For over a decade, we’ve been talking about how Big Food took a page out of Big Tobacco’s playbook. Both industries became merchants of doubt, doing whatever they could to combat negative science about their products.
It turns out, Big Tobacco companies now own a lot of these big food brands. When we see the big tobacco “playbook” in action, it is not a coincidence! Watch and listen, as Morgan Freeman walks us through it.
This video is a powerful reminder of how vigilant we have to stay with our food supply. We put additives, artificial ingredients, GMOs, glyphosate and dozens of other ingredients into our foods at an alarming rate. Thankfully, we are having a food awakening here in the U.S., sadly driven by the runaway rates of food allergies, autism, pediatric cancers, diabetes and obesity. These conditions are forcing us to read labels, and once we do, we can’t unlearn what we know.
Perhaps the most shocking of all is that our own American food companies formulate their products differently overseas. They meet a higher production standard—one that does not allow artificial dyes, artificial growth hormones, GMOs and other additives into their food.
This video does an excellent job of showing the two systems side by side. Please watch and share. Together, we can fix our food system.
A study published today in JAMA shares a shocking new analysis of American health spending. The study examines costs of 155 conditions, and it turns out that just 20 problems account for half of all spending.
U.S. health spending always grows but it grew at an especially fast rate last year to over $3.2 trillion, a number so big that it’s hard to wrap your head around.
And it wasn’t just the skyrocketing price of EpiPens that drove it, though spending on prescription drugs grew at an unprecedented rate, too.
The most expensive condition, diabetes, totaled $101 billion in diagnoses and treatments, growing 36 times faster than the cost of ischemic heart disease, the number-one cause of death, over the past 18 years.
“While it is well known that the US spends more than any other nation on health care, very little is known about what diseases drive that spending.” said Dr. Joseph Dieleman, lead author of the paper and Assistant Professor at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington.
The annual medical spending report from the federal government shows the country spent $3.2 trillion on health care in 2015, 5.8 percent more than in 2014.
How much is that for each of us? Close to $10,000 per person, way more per capita than in any other comparable country.
In other words, our resources are tied up managing disease.
“Health care spending grew 2.1 percentage points faster than the overall economy in 2015,” the team at the Office of the Actuary at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) reported in December, Today, 90 percent of Americans have health insurance coverage.
The federal government funded the expansion for Medicaid which contributed to the the growth in federal health spending. And private health insurance spending increased 7.2 percent in 2015 (up from 5.8 percent in 2014).
And the #Epigate factor? It turns out that spending on prescription drugs grew at an especially high rate — up 9 percent over 2014 for a total of $324.6 billion.
Only 6% of personal health care spending was on well-care, which is all care unrelated to the diagnosis and treatment of illnesses or injuries. Of this, nearly a third of the spending was on pregnancy and postpartum care, which was the 10th-largest category of spending.
So what does that mean? 94% of the $3.2 trillion that we spend on health care in the United States is spent on disease management.
The top 10 most costly health expenses were:
Within a decade, close to a fifth of the American economy will consist of health care.
In America, sickness sells. It is driving almost 20% of our economy. How will we compete in the global marketplace in another twenty years if our capital is tied up managing disease.
It’s time to #rethinkfood and rethink healthcare, because the best health care we have is what we choose to put on the ends of our forks.
Source: Diabetes, heart disease, and back pain dominate US health care spending https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/12/161227134737.htm
The public furor over Mylan’s price-gouging pricing for the EpiPen, now called #EpiGate, shows no signs of stopping. The company has raised the price of the life-saving device 17 times since acquiring it in 2007.
A host of public interest organizations representing consumers, allergy sufferers, doctors and concerned citizens today delivered the signatures of more than 700,000 people around the country calling for Mylan to reverse its EpiPen price hikes.
After relentless public outcry over exorbitant price increases, last Thursday, Mylan CEO Heather Bresch responded by announcing an expansion of the EpiPen discount card program. On Monday morning, Mylan announced its introduction of a generic version of the EpiPen injector that the corporation will sell for $300 per two-pack.
Groups participating in the petition drive find these measures inadequate and are demanding an immediate reduction in the price of EpiPens.
Last week, news outlets nationwide reported on the more than 500 percent increase in price for EpiPens, from less than $100 to more than $600 for a two-pack since Mylan purchased the product line from Merck KGaA in 2007.
Over the same period, Mylan increased its EpiPen revenues from around $200 million per year to $1.2 billion in 2015.
Almost immediately after acquiring the product, Mylan went on an aggressive campaign to increase the revenues through EpiPen sales, using tactics, which included so-called education campaigns and intensive lobbying efforts to expand EpiPen’s availability to different venues.
Bresch’s salary increased from around $2 million when the company acquired EpiPen to nearly $19 million last year.
The signatures were gathered by public interest organizations including Public Citizen, MoveOn.org Civic Action, The Other 98%, Social Security Works, MomsRising, Democracy for America, Sum of Us, Sierra Rise, Doctors for America and Consumers Union.
