This award-winning film documents the real story on smart meters.
For more info, look here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZTiT9ZSg3Q&t=9s
Sharing the type of news you are unlikely to come across in the mainstream media.
Showing posts with label corruption. Show all posts
Showing posts with label corruption. Show all posts
Sunday, 28 April 2024
Saturday, 1 October 2022
Safe and Effective: A Second Opinion (2022) | Oracle Films | News Uncut
If youtube removes it, you can find it somewhere else. ;)
Monday, 19 August 2019
Anonymous - The Story of Aaron Swartz Full Documentary
This film follows the story of programming prodigy and information activist Aaron Swartz. From Swartz's help in the development of the basic internet protocol RSS to his co-founding of Reddit, his fingerprints are all over the internet. But it was Swartz's groundbreaking work in social justice and political organizing combined with his aggressive approach to information access that ensnared him in a two-year legal nightmare. It was a battle that ended with the taking of his own life at the age of 26. Aaron's story touched a nerve with people far beyond the online communities in which he was a celebrity. This film is a personal story about what we lose when we are tone deaf about technology and its relationship to our civil liberties.
Saturday, 8 June 2019
SURVIVAL OF A WHISTLEBLOWER
To be a whistleblower is not easy. Particularly not in healthcare, which is riddled with financial conflicts of interest, corruption, political ambitions about becoming re-elected by promising people screenings that do more harm than good, and personal hobby horses.
Part of big pharma’s business model is organized crime, which envolves fraud, both in research and marketing. Our prescription drugs are the third leading cause of death, after heart disease and cancer, and I have estimated, based on the best research I could find, that psychiatric drugs alone are also the third leading cause of death. Yet, hardly anyone raises an eyebrow; in fact, we irrigate whole populations with psychiatric drugs as if they were mental fertilizers.
Most whistleblowers suffer a terrible fate. Peter Rost has described how things went for 233 people who blew the whistle on fraud: 90% were fired or demoted, 27% faced lawsuits, 26% had to seek psychiatric or physical care, 25% suffered alcohol abuse, 17% lost their homes, 15% got divorced, 10% attempted suicide and 8% went bankrupt. But in spite of all this, only 16% said that they wouldn’t blow the whistle again. I shall try to explain how it was possible for me to blow the whistle for 30 years and yet still have a highly rewarding career.
PETER C. GØTZSCHE
Professor Peter C. Gøtzsche graduated as a Master of Science in Biology and Chemistry in 1974 and as a Physician 1984. He is a specialist in internal medicine; worked with clinical trials and regulatory affairs in the drug industry 1975-1983, and at hospitals in Copenhagen 1984-95.
SUMMER INSTITUTE
The 2018 Summer Institute on Bounded Rationality took place on June 19 – 27, 2018, at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, Germany.
Sunday, 21 April 2019
Deadly Deception, Exposing the Dangers of Vaccines, a film by Gary Null
There is an epidemic, the likes that we have never seen in the history of this country. One in 6 children in America is learning disabled, one in 9 has asthma, one in 48 are becoming autistic, and millions more are suffering with brain and immune dysfunction, which can not be explained. Children are now exposed to more vaccinations than earlier generations. The number of vaccines is expected to increase dramatically with over 250 new vaccines in the pipeline. While there is an untold number of children and adults that have been injured from vaccines, most Americans remain skeptical of the fact that vaccines can and do cause injury, disability and death.
What will happen when vaccine-injured children, with brain and immune system dysfunction, reach adulthood and are unable to function in society? It is a tremendous cost burden to care for someone with a disability over their lifetime and the American healthcare system is incapable of handling the larger cataclysm that awaits as vaccines become mandated.
Conventional medicine claims that vaccines prevent infectious diseases and are proven to be effective and safe. We are that these diseases can be eradicated if the population is fully vaccinated to achieve “herd immunity.” However, does the science support these claims?
Edited by Valerie Van Cleve
Executive Producer, Gary Null Ph.D.
Directed by Gary Null, Ph.D.
Produced by Valerie Van Cleve
Associate Producer, Richard Gale
Saturday, 21 April 2018
Killing For Profit - at the European Parliament ! #LCHF Aseem Malhotra
Killing for Profit – Dr Aseem Malhotra discusses the dark world of Big Food and Big Pharma in Brussels
“We have a complete healthcare system failure and an epidemic of misinformed doctors and harmed patients,” – Dr Aseem Malhotra, 2018.
On 12 April, a combination of main medical doctors and lecturers spoke at the European Parliament in Brussels in a lecture entitled “Big Food & Big Pharma, Killing for Profit?” Among these audio system was Dr Malhotra, writer of The Pioppi Diet, a number one heart specialist and co-founder of Action Sugar, who spoke about the want for system reform in world healthcare, the biased funding of analysis, overmedication and the want to deal with the impression of sugar in our weight-reduction plan.
