I am Going to Stop Eating Corn

[bigfield]

Again, there are peer reviewed articles that indicate Roundup may well be a problem. Unfortunately many of these studies are behind paywalls.

A link to the abstract of those articles would be a start.

Again, some farmers found their pig problems ended when they stopped feeding their pigs with Roundup dosed feed. This is not something I will just brush aside as meaningless. YMMV.

You've taken the drastic step of giving up corn; that's a little more than simply refusing to brush the evidence aside as meaningless.

ETA: In lieu of your recent thread on climate change, it's surprising that you chose to base your decision on an anti-GMO blog and the anecdotal evidence of farmers rather than the scientific consensus as you have done with climate change.

You may also want to review previous TFT threads on this exact topic:

Roundup probably causes cancer

Selalini study on GMO corn re-published

GMO video by Potholer54 (You may be familiar with Potholer's series on climate change)

 

[Will Wiley]

I can't tell if your focus is anti-GMO or anti-glyphosate. You switch between the two without a pause, so likely it's both.

With respect to glyphosate, it's very safe. (To humans, bearing in mind that its primary use is to kill things). There have been A LOT of glyphosate studies. Most of them have reported no significant health risk with normal exposure.

..

However whilst Roundup contains glyophosate Roundup is not glyphosate.
Roundup seems to be worse than glyphosate in the little testing that has been done.
Cardiotoxic Electrophysiological Effects of the Herbicide Roundup(®) in Rat and Rabbit Ventricular Myocardium In Vitro.

Abstract
Roundup (R), a glyphosate (G)-based herbicide (GBH), containing unknown adjuvants is widely dispersed around the world. Used principally by farmers, intoxications have increasingly been reported. We have studied R effects (containing 36 % of G) on right ventricular tissues (male Sprague-Dawley rats, up to 20,000 ppm and female New Zealand rabbits, at 25 and 50 ppm), to investigate R cardiac electrophysiological actions in vitro. We tested the reduced Ca(++) intracellular uptake mechanism as one potential cause of the electrical abnormalities after GBH superfusion, using the Na(+)/K(+)-ATPase inhibitor ouabain or the 1,4-dihydropyridine L-type calcium channel agonist BAY K 8644 which increases I Ca. R concentrations were selected based on human blood ranges found after acute intoxication. The study showed dose-dependent V max, APD50 and APD90 variations during 45 min of R superfusion. At the highest concentrations tested, there was a high incidence of conduction blocks, and 30-min washout with normal Tyrode solution did not restore excitability. We also observed an increased incidence of arrhythmias at different doses of R. Ouabain and BAY K 8644 prevented V max decrease, APD90 increase and the cardiac inexcitability induced by R 50 ppm. Glyphosate alone (18 and 180 ppm) had no significant electrophysiological effects. Thus, the action potential prolonging effect of R pointing to I Ca interference might explain both conduction blocks and proarrhythmia in vitro. These mechanisms may well be causative of QT prolongation, atrioventricular conduction blocks and arrhythmias in man after GBH acute intoxications as reported in retrospective hospital records.

The European Union and the EPA only tested glyphosate. They did not test Roundup. So their proclamations about "safety" don't mean much.

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBQNNDrT-zM[/YOUTUBE]

yes, they tell you this level are safe. Why because they did their safety experiments only with glyphosate alone, but in fact in the pesticide as it is solid and used you have activants to make the principle active, so in fact you should test Roundup because this is what is used. This was never done, we are the only study that tested this commercial formulation with blood analysis of rats. If you ask the EPA , give us the raw data that leads you to authorise Roundup and these levels in the water. They will say we have lot of data on glyphosate. Yes, but do you have for Roundup? They will tell you we have no blood samples for rats fed Roundup

He says the toxicity of Roundup compared to just glyphosate is up to one thousand times more!
The other chemicals in Roundup activate the glyphosate, making it much more toxic

This is the same Seralini who was recently awarded a whistleblower award by the German Federation of Scientists.

