Unsealed Documents Raise Questions on Monsanto Weed Killer

I think that, besides the obvious corruption that these court documents reveal, another conversation has to be had about how disingenuous Monsanto and its agents have been in discussing these things - using classic deflection, obfuscation techniques online.

The "Monsanto Field Manual for Internet Representatives" would be a very interesting leak indeed ..

Edit: It's also worth noting that much legislation and regulations is ghostwritten by affected corporations.

I'm not sure why you're singling out Monsanto, to the exclusion of the government meddling.

Given the statement

a senior official at the Environmental Protection Agency had worked to quash a review

Shouldn't we be pointing a finger at the EPA - even more so, because it's their duty to protect us?

We should all be watchdogs, pointing out malfeasance. But it can't stop when we discover a corporation doing wrong, especially when the implication of that finding is that the government needs more power to keep us safe - when part of the problem is malfeasance in the government itself.

This affects an incredible array of life. Roundup is used on millions of perfect suburban lawns and landscape plants, impacting countless wildlife, pets, and humans. Glyphosate-grown foods are pervasive in our food supply, and eventually find their way into countless rivers and streams.

Using chemicals that are designed to kill living things in such a widespread manner is just a dangerous idea.

The real story, to me, are the academics willing to sign their name to research they didn't write, for a pay cheque.

"Arendt's book introduced the expression and concept "the banality of evil". Her thesis is that Eichmann was not a fanatic or sociopath, but an extremely average person who relied on clichéd defenses rather than thinking for himself and was motivated by professional promotion rather than ideology. Banality, in this sense, is not that Eichmann's actions were ordinary, or that there is a potential Eichmann in all of us, but that his actions were motivated by a sort of stupidity which was wholly unexceptional. She never denied that Eichmann was an anti-semite, nor that he was fully responsible for his actions, but argued that these characteristics were secondary to his stupidity."

Further down, we have PR firm controlled "sock puppets" discussed. Certainly a reality on the internet and HN.

In my view, a sign that discussion of a given issue being influenced by a lot of PR dollars/industry propaganda is an excess of emotion. The emotion is a side effect of all the propaganda, as invoking strong emotions appears to be necessary to influence people using PR/propaganda techniques.

If it lets them feed, shelter, and educate their kids? I imagine you'll have limited difficulty finding someone OK with this.

To quote Upton Sinclair, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

Companies like these are run by psychopaths who want nothing but money and power, and their employee base is self-selecting for the quality of being cowed into complacency.

As a biologist, Glyphosate and it's concoctions aren't a concern in terms of environmental exposure. The concentrations simply aren't there.

For instance, could the surfactant allow glyphosate to more easily be absorbed?

When you take something and spread it so pervasively that it has the chance to impact such a wide spectrum of life, the risks are extreme. Perhaps there is no level of scientific evidence acceptable for this kind of widespread usage, but we are probably far less conservative than we should be.

Part of science is assuming that people are dishonest, incompetent, or subject to influence.

But the scientific method should correct for those occasions when other individuals attempt to reproduce the original results. If we're not doing that, it really isn't science. Appearing in a peer reviewed journal is just the first step for an idea to become an accepted scientific truth.

they won't outright fabricate, usually. but they'll repeat experiments with various perversions until they get the result they want. and this is commonplace elsewhere in science, too, but it's typically disclosed in the methods section and people can put the pieces together for themselves.

Every spring I come out to find many plants damaged. Infuriating.

Farmers behave entirely irresponsibly with it and if it's damaging my grapes imagine what it's doing to the natural ecosystem, riparian buffers, etc. near their farms. 2,4-d can drift for several miles and both volatilize on hot days.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate#Glyphosate_alone

If that's the point he was trying to make, I think he worded it poorly. If people were scared of trace quantities of Monster energy drinks leaking into their food, a representative could simultaneously claim that the product is safe for human consumption and decline to chug a quart all at once on live TV. Even if he were scared of having a heart attack, it doesn't matter since the topic is trace quantities being ingested over long periods of time which add up to a quart.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gtcXXbuR244

He is finding glyphosate in everything that has proteins in it. Especially things that contain gelatin, where gelatin is made out of animal collagen, and collagen is the most abundant protein in mammals.

For example gummy bears, protein powders, nutritional supplements, and even in vaccines (several vaccines contain gelatin). So we are eating it, getting injected with it, and it is integrating into our own proteins as well.

