Last week I blogged about I.G. Farbensanto’s latest gimick to avoid legal entanglements when it (Bayer) bought out Mon(ster)santo, to become I.G. Farbensanto. I won’t go into the latest gimick all over again. Rather, there’s something else coming down the pike that M.W. spotted and shared(and again, thank you!), and it’s such a whopper doozie I have to pass it along. That something is “gene drive organisms”, and if that sounds to you a little “scary and creepy”, it’s because it’s far worse than that:
Normally I’d comment a great deal on stories like this, and I do intend to comment a bit today, but I don’t really think I need to do so extensively, because I’m sure that regular readers here will appreciate the rather horrifying implications of the following quotation from the article:
Synthetic gene drives are a new form of genetic engineering, created via the genetic engineering method CRISPR/CAS9, and are intended to permanently modify or eradicate populations, or even whole species, in the wild.
They are currently defined as a system where genetic elements or traits have more than the usual 50% chance of being inherited, irrespective of whether they benefit or harm the organism inheriting them.
The idea of gene drive technology is to force the inheritance of detrimental genetic traits. In this way, scientists hope to reprogramme or eradicate species such as disease-carrying insects and invasive species.
This is a key distinction between GDOs and genetically modified organisms (GMOs), which are explicitly designed to contain the spread of modified traits.
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Most recently, Imperial College London created a modification that was able to eliminate populations of malaria-carrying mosquitoes in lab experiments. This work was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation under the Target Malaria project.
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This is something that Martin Häusling, agricultural policy spokesman for the Greens and member of the European Parliament’s Environment Committee, called a “fundamental step for biodiversity,” warning that the long term consequences of this technology is “not foreseeable”.
Mareike Imken, from the German initiative Save Our Seeds, concurred, saying that “while the risks of gene drive technology have not yet been scientifically assessed, it could have a massive impact on already damaged ecosystems,” adding that it is “irresponsible to expose species and ecosystems to further risks“. (Emphasis added)
So, boiling all this down, virus-spreading expert (both computer and the other kind) Baal Gates, through his Baal and Malicious Gates Foundation, is funding research into gene drive organisms (GDOs) in the hopes of reprogramming species or just eradicating them if they’re nasty and we don’t like them and they carry nasty diseases. (Notice the criterion here could be applied to just about any organism, including us, and let’s not forget that Baal Gates is one of those overpopulation nuts that have been with us since the Most Serene Republic of Venice.) Well, I have to confess part of me is attracted to the idea of getting rid of certain things. High on my list would be spiders and snakes (and those big lizard things in Japan). But, much as I dislike spiders and snakes, I realize that they do some good, if they’re not the human versions thereof. And as for Baal Gates, when I think of him (and I try not to do so), I think of the Peanuts cartoon character Pig Pen, surrounded always in a cloud of dust, dirt, and flies, or in this case, viruses.
And speaking of Baal Gates and gene driven organisms…
… what happens if, for example, those genetic drive traits jump species? I recall back when I entertained this outlandish speculation many years ago with respect to GMOs, I was roundly denounced by “scientific authorities” for being… well…outlandish. Perhaps I am, and like all outlandish people, I claim the right to be wrong, or just simply outlandish. It later turned out that a couple of obscure papers had noticed that some genetic traits from GMOs started showing up in other organisms. No apologies from the “scientific authorities” were ever forthcoming. My point at the time was rather simple: it wasn’t as if certain things had never jumped from one species to another before. So I wonder the same thing here: what happens if one modified the genes of, say, a species of reptile such as serpentus baalus gatus, in order to eradicate the species, or reprogram it not to spit bile and poison everywhere it slithered, or better, to make its own bile and poison poisonous to itself. But if one allows the possibility of species jumping, this modification might jump to a particularly deadly species of spider, arachnidia sorosia, and serpentus baalus gatus would be depriving itself of one of its best friends, not to mention another vector by which to spread vitriol and bile.
Of course, the types of people involved in such research aren’t the cleverest of people and will press ahead with their research, in spite of the possibility that they might be caught in their own plans and snares.
In which case, it might be worth letting them do it after all.
… nah… it isn’t. They’re just insane, and colossally stupid.
See you on the flip side…
Despite Corporate Threats, Moms Beat Monsanto In Quest For Truth
When common people take on multinational corporations, violent rhetoric, inhuman directives, abuse, and bullying are often the methods chosen to quell the activist spirit.
In 2009, CBS News reported that pharmaceutical giant Merck made a “hit list” of doctors who criticized its deadly, and now withdrawn, drug Vioxx. The list, emailed between Merck employees, contained doctors’ names with the labels “neutralise,” “neutralised” or “discredit” next to them according to testimony in a Vioxx class action case in Australia. Merck emails from 1999 showed company execs complaining about doctors who disliked using Vioxx. One email said: We may need to seek them out and destroy them where they live…”
Fast forward to present day and the public is discovering a similar, expanded and well-funded operation was in play at chemical giant Monsanto. In May, it was found in an investigation by a French news outlet that Monsanto kept “watch lists” of around 600 politicians, journalists and others across seven European countries and in Brussels.
Recently, internal emails showed that Monsanto operated a military-style “fusion center” to monitor and discredit journalists and activists, target reporters and strategize how to counter Neil Young’s 2015 album The Monsanto Years.
Now,new emails revealed from the Monsanto trials and placed into public record show another disturbing perspective of Monsanto’s culture. Dan Goldstein, Monsanto’s lead Medical Science and Outreach, Distinguished Science Fellow and pediatrician, Bruce Chassy, a professor at the University of Illinois, and Wayne Parrot from the University of Georgia called activist Moms “dumb mothers” suggesting, “There you have it. That’s your enemy. Beat the shit out of them and put them on the defensive and you won’t have this problem.”
The directive to “beat the shit out of moms” was not just a harmless figure of speech. Just five months after these emails, it was reported that Sofia Gatica, an activist mother in Argentina who lost one of her babies to pesticide poisoning while living near a GM/agrochemical farm, was beaten.
Zen Honeycutt, founder of Moms Across America, recently sat down with HighWire host Del Bigtree to discuss the threats and internal emails. She stated,
“I’m glad that this is out because it shows the corporate mentality of arrogance and aggression, misogyny, and complete disregard for public health. And this is very important for people to know, especially our politicians, our policy makers, and our President who are currently trying to allow these corporations to self-determine whether or not their products are safe.”
In a real-life X-Files episode, United States House members are reportedly concerned in a bipartisan vote that the Pentagon may have unleashed biological weapons or entomological warfare in the form of ticks or other insects that caused the spread of Lyme disease.
Roll Call, a congressional-focused newspaper reports that on July 11th the House secretly decided through a voice vote to support adding an amendment to the 2020 defense authorization bill that would require the Department of Justice to look into whether the Pentagon/CIA/DoD umbrella weaponized ticks.
According to Roll Call, New Jersey Republican Rep. Christopher Smith wrote the amendment demanding the inspector general “conduct a review of whether the Department of Defense experimented with ticks and other insects regarding use as a biological weapon between the years of 1950 and 1975.”
Smith, also ironically a co-chairman of the Congressional Lyme Disease Caucus, further told Roll Call,“We need answers and we need them now.”
First, let’s define biological warfare based on the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. The definition of a BW agent is pretty clear:
Microbial or other biological agents, or toxins whatever their origin or method of production, of types and in quantities that have no justification for prophylactic, protective or other peaceful purposes.
It’s an indisputable fact that the U.S. has had a longstanding policy for human experimentation, experimenting on its civilian population for decades since the 1950s (Cold War) doing a total of 239 “germ-warfare” tests over populated areas, according to The Washington Post. Even before the Cold War and WW2, the U.S. was involved in eugenics experiments like forced sterilization for undesirables across at least 24 states — prior to even the Nazis being involved in the same practice years later.
In fact, there were a whopping 64,000 cases of forced sterilization in the United States, but this number does not take into account the sterilizations that took place after 1963. Around that time, women from different minority groups were singled out for sterilization in various different experiments. The number increases even more if the sterilizations after 1963 are taken into account, increasing the number of sterilizations in the United States to a massive 80,000. The documentary in the tweet below tells the tale.
The American eugenics movement received extensive funding from various corporate foundations including the Carnegie Institution, Rockefeller Foundation, and the Harriman railroad fortune.
In 1972, United States Senate committee testimony brought to light that at least 2,000 involuntary sterilizations had been performed on poor black women without their consent or knowledge, according to an in-depth article on eugenics in the U.S. entitled “6.6: Eugenics in the United States.”
This author has previously written about one biological warfare project used during the Cold War, Operation LAC, or (Operation Large Area Coverage.)
