How Monsanto Silences Scientific Dissent (VIDEO)

This video explores recent instances of Montanto silencing legitimate scientific studies linking their products to disease.

As published by The Corbett Report, “In September of 2012, an international research team led by Dr. Gilles-Eric Séralini of the University of Caen published a landmark study in the Journal of Food and Chemical Toxicology. The study, titled “Long term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize,” purported to show adverse health effects on groups of rats fed Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide and Roundup Ready corn, including liver congestions, necrosis, tumors and early death.”

The Corbett Report goes on to explain that

The paper and its results, deemed “surprising” because it goes against all of the industry-sponsored research showing the supposed safety of GMOs, caused an immediate stir in the scientific community and online.

But it was not long at all before the biotech industry PR machine went into damage control mode and began smearing the study.

Under the pressure of this PR blitz, “the Journal of Food and Chemical Toxicology took the unprecedented decision to retract the study.” This move was unprecedented because:

[I]t goes against the journal’s own express principles and guidelines for such retractions. The publisher of the journal, Elsevier, is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics, whose criteria for retracting a paper are:

• Clear evidence that the findings are unreliable due to misconduct (e.g. data fabrication) or honest error;
• Plagiarism or redundant publication;
• Unethical research.

And the reason this move came about becomes clear once you consider the fact that Monsanto was able to influence the journal directly:

That a former Monsanto scientist should find himself in charge of a specially-created post at the very journal that published two landmark studies questioning the safety of that company’s products should surprise no one who is aware of the Monsanto revolving door. This door is responsible for literally dozens of Monsanto officials, lobbyists and consultants finding themselves in positions of authority in the government bodies that are supposedly there to regulate the company and its actions. This list of officials includes Linda Fisher, a senior EPA official who later became Monsanto’s VP of Government and Public Affairs, Michael Taylor, Obama’s Deputy FDA Commissioner who also served as Monsanto’s VP for Public Policy, and US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who served as a corporate lawyer for Monsanto in the 1970s. These positions of influence have been used to help Monsanto and its biotech peers obtain an FDA ruling which asserts that GMO foods are not substantially different from non-modified foods, win approval for their products from regulators by self-sponsoring studies with almost identical methodologies to the Seralini study that was just retracted, and pass favorable legislation like the Monsanto Protection Act, preventing the company from being taken to federal court in the event that GMOs are discovered to be harmful to human health. In his position as “Associate Editor for Biotechnology,” former Monsanto employee Richard E. Goodman has now overseen the retraction of two papers that had been critical of his former employer, yet this fundamental conflict of interest is nowhere commented on in reportage of the Seralini study’s retraction.

You can watch the full video below and can go here to read the full transcript:

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