The video recording in full:
Link:
Industry suppresses valid research on gender bending chemicals
Silencing the Scientist: Tyrone Hayes on Being Targeted By Herbicide Firm Syngenta
Sunday, 13 November 2016
Friday, 26 June 2015
Why are we being fed by a poison expert?
Why does this matter? Watch this humorous, entertaining, and chillingly accurate 5-minute video to find out. Then tell everyone you know.
Want to take action? Share this video! And if you want to go further, you can join the Food Revolution Network’s Campaign, calling on Coca-Cola to stop fighting GMO labeling.
Coke says it supports transparency and consumer empowerment. But last year, the company spent more than $2 million fighting against labeling of genetically engineered foods in Oregon and Colorado.
Source:
http://foodrevolution.org/blog/monsanto-gmos-video/
Friday, 3 April 2015
Four Horsemen - Feature Documentary
As we will never return to 'business as usual' 23 international thinkers, government advisors and Wall Street money-men break their silence and explain how to establish a moral and just society.
FOUR HORSEMEN is free from mainstream media propaganda -- the film doesn't bash bankers, criticise politicians or get involved in conspiracy theories. It ignites the debate about how to usher a new economic paradigm into the world which would dramatically improve the quality of life for billions.
"It's Inside Job with bells on, and a frequently compelling thesis thanks to Ashcroft's crack team of talking heads -- economists, whistleblowers and Noam Chomsky, all talking with candour and clarity." - Total Film
"Four Horsemen is a breathtakingly composed jeremiad against the folly of Neo-classical economics and the threats it represents to all we should hold dear."
- Harold Crooks, The Corporation (Co-Director) Surviving Progress (Co-Director/Co-Writer)
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Sunday, 31 August 2014
Sunday, 1 December 2013
Under Our Skin - The politics of chronic Lyme disease
In the 1970s, a mysterious and deadly illness began infecting children in a small town in Connecticut. Today it's a global epidemic. A real-life thriller, this shocking festival hit exposes the controversy surrounding chronic Lyme disease. Following the stories of individuals fighting for their lives, director Andy Abrahams Wilson reveals with beauty and horror a natural world out of balance and a human nature all too willing to put profits before patients.
Saturday, 2 November 2013
Sunday, 25 August 2013
Monday, 17 June 2013
CFS Launches Class Action Lawsuit against Monsanto
By the Center For Food Safety
Last week, CFS and Pacific Northwest wheat farmers launched a class action lawsuit against Monsanto for the escape of Monsanto’s illegal GE wheat in Oregon. Support our work to hold Monsanto accountable!
You probably read the news that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently announced that unapproved, genetically engineered (GE) wheat was found contaminating an Oregon farmer’s field. The GE wheat, known as Roundup Ready, was developed by the Monsanto Company to withstand direct application of Roundup (glyphosate) herbicide, and was never approved for sale.
The discovery of unapproved Roundup Ready wheat in a farmer's field in Oregon, years after Monsanto terminated field testing, is just the latest example of Monsanto's inability to keep their engineered genes under control. Until Monsanto and USDA begin to take gene flow from field tests more seriously, we can expect GE contamination to continue to cause havoc.
CFS is not standing idly by hoping Monsanto and USDA do the right thing. We are taking action. Last week, Center for Food Safety and Pacific Northwest wheat farmers filed a class action lawsuit against Monsanto. Center for Food Safety and Pacific Northwest wheat farmers are representing the broad class of farmers affected by this contamination, seeking monetary compensation for farmers who have lost export markets, and forcing Monsanto to take measures to clean up the contamination and ensure it never happens again.
As we’ve warned for over a decade, GE crops simply can’t be controlled once they’re released into the environment. Past transgenic contamination episodes involving GE corn and GE rice triggered over $1 billion in losses and economic hardship to farmers, and recalls of food products containing illegal GE corn. CFS has been there every time, fighting in the courts, in the halls of Congress, and in communities to protect our food, our farms, and our environment from these risky GE crops.
With your support, we’ve been working to hold biotech companies like Monsanto accountable and tighten regulations over their experimental GE crop field trials for over a decade. And we’ve had a lot of successes -- like our past litigation over similar field trials in Oregon and Hawaii for other GE crops in which we won substantial victories over USDA and industry for their field trial abuses and failures. Because of this litigation, we now have the legal ability to challenge the legality of field trials, and USDA can no longer ignore their environmental and socioeconomic impacts. We’ve even forced USDA to publicly admit new field trial contamination incidents, like this one, that they otherwise tried to keep secret.
Center for Food Safety
660 Pennsylvania Ave, SE, #302
Washington DC 20003
phone (202) 547-9359 | fax (202) 547-9429
Tuesday, 9 April 2013
Argentina - A Poster Child for the Health Hazards of GMO Crops
By Dr Mercola
Argentina’s population is being sickened by massive spraying of herbicides on its genetically engineered soya fields. Glyphosate, the main ingredient in Roundup, is blamed for the dramatic increase in devastating birth defects as well as cancer. Sterility and miscarriages are also increasing.