“American families are being bled dry by drug company profiteering that is completely legal. Mylan’s move with EpiPen is just the latest example. The financial pain that results from these skyrocketing drug prices takes a serious toll on virtually every facet of consumers’ lives, from retirement plans to the essentials of everyday living, like buying groceries. Today, we’re standing with 700,000 Americans who are demanding Mylan lower its price now.” – Lisa Gill, deputy content editor, Consumer Reports Best Buy Drugs
“This is the most outrageous act of corporate greed we’ve seen in years. Heather Bresch has gotten rich by gouging allergy sufferers. She’s putting lives at risk by making the EpiPen unaffordable – and she still won’t admit she was wrong. Democracy for America members demand that she come to her senses and slash the price of the EpiPen to an affordable level.” – Karli Wallace Thompson, campaign manager, Democracy for America
“It is shameful that executives at Mylan gave themselves massive pay raises as they hiked the price of EpiPens 500 percent. I see patients every day who are struggling to afford this lifesaving drug. My own daughter has a life-threatening peanut allergy and not having an EpiPen available is unthinkable.” – Mona Mangat, MD, chair of the Board of Directors, Doctors for America, and a practicing allergist-immunologist
“I’m a mom of a food allergy kid. I have the sleepless nights. The grey hairs. And the worry lines of that fate. Mylan’s plan to offer a discount coupon to some purchasers of the EpiPen, rather than actually LOWER the price of this lifesaving medication, is wholly inadequate and incredibly cynical. Like many other families, I have a child who has extremely severe food allergies, and we see the EpiPen as critical to his life and health. Mylan cynically capitalized on its monopoly on this drug to dramatically increase the price and line the pockets of its already well-paid executives, at the expense of the lives and health of its customers. My son, who needs EpiPens to handle his severe food allergies captured it perfectly: ‘Companies who make lifesaving medicines like EpiPens deserve to make profits, but not at the expense of the lives of those they are supposed to help.’ MomsRising will continue to call on Mylan to truly lower the price of the EpiPen, as well as to increase access to this critical medicine, so that all people who need this lifesaving drug are able to afford it. The lives of Americans depend upon it.” – Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, CEO and executive director, MomsRising
“Instead of a real solution to make sure people with severe allergies have access to life-saving EpiPens, this announcement from Mylan CEO Heather Bresch is an attempt at a quick PR fix. Hundreds of thousands of people have spoken out, and it’s clear this entire industry needs to be brought in line with a set of standards that controls the price of medicine across the board. Offering coupons and half measures is not enough. Mylan must stop price gouging consumers immediately.” – Corinne Ball, platform campaign director, MoveOn.org Civic Action
“The outrageous price gouging of Mylan Labs yielding super profits made off of the lifesaving EpiPen demand change and not charity! Their actions are not only morally repugnant but demand legislative action by federal officials and Congress. Together they must consider legislation that would stop drug companies from reaping extreme profits when a drug costs less than five dollars to produce. Legislative action must be enacted to block these companies from paying cash to delay generics, and federal law should allow federal Medicare to negotiate prices with big Pharma, and permit U.S. citizens to purchase lifesaving drugs from Canada as a start. The tremendous influence that drug companies have due to their PAC donations must be exposed and made available to the public. Moving to a cost effective single-payer national health care system would truly mean that people’s health would be the basis of our health care delivery system and not private profits.” – The Honorable Jim Ferlo, Retired state senator and former president of the Pittsburgh City Council
“Mylan’s price gouging of the EpiPen is just the latest symptom of a patent system that rewards greed and punishes people who need medicine. Maintaining pricey monopolies on medicines developed by our tax dollars makes no sense to anyone except well paid CEOs and their lobbyists.” – Samantha Corbin, actions director, The Other 98%
“Monday’s announcement is just one more convoluted mechanism for Mylan executives to avoid plain talk, admit their price gouging and just cut the price of EpiPen. They should be ashamed of themselves. But even if they are not, they should recognize that the issue is not going away until the company rolls back the EpiPen price.” – Robert Weissman, president, Public Citizen
“Mylan and their CEO, Heather Bresch, have abused the privilege of their monopoly to extract obscene profits from a lifesaving device developed with public dollars, they must lower the price now. More importantly we call on President Obama to instruct the Food and Drug Administration, as mandated by his executive order, to ‘promote competition through pro-competitive rulemaking and regulations.” – Alex Lawson, executive director, Social Security Works
Originally posted in The Public Citizen Press Room.
Last week, I gave an interview with Fox Business in which we discuss the skyrocketing price of EpiPens, Mylan’s monopoly and their 90% market share in the epinephrine auto-injector space.
In the days that followed, Mylan was first silent and then appeared “frustrated.” In response to an onslaught of negative press, the company is now offering a limited discount to some Americans (federal employees, Medicaid and Medicare patients are excluded), while continuing to maintain an almost 600% price increase.
This morning, the company announced it was going to fast-track a generic epinephrine injector, again raising the suspicion of analysts and parents who have been calling on this for decades. Competitors have tried for years to introduce an alternative, as recently as Adamis Pharmaceuticals, this summer. Within days of a PR hurricane and $3 billion loss in market cap, Mylan announces theirs will be ready “in weeks.”