I'm a part-time farmer. My father and I manage about 35 acres, half in corn and half in soybeans. We no-till our fields which is very helpful for preventing soil erosion and fertilizer/manure runoff. We are located in the Chesapeake Bay watershed so we have to (and want to) pay close attention to farming best practices regarding excess nutrients and runoff.

We use Roundup for both a burn-down in the spring and for post-emerge weed management (1 quart to the acre). It continues to work well for us. Based on what I've heard, round-up resistant weeds mostly commonly occur in fields where crops are not rotated. Some farmers do plant corn on corn, year after year. I can see where that would lead to significant problems.

So, I'd say that your unqualified statement above "roundup is obsolete" is true for me although it may be partially true depending on the application.

Look at the difference between glycine and alanine. Alanine is glycine with a methyl group attached. If the cellular polypeptide construction mechanisms have to be sensitive enough to distinguish between glycine and alanine in normal operation, then a phosphate sticking on the amine should be ringing alarm bells.

Additionally, the reactivity of glyphosate should be rather changed. You're going from a primary amine to a secondary amine, one with a moderately steric hindrance on it (considering that the amine is the focal point of the polypeptide production reactions). It's no tert-butyl, but it's still hefty. (Note also that proline, the only amino acid with a secondary amine, is by far the slowest amino acid in peptide production).

Anyways, one could argue that the studies have been tampered with by dastardly Monsanto agents. Also it's a presentation and I didn't follow through to the studies themselves, I just trusted the information as it was presented.

I'm going to trust that glysphosphate is not a carcinogen and that multiple protection agencies worldwide haven't been duped/sold out to Monsanto. The cost of independent testing by any competitor or curious party is low, these are just toxin tests and Ames tests that have to be done. If it really was a dangerous carcinogen, Monsanto would have its pants sued off already.

Seriously, do they do that?

Can you point to some credible sources that show these connections? The only time I've ever seen Glyphosate linked to these ailments is from quack doctor Mercola or fake news sites like Natural News.

http://sciencebasedmedicine.org/glyphosate-the-new-bogeyman/

Specifically Regulatory Capture[1]

>The records [...] indicated that a senior official at the Environmental Protection Agency had worked to quash a review of Roundup’s main ingredient, glyphosate, that was to have been conducted by the United States Department of Health and Human Services.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

The scientific method can be trusted, but how it is implemented can not.

Science only considers something to be "fact" or "true" when a large (and usually expensive) study has been conducted, the results have been peer reviewed, and the results are then published.

The problem comes when the people paying for research only pay for research they want to be "true" and nobody will pay for research leading to things that might not be so good for sales.

As an example - think about how much money it cost to do a study on this Monsanto chemical to find out if it's "safe". Monsanto are paying for the study - do you really think if that study finds out it's not safe that it will be peer reviewed and published and then considered "true" (that it's not safe). Or will the whole study be swept under the rug, and therefore never be found to be unsafe in the eyes of science?

How many multi-million dollar studies have ever been conducted, peer reviewed and published (therefore making them "true" in the eyes of science) that tell us really anything in today's world is "bad" for us? I'm willing to bet that number is close to zero. Any published study was paid for by a system with very, very strong interests in the results, so science will only ever "learn" what the people with money want it to.

Or: What people will say to impress their friends

* Even if you're growing food yourself, some roundup might still get in it if your neighbor is using it for example.

USDA does allow some level of glyphosate in organic products, if they are seen as residual and not from pesticides being applied during farming.

You also don't need to worry about contamination of e.g. water supplies. Glyphosate tends to adhere to soil pretty well, where it is eventually consumed by microbes. Glyphosate isn't absorbed through the roots and isn't effective as pre-emergence herbicide.

The real safety challenge with roundup is the surfactant use. Glyphosate alone just isn't very effective without the surfactant to punch through the plants' waxy outer layers. These surfactants do cause loads of problems.

Note that there are actually very few GMO foods - it only makes sense to develop them for high volume crops. Anything you can buy whole or minulally processed (e.g. an ear of corn) is going to be untouched by glyphosate, even though gmo corn does exist.

http://pmep.cce.cornell.edu/profiles/extoxnet/dienochlor-gly...

But not in science.

Edit: Realize there's a good chance you're being sarcastic, but responding anyway since there are many people who'd take this at face value.