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12-08-2003, 06:42 PM

In article , (Bill Oliver) wrote:

In article ,
Major Ursa wrote:
(Bill Oliver) wrote in
:

Apparently they *do* have to lie, since you misrepresent the findings.

Bill,

do you believe that Monsanto is lying about this issue whilest knowing the
true facts? Because if they do, they're taking a huge risk with the
company. One day the truth will come out and they will be sued by
thousands of ppl and institutions (like the Danish governemnt?) being
guilty of damages by deception of the public, much like the tabacco-
companies are, at present. AFAIK Monsanto is far too businesslike to take
an enormous risk like that.

Ursa..

No. Monsanto is not lying. The scientists who do the studies that
show the safety of the product are not lying. The
envirofundamentalists who misrepresent the findings and peddle
hysteria are the ones who are lying whilst knowing the facts.

billo

Now you're just being silly. Monsanto practices spin control with a highly
paied PR department. They falsify data. They have been caught lying
repeatedly even to Congress, and under oath in coruts of law. Examples:

1) Their extraordinary cover-up with falsified data after they poisoned
the people of Sturgeon Missouri

2) Being fined & forced by the NY Attorney General to stop telling the
whopper you repeated earlier in this thread that RoundUp is safe as table
salt, and forced to remove from the label the lies that RoundUp was
"biodegradable" and "environmentally friendly." Though fined & forced to
take it off the label, they do keep retelling these lies off-label.

3) Though caught lying by the NY Attorney General in 1996, Monsanto did
not chagne their ways, and was again fined in 1998 for claiming in an
advertising campaign (contrary to what they were forced to admit on their
label) that RoundUp was safe to use around water. The only way these kinds
of whoppers can be regarded as accidental & unknowing is if you assume
Monsanto lacks even rudimentary knowledge of science.

4) EPA's outraged charges against Monsanto for providing falsified data
on the safety of dioxin contamination in their products.

5) Dr Ray Suskind's research for Monsanto which was found they routinely
misrepresented data for Monsanto, followed by Monsanto's routine claim
that they never imagined any scientist they gave a shitload of money to
would actually misrepresent findings in order to get the results Monsanto
paid for.

6) Deniability is one of Monsanto's trademarks. In 1994, EPA published
information on the falsified Monsanto-funded studies on RoundUp, but once
again Monsanto claimed they couldn't possibly have known that by paying
Craven Labs for specific findings, with renewed funding guaranteed if the
findings suited Monsanto, then the findings they required would be
fraudulant. Three Craven Labs employees ended up felony charges, sentenced
up to five years in prison, with a large number of employees pleading
guilty to lesser charges. "Coincidentally" when Monsanto hired another lab
to re-do the research, the new lab obediently came to the exact same
conclusions as had been falsified. It's all about not getting caught.

7) Deniability doesn't always work since much of the falsified data comes
from Monsanto's own labs & is not just paid for from others. Monsanto's
in-house "resaerch" falsified data for artificial sweeteners aspartame &
neotame. FDA toxicologists, Drs. Adrian Gross & Jaqueline Verrett, first
discovered the intentionally falsified data.

8) And how short can memory be. Both Monsanto and Dow lied for YEARS about
Agent Orange, and were again caught falsifying supportive data. In one
study alone. Yeah, yeh, that was twenty & fifty years ago, but as late as
2002 at a symposium in Hanoi, Monsanto flacks turned up to again wheedle
out of responsibility. Monsanto's most famously revealed (of scores) of
lies about Agent Orange was when they sent their scientists into the Nitro
West Virginia plant to assess health risks to workers. To get the required
results, they removed from their study five outright deaths, denied the
presence of unusual cancers that were present in the worker population, &
in numerous other ways faked data which Monsanto then used to prove Agent
Orange was totally safe. In 1979 one of the key researchers, an outraged
Bill Gaffey, sued investigative journalists for defamation of character, &
lost. A year later, under oath to Congress, he finally admitted Monsanto
hired him specifically to falsify data. Despite admitting under oath in
1980 that he lied for Monsanto, the data was nevertheless published as if
authentic in 1983, so ended up in court in 1984:

11) In the lawsuit against Monsanto in 1984, Judith Zack made further
admissions under oath of being hired by Monsanto to fake data favorable to
Agent Orange and to whitewash the effects of dioxins. Oh hell, there's
TONS more on Agent Orange. From the 1950s through the 1990s, it was their
RoundUp of the era. The same lying techniques used for decades to favor
Agent Orange are today being adapted to support RoundUp. Since RoundUp
contains dioxin contaminants, Monsanto is still using falsified Agent
Orange data, supplemented by new falsifications, to prove the levels of
dioxin in RoundUp are harmless (i.e., see #4 above).

9) Lies of omission. Monsanto has never, and will never, conduct or fund
any research on RoudUp-caused deaths. Hospital data shows it to be the #3
most dangerous herbicide or pesticide in terms of actual incidents. Yet
Monsanto repeatedly cites its own data alleging safety, a fundamental lie
they are committed to retelling as often as they can.

10) EPA findings in 1998 were that on RoundUp labels, Monsanto was still
using "false & misleading claims." Now I'm pretty sure I'm not unique in
assuming statements that are intentionally "false & misleading" are indeed
lies.