In response, Congress today sent a letter to Mylan’s CEO requesting more information into the monopolistic practices,
which include pricing, concerns over anti-trust behavior with EpiPens in schools and more.
In this interview, I first call for a Congressional investigation. In the interview that I gave again today, in the midst of bipartisan concern over the business practices of this company, I called for it again.
We are sharing this article from Dr Lee Rogers who voiced his concern about the price-gouging of EpiPen consumers and the fact that Mylan’s CEO has a dad in the Senate. Please read on to learn more. At the end, he provides steps of what patients can do.
Anaphylaxis is a deadly reaction to an allergy. After exposure to an allergen, a person breaks out in hives, lips swell, has difficulty breathing, and wheezes, which can eventually lead to shock and death. It has happened to as many as 1 in 50 Americans. Yet, it is one of the simplest emergencies to treat. The initial life-saving treatment is injecting epinephrine (adrenalin) into the fat or muscle, followed by care from a medical professional.
Epinephrine is a hormone produced by the adrenal glands. The body releases it during the “fight-or-flight” response. It increases the heart rate, improves blood flow to muscles, dilates the bronchioles in the lungs (to increase air exchange), and constricts other blood vessels (to shunt blood to vital organs). As a hormone, it a product of nature and cannot be patented.
Seems pretty straight forward, right? Well, not any more. Mylan Pharmaceuticals, the manufacturer of the most commonly used device to deliver epinephrine, called the EpiPen, just jacked up the price of the medication over 400% and there doesn’t seem to be any better reason than… “because they could.”
EpiPen has been around since 1977, but Mylan acquired the product in 2007 when the it cost about $57. Now according to many media outlets and the prescription drug price comparison website www.GoodRx.com, the price has skyrocketed to $640. Fortunately for Mylan, EpiPen has an expiration date of one year, causing the company to bank on an annuity of more than $600 from families who need the life-saving medication, a vast majority of which go unused every year.
The price of epinephrine hasn’t increased in the past 10 years. In fact the epinephrine inside EpiPen costs less than $1. I doubt the price to manufacture EpiPen’s autoinjectors has changed. So what has changed? There are two recent events that help explain. First, EpiPen’s only major competitor, Auvi-Q made by Sanofi, underwent a voluntary recall due to possible dosage miscalabrations. And secondly, this year the FDA rejected an application, which would have been much cheaper, perhaps costing only $10-20, however not auto injected. That opened the door for Mylan to price-gouge consumers into paying outrageous fees for their life-saving medications.
Just in case you might be susceptible to the “poor pharmaceutical company argument,” EpiPen, just one of the products Mylan sells, brings in $1 billion a year and which boosted the company’s 2nd quarter numbers in 2016.
If any of this sounds familiar, that’s because it is. We all remember Martin Shkreli, the former CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, the sole manufacturer of Darapim, who notoriously raised the price of the generic HIV medication from $14 to $750. Shkreli faced tremendous public scrutiny and was referred to by the media as “the most hated man in America.” Eventually, he was subpoenaed to testify before Congress, charged with securities fraud, and resigned as CEO of Turing.
Now there’s something wrong when even this man, Martin Shkreli, recently called the executives at Mylan “vultures” for their slimy move!
Who is Shkreli referring to? None other than Mylan CEO Heather Bresch. Bresch isn’t some ordinary greedy pharmaceutical executive. She’s the daughter of US Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV). She finished her BA in political science at West Virginia University (WVU) and was hired by Mylan in 1992 after her powerful father spoke to former CEO Milan Puskar. She rose through the ranks at Mylan, eventually serving at Director of Government Relations from 2002-2005, while her father was WV Secretary of State. In 2008, there was a controversy at WVU after she claimed to have an MBA. The university initially disputed the claim, but then awarded her an MBA despite only completing 22 of 48 credits required. After public embarrassment, WVU rescinded her degree and the university president, a former consultant and lobbyist for Mylan, resigned in disgrace.
In 2011, just after her father was elected to replace the late Robert Byrd as US Senator, she spearheaded the effort in Congress to pass the Generic Drug User Fee Act, making it more difficult for foreign generic drug makers to import into the United States. In 2012, she became CEO of Mylan Pharamceuticals. Fortune Magazine named her as one of the “50 Most Powerful Women in Business in 2012 and 2013.”
Then in 2015, Mylan purchased Abbott’s generic drug division located in the Netherlands. At that point, Bresch led Mylan through complex and controversial corporate tax inversion to base Mylan’s headquarters (domicile) in the Netherlands in an effort to avoid paying US corporate taxes. The corporate executives still live in the US and run the company from the US. The tax inversion is expected to reap the company an additional 10% in profits. The move wasn’t good for everyone. Normally there are no tax implications from a corporate merger for shareholders. But with tax inversions, investors have to pay capital gains tax on the difference between the stock price at their initial investment and what the new company’s stock price would be. Some shareholders were advised to sell their shares at a loss to offset tax capital gains taxes they’d have to pay.