Yes, this is your secret history of previous deep state experiments. The U.S. Army inside the continental United States, revealed by a professor of sociology at St. Louis Community College, Lisa Martino-Taylor, experimented by spraying zinc cadmium sulfide particles over much of the U.S. across several cities including St. Louis and Texas; that project was known as Operation LAC (Large Area Coverage.)
To recap, the U.S. Army also secretly tested carcinogenic chemicals on unknowing residents of Canada in Winnipeg and Alberta during the Cold War in testing linked to weaponry involving radioactive ingredients meant to attack the Soviet Union, as Activist Post reported.
The incidents occurred between July 9, 1953, and Aug 1, 1953, when they sprayed six kilograms of zinc cadmium sulfide onto unsuspecting citizens of Winnipeg from U.S. Army planes. The Army then returned 11 years later in 1964 and repeated the experiments in other parts of Canada including Suffield, Alta. and Medicine Hat, Alta., according to Lisa Martino-Taylor, National Post reported.
Even further, the United States held open-air biological and chemical weapons tests in at least four states – Alaska, Hawaii, Maryland and Florida – during the 1960s in an effort to develop defenses against such weapons, according to Pentagon documents. According to the documents, artillery shells and bombs were filled with nerve agents like sarin and VX gas.
These tests were part of Project 112, a military program in the 1960s and 1970s to test chemical and biological weapons and defenses against them. Parts of the testing program done on Navy ships were called Project SHAD, or Shipboard Hazard and Defense, Miami Herald reported.
The CIA also did several unethical human experiments in the United States. In one instance they injected radioactive material into hospital patients without their consent at all. Other experiments were performed on pregnant women in Nashville who were given a radioactive iron cocktail to ingest so that researchers could determine if cancer could be passed on to their offspring. Even children were fed radioactive oatmeal as part of a “science club,” Martino-Taylor said.
The previous report didn’t note whether the experiments in Canada were connected to Operation LAC, though it has several similarities to the project. It also wasn’t mentioned whether this was a bigger part of Project 112. However, for years the Canadian government has denied that it tested any bioweapons in Alaska and Alberta, as well as spraying “simulated bio-weaponry across North American cities, including Winnipeg.
Pathogens for War, by University of Western Ontario historian Donald Avery, notes that Canadian scientists were intimately involved in U.S. bioweapons research until 1969 when then-president Richard Nixon unilaterally ended the program. Significant quantities of toxins, including sarin and the nerve agent VX, were stockpiled at Canada, Suffield until at least 1989, The Star reported.
The goal “was to deter the use of biological weapons against the United States and its allies and to retaliate if deterrence failed,” the government explained. “Fundamental to the development of a deterrent strategy was the need for a thorough study and analysis of our vulnerability to overt and covert attack.”
For years many rumors have surrounded New York’s Plum Island and Maryland’s Fort Detrick (the same base that anthrax originated from that was used in an attack on media and politicians after 9/11) may have infected insects for biological weapon tests and then released those insects outside of the lab in a live experiment, leading to the spread of viruses/diseases.
Fort Detrick is home to Battelle’s Top Secret Bio laboratory the (National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center – NBACC) under a U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) contract for the last decade. Battelle was awarded a $344.4 million federal contract (2006 – 2016) and another $17.3 million contract (2015 -2026) by DHS.
There are three main forms of entomological warfare – insects directly used as weapons, insects used to destroy crops, and insects used as vectors to inflict disease, according to Ryan C. Gott, Ph.D.
Early History Of Entomological Warfare:
R.K.D. Peterson in 1990 at the University of Nebraska detailed the history of insects allegedly used as biological weapons also known as entomological warfare (EW) throughout history. (archived.)
According to Peterson, the American Civil War from 1861-1865, marked the first instance of alleged use of an insect as a weapon of war. The Confederacy accused the Union of deliberately introducing the harlequin bug, and Murgentia histrionica, into the South.
Tremendous crop damage resulted in the South because of this pest. This allegation was never proven, and it now appears that the harlequin bug moved on its own into the South from Mexico. However, humans may have aided in the movement of this pest.
Disease relationships (microbial and insect vector) were elucidated in the early twentieth century. As soon as the mechanisms were known, military planners began to apply them as possible warfare agents.
The next alleged use of insects as a biological weapon that is notable was in 1943 when Adolf Hitler agreed to establish an SS biological weapons research station at Posen. As the Russians got closer to the research station, work then accelerated at the station, but no real advances were made before the Russians occupied the station on March 1945.
At the Posen BW research station, the Germans performed work on diseases such as the plague, cholera, typhus and yellow fever. They also performed experiments on the feasibility of using insects such as the Colorado potato beetle to attack Allies’ potato crops. The Germans were accused of dropping cardboard boxes filled with Colorado potato beetles over England from 1941-1943, according to research by Peterson. However, the containers were never recovered, but abnormalities associated with the presence of the beetles prompted Sir Maurice Hankey, head of Britain’s biological warfare effort, to write a memo to Winston Churchill airing out his concerns.
That’s not the only alleged insect biological weapon; as British invasion fears grew after the successful evacuation from Dunkirk, rumors spread that the Germans had created an omnivorous strain of grasshopper which would soon starve the British into surrendering. It turned out that this was a myth. However, the fact that Nazi doctors used human subjects for experiments into insect-borne diseases is no myth. Concentration camp inmates were intentionally infested with typhus-infected lice by SS doctors at Natzweiler, Dauchau, and Buchenwald. Many of these doctors and scientists were sentenced to death by the Nuremberg Tribunal after the war.
There was also several attacks launched against China by Japan from 1939-45; plague-infected fleas were disseminated directly out of aircraft or via specialized bombs that deployed the fleas. In 1944, an assault team was assembled to sprinkle plague-infested fleas around the Saipan airfield, which the Americans held at the time. However, that operation was stopped after the ship carrying the assault team was sunk by an American submarine and the experiment was never accomplished. But just because that attack failed doesn’t mean that other attacks didn’t.
Potentially one of the most disturbing cases involves Dr. Shiro Ishii a microbiologist and a Japanese army medical officer during the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II. As Ishii moved through the ranks, Ishii was placed in charge of building and running Unit 731, a top-secret biological weapons research and development facility, The Guardian reported.
Unit 731 was established in northeast China in a Japanese puppet state on nearly 6 square kilometers of land. Officially, Unit 731 operated as a water purification plant and lumber mill, part of the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army. Ishii and others working at Unit 731 would eventually kill well over 10,000 Chinese citizens and prisoners of war (POWS.) If that’s not enough, the scientists referred to their victims as maruta or “logs,” both of which referenced the cover story of being a sawmill and revealed their complete disregard for the lives of the people they tested. Unit 731 investigated, among many deplorable things, the best disease and vector combinations to attack an enemy and the best way to introduce that vector, via water supply, air, and through insects, i.e. entomological warfare.
The Soviets also ran experiments with fleas in Mongolia before and during the war. In one account, political prisoners and prisoners of war were chained in tents with pens of diseased rats until the subjects were bitten by disease-infected fleas. Supposedly, in the summer of 1941, one of the prisoner/experimental subjects escaped and began an epidemic that was controlled only because the Soviets then bombed the entire Mongol community.
In 1952, China accused the U.S. of engaging in germ warfare against the people of North Korea. The Chinese began producing large amounts of evidence which suggested that the U.S. was spreading bacteria-laden insects and other objects over the Korean countryside.
Also, various plagues suddenly appeared in areas where there had not been a single documented plague for over 500 years.
Chinese entomologists accused the U.S. of distributing disease-carrying anthomyid flies, springtails, and stoneflies with P-51 fighters. Also, accusations were leveled stating that America was contaminating areas with plague-infested rats and fleas, and anthrax-infected flies and spiders. In all, the U.S. was accused of dropping ants, beetles, crickets, fleas, flies, grasshoppers, lice, springtails, and stoneflies. The alleged associated diseases included anthrax, cholera, dysentery, fowl septicemia, paratyphoid, plague, scrub typhus and typhoid, according to Peterson.
The Chinese also set up an international scientific commission for investigating the facts about bacterial warfare. The commission, consisting of scientists from all over the world, ruled that the United States probably did engage in limited biological warfare in Korea.
In 1962, General Stubbs went on the record and admitted to Congress that insect strains were being developed that were resistant to insecticides.
Finally, in 1969, President Nixon stated for the unilateral destruction of biological weapons. Just three years later, the U.S. signed on to the Biological Weapons Convention, which banned the development, production, stockpiling, transfer, and acquiring of biological weapons. In 1975, the U.S. also signed the Geneva Protocol of 1925, which further banned the use of these weapons in war. The treaties, however, do not ban research by nations, which in the U.S.’s case may mean it continued the entomological warfare experiments it started on fleas, rats and other creatures that were used as carriers of diseases.
