Monsanto Leaks Show It Tried To Kill Cancer Research About ‘Roundup’

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Monsanto leaks reveals company tried to kill cancer research on Roundup herbicide

Leaked Monsanto documents reveal that the company attempted to kill official research about their notorious Roundup weed killer.

According to a trove of court documents released by LA-based plaintiff firm Baum, Hedlund, Aristei & Goldman, the agricultural giant forced EPA officials to cover-up the carcinogenic dangers posed by the herbicide.

Rt.com reports: The company is representing people who claimed that they or their relatives got cancer due to Monsanto products.

In particular, the case concerns the notorious Roundup, a non-selective herbicide which kills weeds that compete with agricultural crops. Its active ingredient is called glyphosate.

The documents, mostly emails between Monsanto executives and researchers working for or connected with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), are dated between 1999 and 2016.

For example, in one email Donna Farmer, a Monsanto scientist, insists to an expert that “glyphosate and Roundup cannot be used interchangeably.”

“For example you cannot say that Roundup is not a carcinogen … we have not done the necessary testing on the formulation to make that statement,” she wrote.

In another set of emails Monsanto Executive William Heydens edits a manuscript on the effects of Roundup from an expert consultant.

The majority of the edits concern theories and speculation of possible links between glyphosate and cancer.

“This is a look behind the curtain,” attorney Brent Wisner said. “This show[s] 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 US regulators while misleading European regulators,” he added.

Monsanto said that the plaintiffs’ legal team committed a “flagrant violation” of confidentiality by releasing the trove, and has asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit as a result. The corporation also says that the documents misrepresent its modus operandi.

“When it comes to publications and other activities we behave with the highest ethics,” Scott Partridge, Vice President of Global Strategy for Monsanto, told RT via a phone interview. “What you are looking at is a cherry-picked set of documents that was produced over a 40-year period. We provided 10 million documents for this investigation, from which a couple have language that didn’t reflect appropriately the work that was being done. It’s as simple as that.”

“What has happened here certainly has the potential to be called illegal,” said renowned lawyer and RT America host Mike Papantonio. “Unfortunately, the DOJ hasn’t it upon itself to go after a criminal investigation with this. But understand this – here you have a company that is actually influencing the very regulatory agency that’s supposed to be looking out for the safety of the American public.”

Whatever the Monsanto response, Papantonio believes that the leak will make the case against the company stronger.

“This is almost the tip of the iceberg. What happens now is that we are able to go around and ask questions of doctors and scientists and journalists who were affected, or maybe even participated in this cover-up,”

‘Conflicting evidence’

The EPA’s Report of the Cancer Assessment Review Committee on glyphosate from 2015 addressed the cancer risks of the substance in a neutral way. The committee concluded that the substance has no connection with many types of tumors, and cautiously said that “there is conflicting evidence” that glyphosate causes non-Hodgkin Lymphoma (NHL), a type of blood cancer.

NHL is a primary concern for glyphosate as Baum, Hedlund, Aristei & Goldman plaintiffs claim that they got this exact type of cancer after exposure to the substance.

According to the group, more than 900 people across the US who have been diagnosed with NHL are suing Monsanto.

The description of glyphosate on the EPA website still appears to be positive, saying that it has “low toxicity for humans.”

The biotech corporation, which on its website claims to help farmers “grow food more sustainably,” has been at the center of scandals in recent years. There have been scores of anti-Monsanto petitions and stories of people who claimed to have been affected by the company’s products.

The corporate giant has been also at the center of reports claiming it has influence with the US government and, thus, avoids lawsuits.

The anger with the corporation went global with the start of the March Against Monsanto movement in 2013. The initiative launched rallies against ‘Monsanto poison’ across the globe, with thousands of people joining. “Keep GMOs out of your genes,” says the slogan of the movement, whose Facebook page has gathered 1.4 million likes so far.

Europe appears to be “a force of resistance” against the corporation. In June, more than 1 million people signed a petition calling to ban glyphosate, according to the European Citizens Initiative, which launched the campaign.  The document was submitted to 28 national European authorities.

