Monsanto Effort to Defund Cancer Researchers
theintercept.com
theintercept.com
Oil and gas, if you ignore global warming, really is very, very cheap.
Furthermore, even if that were true there is nothing to stop a malevolent actor, either deliberate, by ignorance, or by lack of better alternatives, to just eat the cost.
No one does any risk analysis and the short-term upside makes the long-term downside invisible.
No one knew how problematic pesticides can get. We are just now discovering the effects.
It's particularly severe when it's up to an MBA running a company, but an engineering education only goes so far in mitigating that tendency: the Koch brothers majored in chemical engineering at MIT. A major component of their education was all about externalities. And yet they've devoted their political activism to nurturing anti-intellectualism in the Republican party specifically so that the GOP would deny any and all externalities.
Don't forget, a lot of engineers don't even consider software engineering to be an engineering discipline.
I still have an extremely conservative outlook, and I have no ideological opposition to the private sector, but when "conservatives" are the ones running around upsetting apple carts and setting fires, it becomes hard to be an engineer and a conservative.
The CEO of, for example, Monsanto, has doubled down on Roundup in so many ways he cannot fail to fight this and keep his job. So I'm not surprised that he is fighting it (and getting Monsanto's many PR resources to fight it). But, the longer term for Monsanto is very negative if they don't change course, because even if they can suppress this in the U.S. they can't in Europe or elsewhere.
So, while the failure of our regulators and/or legislators to respond is certainly part of the problem, the other part is that our corporate boards of directors, whose only remaining job really is to know when to pull the CEO, are not up to the task.
Yes, Monsanto do everything, even semi illegal things to defend it's economical interests. I actually learned they hired fake journalists.
But nothing about the real issue: is glyphosate carcinogenic and if so, how much compared to very common carcinogenics. By far most independent studies (listed on Wikipedia) conclude that glyphosate is not or is unlikely to be carcinogenic. This is solid evidence of glyphosate being of little worry, especially when we have far more worrying carcinogens in our everyday life.
The FTI-written letter declared that glyphosate “does not cause cancer,” accused the IARC of peddling “bunk science,” and threatened a reassessment of the NIH budget to ensure that the agency is “committed to only funding organizations that produce information and conclusions based on sound science, robust processes, and credible methodology.” How solid scientifically are the IARC reviews? Nobody adress this real question.
Btw everybody talk about potential lives that Monsanto indirectly maybe killed. Monsanto is often considered as evil. But thanks to their scientific innovations, they feed the world. It's difficult to realize how many lives they have saved or improved, but they are probably on the top 10 list of most impactful entities for increasing well being and diminishing suffering.
How can you be so sure about this? Monsanto's GMOs depend on the use of their tailored pesticides. It's their whole USP. The negative impact of the current use of pesticides, of which roundup is a bestseller, is _immense_. The vicious cycle of pesticide use, GMOs and debt is horrible for farmers in low- medium-income countries and often leads to suicide. Just pesticide poisoning accounts for a yearly death toll of 200,000 to 250,000 people according to the UN [0] and the WHO [1].
This does not even go into the topic of loss of biodiversity where pesticides play a vital role. According to the OHCHR, if we were to eliminate bees by using neonicotinoid pesticides as usual, we will likely see a collapse of "the very basis of agriculture as 71% of crop species are bee-pollinated."[2] Monsanto and its practice have been directly linked to the demise of bee populations [3].
Monsanto and the like are again, cashing in all our chips for short-term gain. This is not innovation. This is a growth hacking at its worst.
[0] - 2017, https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G17/017/85/PDF... "pesticides are responsible for an estimated 200,000 acute poisoning deaths each year" [1] - 2006, https://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/en/Pest... Worldwide, an estimated three million cases of pesticide poisoning occur every year, resulting in an excess of 250,000 deaths. [2] - https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?N... [3] - https://www.globalresearch.ca/death-and-extinction-of-the-be...
