Thursday, November 14, 2013 (GreenMed Info) - There was a time when Monsanto claimed their patented herbicide Roundup was "safer than table salt" and "practically nontoxic," and aggressively marketed this message. Fast forward 15 years, after millions of farmers around the world bought into the false advertising and who, as a result, are now driving the production and use of several hundred million pounds of the chemical annually, Roundup herbicide is beginning to look eerily like Monsanto’s Agent Orange 2.0.
Indeed, within the scientific community and educated public alike, there is a growing awareness that glyphosate, is actually a broad spectrum indiscriminate killer of all living things.
You don’t have to look very far to find research documenting its extreme and wide-ranging toxicity. Anyone with a smart phone can now access the accumulating body of experimental and epidemiological research freely available on the National Library of Medicine’s citation database MEDLINE, proving that glyphosate-based agrichemicals have been linked to over 40 health conditions, from Parkinson’s to Leukemia, and over two dozen modes of toxicity, from causing damage to the DNA to disrupting hormone receptors, from suppressing the immune system to damaging neurons. To view all 26 adverse physiological actions visit GreenMed Info's open access, MEDLINE-derived Glyphosate Formulation research page.
The current debate over labeling, for example, only acts as a smokescreen distracting us from the more obvious problems associated with the clear and present threat of glyphosate/Roundup toxicity.
This also means that the primary doctrinal justification for not labeling, adequately safety testing, and regulating GM foods, namely, the view that they are ‘substantially equivalent,’ no longer holds any water. Roundup poisoned food is never equivalent to Roundup-free food.
Extreme Toxicity of Roundup Destroys GM/Non-GM ‘Substantial Equivalence’ Argument
If Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide were actually ‘safer than table salt’ as they once advertised, the consumption of GM food wouldn’t be nearly as controversial. The truth, however, is that virtually all GM food today contains residues of this toxic chemical, which disproves that GM and non-GM foods are ‘substantially equivalent," which is the primary doctrinal justification behind why GM foods are not properly safety tested and millions in this country eating them are living and breathing guinea pigs.
(GreenMed Info) There was a time when Monsanto claimed their patented herbicide Roundup was "safer than table salt" and "practically nontoxic," and aggressively marketed this message until 1996, when they were ordered by Dennis C. Vacco, the Attorney General of New York, to pull the ads.[1]
Fast forward 15 years, after millions of farmers around the world bought into the false advertising and who, as a result, are now driving the production and use of several hundred million pounds of the chemical annually, Roundup herbicide is beginning to look eerily like Monsanto’s Agent Orange 2.0.
Indeed, within the scientific community and educated public alike, there is a growing awareness that Roundup herbicide, and its primary ingredient glyphosate, is actually a broad spectrum biocide, in the etymological sense of the word: "bio" (life) and "cide" (kill) – that is, it broadly, without discrimination kills living things, not just plants. Moreover, it does not rapidly biodegrade as widely claimed, and exceedingly small amounts of this chemical – in concentration ranges found in recently sampled rain, air, groundwater, and human urine samples – have DNA-damaging and cancer cell proliferation stimulating effects.
You don’t have to look very far to find research documenting its extreme and wide-ranging toxicity. Anyone with a smart phone can now access the accumulating body of experimental and epidemiological research freely available on the National Library of Medicine’s citation database MEDLINE, proving that glyphosate-based agrichemicals have been linked to over 40 health conditions, from Parkinson’s to Leukemia, and over two dozen modes of toxicity, from causing damage to the DNA to disrupting hormone receptors, from suppressing the immune system to damaging neurons. To view all 26 adverse physiological actions visit our open access, MEDLINE-derived Glyphosate Formulation research page.
Once the public begin to let the reality of Roundup’s parts-per-trillion toxicity sink in, then another realization naturally follows. The vast majority of GM crops are designed to survive chemical poisoning with Roundup. So-called ‘Roundup ready’ or ‘glyphosate-resistant’ plants are sprayed with this chemical, ensuring they are contaminated with toxic residues. This means that the potentially endless, impossible to resolve debate over whether GM transgenes inserted into food and feed crops produce ‘allergenic’ or ‘potentially toxic’ proteins only scratches the surface of the problem, acting like a smokescreen distracting from the more obvious problems associated with the clear and present threat of glyphosate/Roundup toxicity.
Essentially, if you are eating anything that is not explicitly labeled non-GMO or USDA certified organic (and there are reasons to doubt the veracity of this logo), you are being exposed to Roundup and its toxic metabolites. And when we say ‘exposed’ we are using a euphemism for poisoned. This also means that the primary doctrinal justification for not labeling, adequately safety testing, and regulating GM foods, namely, the view that they are ‘substantially equivalent,’ no longer holds any water. Roundup poisoned food is never equivalent to Roundup-free food.
In order to drive momentum towards mass awareness of Roundup and Roundup-Ready agriculture toxicity, we are offering a free PDF download of our accumulated research on the topic to be shared far and wide. It is a 100% peer-reviewed and published research document, with hyperlinks back to the original citation location on the National Library of Medicine’s MEDLINE.