A 2012 nutritional analysis of GMO versus non-GMO corn shows shocking differences in nutritional content. Non-GMO corn contains 437 times more calcium, 56 times more magnesium, and 7 times more manganese than GMO corn.
GMO corn was also found to contain 13 ppm of glyphosate, compared to zero in non-GMO corn. The EPA standard for glyphosate in American water supplies is 0.7 ppm, and organ damage in animals has occurred at levels as low as 0.1 ppm.
GMO corn contains extremely high levels of formaldehyde—about 200 times the amount found toxic to animals.
Unfortunately, President Obama recently signed into law a spending bill that included a devastating provision that puts Monsanto above the law. The provision limits the ability of judges to stop Monsanto and/or farmers from growing or harvesting genetically engineered crops, even if courts find evidence of potential health risks.
Source and more info here.
Saturday, 6 April 2013
Undue industry influences that distort healthcare research, strategy, expenditure and practice: a review
Emmanuel Stamatakis1,2,*,
Richard Weiler3,
John P.A. Ioannidis4,5
Article first published online: 25 MAR 2013
DOI: 10.1111/eci.12074
© 2013 Stichting European Society for Clinical Investigation Journal Foundation. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Background
Expenditure on industry products (mostly drugs and devices) has spiraled over the last 15 years and accounts for substantial part of healthcare expenditure. The enormous financial interests involved in the development and marketing of drugs and devices may have given excessive power to these industries to influence medical research, policy, and practice.
Material and methods
Review of the literature and analysis of the multiple pathways through which the industry has directly or indirectly infiltrated the broader healthcare systems. We present the analysis of the industry influences at the following levels: (i) evidence base production, (ii) evidence synthesis, (iii) understanding of safety and harms issues, (iv) cost-effectiveness evaluation, (v) clinical practice guidelines formation, (vi) healthcare professional education, (vii) healthcare practice, (viii) healthcare consumer's decisions.
Results
We located abundance of consistent evidence demonstrating that the industry has created means to intervene in all steps of the processes that determine healthcare research, strategy, expenditure, practice and education. As a result of these interferences, the benefits of drugs and other products are often exaggerated and their potential harms are downplayed, and clinical guidelines, medical practice, and healthcare expenditure decisions are biased.
Conclusion
To serve its interests, the industry masterfully influences evidence base production, evidence synthesis, understanding of harms issues, cost-effectiveness evaluations, clinical practice guidelines and healthcare professional education and also exerts direct influences on professional decisions and health consumers. There is an urgent need for regulation and other action towards redefining the mission of medicine towards a more objective and patient-, population- and society-benefit direction that is free from conflict of interests.
Sunday, 3 March 2013
The 2013 Hypocrisy Oscars
Published on Monday, February 25, 2013 by Common Dreams
The best actors in America are the business and government leaders who impersonate job creators and makers of prosperity. For their stellar performances over the past year, they deserve to be considered for the special awards listed below.
Here are the nominees:
BEST SCORE
Facebook's Eduardo Saverin scored big-time, landing Mark Zuckerberg as a roommate at Harvard, using American resources to score billions in income, and then revoking his citizenship to avoid paying any taxes.
Thanks to a capital gains system that benefits the few over the many, the twenty richest Americans made more money in one year than the entire United States federal education budget.
Double score! Wall Street bankers responsible for the financial crash not only made it through another year without a single arrest, but they continued to score big bonuses for their criminal behavior.
The 71 Fix the Debt CEOs who are determined to cut Social Security built up their personal retirement funds to an average of $9 million each.
BEST COMEDY
AIG threatened to sue the federal government for its own bailout (because other companies got more money).
Rachel Marsden: "If capitalism is perceived to not be working in America..it's because the system isn't capitalist enough."
Chicago Tribune: "Western-style private enterprise..will lead the world out of the mess it led the world into."
BEST COSTUME
WEDDING TUX: Former Senator John Ensign (R-NV) said "Marriage is the cornerstone on which our society was founded." He later admitted that he had had an extramarital affair with a former campaign staffer.
MOTHER GOOSE MASK: Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) introduced a bill against child pornography and supported sex offender laws. Then he was caught sending sexual messages to underage male congressional pages.
PRO-LIFE GOWN: Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-TN) said "All life should be cherished and protected. We are pro-life." It was later learned that he had encouraged both his lover and his wife to get abortions.
"I PAY TAXES" T-SHIRT: Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) stepped down as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee after failing to pay income taxes. Later he said "Governor Romney should come clean about the tax returns he's hiding from voters."
EARTH DAY SUIT: Al Gore won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on climate change. Utility bills for his 20-room Nashville mansion amounted to $30,000 in 2006.
DIOGENES TOGA: Former Sen. Pete Domenici kept secret that he fathered a child in the 1970s with the daughter of a Senate colleague. Then he voted to impeach Bill Clinton and was quoted as saying "Truthfulness is the first pillar of good character.."
BEST SELF-SUPPORTING ACTORS
Chicago Tribune: "What's so terrible about the infusion of so much money into the presidential campaign?"