Whistleblower award goes to Prof Gilles-Eric Séralini

Prof Gilles-Eric Séralini will tomorrow be honoured with the 2015 Whistleblower Award by the Federation of German Scientists (VDW) and the German Section of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (“IALANA”).

Prof Séralini will receive the award in recognition of his research demonstrating the toxic effects of Roundup herbicide on rats when administered at a low environmentally relevant dose over a long-term period. After the research was published, Prof Seralini was attacked in what the VDW and IALANA call “a vehement campaign by ‘interested circles’ from the chemical industry” as well as from the UK Science Media Centre. This smear campaign led to the retraction of his team’s paper by the first journal that published it. But Prof Seralini and his team fought back, countering the scientific arguments raised against their research and republishing their paper in another journal

 

[Will Wiley]

I am going to stop eating corn..

Good idea, and please don't listen to the people on this forum who don't understand the difference between Roundup and glyphosate.

Monsanto and the EPA tell you that Roundup is safe but they test glyphosate (when it comes to bloodtests). Then they tell you Roundup is safe even though they didn't test Roundup they tested glyphosate.

But glyphosate seems problematic too as this letter from just over one week ago shows. It is signed by 90 sceintists and challenges the recent EFSA decision

http://images.derstandard.at/2015/11/30/glyphosate.pdf

Dear Commissioner Andriukaitis,
We are a group of independent academic and governmental scientists from around the world who have dedicated our professional lives to understanding the role of environmental hazards on cancer risks and human health. We have
banded together and write to you at this time to express our deep concern over the recent European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) decision[1] that the widely used herbicide, glyphosate “is unlikely to pose a carcinogenic hazard to humans.” We ask that you forward the letter to the representatives of all EU member states before the next meeting of the Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed (December 10/11).
The EFSA decision, based upon the Renewal Assessment Report[2] provided by the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR), runs counter to the finding earlier this year by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the highly respected cancer arm of the World Health Organization that glyphosate is a probable human carcinogen. This IARC classification is based on a
comprehensive assessment of the peer-reviewed toxicologic and epidemiologic literature undertaken over a 12-month period by a Working Group of 17 independent expert scientists. The IARC review linked glyphosate to dose relatedincreases in malignant tumors at multiple anatomical sites in experimental animals and to an increased incidence of non- Hodgkin lymphoma in exposed humans.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Monsanto and the EPA tell you that Roundup is safe but they test glyphosate (when it comes to bloodtests). Then they tell you Roundup is safe even though they didn't test Roundup they tested glyphosate.

You normally test the individual chemicals, there's nothing unusual in this.

 

[braces_for_impact]

Aliens are visiting our planet? How do I know this? Simple, Google "Aliens are visiting our planet." This works equally well for some other true things, like "Ghosts cause cancer" and I note it is the top result for "Dog shit is good for you".

Oh YMMV.

Oh yeah, and by the way, there's been a much better experiment than "Farmer redneck says such and such". It's 100 BILIION animals eating GMO for 18 YEARS.

So, be my guest, skip the corn (good luck with that, if that would even do much to reduce glyphosphate I'm not sure). My kids and I will eat it.

 

[Will Wiley]

Monsanto and the EPA tell you that Roundup is safe but they test glyphosate (when it comes to bloodtests). Then they tell you Roundup is safe even though they didn't test Roundup they tested glyphosate.

You normally test the individual chemicals, there's nothing unusual in this.

Which is clearly a problem. You can't claim Roundup is safe unless you test Roundup

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Aliens are visiting our planet? How do I know this? Simple, Google "Aliens are visiting our planet." This works equally well for some other true things, like "Ghosts cause cancer" and I note it is the top result for "Dog shit is good for you".

Oh YMMV.



Oh yeah, and by the way, there's been a much better experiment than "Farmer redneck says such and such". It's 100 BILIION animals eating GMO for 18 YEARS.

So, be my guest, skip the corn (good luck with that, if that would even do much to reduce glyphosphate I'm not sure). My kids and I will eat it.