All of this may cause political problems for Bresch’s father, Sen. Manchin. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has been very critical of the price hike, taking to Twitter to decry the move. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), who was an advocate for getting EpiPens into schools, is now breathing fire over this decision by Mylan. In a recent statement, she said:
“This outrageous increase in the price of EpiPens is occurring at the same time that Mylan Pharmaceutical is exploiting a monopoly market advantage that has fallen into its lap,” said Klobuchar. “Patients all over the U.S. rely on these products, including my own daughter. Not only should the Judiciary Committee hold a hearing, the Federal Trade Commission should investigate these price increases immediately. The Commission should also report to Congress on why these outrageous price increases have become common and propose solutions that will better protect consumers within 90 days.”
Hauling a fellow Senator’s daughter into Congressional Hearings à la Pharma Bro Martin Shkreli would certainly not be good for Senate Democrats, not to mention the embarrassment to Senator Manchin casting light on his daughter’s actions during her tenure as CEO of Mylan.
Additionally, Bresch’s actions may win her a new title, next to Shkreli as the “most hated woman in America.”
I agree, the EpiPen’s design makes delivering a life-saving drug as simple and as effective as possible. But if you can’t afford to be price-gouged for $600, there are alternatives that are still just as life-saving.
A
1 mL ampule of epinephrine costs less than $5. The dose of epinephrine for anaphylaxis is 0.3 to 0.5 ml delivered subcutaneously (in the fat) or intramuscularly (in the muscle). If patient and family members are comfortable with drawing up their own medication and injecting (no more difficult than using insulin), they can request a prescription from their doctor for the vial and syringes. An example of how the prescription would read is below. This would cost about $10.
Prescription:
Rx: Epinephrine 1:1000, 1 mL ampule
Rx: 1 cc syringe with 25g 1.5 cm needle
Instructions: For severe allergic reaction, break ampule and fill syringe with 0.3 mL of epinephrine, inject under the skin. Call 911 or go to the nearest emergency room.*
*specific instructions will differ, always confer with your doctor.
Owen Mumford makes an auto-injector called Autoject which costs $28. This could be used instead of the syringe if auto injection is desired. It is more complex than the EpiPen and the above method.
Another alternative is the Adrenaclick epinephrine autoinjector which is closest to the EpiPen. It costs approximately $200.
I always recommend patients price shop for their medication. The GoodRx website is a good place to start. A pharmacist can also help find certain coupons or incentives might be available that lower the out-of-pocket costs.
This week, I received a note from my local Congressman’s office. His team wanted to make sure that I’d seen it. To try to put into words my gratitude for this man will be tough. He’s been a leader on this issue for years.
Congressman Jared Polis sent the following letter to his constituents about the recent GMO labeling bill passed through both houses of Congress despite massive public opposition. Thank you, Congressman Polis, for what you do for American families and children.
Dear Friend:
Last Friday, I was disappointed to see President Obama sign a bill that overturns food labeling laws in Connecticut, Maine, and Vermont for genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The standard set this by this new federal law will actually provide consumers with less information than the state laws it supersedes.
While this Monsanto-backed bill was packaged as a “reasonable” way to label GMOs, it actually infringes on states’ rights by preempting local laws and allows corporations to disclose information using QR codes—an inaccessible technology. I offered a “truth in advertising” amendment to reflect the spirit of a prior version of the bill by renaming it the Denying Americans the Right to Know (DARK) Act, since all this legislation does is keep Americans in the dark.
GMO labeling is about transparency, but this bill undermines that concept by allowing QR codes or digital web links to be an approved means of disclosing whether a product contains GMOs.
For approximately 1/3 of the American public who don’t own a smartphone, or the many Americans living in rural areas without reception in their grocery store, the QR code is not an effective method of disclosure. Having a smartphone should not be a prerequisite to obtaining information about what ingredients are in the food you eat. Consumers deserve what they expect: information conveyed in clear text, or a widely recognizable symbol. QR codes and web links are just not an adequate solution.
The labeling conversation centers on consumer access to information. From consumers who applaud the cutting-edge science behind GMOs, to those who might have environmental, ethical, or health concerns with their development, there should be clearly labeled products for everyone. That’s what a free market is all about. But a free market depends on accessible information. Consumers deserve to know what’s in their food, plain and simple.
Despite the passage of this bad bill, I am committed to working in Congress to defend your right to know what’s in your food.
I’m always eager for your input and your ideas. Please don’t hesitate to email me, call one of my offices, or send me a note through Facebook or Twitter.
Yours truly,
Jared Polis
Representative
On July 29, the DARK Act went into effect as President Obama quietly signed the bill despite hundreds of thousands of us asking him not to. This means the GMO labeling many of us across the country have seen on products could soon disappear.
But the fight doesn’t end here. The Center for Food Safety will be filing a federal lawsuit in the next two weeks asking a court to declare the law unconstitutional on a number of grounds and to restore our democratically decided upon labeling laws.
