Posts Tagged ‘Science’
GMO-Risk Scientist Wins Libel Case After Smear Campaign
“Neutral” attackers revealed to have financial interests in the industry.
Victory for Independent Science
World-famous independent scientist researching the risks of GMOs wins libel case against biotech association fronting a concerted campaign to discredit and victimise him
Dr. Mae-Wan Ho January 26, 2011 Institute of Science in Society
Gilles-Eric Séralini, professor of molecular biology at the University of Caen in France, and president of the scientific council for independent research on genetic engineering (CRIIGEN), is a leading researcher into the risks of GMOs. Not surprisingly, he and his team became the target a concerted campaign of vilification, which included Monsanto, EFSA (European Food Safety Authority) and scientific societies representing biotechnology in France: the French Association of Plant Biotechnology and the French High Counsel on Biotechnology (see [1] Defend Gilles-Eric Seralini and Transparency in GMO Risk Assessment! SiS 46).
This attach was triggered by the team’s recent thorough re-analysis of data submitted by Monsanto to obtain commercial approval in Europe for three GM maize lines, MON 863, MON 810, NK603, on which EFSA had given a favourable opinion. In a published paper, the team concluded that the data “highlight signs of hepatorenal toxicity, possibly due to the new pesticides specific to each GM corn. In addition, unintended direct or indirect metabolic consequences of the genetic modification cannot be excluded.”
Séralini and his colleagues received massive support from scientists and civil society. But Séralini decided to sue for libel; he believed the researchers Claude Allegre, Axel Kahn, and Marc Fellous were behind the defamation and intimidation campaign in France and that is why he pursued Fellous, who chairs the French Association of Plant Biotechnologies (AFBV), in the courts. Séralini argued that the campaign had damaged his reputation, reducing his opportunities for work and his chances of getting funding for his research [2].
Unbridled Science for Profit Will Reap Catastrophe
Science took a seriously wrong turn some years ago when academia/gov’t oversight defaulted and corporations triumphed. Since then many areas of development have ignored safety concerns and proceeded full throttle in search of profits damn what may. The chemical industry may have been the first to go completely haywire, flooding our bodies and environment with toxics. Now we have GMO, nanotech and geoengineering all racing to see who can cause global catastrophe first.
It’s not that hard to find credible sources of concern. But it is very hard to get anyone to take them seriously. In fact we’re over the cliff rushing headlong down a precipitous slope barely keeping our feet. It’s probably too much to expect people to be considered and rational in such a condition. –Claudia
An evil atmosphere is forming around geoengineering
…a powerful group of scientists, venture capitalists and conservative think tanks is coalescing around the idea of reproducing this cooling effect by injecting sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere to counter climate change. Despite the enormity of what is being proposed – nothing less than seizing control of the climate – the public has been almost entirely excluded from the planning.
Chemtrails
video- you believe your own eyes don’t you?
New study shows possibilities and dangers of nanotechnology
Researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico found that exposure to a certain type of fullerene known as the “tris” configuration, referring to a certain configuration of molecular branches on the nanoparticle, produced a toxic reaction in human tissue. Iyer said that cells from skin and lungs were among those studied, since those would be likely points of exposure to nanoparticles. Cells exposed to the tris fullerenes went into a state that could be described as suspended animation, she said. Cells’ normal life cycle halted, meaning that they stopped growing, dividing and dying.
US Consumers Have Been Given a False Sense of Security About the Safety of Our Food Supply
Many consumers in the US mistakenly believe that the FDA approves GM foods through rigorous, in-depth, long-term studies. In reality, the agency has absolutely no safety testing requirements. Instead the agency relies on research from companies like Monsanto, research that is meticulously designed to avoid finding problems.
It’s easy to understand the FDA’s industry-friendly policy on regulation of GMOs when you see the revolving door between agency regulators and the companies they regulate. The White House mandate to the FDA (under the first George Bush) was to promote biotechnology and the person in charge of developing the agency’s policy at that time was a former Monsanto attorney, who later returned to Monsanto as their vice president.
Mainstream Science Questions GMO Safety and Lack of Testing
BY CAREY GILLAM, Reuters
Are US regulators dropping the ball when it comes to biocrops?
COLUMBIA, MISSOURI — Robert Kremer, a US government microbiologist who studies Midwestern farm soil, has spent two decades analyzing the rich dirt that yields billions of bushels of food each year and helps the US retain its title as breadbasket of the world.
India’s environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, blocked the release of a genetically modified eggplant made by Monsanto. — Reuters
Mr. Kremer’s lab is housed at the University of Missouri and is literally in the shadow of Monsanto Auditorium, named after the $11.8-billion-a-year agricultural giant Monsanto Co. Based in Creve Coeur, Missouri, the company has accumulated vast wealth and power creating chemicals and genetically altered seeds for farmers worldwide.
But recent findings by Mr. Kremer and other agricultural scientists are raising fresh concerns about Monsanto’s products and the Washington agencies that oversee them. The same seeds and chemicals spread across millions of acres of US farmland could be creating unforeseen problems in the plants and soil, this body of research shows.
Mr. Kremer, who works for the US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Research Service (ARS), is among a group of scientists who are turning up potential problems with glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup and the most widely used weed-killer in the world.
“This could be something quite big. We might be setting up a huge problem,” said Mr. Kremer, who expressed alarm that regulators were not paying enough attention to the potential risks from biotechnology on the farm, including his own research.
Concerns range from worries about how nontraditional genetic traits in crops could affect human and animal health to the spread of herbicide-resistant weeds.
What would the White Rose have said about us?
You wouldn’t know it if you only check out the MSM, but there is a cacophany of voices crying in the wilderness of American life, desperate for their fellows to wake from their zombie state. The details, issues and complaints vary but the message is significantly similar: Wake out of your stupor and help resist the Corporate State! (that’s my version, but many are much the same)
Another growing groundswell is a near uniform rejection of science: a sad but understandable situation, since science education is nearly non-existant in the US and the scientific establishment in both academia and industry have allowed Corporate control to co-opt, corrupt and abuse them. From vaccines to climate change, many reject it all. Whatever it is, it must be a scam with profits for the Big-Boys and costs passed along to what used to be known as “the people.” This causes me some grief, but when so many untested products poison the populace and the landscape, and institutions supposed to provide oversight have been gutted and burdened with political hacks, it’s probably safer to “just say NO.”
Corporate schemers own Congress, manipulate every public debate and smother important issues in the press. They have outsourced our economy and demand billions for the right to run a casino on Wall Street.
Which brings me to the White Rose- an anti-Nazi student group in Germany during WWII. The Corporate State is the texbook definition of fascism….and that’s really where we are right now. The charge has been trivialized by many puffed-up pontificators, but that doesn’t make it untrue.
As I correspond with many who excuse current events, or give me sage advice about accepting what’s ‘possible,’ I feel much more akin to those of the White Rose, even knowing the brutal end they came to.
Alex Doherty writes about them and the parallels with those today who have seen the American Dream become a nightmare and call for us to resist:
“The White Rose group could hardly have been unaware of the cruelty of the regime they opposed and yet the group did not shy from exhorting, in fact demanding that their fellow citizens take action to against the Nazi state. They took it to be a sacred duty of all people to oppose violence and authoritarianism regardless of the personal cost:
“Is your spirit already so crushed by abuse that you forget it is your right – your moral duty – to eliminate this system?” “
