Argentinian Report Identifies Major Medical Problems Associated with Roundup Ready Soy
GMOs, Health & Disease — by GM Watch December 8, 2011
Note: An important report by Argentine physicians has just been published in English. It arose from the 1st National Meeting Of Physicians In The Crop-Sprayed Towns, at the Faculty of Medical Sciences at the National University of Cordoba.
The report can be downloaded here (PDF).
It points once again to a big rise in birth defects, up in parallel with expansion of GM Roundup Ready (RR) soy. It also contains a lot of detail about DNA damage, confirming laboratory research on glyphosate and its breakdown product AMPA — and neurological development problems.
Extracts:
Comments (4)CSIRO in Bed with Multinational Corporations
GMOs — by GM Watch July 15, 2011
Editor’s Note: Some years ago I wrote about Australia’s CSIRO using public money for private profit, whilst ejecting just the kind of people we need in an organisation that’s supposed to be looking out for the interests of Australia and Australians. The article below shares some updated news on this….
The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is promoted as Australia’s pre-eminent public scientific research body. Although ostensibly ‘publicly funded’ CSIRO has, in reality, been encouraged to get 30% of its funding from business with the CSIRO top management encouraging its staff to go to 40%. As a point of comparison, only about 10% of the funding of Europe’s leading plant biotech institute, the John Innes Centre, is thought to come directly from industry although the JIC is considered highly industrially aligned.
According to John Stocker, CSIRO’s former chief executive,
Working with the transnationals makes a lot of sense, in the context of market access. There are very few Australian companies that have developed market access in the United States, in Europe and in Japan, the world’s major marketplaces. Yes, we do find that it is often the best strategy to get into bed with these companies. – Australian Broadcasting Commission, 1992.
Richard Hindmarsh in an article in the Journal of Australian Political Economy (No 44.),
Comments (1)Greenpeace Takes on Monsanto Over ‘Pesticides Arms Race’
GMOs, Health & Disease, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Water Contaminaton & Loss — by GM Watch July 1, 2011
Editor’s Note: In addition to the post below, check out this, this and this. It seems that Monsanto, and even industry regulators, have known for decades that glyphosate (the main ingredient of Roundup) causes birth defects, even in very low doses "comparable to levels of pesticide residues found in food and the environment". The philosophy of ‘caveat emptor’ doesn’t work well in this situation, where industry are outright lying to us, and when regulators, the supposed guards at the door, are not taking their job seriously. Banning Roundup everywhere would not only help protect our health from glyphosate, it could also be the death knell for Monsanto. It sounds like a plan to me.
Glyphosate has been linked with escalating rates of birth defects and other
health impacts in Argentina. Photo: Dr Graciela Gomez
The main ingredient of Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer is being linked to cancer, birth defects and Parkinson’s disease and should be banned, according to campaigners behind new report.
The use of the popular weedkiller, ‘Roundup’, in public parks and on agricultural crops is a danger to public health, according to a new analysis of scientific evidence.
Comments (1)GM Industry Lie: Developing Countries Want and Need GM
GMOs — by GM Watch March 17, 2011
 Nari Samaj rally in Bhubaneswar, Orissa, India |
The last 12 months have seen a number of biotech industry lies bite the dust. One of them is that developing countries are hot for GMOs, with only affluent Westerners obstructing their acceptance. In fact, the opposite has been shown to be the case, with deeply rooted resistance to GM crops becoming more and more apparent in developing countries in the face of the heavily financed efforts of US-based and GM industry-led interests to push GM crops.
Comments (8)The Failures of Genetically Modified Crops Continue
GMOs, Health & Disease — by GM Watch October 28, 2008
The GM industry has been ailing at least as far back as 2005, but kept alive by an aggressive campaign of disinformation. GM Watch brings you the latest GM failures 2007-2008
GM cotton debacle in India
GM cotton has been failing in India and elsewhere for years [1] (Broken Promises, SiS 22), escalating the epidemic of farmers’ suicides [2] (Stem Farmers’ Suicides with Organic Farming, SiS 32). Unfortunately, the Indian government has allowed the commercial planting to continue with drastic consequences.
BT cotton failed in Vidarbha
A study on the introduction of Bt cotton in India’s cotton-growing belt of Vidarbha revealed that it failed in the region. Suman Sahai, director of Gene Campaign, which conducted the study, said that despite knowing that Bt cotton would not work in rainfed areas, the state government introduced it. The high input costs of Bt cotton increased indebtedness, and the study showed that 70 per cent of small farmers lost their landholdings as collateral for loans that they could never repay.
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