First, the big difference about GMOs is that "farmers must purchase fresh seeds as retailers sell them only as hybrid cultivars, which prevents growers from replanting them the following year." [3] You can imagine that this makes a huge difference in how farmers need to operate. Farmers do not store seed anymore like they used to but need to buy new seed ever year. If world market prices of their commodities drop they will not even be able to afford new seed & pesticides for the next crop, especially since prices for GMO seeds and brand-specific pesticides are a multiple of non-GMO seeds. With non-GMOs, farmers retain the possibility and the legal right to the re-seed next year. That is why this cycle is more vicious, especially for low-income countries where credits and loan are hard to come by.
> You haven't mentioned any evidence which would inculpate Monsanto.
Secondly, I explicitly linked an article titled "Death and Extinction of the Bees. The Role of Monsanto?" which is one of many others like the Guardian, citing University of Texas research [0], the German Office for Environmental Protection [1] highlighting the negative effect of RoundUp/Glpyhosat. All of these detail the negative impact of Monsanto's product on biodiversity in general and bees more specifically. So the evidence is not only about the negative impact of Monsanto's main product RoundUp on bee population but also Monsanto's documented efforts to prevent effective regulation and scientific discussion.
For instance, the so-called 'Monsanto papers' "reveal Monsanto-sponsored ghostwriting of articles published in toxicology journals and the lay media, interference in the peer review process, behind-the-scenes influence on retraction and the creation of a so-called academic website as a front for the defense of Monsanto products."[5]
Monsanto doesn't really help here and became the first company that has been "banned from entering the European parliament after the multinational refused to attend a parliamentary hearing into allegations of regulatory interference" [4].
[0] - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/sep/24/monsanto... [1] - https://www.bfn.de/fileadmin/BfN/landwirtschaft/Dokumente/20... [3] - https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/gallery/2014/... [4] - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/28/monsanto... [5] - https://www.sci-hub.tw/10.3233/JRS-180028
Well, if there was no concern about the objectivity of the science that might be more relevant. Unfortunately the whole article is pointing out that the science done may not be accurate, as Monsanto has been putting financial incentives against honest research.
We may like to tell ourselves that scientific studies are beyond corruption, but that's plainly not true. There was even a time when a "scientific study" concluded leaded gasoline was safe. This is why financial backers must be disclosed in respected research.
As a consumer, if a CEO wants to consistently subject himself to a 10x dose of the chemical that will be remaining on/in my food, maybe I'd have more faith that our incentives align.
When Clair PAtterson started researching the environmental persistence of ethyl-lead (leaded gas), Du Pont offered to sponsor any research he wanted to do so long as it wasn't ethyl lead.
Not only can you not trust a company to research possible bad effects of its products, you can expect companies to interfere with research into their products done by outside parties.
Daniel Suarez had neatly integrated Monsanto suing farmers[1] into the storyline.
It's a great (neo)cyberpunk read, as are his other novels.
One of the things I love about novels of this style are that they prompt me to go off and learn more about a subject.
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/12/monsanto...
I really don't think this should have been downvoted to hell. We spend every Monsanto thread talking about how bad the company is and I think we can all agree at this point that the company would be best off dead. However, there are still very real farmers out there who need real solutions to avoid going bankrupt. Why can't we talk about all the good weedkiller companies that we should be buying from?
> One of capitalism's most durable myths is that it has reduced human toil. This myth is typically defended by a comparison of the modern forty-hour week with its seventy- or eighty-hour counterpart in the nineteenth century. The implicit -- but rarely articulated -- assumption is that the eighty-hour standard has prevailed for centuries. The comparison conjures up the dreary life of medieval peasants, toiling steadily from dawn to dusk. We are asked to imagine the journeyman artisan in a cold, damp garret, rising even before the sun, laboring by candlelight late into the night.
These images are backward projections of modern work patterns. And they are false...
[1]https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_...
The financial risk for farmers comes primarily from having to compete with farmers who are resorting to these dangerous products. And there's an easy way to address that.