LEADING ACTRESS Accusation
Roger Rivard (R-WI): "Some girls rape easy."
Rick Santorum: "Rape victims should make the best of a bad situation."
Todd Akin (R-MO): "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."
Richard Mourdock (R-IN): "I think that even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen."
Rush Limbaugh on Sandra Fluke defending contraception: "It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute..She's having so much sex she can't afford the contraception."
BEST SONG (and dance, to the tune of "Fix the Debt")
Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs: "You're going to have to do something, undoubtedly, to lower people's expectations of what they're going to get."
Billionaire Peter Peterson: "Without much broader sacrifice..we will never cure America's economic ills."
BEST ANIMATED SHORTS
Charles Koch: "I want my fair share - and that's ALL of it."
The Heritage Foundation on the Financial Transaction Tax: "Thousands of high-paying jobs would leave the U.S."
BEST DOCUMENTARY
-- This documentary skillfully looks beyond the fact that the almost half the people of the world - three billion people - live on less than $2.50 a day, with little change between 1981 and 2008. As for inequality, if China is excluded the global income gap has risen dramatically, even though inequality WITHIN China has risen steadily.
2. The Verizon Story
-- An overview of the popular company over the past five years. Verizon paid negative taxes from 2008 to 2010. A company spokesman said, "The fact is, Verizon fully complies with all tax laws and pays its fair share of taxes." Over approximately the same period, Verizon laid off 30,000 workers. Today, because of Verizon/AT&T market dominance, users in South Korea, Hong Kong, and Europe get much faster service at a much lower price. Verizon is one of the leading lobbyists in Washington, using its money and muscle to crush competition.
3. Sour Apple
-- Behind the scenes at the company with all our favorite gadgets. Apple got its tax bill down to 9.8% last year. About 2/3 of its profits remain overseas for tax avoidance purposes. For state avoidance purposes, the Cupertino, California company claims residence in Nevada. Apple claims to have added 500,000 jobs to the U.S. economy, but it only has 47,000 U.S. employees. It is estimated that the company makes $420,000 profit per employee while paying an average of $12 per hour for its store workers.
BEST EDITING
The JOBS Act: Removing Protections for Small Investors
Electricity Freedom Act: Repealing Renewable Energy Standards
Right To Work Act: Weakening Unions
Legacy Families: The Super-Rich
BEST MAKE UP
Rick Santorum: "One of the favorite tricks of the left [is] this politicization of science called manmade global warming."
Fox News: "Report: Global Warming Stopped 16 Years Ago."
Senator James Inhofe: "The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous."
BEST PRODUCTION (of Jobs in the Mind)
Michael Barone: "The iPod/Facebook generation [has] the means to find work and create careers that build on their own personal talents and interests."
Mitt Romney: "..borrow money if you have to from your parents, start a business."
President Obama: "Over five million new jobs." He didn't mention the 4.3 million jobs that were lost after he became President.
BEST SCREEN PLAY
Google screens profits by moving them through Ireland and the Netherlands and Bermuda, and then screens them again in U.S. banks to keep the money safe (although still untaxed).
American "Ultra High Net Worth Individuals" are using overseas tax havens to screen up to$750 billion of income every year.
Hedge fund managers screen their billions in Bermuda with a strategy called the "reinsurance company", which allow taxes to be deferred for years.
BEST SOUND MIXING
Mitt Romney: "I believe in an America where millions of Americans believe in an America that's the America millions of Americans believe in."
BEST VISUAL EFFECT
Nutrition classes being taught by Coca Cola and Hershey's
McDonalds sponsoring London Olympics 2012
BEST MOVIE
Argo: Why Couldn't They Just Let Us Run Their Country In Peace?
Lincoln: Why Isn't Frederick Douglass in My Movie?
Django Rechained: When He's Picked Up at School in a Private Prison Drug Sweep
Zero Dot Thirty: The Percentage Of Accurate Drone Strikes
And THE WINNER IS... the Financial Industry.
Acceptance Speech:
I'd like to thank Congress and the SEC and the Glass-Steagall repealers and the ratings agencies and all my friends at the Federal Reserve, and everyone who came through the revolving door of my life.
And to you, America: You dislike me, you really dislike me!
Paul Buchheit is a college teacher, an active member of US Uncut Chicago, founder and developer of social justice and educational websites (UsAgainstGreed.org, PayUpNow.org, RappingHistory.org), and the editor and main author of "American Wars: Illusions and Realities" (Clarity Press). He can be reached at paul@UsAgainstGreed.org.