This will be a major battle to defend the rights of consumers and farmers to choose to avoid GMO foods and seeds. Once again, CFS’s legal and science team will be taking on the world’s most powerful industrial food and chemical corporations and their highly paid lawyers.
The Center for Food Safety is used to waging successful legal battles against powerful forces. As a result of past CFS litigation and other efforts, they have stopped numerous GMO crops from being introduced and commercialized; defended county GMO crop bans; banned GMOs from all National Wildlife Refuges in the U.S.; and many other victories protecting our food, our health, and our environment.
They know how to win, but they can’t do this alone. Help the CFS continue the fight in court by pitching in $5 right now.
As we know, the DARK Act is a legislative train wreck. It preempts the GMO labeling laws of Vermont, Maine, and Connecticut, as well as seed and GMO fish labeling laws. In place of these laws, the bill gives the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) two years to establish standards for GMO labeling allowing companies and producers to use “digital” labeling (a.k.a QR codes) and 1-800 numbers to label food products that contain GMOs.
The idea that consumers would have to call or use their phones on each and every product they buy is absurd. And since more than 100 million Americans, mostly the rural elderly and low income, do not even own smartphones, they will not even have access to the digital labeling the law promotes. What’s worse, the law’s narrow definition would exclude many, and perhaps most, current foods containing GMO ingredients from any form of labeling.
CFS has no intention of letting this anti-democratic, discriminatory, fake labeling bill stand. But in all of their battles to defend our democratic rights and protect farmers and communities, they perform all of their legal work free of charge. In these lawsuits, CFS in-house attorneys and scientists spend many thousands of hours arguing these cases all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary. Private law firms would charge many millions of dollars for this amount of legal work and expertise. Even working on public interest salaries, these cases cost CFS hundreds of thousands of dollars in work and expenses.
We know this is a fight worth fighting, and they need our help.
Photo by karen_neoh 
An excellent perspective on how GMO “science” is pushed in universities today.
My name is Robert, and I am a Cornell University undergraduate student. However, I’m not sure if I want to be one any more. Allow me to explain.
Cornell, as an institution, appears to be complicit in a shocking amount of ecologically destructive, academically unethical, and scientifically deceitful behavior. Perhaps the most potent example is Cornell’s deep ties to industrial GMO agriculture, and the affiliated corporations such as Monsanto. I’d like to share how I became aware of this troubling state of affairs.
Throughout my secondary education, I’ve always had a passion for science. In particular, physics and mathematics captured my fascination. My sophomore AP physics teacher, Mr. Jones, became my main source of motivation to succeed. He convinced us students that our generation was crucial to repairing humanity’s relationship to science, and how we would play key roles in solving immense global issues, such as climate change. Thank you Mr. Jones! Without your vision, I would have never had the chance to attend such an amazing university.
I came to Cornell as a freshman, deeply unaware of our current GMO agriculture paradigm, and my university’s connection to it. After two years of school, however, I was reluctant to continue traditional study. I never felt quite at ease, jumping through hoops, taking classes and tests that didn’t inspire me, in exchange for a piece of paper (degree) that somehow magically granted me a superior life. I know many undergraduates fit right in with the university education model, and that’s fantastic. I certainly didn’t, and my mental and physical health began to suffer as a result. I was left with no choice but to take a leave of absence, and pursue another path.
Instead, I began to self-study nutrition out of pure necessity. Luckily, I found Cornell Professor Emeritus T. Colin Campbell’s legendary epidemiological research on nutrition and human disease. His evidence was so clear that I quickly transitioned to a plant-based diet. This personal dietary shift had profound benefits, dispelled my depression, and led me to a deep fascination with the precursor to nutrition: agriculture. I became particularly interested in agroecology. I was astonished to learn that there existed alternatives to chemical-intensive, corporate-controlled models of agriculture, and that they were far safer, more effective, and more sustainable. During my time away from Cornell, I participated in three unique seasons of agroecological crop production, with incredible results. I am immensely grateful for these experiences.
It’s impossible to study and practice agroecology without becoming deeply aware of the other end of the spectrum: the genetic modification of our food supply, ruled by giant agribusiness corporations.
Currently, the vast majority of US commodity crops (corn, soy, alfalfa, sugar beet) are genetically engineered to either withstand Roundup herbicide or produce Bt toxin pesticide. These “technologies” are ecologically damaging and unsafe. The majority of these crops go to feed animals in factory farms. The remainder generally gets converted into corn syrup, white sugar, vegetable oil, or biofuels — you know, good stuff! This combined approach of growing GMO commodity monoculture crops, and feeding them to factory-farmed livestock, is one of the most ecologically destructive forces our planet has ever seen. It’s also a leading contributor to climate change. In fact, some experts believe it to be the leading cause.
As Professor T. Colin Campbell will tell you, the foods that come from this system (animal products and processed foods) are responsible for causing the vast majority of chronic disease. That’s a story for another day.
