The biochemical/food giant, Monsanto is coming under serious fire over the dire health implications associated with the use of its mainline product, the weed killer Roundup.
Roundup is a popular herbicide that is widely marketed and distributed as a simple, weed killer. It is used by everyday people growing their gardens, tending the landscaping, and working on farms. It is used on medium and large scales by farmers and massive agriculture organizations.
Now, hundreds of lawsuits are bearing down on Monsanto over the proven carcinogenic nature of their product. The main ingredient is the herbicide, glyphosate, which has been connected with innumerable cases of non-Hodgkin lymphoma cancer.
Hodgkin’s disease-related lymphoma is a form of cancer that directly affects the lymphocytes, tends to affect the young, (people between the ages of 20 and 30), and is usually the result of an inherited genetic risk factor.
Attorneys who specialize in related areas of the law have reported fielding hundreds of calls from people saying that they have no family history of cancer and have a very low-risk profile, yet have been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Their clients are developing the disease in high numbers despite having no family history of Hodgkin’s and despite being outside the normal age groups associated with the disease.
The one thing all of these people do have in common is that they work with crops and have a history of regular exposure to the chemical glyphosate as found in Roundup.
A scientific analysis of the chemical glyphosate was heard in court along with detailed proof of the toxicity of the substance and the Monsanto product. As the trial goes forward, it is expected that expert opinion will be admitted as evidence against the agro-chemical giant.
The lawsuits, which number over 365, are currently waiting to be taken up by a US District Court located in San Francisco. The suits claim that Monsanto’s herbicide is the cause of the cancers with which their loved ones have been diagnosed.
The suits also claim that Monsanto knew the health risks, and took deliberate action to conceal those risks. The court has promised to attend to these cases as a single case- but only if there is sufficient evidence of the toxicity of glyphosate.
In the second week of March, the court dedicated all of its time to hearing the scientific basis for the claim that glyphosate is a deadly toxin. Toxicologists, epidemiologists, and biomedical statistics analysts testified before the court. They presented the methods of their study and offered a detailed account of their findings.
It is now up to Judge Vince Chhabria to decide whether or not the lawsuits have any merit and should be allowed to proceed.
Monsanto has been a central pillar of global agriculture and food production for decades. If Monsanto should lose this lawsuit it will be yet another nail in the coffin of public trust for this huge global corporation.
Over the years, Monsanto has come under fire for many of its products, as well as the policies it implements in their use. Farmers have been sued by the company for storing second and subsequent generations of seeds that were genetically manipulated by Monsanto.
It has been common practice since time immemorial that farmers could buy a batch of seeds, grow crops from them, harvest the second and subsequent generations of seeds and keep them for their own. That is to say, a farmer owns the seeds generated from the plants he produces. But Monsanto has said that the second generation seeds from those they sell belong to them because they created and own the patent on the genetic code of those plants.
There is also growing research suggesting that the genetically modified plants that Monsanto creates and sells are a health risk to those who eat them. Generally, the purpose of these GMO plants is to resist herbicides that weed plants are not modified to resist. In this way, Monsanto creates plants that can only be grown most fruitfully by farmers who also buy and use the product Roundup.
This has also led to complaints by farmers who refuse to use Monsanto’s GMO crops, whose profits are being decimated by the use of Roundup by their neighboring farmers.
The clear result of these products and policies is a multi-vector strategic monopoly owned by Monsanto. But if this lawsuit is successful, it will be a major blow to Monsanto’s sweeping market dominance.
~ Health Scams Exposed