Saturday, 19 January 2013
Thursday, 27 December 2012
Cancer of Corruption, Seeds of Destruction: The Monsanto GMO Whitewash
Global Research, December 19, 2012
Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/stench-of-eu-corruption-in-monsanto-gmo-whitewash/5316294
http://www.globalresearch.ca/stench-of-eu-corruption-in-monsanto-gmo-whitewash/5316294
Because of the power vested in the EU Commission in Brussels, Belgium, with command over a space encompassing 27 nations with more than 500 million citizens and the largest nominal world gross domestic product (GDP) of 18 trillion US dollars, it’s perhaps no surprise in this era of moral promiscuity that powerful private lobby groups such as the tobacco industry, the drug lobby, the agribusiness lobby and countless others spend enormous sums of money and other favors—legal and sometimes illegal—to influence policy decisions of the EU Commission.
This revolving door of corrupt ties between powerful private industry lobby groups and the EU Commission was in full view recently with the ruling of the European Food Safety Administration (EFSA) trying to discredit serious scientific tests about the deadly effects of a variety of Monsanto GMO corn.
Cancer of Corruption
In September 2012, Food and Chemical Toxicology, a serious international scientific journal, released a study by a team of scientists at France’s Caen University led by Professor Gilles-Eric Seralini. Before publication the Seralini study had been reviewed over a four-month period by a qualified group of scientific peers for its methodology and was deemed publishable.
It was no amateur undertaking. The scientists at Caen made carefully-documented results of tests on a group of 200 rats over a two-year life span, basically with one group of non-GMO fed rats, a so-called control group, and the other a group of GMO-fed rats.
Significantly, following a long but finally successful legal battle to force Monsanto to release the details of its own study of the safety of its own NK603 maize (corn), Seralini and colleagues reproduced a 2004 Monsanto study published in the same journal and used by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) for its 2009 positive evaluation of NK603.
Seralini’s group based their experiment on the same protocol as the Monsanto study but, critically, were testing more parameters more frequently. And the rats were studied for much longer—their full two year average life-time instead of just 90 days in the Monsanto study. The long time span proved critical. The first tumors only appeared 4 to7 months into the study. In industry’s earlier 90-day study on the same GMO maize Monsanto NK603, signs of toxicity were seen but were dismissed as “not biologically meaningful” by industry and EFSA alike. It seems they were indeed very biologically meaningful.
The study was also done with the highest number of rats ever measured in a standard GMO diet study. They tested also “for the first time 3 doses (rather than two in the usual 90 day long protocols) of the Roundup-tolerant NK603 GMO maize alone, the GMO maize treated with Roundup, and Roundup alone at very low environmentally relevant doses starting below the range of levels permitted by regulatory authorities in drinking water and in GM feed.” [1]
Their findings were more than alarming. The Seralini study concluded, “In females, all treated groups died 2–3 times more than controls, and more rapidly. This difference was visible in 3 male groups fed GMOs...Females developed large mammary tumors almost always more often than and before controls; the pituitary was the second most disabled organ; the sex hormonal balance was modified by GMO and Roundup treatments. In treated males, liver congestions and necrosis were 2.5–5.5 times higher. This pathology was confirmed by optic and transmission electron microscopy. Marked and severe kidney nephropathies were also generally 1.3–2.3 greater. Males presented 4 times more large palpable tumors than controls...” [2]
Four times meant four hundred percent more large tumors in GMO fed rats than in normally fed ones of the control group. Because rats are mammals, their systems should react to chemicals or, in this case GMO corn treated with Monsanto Roundup chemical herbicide, in a similar way to those of a human test subject. [3]
In their study the Seralini group further reported, “By the beginning of the 24th month, 50–80% of female animals had developed tumors in all treated groups, with up to 3 tumors per animal, whereas only 30% of controls [non-GMO-fed—w.e.] were affected. The Roundup treatment groups showed the greatest rates of tumor incidence with 80% of animals affected with up to 3 tumors for one female, in each group.” [4]
Such alarming results had not yet become evident in the first 90 days, the length of most all Monsanto and agrichemical industry tests to date, a clear demonstration of how important it was to conduct longer-term tests and apparently why the industry avoided the longer tests.
Seralini and associates continued to document their alarming findings: “We observed a strikingly marked induction of mammary tumors by R (Roundup) alone, a major formulated pesticide, even at the very lowest dose administered. R has been shown to disrupt aromatase which synthesizes estrogens (Richard et al., 2005), but to also interfere with estrogen and androgen receptors in cells (Gasnier et al., 2009). In addition, R appears to be a sex endocrine disruptor in vivo, also in males (Romano et al., 2010). Sex steroids are also modified in treated rats. These hormone-dependent phenomena are confirmed by enhanced pituitary dysfunction in treated females.” [5]
Roundup herbicide, by terms of the license contract with Monsanto, must be used on Monsanto GMO seeds. The seeds are in fact genetically “modified” only to resist the weed-killing effect of Monsanto’s own Roundup, the world’s largest-selling weed-killer.