Oh yeah, and some of those animals eating Roundup seem to be getting very sick from that. We have seen over the years that we have a rising problem with medical problems like autism. Could that be linked to Roundup? Don't know but it surely possible. Peer reviewe studies linking Roundup with human illnesses seem to have been done. And the news does not seem to be good.

How many peer reviewed studies do you need to convince you we may well have problems here?

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/weed-whacking-herbicide-p/

One specific inert ingredient, polyethoxylated tallowamine, or POEA, was more deadly to human embryonic, placental and umbilical cord cells than the herbicide itself – a finding the researchers call “astonishing.”

“This clearly confirms that the [inert ingredients] in Roundup formulations are not inert,” wrote the study authors from France’s University of Caen. “Moreover, the proprietary mixtures available on the market could cause cell damage and even death [at the] residual levels” found on Roundup-treated crops, such as soybeans, alfalfa and corn, or lawns and gardens.

The research team suspects that Roundup might cause pregnancy problems by interfering with hormone production, possibly leading to abnormal fetal development, low birth weights or miscarriages.

 

[bilby]

You normally test the individual chemicals, there's nothing unusual in this.

Which is clearly a problem. You can't claim Roundup is safe unless you test Roundup

Or unless you have studied some chemistry.

But chemistry is hard to learn, and might be part of a massive conspiracy, like physics is.

That's why you can't know what happens to an object you drop unless you watch it - if you are not looking, it might fall upwards this time.

 

[braces_for_impact]

Oh yeah, and some of those animals eating Roundup seem to be getting very sick from that.

The article states the very opposite from that. Did you read it? I have to agree with another poster here, that stated you seem to have made your mind up, and selectively pick and choose based on these preconceived notions of yours.

We have seen over the years that we have a rising problem with medical problems like autism. Could that be linked to Roundup? Don't know but it surely possible. Peer reviewe studies linking Roundup with human illnesses seem to have been done. And the news does not seem to be good.

Your posts read like a so-called poster child for anti-GMO, creationist, or climate change denial. You completely ignore studies that are inconvenient to your "truth". Then start the veritable Gish-gallop of topics, rapid fire style when confronted with actual evidence. There is no evidence linking GMO to autism, just as there is no evidence linking vaccines to autism, or Ghosts causing autism. Is it possible? Lots of things are possible, but that question gets us nowhere. How about "Is it probable?" At least there we have something more concrete to work with.

The Scientific American article you cited is another textbook case of someone ignorant of basic science getting the interpretation of evidence all wrong. We commonly see this in science journalism as well. Results seen on cells in a petri dish are not directly analogous to harm caused to an organism as a whole. What scientist "suspect" can influence the direction science takes, but other than that mean precisely squat.

You have low standards of evidence, combined with ignorance of basic science. If you wish to not eat corn, then don't eat it. But to mislead others to think as you do is wrong.

 

[bilby]

If you want to avoid eating foods grown on farms where Roundup is used, you will need to avoid a lot more than just corn, too.

Farmers love the stuff, because it is so much safer to handle than the stuff they used to use.

In fact, it's use has been so widespread and ubiquitous for so long that any ill effects must be very rare indeed, or they would be obvious.

 

[hurtinbuckaroo]

Oh yeah, and some of those animals eating Roundup seem to be getting very sick from that. We have seen over the years that we have a rising problem with medical problems like autism. Could that be linked to Roundup?

Well, no, that's caused by vaccines, remember?

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

If you want to avoid eating foods grown on farms where Roundup is used, you will need to avoid a lot more than just corn, too.

Farmers love the stuff, because it is so much safer to handle than the stuff they used to use.

In fact, it's use has been so widespread and ubiquitous for so long that any ill effects must be very rare indeed, or they would be obvious.

Not that obvious if you are not looking for them. Are farmers qualified to investigate what happens to those who eat their Roundup laced food? Is Monsanto going to look very hard at health problems that might well be connected to Roundup? Its sort like, we are on our own. The cavalry is not charging to the rescue. There seem to be a fair amount of studies that indicate something is wrong.