Cornell’s GMO Propaganda Campaign
I came back to Cornell a changed person, with a drastically different perspective. I was in for quite a shock, however: I sat in on a course entitled “The GMO Debate.” I was expecting members of an intellectual community coming together, with proponents and critics of GMO food each giving the best verified evidence they had to support their cause. Given all that I had learned about GMO agriculture, I was excited to participate for the “GMO skeptic” side.
The GMO Debate course, which ran in the fall of 2015, was a blatant display of unscientific propaganda in an academic setting. There were a total of 4 active professors in the course, and several guest speakers. They took turns each session defending industrial agriculture and biotechnology with exactly zero critical examination of GMOs. In spite of the course’s name, there was a complete lack of actual “debate.” Here are some of the more memorable claims I heard that fall semester:
- GMO food is necessary to feed the world
- there is no instance of harm from agricultural GMOs
- glyphosate, the main ingredient in Roundup, is safer than coffee and table salt
- if you believe in science, you must believe in GMO technology
- the science of genetic engineering is well understood
- “what off-target effects?” … when asked about the proven biochemical risks of GE technology
- Vitamin A rice is curing children of Vitamin A deficiency (even though the IRRI, the research institute responsible for rolling it out, says it won’t be ready for some years: http://goo.gl/mHcsoJ)
- Current pesticides and herbicides don’t pose an ecological or human health risk
- Bt is an organic pesticide, therefore Bt GMO crops are safe and pose no additional risk
- Bt crops work just fine — but we are now engineering insects as a complementary technology — to make the Bt work better
- “Are you scared of GMO insects? Because you shouldn’t be.”
- GMO crops are the most rigorously tested crops in the history of food
- “If [renowned environmentalist] Rachel Carson were alive today, she would be pro-GMO”
It gets better. During the semester, emails were released following a Freedom of Information Act request, showing that all four of the professors in the class, as well as several guest speakers, the head of Cornell’s pro-GMO group “Alliance for Science,” and the Dean of the College of Arts and Life Sciences were all copied in on emails with Monsanto. This was part of a much larger circle of academics promoting GMO crops on behalf of the biotech industry. Jonathan Latham PhD, virologist and editor of independentsciencenews.org, documented this in an article titled “The Puppetmasters of Academia.” I highly recommend giving it a read, for further context.
Perhaps saddest of all was the inclusion of several visiting African agriculture-academics in the course. They were brought here by the “Cornell Alliance for Science”. This organization was completely funded by a $5.6 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and appears to espouse only pro-GMO rhetoric. For those of you who are unaware, Bill Gates is a proponent of using agricultural biotechnology in Africa, India, and other developing regions. So in essence, a group of African representatives got indoctrinated into the industrial and GMO agriculture framework, and were sent home to disseminate this information … after all, who could question the expertise of an Ivy League powerhouse such as Cornell?
I then learned of Cornell’s deep historic ties to the biotech industry, which explained what I witnessed in the “GMO Debate” course. Notable examples include the invention of both the controversial bovine growth hormone, and the particle bombardment (“gene gun”) method of creating GMO crops. Both of these cases are connected to Monsanto.
To say the least, I was completely stunned.
What I’m going to do about all of this
You didn’t think I was just going to complain about a pro-GMO, industry-sponsored Cornell all day, did you? Good, because I have come up with a plan to create actual, lasting change on campus.
A student-led, expert-backed, evidence-based GMO course
I have decided to host an independent course on the current GMO paradigm, in response to Cornell’s course. It will be held on campus, but will have zero influence from Cornell or any biotech organization.Every Wednesday evening, from September 7th to November 16, we will host a lecture. This lecture series is completely free, open to the entire Cornell community and broader public, and will be published online (for free, forever) at my project, gmowtf.com.
There will be several experts and scientists coming in to lecture for this course. Frances Moore Lappé, of “Diet for a Small Planet” and “World Hunger: 10 Myths” fame, will be introducing the course on September 7, via video presentation. She will be speaking on how GMO agriculture is unnecessary to end world hunger.
Steven Druker is a public interest attorney and author of the powerful book “Altered Genes, Twisted Truth: How the Venture to Genetically Engineer Our Food Has Subverted Science, Corrupted Government, and Systematically Deceived the Public”, which Jane Goodall (in her foreword) hails as “one of the most important books in the last 50 years”. He will be giving two lectures that elaborate on the themes in the book’s subtitle and demonstrate that the GMO venture has been chronically and crucially dependent on deception, and could not survive without it.
Jonathan Latham PhD will be giving two lectures, on the dangers of Roundup Ready and Bt crops, respectively. He will also be participating in our special October 5 debate, representing the anti-GMO panel, alongside Michael Hansen PhD, a senior scientist for the Consumers Union. Jonathan hasdirect experience genetically modifying organisms, so his expertise is guaranteed.
Allison Wilson PhD is a geneticist and editor/science director of the Bioscience Resource Project. She will be giving a lecture on how GMOs are actually created, to dispel any industry myths of precision, accuracy, or deep genetic understanding.