In plain language, as another scientific study led by Prof. Seralini noted, “GMO plants have been modified to contain pesticides, either through herbicide tolerance or by producing insecticides, or both, and could therefore be considered as ‘pesticide plants’” [6]
Further, “Roundup Ready crops [such as Monsanto NK603 maize-w.e.] have been modified in order to become insensitive to glyphosate. This chemical, together with adjuvants in formulations, constitutes a potent herbicide. It has been used for many years as a weed killer...GMO plants exposed to glyphosate-based herbicides such as Roundup...can even accumulate Roundup residues throughout their life...Glyphosate and its main metabolite AMPA (with its own toxicity) are found in GMOs on a regular and regulatory basis. Therefore, such residues are absorbed by people eating most GMO plants (as around 80% of these plants are Roundup tolerant).” [7]
Suspiciously enough, Monsanto had repeatedly refused scientific requests to publish the exact chemicals used in its Roundup aside from one—glyphosate. They argued that it was a “trade secret.” Independent analyses by scientists indicated, however, that the combination of glyphosate with Monsanto’s “mystery” added chemicals created a highly toxic cocktail that was shown to toxically affect human embryo cells in doses far lower than used in agriculture.[8]
Mammary tumors that developed in rats fed GMO corn and/or low levels of Roundup. From the paper “Long term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize,” published in Food and Chemical Toxicology.
What was more than alarming in the context of Seralini’s first long-term independent study of the effects of a GMO diet on rats was that it took place some twenty years after US President George H.W. Bush gave the commercial release of GMO seeds the green light and mandated no government safety tests before release. Bush did so following a closed-door meeting with top officials of Monsanto Corporation, the world’s largest GMO concern.
The US President decreed then that GMO seeds were to be permitted in the United States with not one single independent precautionary government test to determine if they were safe for human or animal consumption. It became known as the Doctrine of Substantial Equivalence. The EU Commission dutifully aped the US Substantial Equivalence Doctrine of “hear no bad effects, see no bad effects...hear no evil, see no evil.”
EFSA ‘science’ exposed
What the Seralini study has set off has been the scientific equivalent of a thermonuclear explosion. It exposed the fact that the EU “scientific” controls on GMO were nothing other than accepting without question the tests given them by the GMO companies themselves. As far as the irresponsible bureaucrats of the EU Commission were concerned, when it came to GMO, the Monsanto fox could indeed “guard the hen house.”
Suddenly, with worldwide attention to the new Seralini results, clearly the EU Commission and its EFSA was under fire as never in their history and how they reacted was worthy of a bad copy of an Agatha Christie murder novel. Only it was no novel but a real-life conspiracy that evidently involved some form of collusion between Monsanto and the GMO agrichemical cartel, EU commissioners, the GMO panel members of EFSA, complacent major media and several member governments of the EU, including Spain and Holland.
The Brussels EU scientific food regulatory organization, EFSA, was under the gun from the damning results of the long-term Seralini study. EFSA had recommended approval of Monsanto’s NK603 Roundup-tolerant maize in 2009 without first conducting or insuring any independent testing. They admitted in their official journal that they relied on “information supplied by the applicant (Monsanto), the scientific comments submitted by Member States and the report of the Spanish Competent Authority and its Biosafety Commission.” EFSA also admitted that the Monsanto tests on rats were for only 90 days. Seralini’s group noted that the massive toxic effects and deaths of GMO-fed rats took place well after 90 days, a reason why longer-term studied were obviously warranted. [9]
The Spanish report cited by EFSA was itself hardly convincing and was anything but independent. It stated, “according to the current state of scientific knowledge and after examining the existing information and data provided by the Monsanto Company, the Spanish Commission on Biosafety could give a favorable opinion to the commercialization in the EU of maize NK603...” And the scientific comments submitted by Member States seemed to include Spain and Holland which applied to license the Monsanto seed in the first place. [10]
The EFSA concluded at the time of its approval in 2009 that, “the molecular data provided [by Monsanto-w.e.] are sufficient and do not raise a safety concern.” The Brussels scientific panel further declared amid scientific-sounding verbiage that, “The EFSA GMO Panel is of the opinion that maize NK603 is as safe as conventional maize. Maize NK603 and derived products are unlikely to have any adverse effect on human and animal health in the context of the intended uses.” [11]
Now, in September 2012, three years after the commercial introduction of Monsanto GMO maize in the EU, Seralini showed, complete with ghastly photos, that Monsanto’s GMO maize demonstrably caused severe rates of cancerous tumors and early death in rats.
The EU Commission in Brussels had guidelines that were as revealing for what they did not say as for what they did say about what precautions are taken to insure public health and safety from exposure to GMO plants and their paired toxic herbicides: “Toxicological assessments on test animals are not explicitly required for the approval of a new food in the EU or the US. Independent experts have decided that in some cases, chemical analyses of the food’s makeup are enough to indicate that the new GMO is substantially equivalent to its traditional counterpart...In recent years, biotech companies have tested their transgenic products (maize, soy, tomato) before introducing them to the market on several different animals over the course of up to 90 days. Negative effects have not yet been observed.” [12]
Because of US Government arm-twisting and of the obviously powerful lobby power of the Monsanto-led GMO agrichemical lobby in the US and EU, as of the time of the Seralini study, no regulatory authority in the world had requested mandatory chronic animal feeding studies to be performed for edible GMOs and formulated pesticides. The only studies available were a tiny handful of 90 day rat feeding trials carried out by the biotech industry and no studies longer than that, apparently on the principle that conflict of interest in an area as important as the safety of food should not be taken as a serious matter.