Covert Operations Using Entomological Warfare:
In 1970 and 1972, Sand Fly Fever tests were performed on humans according to a declassified U.S. Army report – US Army Activities in the US, Biological Warfare Programs, 1977, vol. II, p. 203. During the operation known as Whitecoat volunteers were exposed to bites by infected sand flies.Operation Whitecoat was a bio-defense medical research program carried out by the US Army at Fort Detrick, Maryland between 1954 and 1973.
For decades, the U.S. Army examined whether infected mosquitoes could be used to kill our enemies in “entomological warfare.”
Some of the most notable entomological warfare experiments include – Operations Drop Kick, Big Buzz, May Day, Whitecoat, Big Itch and Bellweather. And these are just what are public knowledge and declassified.
“In these excerpts from a March 1981 Army report, you can marvel at how much it would have cost to launch a yellow fever-infected mosquito attack on a city (with a handy ‘Cost per Death’ chart included!),” Smoking Gun writes. (archived)
Smoking Gun also wrote an in-depth article analyzing the documents (here.)
OperationWhitecoat: Infected flies tested to bite humans.
OperationBigItch: Field tests were performed to determine coverage patterns and survivability of the tropical rat flea Xenopsylla cheopis for use as a disease vector in biological warfare.
OperationBigBuzz: 1 million A. Aeugupti mosquitoes were produced, 1/3rd were placed in munitions and dropped from aircraft, or dispersed on the ground. The mosquitoes survived the airdrop and actively sought out human blood according to the experiment.
OperationMay Day: Aedes Aegupti mosquitoes were dispersed in Georgia, USA.
Operation Bellweather: The U.S. Army Chemical Research and Development Command, Biological Weapons Branch, studied outdoor mosquito biting activity in a number of field tests at Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, in 1960. Virgin female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which had been starved, were tested on soldiers out in the open.
Still, parts of the 1981 U.S. Army report such as the “Mass production of Aedes Aegypti” have not been declassified like Operation Drop Kick which was fully redacted. This means the experiments could still be ongoing under a different name or the same operation moniker.
Aedes Aegypti, also known as yellow fever mosquito, has been widely used in U.S. military operations. The same species of mosquitoes are alleged to be the cause of dengue, chikungunya and even the Zika virus.
If the current review by U.S. Congress determines that the Pentagon has created insects as biological weapons, the House is demanding that the inspector general must present Congress with information including “whether any ticks or insects used in such experiments were released outside of any laboratory by accident or experiment design.” It is an unnerving truth that the government may be responsible for having unleashed a custom-made pathogen as part of a biological human experiment.
Synthetic Biology And Manmade Viruses
Even if by accident (which is less likely given the deliberate releasing of insect weaponization above), that’s not so bizarre either. In 2009, the German news agency Spiegel reported that a Swine Flu container exploded on a train in Switzerland. This may have been what was behind the outbreak of Swine Flu during the same year despite denial in the article.
Luckily, however, it was not the mutated swine flu virus that has killed around 150 people in Mexico. The police quickly reassured the public that there was no danger of any infection.
Likewise, China also had an incident of an outbreak which resulted in five top officials of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) punished for the outbreak of SARS. The investigation found that the release of the virus was due to the negligence of two CDC employees who were infected and not deliberate, China Daily reported.
In 2017, scientists at the University of Alberta put together from scratch a relative of the smallpox virus, the horsepox virus, Scientific American reported. Although not deadly to humans, or horses for that matter, the fact remains that such a feat can be accomplished by scientists.
In 2014, another scientist – Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison – genetically manipulated the 2009 strain of pandemic flu virus H1N1 Swine Flu in order for it to “escape” the control of the immune system’s neutralizing antibodies, effectively making the human population defenseless against its reemergence, Independent UK reported.
That same year, scientists at the same University in Wisconsin-Madison headed by Kawaoka created a life-threatening virus that closely resembles the 1918 Spanish flu strain that killed an estimated 50 million people, which was condemned by their colleagues as “crazy.”
Last year, a major U.S. government report from National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine warned that advances in synthetic biology now allow scientists to have the capability to recreate dangerous viruses from scratch; make harmful bacteria more deadly; and modify common microbes so that they churn out lethal toxins once they enter the body. The report did not mention entomological warfare weapons.
In the report, the scientists describe how synthetic biology, which gives researchers precision tools to manipulate living organisms, “enhances and expands” opportunities to create bioweapons. “As the power of the technology increases, that brings a general need to scrutinize where harms could come from,” said Peter Carr, a senior scientist at MIT’s Synthetic Biology Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.”
The report calls on the U.S. government to rethink how it conducts disease surveillance, so it can better detect bioweapons, and to look at ways to bolster defenses, for example by finding ways to make and deploy vaccines far more rapidly. For every bioweapon the scientists consider, the report sets out key hurdles that, once cleared, will make the weapons more feasible.
The Guardian references one of the first believed cases 20 years ago where geneticist Eckard Wimmer of Stony Brook University in New York recreated the polio virus in a test tube. Also occurring last year, a team at the University of Alberta built a vaccine for their infectious horsepox virus. “The virus is a close relative of smallpox, which may have claimed half a billion lives in the 20th century,” reports The Guardian. “Today, the genetic code of almost any mammalian virus can be found online and synthesized.”
A book published earlier this year titled Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons—predated the House call for an investigation. This book may have inspired Smith to propose the bipartisan amendment that is co-sponsored by Maryland Republican Andy Harris and Minnesota Democrat Collin Peterson who are echoing the calls for an investigation.
Another book that is recommended reading by this reporter and that was used in excerpts of writing this article is Six-Legged Soldiers: Using Insects as Weapons of War. by Jeffrey A. Lockwood, a professor of natural sciences and humanities at the University of Wyoming.
If the U.S. used vector-borne diseases such as plague (carried by fleas), yellow fever and malaria (mosquitoes), typhus (lice), Q fever (ticks), and dysentery (flies) in conflicts from the Napoleonic campaigns through World War I, what was stopping the continuation of those entomological warfare experiments until the modern-day era on ticks with Lyme disease? The answer is: absolutely nothing. It’s clear that the Pentagon’s umbrella in the military was experimenting on entomological warfare, and now the government needs to compensate millions of Americans who may have been infected from the covert release of pathogens piggybacked on insects and animals alike.
Aaron Kesel writes for Activist Post. Support them at Patreon.
Bayer and Monsanto are Facing the Music — But, Bayer Intends to Re-Write History
Source: Jon Rappoport’s Blog
by Jon Rappoport
April 29, 2019
As most of you know, Bayer now owns Monsanto. To make it happen, it forked out $66 billion in 2018. Among the new parent’s problems? Lawsuits against Monsanto’s best-selling herbicide, Roundup.
Catch this, from fiercepharma.com: “Recently, in a key bellwether trial, a U.S. federal jury in San Francisco found Bayer liable for plaintiff Edwin Hardeman’s non-Hodgkin lymphoma [caused by Monsanto’s Roundup] and awarded him $80 million in damages. Bayer said it plans to appeal, as it is doing with a [similar] California state suit that awarded the plaintiff $78 million. Still, there are more than 11,200 other similar suits [against Roundup], according to Bayer’s last tally.”
Therefore, key Bayer shareholders are angry at Bayer’s board for greenlighting the 2018 buyout of Monsanto. Bayer intends to eradicate the name “Monsanto,” and do business under a fully merged single name, its own. But for now, that hasn’t stopped the flood of lawsuits against Bayer aimed at its adopted child, Monsanto/Roundup.
What about sales of Roundup? As early as 2016, for several reasons, a sharp decline had already set in. One reason: in 2015, the World Health Organization had declared glyphosate, the prime ingredient in Roundup “a probably carcinogen.” Monsanto moved to cut 16% of its work force.
Bayer appears to be “taking one for the team.” It certainly bought Monsanto knowing full well that Roundup was going to be a big problem. It knew Monsanto had garnered a horrendous reputation from one end of the planet to the other—owing in part to Roundup, and also the disastrous pioneering of GMO crops. But big daddy Bayer didn’t flinch. After all, it has territory to defend—it’s in the same basic business as Monsanto was: genetic manipulation. To protect and sanitize that Brave New World territory, long-term, Bayer aims to swallow Monsanto whole, no matter how much penalty-money that costs, thus making Monsanto disappear for future generations.
“Monsanto? Oh yes. Wasn’t that some kind of farming company? Or a music group?”
That’s the game here. A handful of giant biotech companies (and their shadowy backers) intend to OWN the future, via various forms of radical gene-alteration, in plants, animals, and humans. They want nothing to hinder that agenda. Monsanto was a stain. It brought down heavy attacks on the whole “genetic community.” Therefore, it had to go. The only question was: who would come up with the huge buyout cash and make the sacrifice?
