They Are Not Human

Dateline: 3 February 2006

Roundup is the world’s most commonly used herbicide. It’s made by the corporate giant, Monsanto. One of my neighbor’s is a farmer. I’ve seen him spray Roundup on a perfectly healthy hay field. A few days later, the whole thing was dead and brown. Then he planted a crop into the dead field without plowing or preparing it. It’s called no-till farming.

Some crops, like corn are genetically modified so that they are not affected by Roundup. So the farmer can spray the corn field and kill weeds without killing the corn. I’ve read that Roundup is sprayed on 140 million acres of genetically-modified crops around the world each year.

Since Roundup was invented (It has been around for a couple decades now) the company has made a fortune for its stockholders, and the company maintains that their killer chemical is perfectly safe, if used according to their guidelines.

I’ve expressed concerns about Roundup to two farmers I know and they have assured me it is indeed perfectly safe, and then they give me some spiel about why it is safe. I don’t believe these people. I think they have been duped by the chemical companies. Anything that can kill a whole living field like that is not safe for people.

And now the independent studies are coming out to show the dangers of Roundup. It turns out that that Roundup damages human placental cells, even at 1/10th of the exposure that the company claims is safe. They have also found it kills tadpoles in water around the fields. What else does it kill? What other damage does it do to people once it’s in the environment and the food chain?

How could Monsanto claim Roundup was safe when it damages humans? How does any chemical company claim that their chemicals are safe? Someone must study the safety of the chemical. And that brings me to a little story that I feel compelled to share with you. . .

I know a guy who works in research at a well-known agricultural college. You would instantly recognize this school's name. This guy and I are on friendly terms. I won’t tell his name and I won’t tell the school and I won’t tell much about the details of what he does because I don’t want him to loose his job. But I will tell you about a conversation I had with him not too long ago.

He was telling me that he was helping with a new field study. It involves the planting of crops and the effects of a new chemical herbicide. It is a multiyear study. I asked him who commissioned the study. He told me it was the chemical company that made the herbicide.

I asked him if he thought the study would, in the end, prove very favorable to the chemical herbicide. He laughed out loud and said, “What do you think?” The point being that of course the study would prove the herbicide everything the company wants it to be.

To this I wondered if the college with the world-renowned reputation was prostituting itself? He responded, a little subdued in his tone, “Well, you wouldn’t want to tell them that.”

Then he told me that the chemical company gave the school a grant of several million dollars to study the herbicide. The point being, you don’t bite the hand that feeds you. After all, research—even academic research—is a business that needs satisfied customers to survive and prosper.

This conversation was something of a revelation to me. Most people like to think that institutions of higher learning and their research departments are morally neutral when it comes to the scientific research they do. But I think that is being very naive.

Surely, no researcher would find an herbicide with obvious and immediate shortcomings to be safe. But what about the hazards and dangers that are not immediatly obvious; the ones that go undetected for years or, even, forever? Do the research companies that are in the back pocket of the giant chemical corporations really study those things? I don’t think so.

I do not trust the multinational corporate Industrial Providers. They are not human. They do not think and act like real people. They are artificial entities. They have artificial hearts and artificial consciences. Nothing is more important to them than making money. That is their whole reason for being. It is their only reason for being. They are not human. They are not my friend. They are not your friend. Don't ever forget that.