A billion-dollar molecule
I have been a member of a British-American forum discussing chemicals and the environment, primarily the effects of the giant-selling weed killer going under the name of glyphosate or roundup. Glyphosate is the so-called active ingredient of roundup. Monsanto came up with the glyphosate / roundup billion-dollar molecule decades ago.
Stephanie Seneff, a senior MIT computer scientist, is a member of this small forum. I noticed her remarks from Hawaii or Massachusetts on a variety of issues and glyphosate in particular. I kept wondering why would a computer geek on artificial intelligence be so involved with the world’s largest-selling herbicide.
The deleterious legacy of glyphosate / roundup
Seneff answered my curiosity in her book, Toxic Legacy: How the Weedkiller Glyphosate Is Destroying Our Health and the Environment (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2021).
She said she was out to make the world a better place. She says her grandfather was found dead next to a bag of DDT.
She tells the readers she combined her computer skills with her desire to do good in order to make it easier to learn a foreign language. “I’ve worked to enrich people’s lives using technology, to improve access to information, and to provide entertaining ways to advance language skills,” she wrote.
She also used her knowledge of biology, statistics, and computational modeling to probe the origins of diseases like autism. In addition, she investigated nutritional deficiencies of crops, connecting the deficiency to the poisoning of the natural world, especially by glyphosate.
She thanked Quanta Computer executives Barry Lam and Ted Chang for being a major sponsor of her research, ranging from “natural language processing and dialog systems to human health and environmental toxicity.”
The spark of Don Huber
However, the turning point in her life from computers and artificial intelligence to the broader society and the living natural world took place in 2013 when, accidentally, in Indianapolis, she listened to a lecture by Don Huber, biological warfare expert and plant pathologist and professor emeritus at Purdue University.
Huber spoke about the deleterious effects of glyphosate on both environmental and human health. Listening to Huber transformed Seneff to a warrior against glyphosate and its toxic global reach – and legacy.
She turned to the substantial knowledge of Huber, the conclusions of the scientific literature, and litigation against Monsanto. She absorbed that knowledge and started wondering why such a powerful poison could still be for sale in the United States and all over the world. Could it be Monsanto owned more than the infamous weed killer?
“I’m angered that this herbicide has been on the market for 45 years, and that we’ve been duped into believing it’s nontoxic to humans, animals, and ecosystems,” she wrote.
Her denunciation of glyphosate mirrors the criticisms of Huber. She says:
“[G]lyphosate is a major factor in several debilitating neurological, metabolic, autoimmune, reproductive, and oncological [cancer] diseases… [glyphosate] is much more toxic to all life forms than we have been led to believe. Glyphosate’s mechanism of toxicity is unique and diabolical. It is a slow killer, slowly robbing you of your good health over time , until you finally succumb to incapacitating or life threatening disease.”
More than glyphosate
Seneff is not exaggerating, though “diabolical” has nothing to do with deleterious effects. Glyphosate, and especially in its roundup form, is a biocide killer, the “perfect” weapon for chemical warfare.
Unfortunately, glyphosate is not the first or last in its ecocidal and anthropocidal potency. DDT reigned supreme for decades and did pretty much what glyphosate has been doing: causing havoc in nature and in human health. Most of the “registered” (approved) pesticides are not that far behind the deleterious powers of glyphosate.
Just imagine my shock when I reached this conclusion within a few years after I joined the US EPA in 1979. I did not know what to do. Should I scream at the senior officials who kept entertaining the lobbyists of the owners of the agrichemical industry? Should I reveal what I knew to Congressional staff of a couple of Congressmen I had met? Or, should I blow the whistle?
In time, I did all these things. But no one paid serious attention. A magazine editor suggested I talk to 60 Minutes, a TV “investigative” program. I did without success. My literary agent approached most trade publishers and had nothing to show for his efforts. Those large publishers turned him and me down. They cared less that Americans ate food drenched with carcinogens and neurotoxins or that honeybees have been hovering on the verge of extinction.
So, in reading Seneff’s timely book, I am reliving the agonies of knowledge – about pesticides and industrialized agriculture. Who produced that knowledge? Is it trustworthy? Is it designed to benefit the public or to give more power to those who already have too much?
In my case, as an insider with access to unpublished and relevant data, I thought I knew enough about the deleterious nature of pesticides that I wanted all of them banned.
A few colleagues agreed with me. In deep anger, and probably taking revenge against robot-like senior officials, they would give me copies of memoranda and briefings they had prepared about chemical pesticides in their responsibility. They enriched my collection of data, most documenting adverse effects of chemicals already in use or proposed for registration.
Eventually, I put all this valuable information to good use. My book, Poison Spring, brings it to life, telling Americans enough with this chemical warfare at the farm for the convenience of medieval landlords.
EPA continues its dirty business of being the protector of polluters.
A warning for action
Seneff, however, is more diplomatic than me, though she admits that, “Something devastating is going on.” Her summary of the published scientific literature on glyphosate leaves no doubt that glyphosate should be banned.
Read her insightful and powerful book. It’s a warning, an urgent one, about a dangerous corporate overreach known as glyphosate. No one has ever had the right to poison the nation’s and the world’s food, drinking water, and the natural world. The owners of glyphosate – Monsanto and the German company Bayer -- do that. They must be stopped.
For that reason, Seneff’s last chapter is an appeal to decency and a practical guide on what food is good for us and how farmers can detoxify and regenerate their fields from poisons like glyphosate. She says get out into the sunshine, enjoy the outdoors, walk without shoes in the waters of a sandy beach. It’s never too late to change your life, she says.
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