Bayer.
Once the core of the infamous Nazi cartel, IG Farben, Bayer had a history of re-writing history. Long term, it would know how to make Monsanto vanish, as if it had never existed.
That operation is now underway.
Degeneration Nation: GMOs, Toxic Chemicals and Factory Farms
Nearly half of America’s cropland is devoted to GMO crops, including over 140 million acres of GE corn, soybeans and cotton; 70 to 80 percent of supermarket, restaurant and school cafeteria processed foods are contaminated with GE corn, soy, canola, high fructose corn syrup and cotton seed/vegetable oil
Ninety percent of U.S. meat and animal products come from factory farms, where livestock are fed GE animal feed (corn and soy), and routinely given animal drugs and growth promoters
Unless we can shut down the factory farms, rebuild our soils, restore our watersheds and forests and get rid of the toxins, GMOs and greenhouse gases contaminating our bodies and our environment, mounting evidence suggests we may soon, perhaps in the space of one generation, pass the point of no return
Industrial, GMO-tainted, pesticide-laden, factory-farmed foods are bad for your health, bad for farm animals, bad for small farmers and farmworkers, bad for the environment and bad for the climate
Groups including the Organic Consumers Association, Beyond Pesticides and Food & Water Watch, have launched numerous lawsuits, suing companies for fraudulently labeling their products as natural, pasture-raised, ecofriendly or U.S.-made, when they are not
Commentary by Ronnie Cummins, International Director of Organic Consumers Association
“The Nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt 19431
Welcome to Degeneration Nation 2019. The frightening truth is that genetically engineered foods and crops, toxic chemicals and factory farms — the unholy trinity of industrial food and farming — are undermining our very survival. Public health and the health of the living Earth — our soils, forests, wetlands, watersheds, oceans and climate — are rapidly being destroyed, collateral damage arising from the “profit at any cost” ethos of corporate agribusiness, Big Biotech, Big Pharma and Big Food.
Cancer, chronic disease, obesity, loss of fertility, mass depression, learning disabilities and reproductive disorders have now become the norm, along with environmental degradation. The rhythms and cycles of nature — the atmosphere, the soil carbon cycle, the water cycle, biodiversity, the climate and even the integrity of our DNA — are unraveling.
Unless we can turn things around, shut down the factory farms, rebuild our soils, restore our watersheds and forests, and get rid of the toxins, GMOs and greenhouse gases contaminating our bodies and our environment, mounting evidence suggests that we may soon, perhaps in the space of one generation, pass the point of no return.
Hijacked System Threatens Environment and Health
Despite all of our efforts in terms of public education and mobilization, corrupt government officials, regulatory agencies and international trade bureaucrats have allowed Monsanto/Bayer, Syngenta/ChemChina, Dow/Dupont and a cabal of multinational agribusiness, chemical, seed and GMO corporations, aided and abetted by Madison Avenue, Wall Street and the mass media, to hijack our food and farming system and slowly but surely undermine our health, degrade the soil, pollute the environment and destabilize the climate.
Although Big Food, the Gene Giants and the Factory Farm lobby have managed to derail our efforts so far to ban GMOs, toxic chemicals and factory farms, people in the U.S. and all over the world are starting to wake up.
After several decades of pressure from consumer activists, and a seemingly unending stream of food safety scandals, Big Food Inc. has continued to lose credibility and market share. Backed by corrupt politicians and powerful trade organizations such as the Grocery Manufacturers Association, the majority of large food corporations alienated millions of consumers by fighting against mandatory “country of origin” and GMO labeling of foods.
Watching consumers turn away from their products, large multinational food and beverage corporations such as General Mills, Nestle, Campbell’s, Coca-Cola, Cargill, Pepsi, Kellogg’s, Danone, Perdue, Unilever and others have been forced to try to shore up their reputations and market share by buying up every sizeable organic brand willing to sell out.2
At the same time, giant supermarket chains in North America and across the world, including Walmart, Kroger, Safeway and Amazon/Whole Foods, have been forced by consumer demand to increase the sales and marketing of their store-brand private-label organic and “natural” products as well.
Even fast food chains such as McDonald’s, Burger King and Subway, pressured by sagging sales among millennials and competition from natural/non-GMO food upstarts like Chipotle and Panera, have expanded their menus and put more emphasis on nutrition.
Having failed to shore up their sagging profits with organic acquisitions alone, the food giants have hired an army of PR firms and political lobbyists to help them fraudulently “greenwash” and market billions of dollars of their conventional (GMO-tainted, chemical and factory-farmed) products as “natural,” “all natural” or “ecofriendly.”
In response, groups including the Organic Consumers Association (OCA), Beyond Pesticides and Food & Water Watch have launched numerous lawsuits, suing companies for fraudulently labeling their products as natural, pasture-raised, ecofriendly or U.S.-made, when in fact they are not.
Despite all their money and power, Big Food Inc. still finds itself on the defensive, desperately trying to reach out to evermore conscious and savvy consumers, and to counteract what OCA and allied food activists have been telling consumers for 25 years: Industrial, GMO-tainted, pesticide-laden, factory-farmed foods are bad for your health, bad for farm animals, bad for small farmers and farmworkers, bad for the environment, and as more and more people are starting to understand, bad for the climate.
GMOs, Industrial Agriculture and Toxic Chemicals
A growing corps of conscious consumers is starting to understand the dangers of pesticide and drug residues in our food and water, and the threat of toxic chemicals in everyday consumer products, including clothing, body care products, cosmetics, plastics, laundry and cleaning ingredients, mattresses, bedding, cellphones and computer devices.
America’s growing health awareness is a major driver of the growth in the organic, grass fed, natural health and green products sectors. But compounding the industrial and agritoxic pollution of our food, water and environment we have now, over the past several decades, we have been dragged into the Brave New World of Genetic Engineering and Frankenfoods as well.
Genetic engineers, chemical companies and Big Pharma have begun to implement a radical and haphazard reprogramming — with little or no foresight, safeguards or precautions — of the very blueprints of life. They are genetically altering bacteria, viruses, seeds, plants, animals, foods, trees, drugs and now humans.
Almost half of America’s cropland is devoted to GMO crops, including over 140 million acres of GE corn, soybeans, and cotton. Seventy to 80 percent of supermarket, restaurant and school cafeteria processed foods are contaminated with genetically engineered corn, soy, canola, high fructose corn syrup and cotton seed/vegetable oil.3
Meanwhile, 90 percent of our meat and animal products are coming out of factory farms, where livestock are stuffed with GMO animal feed (corn and soy), and recklessly dosed with Big Pharma animal drugs and growth promoters.
And, of course, it is not just the genetic engineering, foreign DNA, antibiotic marker genes and viral promoters in these everyday (nonorganic) Frankenfoods and crops that we need to worry about.
We also have to contend with the fact that these gene foods and animal feeds have been doused with poisonous pesticides, insecticides and fungicides. After 30 years of force feeding the public a vast array of untested, unlabeled GMOs and low-grade, nutritionally deficient “commodity” foods and crops laced with pesticides like Roundup, dicamba, 2,4-D, chlorpyrifos, atrazine, malathion, neonicotinoids and Bt, it is no wonder that public health is steadily degenerating.
The impact on the environment of GMOs, chemical-intensive industrial agriculture and factory farms is equally devastating. They are responsible for water pollution, aquatic dead zones, aquifer depletion, degradation of the soil’s ability to absorb and hold water, air pollution, destruction of grasslands and wetlands, loss of biodiversity, killing off wildlife, insects and pollinators, and causing soil erosion and massive climate-disrupting emissions of CO2, methane and nitrous oxide.
Perhaps most dangerous of all is the impact of industrial agriculture on the loss of soil fertility and soil carbon, which has degraded the natural ability of healthy soil, plants, grasses and trees to effectively carry out photosynthesis and drawdown, thus impairing their ability to sequester excess CO2 from our supersaturated atmosphere, into our soils and biota.
Factory Farms, GMO Animal Feed and Pharma Drugs
Ninety percent of the meat, dairy, and poultry consumed by the average (malnourished, supersized) American consumer today comes from crowded, filthy, hellish factory farms and feedlots, euphemistically called CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations).
The daily diet of the hapless creatures in these animal prisons typically consists of pesticide-drenched GMO grains, antibiotics, growth promoters and a mind-boggling range of other Big Pharma animal drugs. The meat, dairy and poultry coming out of these animal factories is low in nutrition, routinely contaminated with harmful bacteria, pathogens and animal drugs, and loaded with artery-clogging bad fats (low in omega-3 and high in omega-6).
Study after study links the nation’s deteriorating health, including the chronic health epidemic of our children, to the increasing amounts of toxic chemicals and GMOs (essentially pesticide delivery systems) dumped into our environment and laced into our food.