 

[bilby]

If you want to avoid eating foods grown on farms where Roundup is used, you will need to avoid a lot more than just corn, too.

Farmers love the stuff, because it is so much safer to handle than the stuff they used to use.

In fact, it's use has been so widespread and ubiquitous for so long that any ill effects must be very rare indeed, or they would be obvious.

Not that obvious if you are not looking for them. Are farmers qualified to investigate what happens to those who eat their Roundup laced food? Is Monsanto going to look very hard at health problems that might well be connected to Roundup? Its sort like, we are on our own. The cavalry is not charging to the rescue. There seem to be a fair amount of studies that indicate something is wrong.

We are not 'on our own', and the farmers need not worry themselves about tracking every bit of food they produce in order to demonstrate its safety - we have an entire system dedicated to that. The FDA and CDC would assuredly notice if there was an uptick in hospital admissions or ER visits - that's how they detect and act on the fairly regular e.coli outbreaks caused by organic farming (which is demonstrably more dangerous than modern farming methods).

We don't need to wonder whether this would be noticed; we have a set of clear instances of health problems caused by food that have been noticed and acted upon before more than a handful of people got sick or died.

So one benefit of the organic food industry is that it gives our safety systems a good test every once in a while.

Although why people are worried about eating food that might have traces of a non-toxic herbicide on them, but are still happy eating food that has been liberally sprayed with shit, is beyond me.

 

[tupac chopra]

Which is clearly a problem. You can't claim Roundup is safe unless you test Roundup

Or unless you have studied some chemistry.

But chemistry is hard to learn, and might be part of a massive conspiracy, like physics is.

That's why you can't know what happens to an object you drop unless you watch it - if you are not looking, it might fall upwards this time.

Do you have any scientific studies of roundup, that compares it with glyphosate?

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

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[h=1]Monsanto knew all along! Secret studies reveal the truth of Roundup toxicity[/h] Richard Gale & Gary Null / Progressive Radio Network



Monsanto's toxic history
During the latter half of the 1970s, Monsanto's leading products were under federal inquiry and public assault regarding safety. Dioxin had been banned. Safety concerns arose over its sweetener saccharin, and cyclamate was removed from the market.
The company's attempts to get it's new artificial sweetener aspartame confronted obstacles during FDA scientific review. Independent research had shown that aspartame caused brain tumors in mammals. And its best selling herbicide at the time, Lasso, was showing signs of carcinogenicity.
Today Lasso is a restricted-use pesticide due to its oncogenicity. With sales falling and future growth under threat, Monsanto faced a desperate need to launch a new and novel flagship product. Monsanto found itself banking its future on its new herbicide glyphosate.
As we recently discovered, enormous amounts of research, analysis and hundreds of trials were conducted to learn as much as possible about the compound's bioactivity in mammals and its potential health risks. All of this research data, studies and reports were subsequently sealed as trade secrets upon submission to the EPA. For over thirty years it has sat in the EPA vaults.
Monsanto has yet to be caught and charged for falsifying scientific data on glyphosate. However on earlier occasions two laboratories Monsanto outsourced research to were caught and indicted.
In 1978, the EPA busted Industrial Biotest Laboratories for rigging laboratory results; the company's executives were found guilty for submitting fabricated data supporting glyphosate positively to the government. In 1991, another firm, Craven Labs, was found guilty on similar charges with 20 felony counts. [11]

To this day, Monsanto continues to assert that Roundup is environmentally friendly. We are told it biodegrades rapidly and therefore poses no long-term risks after repeated usage. We are told that the herbicide is ideal for weed control. Throughout the US, it is liberally sprayed on our public parks, school playgrounds, sporting fields, and throughout our lawns and gardens.

---


As with Big Tobacco's proprietary claims that prevented the FDA from publicly warning Americans about the dangers of smoking, the EPA has sat on Monsanto's own deleterious data for decades.