11) A 1991 document from EPA, "Impact of Falsified Monsanto Human Studies
on Dioxin Regulations by EPA & Other Agencies" confirms that the lying
chemical companies do gain by lying, because chemicals that should be
regulated end up unregulated on the basis of being lied to by Monsanto and
Dow.

12) Monsanto after years of lying about bovine growth hormones not making
it into the food chain was caught out in the big lie. Robert Cohen
testified in 1999 how the lie went: "90% of Bovine growth hormone is
removed by pasteurization at 160 degrees for thirty minutes." This is a
lie on two levels. First, milk is pasteurized for FIFTEEN SECONDS, not
thirty minutes, so the idea that thirty minutes of pasteurization would
fix all but 10% of the problem was a red herring. Second, Monsanto's
experiments with lengthy pasteurizing had in reality failed to destroy
even 20% of the bovine growth hormone, fully 81% of the hormone remained.
The FDA should never have okayed this hormone but they did, because so
many FDA operatives take advantage of the "revolving door policy" & leave
the FDA for high-paying jobs at Monsanto or its numerous subsidiaries.
Plus Cohen discovered that it took only 12 members of congress to sink a
bill that had the support of 181 congressmen to not allow milk
contaminated with bovine growth hormone to be sold to the public. Those 12
men who stopped the bill were called the Dairy Livestock & Poultry
Committee. They had all received PAC money from dairy interests & four
accepted monies direct from Monsanto. So the method is first, lie. If that
fails, buy off Congress.

13) Suppression of truth-tellers. Monsanto sues whistleblowers, but
rewards anyone who supports their views. A secret internal memo was leaked
to Gene Watch regarding Monsanto's methods of propogandizing the public
by controlling what the public is permitted to find out. The full text of
this amazing memo can be found at genewatch.org -- it is an outline for
controling or misleading government agencies & the public. Monsanto
would, for instance, do whatever it could to control who could attend
international symposia on gene modified crops; would promote the views of
agreeable scientists pretending to do independent research; would buy off
government officials in developing countries; would fight through
lobbyists for their continuing right to concoct misleading labels; would
do what they could to damage or restrict the careers of independent
researchers apt to publish data unfavorable to gene modified crops; would
provide "experts" to poison control centers around the world to help them
understand nothing Monsanto sells is harmful, under the premise that
regional legislators rely on information from poison control centers when
fashioning laws to protect the public; & would personally train the
technicians for lab work at no cost to the independent labs.

14) Anniston, an impoverished rural town in Alabama populated by
disempowered blacks, is one of the hotspots for cancer in America, because
of illegal massive dumping of PCBs into their local environment. For 40
years Monsanto and Solutia lied about the intentional dumping & paid
millions in court costs to keep from having to settle with the people of
Alabama before 2001, when at long last they admitted to guilt, but changed
their tactic to argue (successfully, alas) that they shouldn't be forced
to pay medical costs for illnesses that take a couple decades to show up.
So justice has never been done the people of Anniston.

15) EPA investigator William Sanjour found that Monsanto were chronic
liars. The examples he cited included A) Paid for falsified studies then
knowingly used the false data that "proved" there was no cancer risk from
exposure to dioxins; B) falsified data & sent PR men and attorneys to
Sturgeon Missouri to lie face-to-face to spill victims; C) Monsanto lied
to plant workers about dangerous exposures that occurred in their
chlorophenol plant; D) Monsanto knowingly dumped 30-40 pounds of dioxins
per day into the Mississippi throughout the 1970s, lied about it, then
lied again when the dioxins were found to have made their way into the
food chain; E) Monsanto lied in meetings with EPA about dioxin
contaminants in & around their plants; F) Monsanto lied in meetings with
OSHA about contaminants in their plants; F) Lied to EPA about the
feasibility of studying dioxins at all, to excuse their intentional lack
of creditable data, but turned out they had already prepared some
falsified data which they were afraid to share since they were being too
heavily scrutinized at that moment & figured they'd get caught.

The result of Sanjour's findings was that a "full field criminal
investigation" should be undertaken against Monsanto because "a potential
conspiracy between Monsanto & its officers & employees, exists or has
existed to defraud the US EPA, in violation of 18 USC 371. The means of
the conspiracy appears to be by (1) providing misleading information to
the EPA; (2) intentional failure by Monsanto to fully disclose all
pertinent TSCA [Toxic Substances Control Act] related information to the
EPA; (3) false statements in notices and reports to EPA; (4) the use of
allegedly fraudulent research to erroneously convince the EPA, and the
scientific community." After this, some heavy-duty intense lobbying of
Congress too place, Congress intervened to shut down EPA's criminal
enforcement investigation of Monsanto, & were permitted instead to
undertake a two year investigation of whistleblowers. So Monsanto knows:
Lying works.

There's much, much, much more. "Monsanto" is virtually a synonym for
"Dishonesty" and "Liars." Why Billo would tell such whoppers to the
contrary is hard to fathom, except that everything he has posted can be
found in Monsanto instructions to employees, including the instruction to
cloud the issues whenever possible on the internet (which their own PR
firm, the Bivings Group, admitted).

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/