Come to think of it - it is always a big news when companies' wrongdoings are exposed. But for companies who've turned around and is trying to make their operations better and abide by regulations and focused on ensuring safety and well-being of everyone directly and indirectly, they never make the news.
This type of behavior has always been prevalent with any corporation staffed by humans.
You don’t need a profit motive to get these sorts of things. Look at what the gov’t has done in the name of national security, war against crime, etc.
Glyphosate sits in the same category ('probably carcinogenic') as:
>Emissions from frying stuff
>Being a barber
>Being a night shift worker
>Red meat
>Malaria
>Glass manufactoruing
>Burning wood biofuel
And some other stuff and a bunch of chemicals whose usage I don't know.
In the 'definitely carcinogenic' category are lots of things that you would expect, such as coal production and ionizing radiation, but there's also:
>Being a painter
>Mineral oils
>Processed meat
>"Salted fish, Chinese-style"
Because I wasn't sure, this is the IARC's definition of processed meat:
>Processed meat refers to meat that has been transformed through salting, curing, fermentation, smoking, or other processes to enhance flavour or improve reservation. Most processed meats contain pork or beef, but processed meats may also contain other red meats, poultry, offal, or meat by-products such as blood.
There's also the third group of 'possibly carcinogenic', which includes beverages above 65C (149F), aloe vera, carpentry, asian pickled vegetables, and radio waves.
Source:
The core conundrum is the two party adversarial system.
More durable are three way food fights (trilemmas), like the USA's Constitution balance of powers (leg vs exec vs court).
Not perfect. Just better.
IMHO.
What you see here is largely a Republican effort to defund an organisation that's... Government funded.
So if you want the research to happen then that's not less government, it's different government.
Donating directly to politicians is fairly straightforward and transparent due to campaign finance law, but PACs operating “independently” and in the background undermine the system in a huge way
Many countries use publicly funded elections where all candidates get a set sum from the government to use towards a campaign. This would stop the billions flowing into races and ensure that all candidates have the same campaign budget.
Look at Texas, for example. The annual salary for a state legislator is pitiful (like $10k), which basically prevents anyone who isn’t independently wealthy from running from state office.
As long as we have free speech, whomever can buy the largest megaphone has the ability to drown out everyone else. You have to regulate speech so that everyone gets an equal size megaphone, but then groups that most people want to drown out also gets to speak. You can try limiting it so only some groups get access, but then you just get regulatory capture of speech.
That may be true enough, but it's not a phenomenon we've been seeing. What we _have_ been seeing in the past few years, especially after _Citizen's United_ and the dawn of PACs, is wealthy corporations legally handing money to candidates to do their campaigning with.
This would and should have nothing to do with free speech, except that there have been recent (SC?) rulings declaring financial donations, i.e. money, to be a form of speech, so basically unlimited political donations are considered protected under the 1st Amendment. I personally consider this a grave error in judgment, undoubtedly politically motivated.
Well, you have to include the middle step that voters are strongly influenced by what they hear, advertising, and the like and that many voters do not do a deep amount of digging. Also you have to include the other step that there is a lot of research in marketing and psychology to sway people's reactions and opinions.
But once you combine the above, it turns out that those with control of the primary information distribution can influence public opinion. Now, they can't convince people that grass is purple and the sky is green, but they can sway public opinion. Politicians realize this and are thus swayed by those who control the information lest they make enemies who will seek to promote their opponents either in primaries or general elections (at least in the US with its government system).
>How exactly would you go about regulating speech "so that everyone gets an equal size megaphone"?
I don't have a clue, and as you suggest, such actions won't be without unforeseen consequences which could end up worse than the original problem. A few countries in the EU seem to have laws made to dampen the problem without fixing it, but the actual effectiveness of the laws is something I haven't seen any peer reviewed research on.
I feel an iceberg metaphor looming.
That's why the defence has focused so far on facts and studies.
(Note: I'm not saying one is better than the other. Just that the risk was probably assessed with assumptions that turned out to be incorrect.)