Revealingly, the EU stated publicly their seemingly reassuring policy: “GMO critics claim that feeding studies with authorized GMOs have revealed negative health effects. Such claims have not been based on peer-reviewed, scientifically accepted evaluations. If reliable, scientific studies were to indicate any type of health risk, the respective GMO would not receive authorization.” [13] That was the EU official line until the 2012 Seralini bomb exploded in their faces.
EU Commission deception, coverup
The September 2012 Seralini study was peer-reviewed, and it was published in a highly respected international scientific journal after such review. What was the response of the EU Commission and the EFSA? Nothing short of fraudulent deception and coverup of their corruption by the Monsanto GMO lobby.
On November 28, 2012, only a few weeks after the study was published, EFSA in Brussels issued a press release with the following conclusion: “Serious defects in the design and methodology of a paper by Séralini et al. mean it does not meet acceptable scientific standards and there is no need to re-examine previous safety evaluations of genetically modified maize NK603.” Per Bergman, who led EFSA’s work, said: “EFSA’s analysis has shown that deficiencies in the Séralini et al. paper mean it is of insufficient scientific quality for risk assessment. We believe the completion of this evaluation process has brought clarity to the issue.” [14] Nothing could have been farther from the truth.
At the very minimum, the precautionary principle in instances involving even the potential for grave damage to the human population would mandate that the EU Commission and its EFSA should order immediate further serious, independent long-term studies to prove or disprove the results of the Seralini tests. That refusal to re-examine its earlier decision to approve Monsanto GMO maize, no matter what flaws might or might not have been in the Seralini study, suggested the EFSA might be trying to cover for the GMO agrichemical lobby at the very least.
Instead of clarity, the EFSA statement once more fed EFSA critics who had long argued that the scientists on EFSA’s GMO Panel had blatant conflicts of interest with the very GMO lobby they were supposed to regulate. Corporate Europe Observer, an independent EU corporate watchdog group noted about the EFSA response, “EFSA failed to properly and transparently appoint a panel of scientists beyond any suspicion of conflict of interests; and it failed to appreciate that meeting with Europe’s largest biotech industry lobby group to discuss GMO risk assessment guidelines in the very middle of a EU review undermines its credibility.” [15]
More damaging for the shoddy EFSA coverup on behalf of Monsanto was the fact that over half of the scientists involved in the GMO panel which positively reviewed the Monsanto’s study for GMO maize in 2009, leading to its EU-wide authorization, had conflicts of interests with the biotech industry.[16]
A report by Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) found that more than half of the GMO panel experts who signed the approval had conflicts of interest.
The conflicts ranged from receiving research funding from the biotech industry, being a member or collaborator in a pro-biotech industry association, to writing or reviewing industry-sponsored publications. Some conflicts revealed a conflict of scientific interests, with some panel members involved in working on the creation of transgenic plants – including potatoes – with antibiotic-resistant marker genes – including nptII.[17]
Secondly, although none of EFSA’s GMO panel members were medical experts in the use of antibiotics in human medicine, they decided that neomycin and kanamycin were antibiotics with “no or only minor therapeutic relevance”. The World Health Organisation (WHO) classified these antibiotics as “critically important” in 2005.
Dutch scientist Harry Kuiper, chair of the EFSA GMO panel who had close links to the biotech industry, played a key role in the framing of this disputed key scientific advice.
Kuiper himself is an open advocate of less controls on GMO seed proliferation in the EU. He has led the EFSA GMO panel since 2003, during which time EFSA went from no GMO approvals to 38 GMO seeds approved for human consumption. The criteria for approval were developed by Kuiper for EFSA in cooperation with Monsanto and the GMO industry and a Monsanto pseudo-scientific front group called ILSI, the Washington-based International Life Sciences Institute, between 2001 and 2003. The board of the noble-sounding ILSI in 2011 was comprised of senior people from Monsanto, ADM (one of the world’s biggest purveyors of GMO soybeans and corn), Coca-Cola, Kraft Foods (major proponent of GMO in foods) and Nestle, another giant GMO food industry user. [18]
One critic of the blatant conflict of interest in having the top EU food safety regulator in bed with the industry whose practices he is mandated to objectively assess noted, “During that period, Harry Kuiper and Gijes Kleter (both members of the EFSA GMO Panel) were active within the ILSI Task Force as experts and as authors of the relevant scientific publications. It is a scandal that Kuiper has remained as Chair of EFSA’s GMO Panel since 2003, and that he is still Chair in spite of the massive criticism directed at the Panel from NGOs and even from the Commission and EU member states.” [19]
The brazen conflicts of interest between Monsanto and the agribusiness lobby and the EFSA went further. In May 2012 Professor Diána Bánáti was forced to resign as Chairman of the EFSA Management Board when it was learned she planned to take up a professional position at the Monsanto-backed International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI) in Washington. The same Diána Bánáti had been forced to resign, not as EFSA chairman but as a simultaneous Board Member of ILSI in 2010. Public interest groups made calls for her to resign from EFSA but to no avail. [20] At ILSI she will be able to use expertise and contacts gained from working for the EFSA to help GMO companies like Monsanto and other food industry companies influence policy across the world.