Although approximately 12 percent of American consumers today, according to the latest surveys, are trying to protect ourselves and our families by always buying organic foods, and 47 percent occasionally do so, most of us are exposed day after day to a barrage of toxic, carcinogenic, hormone-disruptive chemicals and GMOs.
The average American diet, as Mercola.com and others have pointed out, is now mainly composed of highly processed junk foods (70 percent) and beverages, along with factory-farmed meat and animal products — in other words, the types of foods you can purchase at your local gas station, fast food restaurant or convenience store.
What are some of the health consequences of this toxic assault? A recent Rand Corporation study4 found that 60 percent of Americans suffer from at least one chronic health condition such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity and arthritis; and 42 percent have two or more of these illnesses.
Chronic diseases now account for more than 40 percent of the $3.5 trillion that people are handing over to Big Pharma and the medical industrial complex. Scientific studies indicate that the overwhelming majority of these chronic diseases are caused by environmental and dietary toxins, rather than hereditary factors.
Half of all Americans are now expected to come down with cancer at least once in their lifetime. According to recent research, U.S. men born in 1960 have a lifetime cancer risk of 53.5 percent. For or women it’s 47.5 percent.5 Seventy percent of U.S. drinking water is now contaminated with Monsanto’s toxic herbicide, Roundup,6 while 93 percent of consumers now have traces of Monsanto’s poison (active ingredient glyphosate) in our urine.7
Today, 1 in 13 U.S. children has serious food allergies; 6 to 24 percent have serious intestinal problems; 20 percent are obese; 60 percent have chronic headaches and 20 percent suffer from mental disorders and depression. One in every 41 boys and 1 in every 68 girls is now diagnosed with autism.8
Deteriorating public health is not just a problem in the U.S. It’s also a global crisis. Of the toxic stew of GMOs and chemicals dumped into the environment or laced into food or other consumer products, 99 percent or more have never been individually tested for their toxicity on animals or other living organisms, much less in combination with other synthetic chemicals, which is how most humans and animals ingest or come in contact with them.9
As a result, the overwhelming majority of us are exposed every day to literally hundreds of different toxins, whether we’re talking about our food, water, air, home and work environment, medical drugs, or everyday consumer products. As longtime Australian organic farm leader and pesticide expert Andrew Leu points out:10
“Regulatory authorities are ignoring a large body of peer-reviewed science showing the harm caused by pesticides and they are making decisions on data-free assumptions … A study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control found a cocktail of many toxic chemicals in the blood and urine of most Americans.”
Soil Degeneration
Genetically engineered (GE) crops, toxic agrichemicals, industrial monocultures and factory farms are steadily degenerating not just our health and our air and water, but our soils as well. Erosion, compaction, loss of nutrients and salinization are now widespread.
Healthy soils, rich in carbon organic matter and microorganisms, and the plants, trees, and animals that depend upon a carbon rich soils, are the key to human health and nutrition. Our soils are the foundation for global biodiversity. They are also the most important factor in maintaining a climate-stabilizing balance between the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere and oceans, and the amount of carbon in our soils and biota.
Soils also regulate the flow of water from rainfall or snowmelt, and filter or reduce toxic pollutants, whether from industrial, agricultural or municipal sources. GMOs and industrial commodity crops cannot grow without the massive use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers.
In fact, GMO seeds are explicitly designed and patented by corporations such as Monsanto in order to maximize sales of their proprietary pesticides such as Roundup. Unfortunately, spraying pesticides and dumping enormous amounts of chemical fertilizers on farmland kills the soil, eliminating soil organic matter and the microorganisms that give rise to soil fertility and nutritious food.
Under the impact of degenerative food, farming and land-use practices, which include deforestation, heavy plowing, monocropping (growing the same crop every year) and the heavy use of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, most agricultural soils have lost 30 to 75 percent of their original soil organic carbon.11
Seventy-five billion tons of topsoil, with a market value of $400 billion are lost every year to wind and water erosion, mainly from farms and ranches utilizing chemical-intensive, soil-degenerating farming methods.12
Before carbon-sequestering forests, mixed traditional cropping and grasslands were ravaged by chemical-intensive and now GMO and factory-farmed industrial agriculture (and industrial forestry), global soil organic matter generally comprised 6 to 10 percent of the soil volume — three to six times the 1 to 3 percent levels typical of today’s industrial agriculture soils.
In other words, taxpayer-subsidized, chemical-based industrial agriculture, factory farms and unrestricted grazing (along with industrial forestry) have turned the earth’s soil (which still contains three times as much carbon as the entire amount of CO2 in the atmosphere) from being a major climate-stabilizing carbon sink into a massive and dangerous source of greenhouse gas emissions and global warming.
Forty percent of the world’s agricultural soil is now classified as degraded or seriously degraded. That means that up to 70 percent of the topsoil is gone.13
Unless soils are regenerated and forests and wetlands are restored, billions of small farmers and rural villagers will lose their livelihoods and be driven off the land. In the meantime, billions of urban consumers will suffer the consequences of eating nutrient-deficient, chemical- and GMO-contaminated foods.
Healthy soil is also a key factor in determining whether the world’s three billion farmers and rural villagers can make a living off the land, or whether they are forced to migrate to large cities or foreign countries in search of a job and a decent standard of living. According to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification:14
“The Earth is the fundamental pillar of civilization … The erosion of soil, desertification and the shortage of water contribute to the stress and rupture of society. In this sense, the degradation of the soil can be considered as a ‘threat amplifier,’ especially because it gradually reduces the capacity of people to utilize the land for the production of food, the procurement of water and other vital ecosystem services.”
The destruction of soil carbon (and soil fertility), via degenerative farming, grazing and improper land use, is disturbing given that the top 3 feet of the world’s soil holds three times as much carbon as the entire atmosphere.15 This makes the soil a major repository for carbon (along with forests and oceans) and therefore a major factor in maintaining climate stability.
Deforestation and destructive agricultural practices over the past 10,000 years have released 320 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere. Burning fossil fuels has released another 292 billion tons.16 Over time, this steady loss of soil carbon (and soil biodiversity and fertility) released into the atmosphere has not only changed the climate, but has also affected the quality of our foods.
Today’s nonorganic foods have lost 25 to 75 percent of the essential nutrients and trace minerals compared with 50 years ago.
As the journal Scientific American points out, “… fruits and vegetables grown decades ago were much richer in vitamins and minerals than the varieties most of us get today. The main culprit in this disturbing nutritional trend is soil depletion: Modern intensive agricultural methods have stripped increasing amounts of nutrients from the soil in which the food we eat grows.”17
Massive soil degradation has taken place in every nation, not just the U.S. In a recent news report,18 scientists point out that that the U.K. appears to be 30 to 40 years away from the “eradication of soil fertility.”
From Degeneration to Regeneration: Five Steps
OK. Enough of the bad news. What do we do about all this? How do we move from degeneration to regeneration? How do we defeat Bayer/Monsanto, Big Food and Big Pharma? How do we take back control of our health and our diets, clean up the environment, and join in the global effort to reestablish a stable climate?
Fortunately, millions of us are already rejecting GMOs, pesticides and factory farms, and embracing organic food and natural health practices and lifestyles. Here are some things all of us can do:
Stay informed and spread the message of organic, biodynamic and regenerative food, farming and natural health among your family, friends and neighbors. Some of the best newsletters, websites, social media and sources of information include Mercola.com, OrganicConsumers.org and RegenerationInternational.org.
Boycott GMOs, toxic pesticides and factory-farmed meat, dairy and poultry — today and every day.
Buy organic, biodynamic, 100 percent grass fed, pasture-raised and other regenerative foods and consumer products.
Get involved with other natural health activists and regenerators in changing public policy at the local, state and national levels. Become a grassroots citizen lobbyist with the Organic Consumers Association or OCA’s grassroots lobbying arm, the Citizens Regeneration Lobby.
French and German farmers have been forced to dig up thousands of hectares of rapeseed fields after authorities found an illegal GMO strain mixed in with the natural seeds they’d bought from Bayer-Monsanto.
Authorities discovered the illicit seeds in three separate batches of rapeseed seeds last fall, but the public has only just been notified. While Bayer issued a recall, by the time the farmers learned of it some of the seeds had already been planted, covering 8,000 ha in France and 3,000 ha in Germany.
Bayer-Monsanto estimated the number of rogue seeds at just about .005 percent of the total volume of rapeseed seeds sold to both nations under the brand name Dekalb, but each country has a ban on GMO cultivation, with strict penalties for “accidental” contamination of standard crops.