Anthony Samsel is an independent research scientist working internationally in the interest of public health and the environment. He is a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists, and a former scientist and consultant at Arthur D. Little, one of the world's leading management consulting firms.
Now retired, Samsel has devoted much of his independent research on Roundup's toxicological characteristics and bioactivity. Unable to gain access to research reports and data Monsanto submitted to the EPA through FOIAs, he turned to his senator's office, who assisted in the procurement of studies and reports he sought.
Months later he received a hoard of scientific documents, over 15,000 pages worth, covering Monsanto's complete glyphosate research.
The conclusion is clear: they knew
With his co-investigator Dr. Stephanie Seneff at MIT the two have been reviewing Monsanto's data. Their conclusion is Monsanto's claims about glyphosate's safety are patently false. The company has known for almost four decades that glyphosate is responsible for a large variety of cancers and organ failures.
Clearly it was for this reason that Monsanto demanded the data and reports to be sealed and hidden from public scrutiny as proprietary trade secrets.
During an exclusive interview on the Progressive Radio Network on September 4, Samsel stated that Monsanto used an industry trick to dismiss evidence about glyphosate's risks in its own research. "Monsanto misrepresented the data", says Samsel, "and deliberately covered up data to bring the product [glyphosate] to market." [13]


....

Hmmmmmmmmmm.......

 

[bilby]

Or unless you have studied some chemistry.

But chemistry is hard to learn, and might be part of a massive conspiracy, like physics is.

That's why you can't know what happens to an object you drop unless you watch it - if you are not looking, it might fall upwards this time.

Do you have any scientific studies of roundup, that compares it with glyphosate?

Why would such a comparison be useful to anyone?

There are studies of Roundup; there are studies of EPOA; and there are studies of glyphosate; If you really want to compare them, you are free to do it yourself.

Of course, if you want to imply that the testing is inadequate, by banging on about the absence of testing that there is no reason to expect, then you might be better off not looking too closely at the facts. Much better to just complain that others are not doing your homework for you.

Do you have any studies of peanut butter sandwiches, that compare them to peanut butter? How do you know that there is not some interaction between bread and peanut butter that renders the combination lethally dangerous?

I would avoid eating sandwiches if I were you.

 

[tupac chopra]

Here is a study comparing the effects of glyphosate with roundup.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3436299?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

Abstract
Roundup is a glyphosate-based herbicide used worldwide, including on most genetically modified plants that have been designed to tolerate it. Its residues may thus enter the food chain, and glyphosate is found as a contaminant in rivers. Some agricultural workers using glyphosate have pregnancy problems, but its mechanism of action in mammals is questioned. Here we show that glyphosate is toxic to human placental JEG3 cells within 18 hr with concentrations lower than those found with agricultural use, and this effect increases with concentration and time or in the presence of Roundup adjuvants. Surprisingly, Roundup is always more toxic than its active ingredient. We tested the effects of glyphosate and Roundup at lower nontoxic concentrations on aromatase, the enzyme responsible for estrogen synthesis. The glyphosate-based herbicide disrupts aromatase activity and mRNA levels and interacts with the active site of the purified enzyme, but the effects of glyphosate are facilitated by the Roundup formulation in microsomes or in cell culture. We conclude that endocrine and toxic effects of Roundup, not just glyphosate, can be observed in mammals. We suggest that the presence of Roundup adjuvants enhances glyphosate bioavailability and/or bioaccumulation.

 

[bilby]

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[h=1]Monsanto knew all along! Secret studies reveal the truth of Roundup toxicity[/h] Richard Gale & Gary Null / Progressive Radio Network



