the issue.

In an attempt to justify this delay, the body responsible for conducting the review, the Federal Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety of Germany (BVL), claimed that they were too busy.

For those who did not download the Earth Open Source report we began to delve into in part two, please do so: Roundup and Birth Defects - Is The Public Being Kept in The Dark?
 

Note: quotes are cited by section heading not page number.
 

Glyphosate is not the only pesticide affected by these delays, in fact according to the European Commission’s Directive 2010/77/EU of the 10^th of November, 2010, there are a total of 39 potentially toxic pesticides pending review. However, this is not just a time delay; this will have the dark consequence of glyphosate and the other pesticides being reviewed under the old EU directive.

The outdated pesticide Directive 91/414 were designed decades ago and ignore crucial factors in scientific evaluation like,

“endocrine disruption, effects on development, effects of added ingredients (adjuvants), effects of combinations of chemicals, and effects on bees.”

(2.6)

The old EU Directive does not stipulate that the independent, peer-reviewed scientific literature must be included in the review.

The new Regulation 1107/2009, which was supposed to come into force in June 2011, does not allow the highly questionable unpublished industry studies or studies which are kept from public review. Furthermore, unlike the old Directive, the new Regulation explicitly states that the future pesticide reviews must include the “scientific peer-reviewed open literature.”

Since glyphosate, and thus Roundup, will not be reviewed under the new Regulation in 2015, all of these pesticides will potentially not have a truly thorough review in the European Union until 2030.

This is, of course, unless the EU Commission demands that the independent scientific literature be taken into account. Without this, the EU will suffer continually from these deadly products just like so much of the rest of the world already is.

In part two I briefly covered the Argentinean scientist Andres Carrasco’s research on Roundup’s effects on the development of chicken and frog embryos. His research found that small amounts of Roundup caused growth abnormalities in the embryos but it was singled out by the German review body, the BVL, as the only study to find problems.

This could not be further from the truth, although since the BVL cites a 1998 Draft Assessment Report on glyphosate, they can attempt to justify their statements. If you read part one of the series, you learned of two studies published in Chemical Research in Toxicity which both showed serious dangerous effects.

Germany’s 1998 report claims there is “no evidence of teratogenicity,” which is the ability of a substance to cause birth defects or malformations of any kind. Both of the studies we reviewed in part one found that glyphosate, and especially Monsanto’s Roundup formula, indeed caused malformations and even necrosis or uncontrolled cellular death.

Despite Carrasco’s results and the other independent studies showing potential dangers of glyphosate Monsanto and Dow claim,

“Glyphosate does not cause adverse reproductive effects in adult animals or birth defects in offspring or these adults exposed to glyphosate, even at very high doses.”

To make matters worse for the already shattered reputability of the BVL and massive corporations like Monsanto, their claims are directly contradicted by their own 1998 Draft Assessment Report and the industry studies it is based upon.

According to the German summary of a 1993 study that examined the effects of glyphosate on rabbit fetuses found that there were a high number of major anomalies in all experimental groups. This includes the lowest dose level of 20 mg/kg and represented anomalous heart formations along with skeletal malformations.

Roundup and birth defects: is the public being kept in the dark? lists four other studies listed in the 1998 report that directly contradict the statements of Monsanto and the German regulatory body.

To sum up their review of the studies, the report reads,

“Taking all these industry studies together, there is enough evidence to require regulators to apply the precautionary principle and withdraw glyphosate from the market.”

(3.2)

Indeed, Roundup and glyphosate need to be taken off the market in the United States and around the world as there is a wealth of evidence indicating the dangers in these products. Until there is a large body of independent scientific evidence, it should not be sold.

The greater insanity is that regardless of the evidence showing the dangers of glyphosate and Roundup in particular, it is allowed to be present in food supposedly fit for human consumption.

As I mentioned in part two of this series, the so-called Roundup Ready genetically modified varieties of crops engineered by Monsanto only absorb the toxin and live, passing the buck to the consumer instead of killing the plant itself.

The Genetically Modified food (GM RR) thus puts glyphosate-based Roundup into the food supply, no matter what animal happens to consume it.

Knowing the overwhelming evidence provided both by industry studies and independent, peer-reviewed scientific studies, corporations like Monsanto have continued to market and distribute their products at an unprecedented level. Even more disturbing is the fact that governments have allowed this to occur.

The Earth Open Source report gives the following outline of the deliberate cover-up of the dangers of glyphosate, and thus Roundup, perpetrated by industry and government alike.

• Industry (including Monsanto) has known since the 1980s that glyphosate causes malformations in experimental animals at high doses.
  Industry has known since 1993 that these effects could also occur at low and mid doses.

• The German government has known that glyphosate causes malformations since at least 1998, the year it submitted its DAR on glyphosate to the EU Commission.

• The EU Commission’s expert scientific review panel has known since 1999 that glyphosate causes malformations.

• The EU Commission has known since 2002 that glyphosate causes malformations. This was the year its DG SANCO division published its final review report, laying out the basis for the current approval of glyphosate.