Belinda Martineau PhD is a geneticist with an interesting history — she was on the team of genetic engineers that created the first commercial GM food crop, the Flavr Savr Tomato. She authored a book on her experience, titled “First Fruit: The Creation of the Flavr Savr Tomato and the Birth of Biotech Foods”. Her lecture will be a historical and personal account of the science, regulation, and commercialization of genetically engineered foods, effectively giving context for today’s GMO paradigm.
My personal scientific hero, T. Colin Campbell, who started me on this whole journey years ago, will not be speaking on GMOs per se … but will address some critically important, related topics: academic freedom and scientific integrity. He began his Cornell career over half a century ago, and has “seen it all.” He has fascinating anecdotes that will illuminate these campus-wide issues beautifully.
Jane Goodall, if you’re reading this, you are personally invited to take time out of your busy schedule to come and give the final capstone lecture. I know how passionate you are about saving our species, our planet, and all of its beautiful inhabitants. Your wise presence in this project would take it to the next level. Alternatively, please consider a short video interview. This offer stands indefinitely. Same for you Vandana Shiva!
All in all, our independent GMO lecture series will focus on real threats and real solutions to our current ecological crisis … and perhaps most importantly, will feature 100% less Monsanto influence than Cornell’s course! Sounds good to me.
Taking it further
I’m on my second leave of absence from Cornell to work on this project, and due to my experiences, I have somewhat given up on a Cornell degree … not that I was ever intensely focused on attaining one. This GMO course is by far the most important thing I can do with my Cornell “career”. However, it is just the beginning of my plan.
Remember the $5.6 million Bill Gates gave Cornell through his foundation, to push the pro-GMO propaganda? Well, to coincide with our course, we’re launching an initiative to raise the same amount of money or more to sponsor more appropriate forms of agriculture, educational outreach, and activism. Go to gmowtf.com for more information, but in essence, this would finance:
- Continued grassroots educational activism at Cornell, and similar programs in other compromised universities (UC Davis and Berkeley, University of Florida, etc.) across the country.
- A plant-based, NON-GMO independent dining hall for Cornell students. It would source as close to 100% organic and local food as possible. Ideally, it would be cheaper than Cornell’s plan (plant-based eaters won’t subsidize expensive meat and dairy for omnivorous eaters).
- gmowtf.com as a permanent, free, independent, constantly updated resource for GMO science, policy, news, etc. … also the GMO course would remain online
- My dream: a research farm focused on rigorous analysis of agroecological practices. There is an infinitum of fascinatingly effective agroecological techniques that are underrepresented in the scientific community (in favor of faddist, ineffective GMO “technology”).
- Completely paying off student debt for a group of 10-15 undergraduates who are willing to help spread this message to the Cornell community.
Mr. Gates, if you truly care about feeding the world in a safe and sustainable manner, and if you are truly dedicated to science and to the kind of open, fact-based discourse on which it depends, I implore you to learn the important facts about which you have apparently been misinformed — and which are being systematically misrepresented by the Cornell organization you are funding. You can easily gain illumination by reading “Altered Genes, Twisted Truth” by Steven Druker, one of the key contributors to our independent GMO course. You might find Chapter 11, on the ramifications and risks of altering complex information systems, of particular interest. You are, after all, the world’s most famous software developer!
As the chapter demonstrates, biotechnicians are significantly altering the most complex yet least understood group of information systems on earth — the ones that undergird the development and function of living organisms. Yet, they fail to implement the kind of safeguards that software engineers have learned are imperative when making even minor revisions to life-critical human-made systems. Can this be legitimately called science-based engineering?
Bill, feel free to reach out to any of the experts in our course, and don’t be hesitant to update your views on GMO agriculture in light of new understanding. A genuine scientist lives by this principle.
I Invite you all to go to gmowtf.com and explore my proposals more. Please bear with the construction of the site in the coming weeks, in preparation for our amazing GMO course!
We live in somewhat of a scientific dark age. Our universities have become extensions of corporate power, at the cost of our health, livelihoods, and ecology. This has to stop, yesterday. We cannot afford to spread lies to our undergraduate students. Cornell, please reconsider your ways. Until you do, I will be doing everything in my power to counter your industry GMO propaganda efforts with the facts.
With love,
Robert Schooler
Originally published at GMOWTF.org.
An investigation by local journalist Eliván Martínez Mercado reveals that Puerto Rico has handed over hundreds of millions of dollars in public funds to multinational biotech corporations, such as Monsanto and Pioneer Hi Bred (now Dupont), even as the colonial territory’s decade-long debt crisis forced the closure of public schools.
“Monsanto and Pioneer Hi Bred[…] received benefits from the bankrupted U.S. colonial territory in the Caribbean while their headquarters made billionaire profits worldwide,” Mercado reports. “Monsanto reported a global net profit of $2.3 billion only in 2015, while Pioneer Hi Bred reported $2 billion last year, according to their respective reports for investors.”
As Common Dreams has reported, Puerto Rico is faced with a staggering debt worth $72 billion—largely as a result of Wall Street speculation—and federal legislation passed last month put the island’s population under the auspices of what critics have decried as a “colonial control board,” which is poised to enforce austerity policies.