Monsanto's toxic history
During the latter half of the 1970s, Monsanto's leading products were under federal inquiry and public assault regarding safety. Dioxin had been banned. Safety concerns arose over its sweetener saccharin, and cyclamate was removed from the market.
The company's attempts to get it's new artificial sweetener aspartame confronted obstacles during FDA scientific review. Independent research had shown that aspartame caused brain tumors in mammals. And its best selling herbicide at the time, Lasso, was showing signs of carcinogenicity.
Today Lasso is a restricted-use pesticide due to its oncogenicity. With sales falling and future growth under threat, Monsanto faced a desperate need to launch a new and novel flagship product. Monsanto found itself banking its future on its new herbicide glyphosate.
As we recently discovered, enormous amounts of research, analysis and hundreds of trials were conducted to learn as much as possible about the compound's bioactivity in mammals and its potential health risks. All of this research data, studies and reports were subsequently sealed as trade secrets upon submission to the EPA. For over thirty years it has sat in the EPA vaults.
Monsanto has yet to be caught and charged for falsifying scientific data on glyphosate. However on earlier occasions two laboratories Monsanto outsourced research to were caught and indicted.
In 1978, the EPA busted Industrial Biotest Laboratories for rigging laboratory results; the company's executives were found guilty for submitting fabricated data supporting glyphosate positively to the government. In 1991, another firm, Craven Labs, was found guilty on similar charges with 20 felony counts. [11]

To this day, Monsanto continues to assert that Roundup is environmentally friendly. We are told it biodegrades rapidly and therefore poses no long-term risks after repeated usage. We are told that the herbicide is ideal for weed control. Throughout the US, it is liberally sprayed on our public parks, school playgrounds, sporting fields, and throughout our lawns and gardens.

---


As with Big Tobacco's proprietary claims that prevented the FDA from publicly warning Americans about the dangers of smoking, the EPA has sat on Monsanto's own deleterious data for decades.

Anthony Samsel is an independent research scientist working internationally in the interest of public health and the environment. He is a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists, and a former scientist and consultant at Arthur D. Little, one of the world's leading management consulting firms.
Now retired, Samsel has devoted much of his independent research on Roundup's toxicological characteristics and bioactivity. Unable to gain access to research reports and data Monsanto submitted to the EPA through FOIAs, he turned to his senator's office, who assisted in the procurement of studies and reports he sought.
Months later he received a hoard of scientific documents, over 15,000 pages worth, covering Monsanto's complete glyphosate research.
The conclusion is clear: they knew
With his co-investigator Dr. Stephanie Seneff at MIT the two have been reviewing Monsanto's data. Their conclusion is Monsanto's claims about glyphosate's safety are patently false. The company has known for almost four decades that glyphosate is responsible for a large variety of cancers and organ failures.
Clearly it was for this reason that Monsanto demanded the data and reports to be sealed and hidden from public scrutiny as proprietary trade secrets.
During an exclusive interview on the Progressive Radio Network on September 4, Samsel stated that Monsanto used an industry trick to dismiss evidence about glyphosate's risks in its own research. "Monsanto misrepresented the data", says Samsel, "and deliberately covered up data to bring the product [glyphosate] to market." [13]


....

Hmmmmmmmmmm.......

Yeah. Here's the thing; Stephanie Seneff and Gilles-Éric Seralini are loons. So to avoid wasting a LOT of time, any debate on GMOs and/or Roundup should exclude anything to which either of them has contributed. Let's throw Arpad Pusztai into that list too.

Any of those three names on a document render it worthless. They are vociferous activists, whose work has been debunked over and over.

And in the spirit of fairness, you can name any three researchers whose work you want to exclude from the debate too. Any three at all.

Then we can have a discussion - but you may find that you have very little material left to work with.

When all but a handful of loons take one side in a scientific discussion, the safe bet is to go with the consensus. It is true in Climate Science; and it is true in Biotechnology too. There are a handful of loons in both disciplines who are widely quoted to keep alive a non existent controversy - because then the media can give equal time to both sides in the interest of "fairness". But the reality is that the opinions of a handful of loons don't outweigh those of the entire rest of their field.

 

[tupac chopra]

the safe bet is to go with the consensus.

Not if the consensus is not based on science. If you have any scientific studies that disagree that might help.

You can't test glyphosate and substitute that for testing roundup

 

[bilby]

the safe bet is to go with the consensus.

Not if the consensus is not based on science. If you have any scientific studies that disagree that might help.

You can't test glyphosate and substitute that for testing roundup

For oodles of links to science, please refer to the previous threads on this topic.

Ignoring the evidence and simply demanding it again and again as if it had never existed is simply tiresome.