The agrochemical giant refused to estimate the total cost of the GMO contamination, which knocks out not only this season’s crop but also the next season’s, as farmers will be barred from growing rapeseed next year “to avoid re-emergence of the GMO strain,” according to Bayer-Monsanto’s French COO Catherine Lamboley. They offered to compensate farmers €2,000 per hectare, which would work out to about €20 million between both countries.
The cause of the contamination is unknown, Lamboley said, claiming the seeds were produced in Argentina “in a GMO-free area” and declaring that the company “has decided to immediately stop all rapeseed production in Argentina.” The rogue GMO seeds were of a variety grown in Canada that is banned in Europe, although imported food made with the modified rapeseed is permitted for human and animal consumption as long as it is adequately labeled.
Bayer acquired Monsanto for $63 billion last year at a low point in the reputation of the chemical company. The company found itself in the legal spotlight again this week, as French farmer Paul François, who has been fighting Monsanto in court for 12 years, faced his last appeal after a court overturned two previous rulings in his favor. François alleges Monsanto’s Lasso weedkiller caused his disabilities, which include amnesia, vertigo, seizures, irritability and even recurring comas. American groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson, who claimed Monsanto’s glyphosate weed killer Roundup caused his cancer, won $78 million in a history-making verdict last year that has opened the door to over 9,000 other lawsuits pending against the company. France banned Lasso in 2007, and last month a French court canceled authorization to market Roundup, citing health concerns. While glyphosate is legal in France, its use is strictly regulated and President Emmanuel Macron has pledged to outlaw it by 2021.
In January, it emerged that Germany’s Federal Institute for Risk Assessment had plagiarized entire chapters from Monsanto company literature in a “safety assessment” aimed at proving to EU regulators that the controversial pesticide was safe as it came up for relicensing in 2017. While the relicensing passed, individual European countries have increasingly come out against the chemical.
If you’ve been thumbing through your Primer of Biblical Apocalypses or browsing through Apocalypses for Dummies lately, you’ve probably noticed how oddly synchronous all those dire predictions from the past are and how much they resemble the “if-we-can-think-of-it-let’s-do-it” attitude of contemporary corporations, mad scientists, and insane government agencies like DARPA, which – thanks to a suggestion by Mr. J.B. – we respectfully refer to on this site as the Diabolically Apocalyptic Research Projects Agency. We’d almost expect the current Director’s name to be Lucy Furr. And for those of you who are unfamiliar with what synchronicities are, they’re somewhere on the spectrum between coincidence and ineluctable Calvinism.
And if you’ve been following the saga of GMOs and Mon(ster)santo (lately become I.G. Farbensanto after German chemicals giant Bayer bought the company), you’ll also be familiar with the fact that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., son of the murdered Senator, has been closely following or actually involved with recent lawsuits against against the company for glyphosate which some studies have identified as a carcinogen. And that’s just the beginning, because there are hundreds more lawsuits in the wings. And while we’re talking about synchronicities somewhere between coincidence and ineluctable Calvinism, don’t forget that strange Bayer-I.G. Farbensanto connection to 9/11 via Mohammad Atta, whose stint in Germany was sponsored by the Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft, Duisberg being the lovely chap who headed Bayer during World War One, who helped found the notorious IG Farben cartel after said War to End All Wars, and who recommended during said War to End All Wars to bring 60,000 or so Belgians to Germany as slave labor. He was a veritable cauldron bubbling with ideas, including the idea of using poison gas and chemical warfare. That didn’t work out too well for Germany as France and England had chemists too (go figure), but all ended well as Bayer made lots of money, some of which doubtless helped to purchase Mon(ster)santo.
Well, the spirit of Carl Duisberg lives on, for Mr. B.B. spotted and shared this article about the latest “if-we-can-think-of-it-let’s-do-it” project going on at DARPA:
Now, if you thought GMOs were bad enough, consider the following revelation:
A new technology in which insects are used to genetically modify crops could be converted into a dangerous, and possibly illegal, bioweapon, alleges a Science Policy Forum report released today. Naturally, the organization leading the research says it’s doing nothing of the sort.
The report is a response to a ongoing research program funded by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Dubbed “Insect Allies,” the idea is to create more resilient crops to help farmers deal with climate change, drought, frost, floods, salinity, and disease. But instead of modifying seeds in a lab, farmers would send fleets of insects into their crops, where the genetically modified bugs would do their work, “infecting” the plants with a special virus that passes along the new resilience genes.
…
The technology at the heart of this research could herald an entirely new way of genetically modifying crops. Instead of having to wait for a plant to pass its newly-acquired traits onto the next generation, genetic changes would be imposed upon living organisms, a process known as horizontal genetic alteration. Hence the technology’s name—Horizontal Environmental Genetic Alteration Agents, or HEGAAs.
For HEGAAs to work, a lab-developed genetic modification needs to be inserted into the chromosome of a target organism. And that’s where the insects come in. The system would utilize leafhoppers, whiteflies, and aphids genetically altered in the lab using CRISPR, or some other gene-editing system, to carry an infectious virus to pre-existing crops. Each plant would be infected with a transgene, triggering the desired gain-of-function, such as improved resistance to drought or frost.
Now, most readers here are familiar with the biggest criticism leveled against GMOs: the utter lack of long-term trans-generational studies; they were simply rubber-stamped and allowed out (during the [mis-]administration of G.H.W. Bush). At the time of course there were German generals people who said that using poison gas wouldn’t work because France and England had chemists too further testing needed to be done of environmental impact, long term crop yields, and human health impact, but no one listened to them, and the result was predictable: England and France started using poison gas long term independent studies began to confirm that long term yields fell as prices rose, and a whole host of animal and human problems began to occur. Now, without any long-term studies, DARPA wants to create and release Genetically Modified Insects (GMIs) to Genetically Modify Crops.
And that’s the positive spin!
The potential for weaponization of this Lucy Furrian idea is definitely there, so like Carl Duisberg, DARPA plunges ahead anyway, forgetting that England and France have chemists too China and Russia have genetic and robotical engineers too, and GMI warfare becomes an apocalyptic possibility.
All it will take is for some heartlessly brilliant corporocrat colossally stupid and greedy Carl Duisberg to recommend that the insects can be released on farmers’ fields through gigantic artillery bombardments…
… oh… wait… we have airplanes for that now.
And gee, what a coincidence synchronicity that they’re spraying like crazy. Why not just add some GMIs to the mix?
Industry front groups include the Genetic Literacy Project, the American Council for Science and Health, Science 2.0, GMO Answers, Independent Women’s Forum, Science Codex, Center for Consumer Freedom and the Center for Inquiry
Once you start to investigate these front groups, you’ll find the same names appearing again and again, cowriting articles, interviewing each other and referring to each other’s work in a closed loop
The seven classic techniques of propaganda have been clearly delineated and are used without exception by most industries
Astroturfing is when a special interests group creates a fake grassroots campaign for or against a particular agenda
The vaccine and biotechnology industries have joined forces and are using the same terminology and the same psychological assault strategies against their detractors.
by Dr. Mercola
Over the years, I’ve written a number of articles outing industry front groups1 such as the Genetic Literacy Project, the American Council for Science and Health (ACSH),2 Science 2.0, GMO Answers, Independent Women’s Forum, Science Codex, Center for Consumer Freedom and the Center for Inquiry.
Once you start to investigate these front groups, you’ll find the same names appearing again and again, cowriting articles, interviewing each other and referring to each other’s work in a closed loop.
I’ve also written about academics and journalists who, while presenting themselves as independent experts, are actually shills for industry. This is a fairly close-knit group of individuals, so the worst actors are not hard to identify based on their associations.
Well-established actors include Forbes contributor Kavin Senapathy;3 Henry Miller; Steven Salzberg;4Bruce Chassy, Jon Entine,5,6Kevin Folta, Keith Kloor7 and Mark Lynas.
Learn to Recognize Astroturfing When You See It
In the TED Talk above, award-winning investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson discusses strategies used by industry to manipulate public opinion and steer online discussion.
A strategy that has become phenomenally popular with the advent of social media is astroturfing, which is when a special interests group creates a fake grassroots campaign for or against a particular agenda. You might think it’s a group of moms devoted to children’s health that is touting the benefits of GMOs or vaccines, for example, when in fact the campaign is run by industry.
Increasingly over the past year or so you may have seen a number of articles simultaneously criticizing both the “anti-vaxxers” and “anti-GMO movement,” making contemptuous and sometimes wildly insulting comments about people who question the safety of either of these industries and their wares.
While GMOs and vaccines may seem like strange bedfellows, the cross-linking of these two industries in propaganda material is neither accidental nor haphazard.
Industry Messaging Example
In a May 18, 2017, Forbes article,8 Senapathy (one well-known mouthpiece for the GMO industry) took aim at the “anti-vaccine and anti-GMO movements,” saying they’re “inextricably linked and cause preventable suffering.”
