By Carey Gillam
Four months after the
publication of a batch of internal Monsanto Co. documents stirred
international controversy, a new trove of company records was released early
Tuesday, providing fresh fuel for a heated global debate over whether or not
the agricultural chemical giant suppressed information about the potential
dangers of its Roundup
herbicide and relied on U.S. regulators for help.
More than 75 documents,
including intriguing text messages and discussions about payments to
scientists, were posted for public viewing early Tuesday morning by
attorneys who are suing
Monsanto on behalf of people alleging Roundup caused them or their family
members to become ill with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of blood cancer. The
attorneys posted the documents, which total more than 700 pages, on the website for the law firm Baum, Hedlund, Aristei
& Goldman, one of many firms representing thousands of plaintiffs who
are pursuing
claims against Monsanto. More than 100 of those lawsuits have been
consolidated in multidistrict litigation in federal court in San Francisco,
while other similar lawsuits are pending in state courts in Missouri, Delaware,
Arizona and elsewhere. The documents, which were obtained through court-ordered
discovery in the litigation, are also available as part of a long list of Roundup court
case documents compiled by the consumer group I work for, U.S. Right to Know.
It was important to release
the documents now because they not only pertain to the ongoing litigation, but
also to larger issues of public health and safety, while shedding light on
corporate influence over regulatory bodies, according to Baum Hedlund attorneys
Brent Wisner and Pedram Esfandiary.
"This is a look behind
the curtain," said Wisner. "These show that Monsanto has deliberately
been stopping studies that look bad for them, ghostwriting literature and
engaging in a whole host of corporate malfeasance. They [Monsanto] have been
telling everybody that these products are safe because regulators have said
they are safe, but it turns out that Monsanto has been in bed with U.S.
regulators while misleading European regulators."
Esfandiary said public
dissemination of the documents is important because regulatory agencies cannot
properly protect public and environmental health without having accurate,
comprehensive and impartial scientific data, and the documents show that has
not been the case with Monsanto's Roundup herbicide and the active ingredient glyphosate.
When reached for comment, Robert F. Kennedy,
Jr., one of the plaintiffs' lawyers said, "This trove marks a turning
point in Monsanto's corporate life. They show Monsanto executives colluding
with corrupted EPA officials to manipulate and bury scientific data to kill studies
when preliminary data threatened Monsanto's commercial ambitions, bribing
scientists and ghostwriting their publications, and purchasing peer review to
conceal information about Roundup's carcinogenicity, its toxicity, its rapid
absorption by the human body, and its horrendous risks to public health and the
environment."
"We can now prove that
all Monsanto's claims about glyphosate's safety were myths concocted by amoral
propaganda and lobbying teams," Kennedy continued. "Monsanto has been
spinning its lethal yarn to everybody for years and suborning various perjuries
from regulators and scientists who have all been lying in concert to American
farmers, landscapers and consumers. It's shocking no matter how jaded you are!
These new revelations are commensurate with the documents that brought down big
tobacco."
Several of the document
discuss a lack of robust testing of formulated Roundup products. In one email, Monsanto scientist Donna Farmer writes
"you cannot say that Roundup is not a carcinogen ... we have not done the
necessary testing on the formulation to make that statement. The testing on the
formulations are not anywhere near the level of the active ingredient."
The release of the documents
Tuesday came without the blessing of Judge Vince Chhabria, who is overseeing
the multidistrict litigation moving its way through the U.S. District Court for
the Northern District of California. In March, Chhabria did agree to unseal
several other discovery documents—over Monsanto's objections—and
those documents prompted a wave of outrage for what they revealed: questionable research practices by
Monsanto, cozy ties to a top official within the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA), and indications that Monsanto may have engaged in
"ghostwriting," of research studies that appeared to be independent
of the company.
The revelations within those
documents prompted an investigation by the EPA's Office of Inspector General into
possible Monsanto-EPA collusion, and roiled Europe where regulators now are
trying to decide whether or not to reauthorize glyphosate, which is the most
widely used herbicide in the world and is found in numerous products in
addition to Roundup.
The lawyers said they are
sending copies of the documents to European authorities, to the EPA's OIG and
to the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA),
which has been sued by Monsanto for moving to list glyphosate as a known carcinogen
Monsanto has fought to keep
most of the documents it turned over in discovery sealed, complaining to Judge
Chhabria that in several court filings plaintiffs' attorneys presented
discovery materials out of context and tried to exploit the information to
influence public opinion. Chhabria has both chided Monsanto for trying to
improperly seal certain documents and warned plaintiffs' attorneys against
unfairly publicizing certain documents. It is unclear how Judge Chhabria will
react, if at all, to the law firm's release of these more than 75 documents.
Baum Hedlund attorneys said
they notified Monsanto on June 30 of their intent to unveil the 75+ documents
and gave Monsanto the legally required 30-day window to formally object. That
period expired Monday, clearing the way for them to make the release early
Tuesday, said Wisner.
Concerns about the safety of
glyphosate and Roundup have been growing for years amid mounting research
showing links to cancer or other diseases. But the lawsuits only began to
accumulate after the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in 2015
classified glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen. The plaintiffs in the lawsuits
allege that the combination of glyphosate with certain surfactants used in
Monsanto-branded Roundup products is even more toxic than glyphosate alone, and
Monsanto has sought to cover up that information.
Monsanto has publicly denied that there are cancer
connections to glyphosate or Roundup and said 40 years of research and scrutiny
by regulatory agencies around the world confirm its safety.
Monsanto has made billions of
dollars a year for decades from its glyphosate-based herbicides, and they are
the linchpin to billions of dollars more it makes each year from the
genetically engineered glyphosate-tolerant crops it markets. The company is
currently moving toward a planned
merger with Bayer AG.
The only way to defeat Trump—
and to redeem what is worth saving in liberal democracy—is to detach ourselves
from liberal democracy’s corpse and establish a new Left.
Elements of the program for
this new Left are easy to imagine.
Trump promises the
cancellation of the big free trade agreements supported by Clinton, and the
left alternative to both should be a project of new and different international
agreements.
Such agreements would
establish public control of the banks, ecological standards, workers rights,
universal healthcare, protections of sexual and ethnic minorities, etc.
The big lesson of global
capitalism is that nation states alone cannot do the job—only a new political
international has a chance of bridling global capital.
Excerpt from:
“We Must Rise from the Ashes
of Liberal Democracy”
BY Slavoj Žižek
http://inthesetimes.com/article/19918/slavoj-zizek-from-the-ashes-of-liberal-democracy
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