Originally published November 4 2015
Meet the top nine shills, hacks, hucksters and charlatans of the biotech industry
by S. D. Wells
(NaturalNews) It's time for you to meet some of the best-paid puppets of the chemical-agriculture industrial complex of the USA. The biotech industry in general has a deep-seeded interest in controlling the world's seeds, modifying them by inserting the genes of toxic pesticides and declaring it is the way to save a starving, depleted, diseased world.
These are the "headmasters" of propaganda, the worst type of characters on Earth, selling poisonous food and its "technology" to the public and regulatory officials under the cloaks of "journalism," "science," "education" or all of the above. A "sellout" will speak only positively about GMO agriculture, always selling the public on the safety and security of the whole industry of agrichemical science.
First, let's review the following relevant terms:
Shill: An accomplice of a hawker, gambler or swindler who acts as an enthusiastic customer to entice or encourage others.
Hack: A writer who is paid to write low-quality or rushed articles or books "to order" and often with a short deadline.
Huckster: Someone who promotes or sells a product or service of questionable value.
Charlatan: A fraud who falsely claims to have special knowledge or skills.
Getting to know the top nine shills of the biotech industry
1) Jon Entine: A corporate propagandist, hack and pseudo-journalist who uses media savvy to promote opinions and positions of chemical corporations while posing as an independent journalist, Entine has multiple ties to biotech companies including Monsanto and Syngenta. He is the key player/writer for the biotech industry front group ACSH or American Council on Science and Health, which accepts funding from Coca-Cola, Kellogg, Pepsico and American Beverage Association. Entine knowingly and repeatedly publishes false and fictitious information in mainstream publications, including Forbes.com, and he targets individuals who support the clean food movement. Entine is a hired "character assassin" who attacks any critics of GMOs. Entine is now known for abusing (choking and shoving) his ex-wife in front of his teenage daughter, as court documents revealed his seven-year-long, drawn-out divorce, wherein his wife pleaded with the courts to put him under psychiatric evaluation.
2) Bill Nye, the "Science Guy": William Sanford Nye, popularly known as the Science Guy, is an iconic popular media science educator whose mother was a code breaker during World War II. For years, Nye took a stance against GMOs, educating parents and children alike that genetically modified organisms potentially threaten to alter entire ecosystems and have the potential to kill off entire species of bats and butterflies necessary for crop pollination, per the episode aired on his popular show, The Eyes of Nye. However, in 2012, Nye endorsed Obama's re-election bid. Then, in 2015, he visited Monsanto headquarters and changed his mind as he "fell in love" with GMO and the idea of inserting chemical pesticide genes into the seeds of American corn, soy, canola and the like. His new book is now being edited to change his developing stance on GMO in the face of everything that he has previously warned his fans and followers.
3) Neil deGrasse Tyson: A 1980 Harvard physics graduate, Neil deGrasse Tyson's research has been focused on observing cosmology, galactic astronomy and stellar evolution, modeling himself after his hero Carl Sagan. Tyson, the ultimate "science communicator", has been caught more than a few times fabricating quotes and dogmatically professing his ignorance about the differences between genetically modified food and selective breeding of plants. Although Neil deGrasse Tyson founded the Department of Astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History, he fails to grasp the concept that genetically modified organisms from insects, pesticides and bacteria inserted biologically into seeds by scientists in laboratories is not the same thing as selective breeding, which happens normally in nature. Referred to as the "mascot of the scientific industrial complex," he has incessantly been marketed by the for-profit science industry and is serving as an apologist for corporations and other "wealthy" interests by promoting GMO propaganda.
4) Kevin Folta: A chairman of the horticultural sciences department at the University of Florida has landed himself recently at the center of a huge controversy over accepting thousands of dollars ($25,000, to be exact) to reiterate Monsanto's false claims about the safety and sustainability of their chemical-based pesticides, including herbicides and insecticides. Folta, who holds a PhD in molecular biology from the University of Illinois, contends that all GMOs are safe and that they are just the next step in traditional breeding. Folta leads a campaign of disinformation while accusing his critics of doing exactly that. The New York Times just exposed Dr. Folta by publishing emails from the self-proclaimed "public scientist" to Monsanto reps (and the Ketchum PR firm). These emails were dredged up by the US Right-to-Know campaign, and they document money trails and even instructions for Folta regarding EXACTLY what to say, when, where, and how in order to promote the biotech agenda of deceit and lies.
5) Keith Kloor: A cohort and "very good friend" of exposed biotech shill Jon Entine, Kloor is a "freelance journalist" and a former editor of Audubon Magazine, specializing in theorizing about climate change. Recently, Kloor has been "enlisted" by the chemical agri-business as a charlatan to spread propaganda written in large part by industry insiders.
6) Amy Harmon: A bestselling author of eight novels and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Harmon suddenly became a GMO advocate a few years ago, conspiring with biotech's top shills and hucksters to promote "high performance plants" via chemical agriculture "discussions" of biotechnology or "transgenics" and the dissemination of industry-funded and industry-written propaganda.
7) Tamar Haspel: A Washington Post food columnist and huckster who often features her pro-GMO stance as aligned with agrichemical company interests, Haspel has admitted to receiving "plenty" of money from biotech groups while writing pro-GMO articles.
8) Dr. Gilbert Ross: Ross is the medical director of the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), a non-profit organization that promotes junk food and genetically modified organisms in food. Steeped in biotech propaganda and ties to the "Big Food" industry of junk science, Gilbert Ross served nearly four years in federal prison and had his medical license revoked for Medicaid fraud. Ross was convicted of racketeering, mail fraud and conspiracy.
9) Henry Miller: A former medical researcher of 15 years at the FDA, Miller was the ring leader who, in the spring of 2015 and within weeks of Dr. Oz airing his show about the dangers of glyphosate and Roundup, coordinated a letter from a group of physicians to Columbia University outright demanding the College of Physicians and Surgeons remove Dr. Mehmet Oz as professor of surgery. Miller is one of Monsanto's "hell hounds" (character assassins) who went after Oz for doing a show exposing Roundup. Miller also argues that there should be zero regulations on the biotech industry.
Beware of the biotech shills
Biotech "front groups" employ, enlist and recruit "players" who will say and write what the industry wants them to, when and where they want it, and on cue at any conference, lawsuit, testimony to public officials, testimony to federal regulators, testimony to city council, to the FDA, to the CDC, or to whomever else. These fraudsters must be 100 percent sold on the topic of genetically modified organisms being beneficial in anything, anywhere, and anytime.
Additional sources for this article include:
NYTimes.com
DocumentCloud.org
GMWatch.org
StockPhotoBureau.com
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