“European citizens aren’t fooled by the pesticide industry’s lobbying efforts or the faulty science it’s peddling,” David Schwartz, ECI coordinator at WeMove.EU, said.




The rising criticism of Monsanto also resulted in a 2014 documentary, claiming that the company has contributed to over 290,000 suicides by Indian farmers over the last 20 years. Farmers were allegedly forced to grow GM cotton instead of traditional crops, agricultural scientist Dr. G. V. Ramanjaneyulu, of the Center For Sustainable Agriculture, told a team from RT’s documentary channel, RTD, which traveled to India to learn about the issue. The seeds were so expensive and demanded so much more maintenance that farmers often went bankrupt and killed themselves.

One of the recent scandals around Monsanto involves its alleged hiring, through third parties, of an army of internet trolls to counter negative comments. These trolls were reportedly tasked with citing positive “ghost-written” pseudo-scientific reports which downplay the potential risks of Monsanto products, including Roundup.

Monsanto even reportedly targeted all online materials and even social media comments that indicate potential dangers of its products, according to several plaintiffs’ lawsuits.

One of Monsanto’s most well-known attempts to seemingly hush-up “wrong” science concerns was in March 2015, when the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) released a report which classified glyphosate as a possible carcinogen.

Monsanto promptly said that it “strongly disagrees with IARC’s classification of glyphosate” and demanded it be retracted with its “erroneous classification”.

No scientific report has definitively concluded that Roundup, which has been on the market since 1974, causes cancer. This fact is especially noted in every Monsanto press release on the issue. The statements are usually supported by a pile of scientific articles claiming the harmless effects of glyphosate. One of the positive facts around the herbicide is that it helps to tackle climate change, the company claims.

6 Comments

  1. Monsanto is the most evil company in the world. Whether their ultimate agenda is money, depopulation, control of all the world’s food or all of the above, they make Mao, Lenin, and Stalin and Pol Pot seem like honest, nice guys.

    Truth is if we want to stay healthy we must stay away from “public” companies, where they must meet 5-20% growth YOY or are dividend oriented, unless they are completely vetted by a trusted source.

    We must buy from local organic farmers and local mom and pop shops who have integrity and value human life. We must stay away from processed foods as much as possible, and that includes pre-prepared foods. Have you read the ingredient labels of those pre-made “fresh” packaged sandwiches? I have noticed more and more that Trader Joe’s products have the ingredient “canola oil.” Don’t buy products with canola oil, which is probably more than 99% GMO sourced, even if it says “organic.” Once you remove these foods and GMOs from your diet, you will get a “wicked” headache for a short time while you detox, then if you eat any of these products again you will get sick, hence, you will know that the food is poisonous. You will feel poisoned.

    All these millions of cases of auto-immune diseases are not a coincidence.

  2. As the widow of a Vietnam era veteran, I am not sure why the ‘agent orange’ victims aren’t included in the research, as they have suffered from this chemical long term effects for a long time. And the VA is still dragging its arms in the dirt to deal with these veterans in very limited ways. $ and accepting responsibility is why!!!! I fought after my husband passed to prove he was denied his just due (did partial evol only) and proved where he was and what he was doing in building storage facilities in Thailand for agent orange in conjunction with a noted helicopter crash the would have caused heart problems and as VA guidelines don’t include veterans who weren’t guards and they ignored the whitepaper on blunt force chest trauma–I got no where, even trying to use patronizing elected Federal officials. Make the most of your lives as you can–live-laugh-love

  3. Yeah but the residue of ROUND UP is so high in your food that you eat. You can’t tell me that the crap is good for you. It ‘s poison. If it kills weeds, then it kills you too. Only common sense. It is all about money.

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    • Years ago somewhere, I found veggies should be scrubbed with hydrogen peroxide to remove pesticides and other contaminations. I keep a spray bottle on the sink for that use and to disinfect counter tops and sinks. At least cleans off the out sides.

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