In sum, it came as no surprise to those familiar with the notorious “revolving door” in Brussels between the GMO industry and the regulatory body entrusted with making independent decisions on the risks of GMO in the EU, that EFSA condemned the Seralini study results. Most telling however of the brazen pro-GMO industry bias of EFSA’s GMO Panel members was the fact that the final ruling statement by the EFSA GMO Panel reviewing Seralini’s results announced, “Serious defects in the design and methodology of a paper by Séralini et al. mean it does not meet acceptable scientific standards and there is no need to re-examine previous safety evaluations of genetically modified maize NK603.” [21]
The EFSA is not the only source of blatant and reckless pro-GMO sentiment in Brussels. Some weeks before release of the embarrassing Seralini study, Anne Glover, chief scientific adviser of the EU Commission, said in an interview on 24 July, 2012, “There is no substantiated case of any adverse impact on human health, animal health or environmental health, so that’s pretty robust evidence, and I would be confident in saying that there is no more risk in eating GMO food than eating conventionally farmed food.” She added that the precautionary principle also no longer applies, which means the EU should not err on the side of caution on the approval of GMOs.[22]
Were there any pretense of scientific responsibility in the clearly corrupt EFSA panel, or Professor Glover’s office, they would have immediately called for multiple, independent similar long-term rat studies to confirm or disprove the Seralini results. They and the Monsanto GMO lobby influencing them clearly had no desire to do anything but try to slander the Seralini group with vague accusations and hope the obedient international media would take the headline and close the embarrassing story. It was typical of the entire history of the spread of patented GMO seeds and paired toxic herbicides like Roundup.
Notes:
[3] WiseGeek, Why are Rats used in Animal Testing?, accessed in http://www.wisegeek.org/why-are-rats-used-in-animal-testing.htm
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Gilles-Eric Seralini et al, Genetically modified crops safety assessments: present limits and possible improvements, Environmental Sciences Europe 2011, 23:10, accessed in http://www.enveurope.com/content/23/1/10.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Aris, A., Leblanc, S., Maternal and fetal exposure to pesticides associated to genetically modified foods in Eastern Townships of Quebec, Canada, Reproductive Toxicology, 2011 May;31(4):528-33. Epub 2011 Feb 18.
[9] European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), Scientific Opinion of the Panel on Genetically Modified Organisms on applications (EFSA-GMO-NL-2005-22 and EFSA-GMO-RX-NK603) for the placing on the market of the genetically modified glyphosate tolerant maize NK603 for cultivation, food and feed uses and import and processing, and for renewal of the authorisation of maize NK603 as existing product, The EFSA Journal (2009) 1137, 1-50.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid.
[12] GMO-Kompass, Food Safety Evaluation–Evaluating Safety: A Major Undertaking, February 15, 2006, accessed in http://www.gmo-compass.org/eng/safety/human_health/41.evaluation_safety_gm_food_major_undertaking.html
[13] Ibid.
[14] EFSA, Séralini et al. study conclusions not supported by data, says EU risk assessment community, EFSA Press Release, 28 November 2012, accessed inhttp://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/press/news/121128.htm
[15] Corporate Europe Observatory, Op. Cit.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Corporate Europe Observatory, Approving the GM potato: conflicts of interest, flawed science and fierce lobbying, CorporateEurope.org, November 7, 2011, accessed in http://corporateeurope.org/publications/approving-gm-potato-conflicts-in…
[18] ILSI, 2011 Annual Report, Board of Trustees, accessed in http://www.ilsi.org/Documents/ILSI_AR2011_rFinal.pdf
[19] Tore B. Krudtaa, Harry Kuiper Chair of EFSA GMO panel – Another regulator in the business of deregulation?, Monsanto.No, 22 September 2011, accessed in http://www.monsanto.no/index.php/en/environment/gmo/gmo-news/166-harry-kuiper-chair-of-efsa-gmo-panel-another-regulator-in-the-business-of-deregulation
[20] EFSA, FAQ on the resignation of Diana Banati as member and Chair of EFSA´s Management Board, accessed inhttp://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/faqs/faqresignationdianabanati.htm
[21] EFSA, Séralini et al. study conclusions not supported by data, says EU risk assessment community, EFSA Press Release, 28 November 2012, accessed inhttp://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/press/news/121128.htm.
[22] EurAktiv.com, GMOs: “Anne Glover, you are wrong,” 27 July 2012, accessed in http://www.euractiv.com/cap/gmos-anne-glover-wrong-analysis-514185
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