“The thoroughly answered question of whether vaccines cause autism isn’t really a question outside of conspiracy-theorist circles,” Senapathy writes.
“The body of evidence shows that vaccination has … vastly reduced suffering and death … and that vaccines don’t cause autism, cancer, dementia or long term health problems, and that any minute risk is vastly outweighed by benefits to individuals and society.
Yet with the backing of prominent leaders like Robert DeNiro and Robert Kennedy Jr., anti-vaccine groups fuel common narratives that keep herd immunity down, directly leading to suffering and death.
Now with Donald Trump embracing vaccine skeptics, the anti-vaccine movement has earned a hallowed place on the shelf next to other tinfoil hat clad schools of thought.
The question of the safety of genetically engineered crops (GMOs) has been answered just as thoroughly, and the anti-GMO movement deserves its own place on the same shelf, not just for being wrong but for its role in unconscionable suffering …
She goes on to point out how similar the communication tactics are between vaccine and GMO detractors. Ironically, her article reveals just as much if not more about the biotech and vaccine industries’ messaging tactics. You can go through her article and check off numerous boxes for how to spot a piece of industry propaganda.
That includes the claim that the science is settled (which automatically precludes the need for further discussion), citing a fellow industry shill (in this case Kloor), using strong, derogatory language when describing those who disagree with industry talking points, making ample references to “conspiracy theories” and “other tinfoil hat clad schools of thought.”
Seven Classic Propaganda Techniques
Whenever you hear or read that someone is a “quack,” and that “the science has been settled,” or that something is “science-based,” it’s probably a smear campaign created by an astroturf group, industry front group or paid shill. In fact, the seven techniques of propaganda have been clearly delineated and are used without exception by most industries. As noted by writer Morgan Crouch in his article, “What Are the Seven Techniques of Propaganda?” these include:9
Name calling — Derogatory terms or discriminatory words used to arouse suspicion and prejudice
Glittering generalities — Slogans, catchphrases and highly generalized statements that sound good but mean little and prove nothing (such as “the science is settled”)
Transfer — The linking of a company/industry idea with a revered symbol
Testimonial — Testimony by a respected authority, similar to celebrity endorsement
Plain folks — Corporate material presented by someone who appears to be “just like you” — someone who shares your concerns and ideals
Bandwagon — Creating the illusion that there’s a consensus, which capitalizes on people’s inherent desire to be on the “right” side
Card stacking — Using only those facts that support the company’s/industry’s ideas, with the aim of making you assume these facts are conclusive. As noted by Crouch, “By ‘stacking cards against the truth,’ propagandists can control the beliefs of their audience”
Pesticide and Vaccine Partnerships Revealed
While Senapathy tries to show how those who question the safety of either GMOs or vaccines are all alike — that is, tinfoil hat-wearing lunatics who follow flat-earth theories in their spare time — what she ultimately achieves is a perfect example of industry PR.
This systematic messaging strategy has been carefully developed, and is known to have a penetrating psychological effect. Both the vaccine and biotechnology industries use the same terminology and the same psychological assault strategies to make you feel like you’re in the wrong — or worse.
In her article, Senapathy basically accuses all vaccine and GMO safety advocates of being killers, merely for asking questions and not settling for non-answers, and doing what they think is right for their own health and that of their children.
Another article10 that connects the vaccine and chemical technology industries was recently published by The Feed.
In it, Ashleigh Morse, Ph.D., whose training centers on psychology and the influence of environmental cues on decision-making, and who says she works as a consultant to “a range of clients” in the field of science communication and public health,11 argues that juries are incapable of assessing the validity of scientific evidence presented in court, or the validity of the scientific methods used.
Specifically, Morse — whose professional credits include a single published research paper listed on her LinkedIN bio on the role of opioid processes in reward and decision-making — is referring to the recent jury verdict against Monsanto, but she goes on to link that to vaccine science. “When juries decide on the science, we get autism linked to vaccines and the Monsanto verdict,” she writes.
When In Doubt, Blame the Russians
Then there’s the curious claim that the Russians are to blame for Americans’ lack of faith in vaccine safety.12 According to a recent paper13 published in the American Journal of Public Health, Russian trolls and Soviet-directed Twitter bots promoted anti-vaccine information on social media to “amplify the vaccine debate” and create dissent in the U.S.
According to the authors, “Accounts masquerading as legitimate users create false equivalency, eroding public consensus on vaccination,” and “Directly confronting vaccine skeptics enables bots to legitimize the vaccine debate.” Those two sentences are interesting and revealing indeed.
In a nutshell, they’re saying that by providing anti-vaccine content, these bots made it seem as though there was actually something to discuss when, in the opinion of the authors, no discussion about vaccine safety should occur at all.
Apparently, it is their view that the vaccine debate is “illegitimate,” since there’s “public consensus” on vaccines (refer back to the bandwagon strategy, No. 6 in the propaganda list above).
In other words, everyone knows vaccines are safe; the science is settled, so there’s no valid reason to question it. Summing up the alleged Russian bots’ efforts to sway public opinion against vaccination, the authors referred to it as “weaponized health communication.”
The Russians Did It Again
Coincidentally, the vaccine paper above was submitted for publication shortly after news stories began circulating claiming the Russians were behind anti-GMO rhetoric.14 Minnesota Farm Living writes:15
“Researchers from Iowa State University (Shawn Dorius and Carolyn Lawrence-Dill) wanted to better understand the controversy around genetically engineered food.16The issue is with the overwhelming belief in the science community is that GMOs are safe, consumers still question their safety. Dorius and Lawrence-Dill wanted to find out why.
What they found was surprising. The ISU researchers looked at not only how U.S. publications portrayed GMOs but also looked at the American versions of RT and Sputknik, two Russian publications. They counted how many times the term ‘GMO’ was used in different publications …
They went a step further and analyzed the tone of each article. What they found is the Russian publications were overwhelming anti-GMO. The articles talked negatively about environmental risks, nutrition concerns, and health risks of GMOs.”
Here, the author links to the “Are GMOs Safe?” page on the Genetic Literacy Project’s website as evidence to support GMO safety. But, the Genetic Literacy Project is a well-known front group for the GMO industry and hardly a reliable source of impartial information.
As for why the Russians would want to spread anti-GMO rhetoric in the U.S., the study authors note Russia has an interest in creating division among the American people to weaken the country as a whole, and to promote their own agricultural exports, as Russia banned GMOs in 2016 and is trying to increase its exports of organic food.
Claim of Scientific Consensus on GMO Safety Is Patently False
In the Minnesota Farm Living article cited above, you can see the telltale industry rhetoric in the sentence, “the overwhelming belief in the science community is that GMOs are safe, [yet] consumers still question their safety.” The reality is there is no scientific consensus on the safety of GMOs.
That is in fact the title of a scientific statement17 published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Sciences Europe, January 24, 2015. The statement, aptly titled “No Scientific Consensus on GMO Safety,” was signed by 300 scientists, researchers, physicians and scholars.
What’s more, the paper states that the claim of scientific consensus on GMO safety is in actuality “an artificial construct that has been falsely perpetuated,” and that such a claim “is misleading and misrepresents or outright ignores the currently available scientific evidence and the broad diversity of scientific opinions among scientists on this issue.”
In addition, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration still does not possess any evidence demonstrating safety because they do not do scientific reviews. And even if they did, hundreds of scientists say there’s no evidence demonstrating that genetically engineered foods are safe, and a number of independent studies have raised serious health concerns.
To learn more about how GMOs were introduced into the food supply without safety testing, see my two-part interview with attorney Steven Druker, author of “Altered Genes, Twisted Truth.” (Part 1, Part 2.)
GMO-Vaccine Convergence
The reason for the joining of PR forces between the vaccine and biotech industries becomes clearer when you take into account the fact that GMOs are moving into the vaccine industry. The 2016 article,18 “GMOs Lead the Fight Against Zika, Ebola and the Next Unknown Pandemic,” published in The Conversation, asserts that GMOs play a “vital role” in medicine, adding:
“Most modern biomedical advances, especially the vaccines used to eradicate disease and protect against pandemics … rely on the same molecular biology tools that are used to create genetically modified organisms.
To protect the public, scientists have embraced GMO technology to quickly study new health threats, manufacture enough protective vaccines, and monitor and even predict new outbreaks.”
Additionally, scientists are also exploring the possibility of vaccinating plants against pests as an alternative to using pesticides.19 In other words, it’s really quite crucial for these two bedfellows, strange as their joining may seem at first, to get people to embrace both genetic engineering and vaccines.
That’s why we’re now seeing more and more articles deriding both vaccine and GMO safety advocates in the same piece, whether it necessarily makes sense to do so or not.