Yet Mercado’s investigation revealed that despite the debt crisis, multinational GMO corporations—condemned by environmental advocates as a “corporate cabal“—have benefited handsomely from the island’s corporate welfare policies.
The article originally published earlier this month in Spanish by the Centro de Periodismo Investigativo (CPI), or the Center for Investigative Journalism, notes that under the island’s three most recent governors, the territory gave biotech giants “preferential tax rates, tax exemptions, industrial incentives and wage subsidies.”
Mercado continues:
Those wage subsidies come from the General Fund which is the money collected directly from Puerto Rican taxpayers. They also allowed Monsanto and Pioneer, for example, to receive 238 million gallons of free water from an underground water reserve in the south of the Island, between Salinas, Guayama, Juana Díaz and Santa Isabel.
“And so it was that 11 agricultural biotechnology enterprises found an oasis of easy money in Puerto Rico throughout 10 years of fiscal crisis,” Mercado writes.
An examination of public records showed that the biotech giants received $477.5 million in wage subsidies “because the Department of Agriculture considers them bona fide farmers.” The wage subsidy law is intended to allow farmers to pay farmhands a higher wage, to assist an industry that has historically struggled to retain workers.
“But agricultural biotechnology enterprises are not really the same thing as farmers,” Mercado argues:
They are dedicated to research and development, a scientific and corporate activity that for the last 10 years in Puerto Rico can be summed up in the following equation: over 1,694 experiments to develop genetically modified corn (55%) and soybean (37%) seeds, according to an analysis of the testing licenses granted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Moreover, the government of Puerto Rico allows Monsanto and other GMO giants to use far more land than other foreign “farmers”—and that’s because the government, paradoxically, also does not consider these corporations to be farmers.
Mercado writes that on this point the government relies on “Secretary of Justice Guillermo Somoza Colombani, who had decreed that these enterprises could rent more than 500 acres because biotechnology could not be considered an agricultural activity. ‘It is rather an activity primarily scientific in nature, whose results are not available for immediate consumption,’ explained Somoza in an opinion issued in 2012 after an inquiry from the Puerto Rico Industrial Development Company.”
But the Puerto Rican government continues to treat biotechnology corporations as both farmers and non-farmers:
As a matter of fact, Monsanto Puerto Rico received $9.7 million in wage subsidies over the last 10 years, according to the Administration for the Development of Agricultural Enterprises (ADEA, for its Spanish acronym), while Monsanto Caribe rented the 768 acres of public land. They are different legal entities in Puerto Rico’s Registry of Corporations, although they work under the same economic strategy in their headquarters in Missouri.
A graphic illustrates the enormous amount of funds funneled to these multinational companies over the past ten years:
The corporations are additionally benefiting from industrial incentives for building infrastructure and purchasing agricultural equipment, as well as receiving municipal and property tax exemptions.
And because they are considered farmers, the biotech behemoths are allowed to withdraw as much water as they want—for free—from public sources.
“Out of the six corporations who have franchises to extract water from the southern water sources,” Mercado writes, “Monsanto Caribe and Pioneer Hi Bred extracted 238 million gallons in the last 10 years, according to reports from the Department of Natural and Environmental Resources. If they hadn’t been considered bona fide agriculturists, they would have had to pay $476,389, which is the industrial cost for this amount of consumption. The water sources in the south have been in trouble because of ‘over-extraction’ and lack of rain.”
Those in favor of the enormous tax breaks and subsidies argue that the biotechnology sector is a major employer in the impoverished colonial territory.
Puerto Rican economist Ramón Cao “differs from this appraisal,” Mercado writes.
“It’s an important amount, but at what cost? Each employment represented an annual fiscal cost of $15,354 which is approximately the minimum yearly wage for an employee,” Cao told Mercado. “At that fiscal cost, they could have hired about 2,000 teachers a year, including employee benefits.”
Such massive corporate welfare benefits have contributed to Puerto Rico’s devastating crisis, observers argue. As Isaiah J. Poole of Campaign for America’s Future wrote earlier this month:
Add an obsession with giving tax breaks to the wealthy with the addictive drug of tax-free Wall Street debt, mix in the mysterious change that stripped from Puerto Rico the ability to declare a Chapter 9 bankruptcy, and you get the shame we see today—working-class American citizens stripped of economic opportunity, democratic rights and basic dignity, and told they have to bear with the ‘imperfect’ while the fat cats finish their feasting. At least for them, this crisis has not been a waste at all.
Argeo Quiñones, professor in the Department of Economics of the University of Puerto Rico, lamented the territory’s fondness for corporate tax breaks: “We have moved from foreign manufacturing enterprises to petrochemical industries, from the petrochemical industries to the pharmaceutical industries, from the pharmaceutical to biotechnology.”
“And that does not translate into a sustainable large-scale activity that could be identified as growth and development for Puerto Rico,” Quiñones said to Mercado. “It is the philosophy that we have to give our soul away. It is a model of dependency.”
Originally published at Common Dreams.
