This week, the court records involving pesticide giant Monsanto were unsealed and released to the public, and what those records reveal was absolutely stunning. Not only did Monsanto knowingly expose Americans to Glyphosate, a cancer-linked chemical, for which they are already paying, but they did so by purposely suppressing research on the chemical and composing their own research on the safety of their product which was later attributed falsely to academics.
According to court documents which include emails sent internally as well as email correspondences between the company and federal officials, Monsanto’s concerted effort to keep the truth about Glyphosate was more darkly orchestrated than previously believed.
“In one email unsealed Tuesday, William F. Heydens, a Monsanto executive, told other company officials that they could ghostwrite research on glyphosate by hiring academics to put their names on papers that were actually written by Monsanto. “We would be keeping the cost down by us doing the writing and they would just edit & sign their names so to speak,” Mr. Heydens wrote, citing a previous instance in which he said the company had done this.
Asked about the exchange, Monsanto said in a second statement that its “scientists did not ghostwrite the paper” that was referred to or previous work, adding that a paper that eventually appeared “underwent the journal’s rigorous peer review process before it was published.””
Basically, though they now deny it, internal emails show that the research Monsanto and others use to argue that Glyphosate is not carcinogenic is completely unreliable because Monsanto executives and employees penned the “research” and told their scientists to sign off on the reports.
In other internal emails, a Monsanto executive said that if he was able to kill a review of the agency by the Department of Health and Human Services concerning the carcinogenic quality of its product, that he “should get a medal.” The New York Times notes that the review referenced never took place.
Monsanto may want you to believe that Glyphosate is completely safe for its intended use but consumers should know that the company has engaged in a multitude of questionable practices and outright misinformation to arrive at that questionable conclusion.
