BUSTED! Monsanto Caught Writing Their Own Independent Safety Reviews
By Mac Slavo
Leaked internal documents from Monsanto condemn the already-struggling giant to maintain some level of integrity. The company has been caught red-handed using a ghostwriter to craft their own independent safety reviews to be published in scientific journals.
According to this report, plaintiffs suing the agricultural company are alleging that Monsanto self-wrote several “independent” scientific reviews that “proved” that RoundUp’s main ingredient, glyphosate, was not a carcinogen.
This set of internal Monsanto e-mails (which can be seen online) shows that the reviews that claimed to be “scientific” and “truthful” were anything but. If inhaling or ingesting glyphosate doesn’t give you cancer, then reading some of these documents might. It’s disturbing, to say the least, how a seemingly business-like correspondence details a conscious and deliberate effort to fool the public.
Widget not in any sidebars
As more evidence compounded and was presented on the carcinogenic effect of their product, Monsanto suddenly took to more suspect behavior. Spokespeople from the company repeatedly denied claims that glyphosate induced cancer and to prove that it was not all mouth-service, they pointed to scores of independent, third-party reviews that concluded to no such effect. These studies were a rebuttal to a 2015 assessment by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) that suggested that glyphosate was a probable human carcinogen. This triggered a wave of lawsuits from individuals who claimed that they had contracted non-Hodgkin lymphoma from exposure to Monsanto’s product, RoundUp.
Monsanto’s most recent review called “An Independent Review of the Carcinogenic Potential of Glyphosate.” Supposedly, Monsanto paid Intertek Group Plc to “supervise” the article. Lawyers from Monsanto, nevertheless, countered that the company’s involvement was limited to engaging the consultants of Intertek.
To be fair, the leaked documents support this as well. Rather than blatantly lying, Monsanto executives attempted to play a linguistics game instead. For example, in a back-and-forth exchange between Monsanto’s executives and Intertek consultants, an appropriate leading sentence for the abstract was being determined. Monsanto executives were asked to choose between a safe, “expert panel review of the carcinogenic potential of the herbicide glyphosate” and the the more provocative, “an expert panel concludes there is no evidence that glyphosate is carcinogenic to humans.” Obviously, the Monsanto executives liked the second sentence better but decided against using it. In Monsanto executive Thomas Sorahan’s own words: “We can’t say ‘no evidence’ because that means there is not a single scrap of evidence, and I don’t see how we can go that far.” -Source
Monsanto was crafty. But plaintiffs say that a complete read of the documents shows a more sinister approach. Allegedly, Monsanto’s Chief of Regulatory Science, William Heydens was heavily involved in reviewing drafts submitted by outside experts. Anything that voiced a slightly different opinion from the company’s desired message was vetoed. Monsanto maintains that the only participated in “cosmetic editing.”
Documents were gathered an put on the internet as Monsanto missed the deadline to object to the release of the evidence. Legal representatives of Monsanto have fired back saying that they were “blindsided by these disclosures.” Monsanto has since asked U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria in San Francisco to have these documents pulled from the web and they seek a reprimand for the lawyers responsible for “breaching confidentiality orders.”
Copyright Information: Copyright SHTFplan and Mac Slavo. This content may be freely reproduced in full or in part in digital form with full attribution to the author and a link to www.shtfplan.com. Please contact us for permission to reproduce this content in other media formats.
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