Both of these industries are using the exact same messaging strategies — because so far they have worked — to achieve the same aim: Shame those who dare question the safety of either, and make them feel like ignorant outcasts and social misfits, thereby shutting down the conversation.
Preempting Your Rights
In my five-part “Ghost in the Machine” series, I discuss the many ways in which big industries manipulate science, and how they’ve captured our regulatory agencies and manipulate our political system. Here’s a listing of the series, in case you missed any of them:
A feature common to both the vaccine industry and the biotech industry is the use of legislation to preempt your rights and force you to use their products whether you want to or not, and without regard for the health consequences.
In recent years, I’ve written extensively about the vaccine industry’s attempts to mandate vaccines and eliminate personal belief exemptions across the U.S. In some cases, they’ve succeeded. In others, they’ve lost, but efforts to strip every American of their right to informed consent and medical freedom is ongoing.
The chemical technology industry is following the same agenda. One of the latest infringements on your rights is a provision in the Farm Bill that would block local governments from regulating pesticide use. The U.S. House committee approved the draft back in April. As noted by Jay Feldman, executive director of Beyond Pesticides:20
“This is really a backdoor attempt to interfere with state governments and local governments. I think the trend is for local governments to engage on this issue. This would undermine that.”
Monsanto Ghostwriting Shill Attempts to Tie USRTK to Russian Troll Efforts
A common corporate tactic is to use “third-party experts” to bring the industry’s message to the public under the cloak of independent opinion or expertise (No. 4, “Testimonial”). The idea is that academic types are far more credible than industry employees when it comes to defending the industry’s position.
A well-known spokesperson for the GMO industry is Henry Miller, who was thoroughly outed as a Monsanto shill during the 2012 Proposition 37 GMO labeling campaign in California. A “No on 37” advertisement had to be pulled off the air because Miller was fraudulently identified as being part of the Stanford University faculty.
Last year, Miller was outed yet again — this time as a ghostwriter for Monsanto. Forbes fired Miller when it became clear he had submitted ghostwritten material. On a relevant side note, Senapathy has cowritten articles with Miller, which is why some of her Forbes articles ended up being deleted as well,21 and the foreword for her book “Fear Babe” was written by Folta, a University of Florida professor who hid his financial ties to Monsanto.
The Freedom of Information Act Request (FOIA) discovery against Monsanto was led by U.S. Right to Know (USRTK). Proving he’s still working on Monsanto’s behalf, Miller penned a two-part article22,23 for Investor’s Business Daily this past summer, in which he tries — quite unsuccessfully — to tie USRTK to the alleged Russian GMO disinformation campaign.
The fact that they’re still turning to Miller is probably a sign of just how desperate Monsanto (now Bayer) has become. Other discovery documents obtained by USRTK included email correspondence revealing Monsanto has been quite desperate for a number of years already.
In an email dated February 26, 2015, Daniel Goldstein, senior science lead of medical sciences and outreach for Monsanto, tells Monsanto’s food safety scientific affairs lead, John Vicini, Ph.D.:24
In this email, Goldstein admits two pearls: First, the list of supporters willing to do their dirty work is short — which is why we keep seeing the same names pop up in pro-GMO propaganda pieces — and ACSH is a most valuable front group for the biotech industry.
Another Undercover Ambassador for GMO Industry Wants You to Think the Russians Are Responsible for ‘Anti-Vaccine Myths’
So, who else wants you to think that “the Russians did it”? Mark Lynas, a long-term shill for the GMO industry, just published: “Opinion: Russian Campaign to Spread Anti-Vaccine Myths Part of a Wider War on Science and Truth”25 on the Alliance for Science website.
As the other examples cited above, Lynas — normally a pro-GMO advocate — is now cross-linking GMOs and vaccines, closely mimicking the core message of Senapathy’s article, which is that “Many anti-GMO groups and anti-vaxxers are closely linked.”
Again, what we’re seeing is a crossover or merging of the GMO and vaccine industries in terms of messaging and propaganda angles. Rather than fighting public doubt separately, the shills for these industries are now putting out a single joint message that anyone who doubts the science presented by either of them is an anti-science nut job.
The take-home message here is that these tactics are nothing but a PR ploy. Yes, they’re trying to make you feel like an outsider, an outcast. They’re trying to make you feel ashamed of your “ignorance,” or worse, as if you’ve fallen for false propaganda propagated by evil Russians in an effort to divide and conquer.
But all you really need to do is look for the hallmarks of astroturfing, and you’ll quickly see through their ruse. You are not wrong for questioning flawed and biased science. You are not ignorant for questioning whether vaccines and GMOs might be unsafe when there’s a clear lack of evidence to support safety claims.
You are not a danger to the public for looking at the evidence and making your own decisions about whether or not you want your family to receive a particular vaccine or eat a certain food. Your inquiries and thought processes are only dangerous to the industries in question which, by the way, are willing to go to just about any lengths to hide the dangers of their products in order to maintain their profits. Stand your ground. It’s solid.
Protect Your Right to Informed Consent and Defend Vaccine Exemptions
With all the uncertainty surrounding the safety and efficacy of vaccines, it’s critical to protect your right to make independent health choices and exercise voluntary informed consent to vaccination. It is urgent that everyone in America stand up and fight to protect and expand vaccine informed consent protections in state public health and employment laws. The best way to do this is to get personally involved with your state legislators and educating the leaders in your community.
THINK GLOBALLY, ACT LOCALLY.
National vaccine policy recommendations are made at the federal level but vaccine laws are made at the state level. It is at the state level where your action to protect your vaccine choice rights can have the greatest impact.
It is critical for EVERYONE to get involved now in standing up for the legal right to make voluntary vaccine choices in America because those choices are being threatened by lobbyists representing drug companies, medical trade associations, and public health officials, who are trying to persuade legislators to strip all vaccine exemptions from public health laws.
Signing up for NVIC’s free Advocacy Portal at www.NVICAdvocacy.org gives you immediate, easy access to your own state legislators on your smart phone or computer so you can make your voice heard. You will be kept up to date on the latest state bills threatening your vaccine choice rights and get practical, useful information to help you become an effective vaccine choice advocate in your own community.
Also, when national vaccine issues come up, you will have the up to date information and call to action items you need at your fingertips. So please, as your first step, sign up for the NVIC Advocacy Portal.
Share Your Story With the Media and People You Know
If you or a family member has suffered a serious vaccine reaction, injury, or death, please talk about it. If we don’t share information and experiences with one another, everybody feels alone and afraid to speak up. Write a letter to the editor if you have a different perspective on a vaccine story that appears in your local newspaper. Make a call in to a radio talk show that is only presenting one side of the vaccine story.
I must be frank with you; you have to be brave because you might be strongly criticized for daring to talk about the “other side” of the vaccine story. Be prepared for it and have the courage to not back down. Only by sharing our perspective and what we know to be true about vaccination, will the public conversation about vaccination open up so people are not afraid to talk about it.
We cannot allow the drug companies and medical trade associations funded by drug companies or public health officials promoting forced use of a growing list of vaccines to dominate the conversation about vaccination.
The vaccine injured cannot be swept under the carpet and treated like nothing more than “statistically acceptable collateral damage” of national one-size-fits-all mandatory vaccination policies that put way too many people at risk for injury and death. We shouldn’t be treating people like guinea pigs instead of human beings.
Internet Resources Where You Can Learn More
I encourage you to visit the website of the non-profit charity, the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), at www.NVIC.org:
NVIC Memorial for Vaccine Victims: View descriptions and photos of children and adults, who have suffered vaccine reactions, injuries, and deaths. If you or your child experiences an adverse vaccine event, please consider posting and sharing your story here.
Vaccine Freedom Wall: View or post descriptions of harassment and sanctions by doctors, employers, and school and health officials for making independent vaccine choices.
Vaccine Failure Wall: View or post descriptions about vaccines that have failed to work and protect the vaccinated from disease.
Connect With Your Doctor or Find a New One That Will Listen and Care
If your pediatrician or doctor refuses to provide medical care to you or your child unless you agree to get vaccines you don’t want, I strongly encourage you to have the courage to find another doctor. Harassment, intimidation, and refusal of medical care is becoming the modus operandi of the medical establishment in an effort to stop the change in attitude of many parents about vaccinations after they become truly educated about health and vaccination. However, there is hope.
At least 15 percent of young doctors recently polled admit that they’re starting to adopt a more individualized approach to vaccinations in direct response to the vaccine safety concerns of parents.
It is good news that there is a growing number of smart young doctors, who prefer to work as partners with parents in making personalized vaccine decisions for children, including delaying vaccinations or giving children fewer vaccines on the same day or continuing to provide medical care for those families, who decline use of one or more vaccines.
So take the time to locate a doctor, who treats you with compassion and respect, and is willing to work with you to do what is right for your child.
