Big government in bed with Monsanto: How government agents covered up Roundup's birth defects

Wednesday, August 14, 2013 by: Summer Tierney
Tags: glyphosate, Roundup, birth defects

(NaturalNews) Truly disturbing are the lengths to which big government will go to conspire with big corporations to keep people sick in their reckless pursuit of profits and power. A recent study, published in the Journal of Environmental and Analytical Toxicology offers up more disturbing evidence that the very government agencies charged with protecting the health and safety of the world's populations simply cannot be trusted.

At the center of the study is a 1998 assessment report by German authorities on a group of previous industry-sponsored studies on glyphosate (the key ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup herbicide), dating as far back as the 1980s. According to the German report, those many years of unpublished studies showed that glyphosate was not a teratogen, or reproductive toxin. Findings of that report were later cited in a rebuttal by the German Federal Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety (BVL, a German acronym) to a more recent 2010 study, which did in fact find glyphosate alone could lead to malformations in the embryos of certain species. Backed by similar findings from other separate studies, this conflicting data sparked a controversy over the safety of the production and consumption of Monsanto's Roundup Ready soybeans, a crop which is genetically engineered to survive repeated exposure to glyphosate.

But the recent examination of the BVL's subsequent rebuttal, which cited the 1998 German report as reason enough not to be concerned over the safety of glyphosate use and consumption, now reveals that the German and EU authorities behind the report actually minimized the findings in those industry-sponsored studies. Evidence of numerous errors contained within the report constitute an apparently deliberate attempt on the part of those authorities to deceive the public, allowing the EU in 2002 to authorize its current and - potentially very unsafe - acceptable daily intake (ADI) level for glyphosate.

Just how bad is the "bad science?"

According to the new study, "Examination of the draft assessment report revealed that the industry toxicological studies on rabbits and rats that BVL said showed 'no evidence of teratogenicity' did, in fact, report malformations from glyphosate exposure."

What that means is, in the discerning fields of science, omitting data or conducting experiments designed to produce an intended outcome is as good as falsifying research -- or, better yet, just plain lying. The study found multiple deceptions present in the so-called "science" reported, including these, among others:

Test groups were too small in both number and length of time to acquire an accurate sampling of potential risks to a larger population over extended periods of time. The study stated, "Their comment that the number of foetuses with abnormalities was small merely identifies a shortcoming of the standardised industry studies performed for regulatory purposes. Larger numbers of animals are preferable. If the number of animals used is small, any effect will only be seen in a few animals and statistical significance will be difficult to obtain. This is especially true at lower doses, where observable effects will be small and/or less frequent."

The research is full of gaping holes. Specific references to historical data on control groups is missing with no explanation, rendering any comparisons of the trial group to it utterly meaningless. In order to be considered valid in any study, controls must be selected as appropriate matches and have the same trial performed on them as on the study group, and at the same time. In this case, for all we know, the "control" subjects might have been entirely different animals eating entirely different foods in an entirely different decade.

Results were presented with dishonestly high standards. Though German regulators did observe an increase in both visceral and skeletal malformation in rabbits in high-dose groups beginning with dosages as low as 125mg/kg, they failed to acknowledge that birth defects can occur at levels below 250 mg/kg.

What all this means is that the shoddy "science" behind the initial German report makes it not only a poor citation for the argument in favor of glysophate usage and consumption; it actually makes it a more credible citation for the growing groundswell of opponents moving against it. Eat that, Monsanto and friends.

Sources for the article include:

http://gaia-health.com

http://gaia-health.com

http://sustainablepulse.com

http://www.nyrnaturalnews.com

http://www.omicsonline.org/2161-0525/2161-0525-S4-006.php?aid=7453

http://sustainablepulse.com

http://gmoevidence.com

http://www.naturalnews.com