Many Pro-GMO Corporate Biologists Own GMO Patents, in Bed with Monsanto

The lead researcher behind the monumental study that linked Monsanto’s GMOs and best-selling herbicide Roundup to tumor development and early death is now blowing the whistle on many corporate scientists who are not just close to Monsanto and profit-harvesting GMO crops — many of them actually have or are seeking their own GMO patents. These patents, of course, enable them to make bountiful amounts of cash. Other corporate scientists are on (or ‘were’ at one point) Monsanto’s pay roll, including former Monsanto executive turned Deputy Commissioner for Foods at the FDA Michael R. Taylor.

Dr. Gilles-Eric Séralini, a French scientists who has been under assault from Monsanto and pro-GMO scientists, was responsible for perhaps the largest awakening over the dangers of Monsanto’s GMO foods that we have ever seen. Not only did the public begin to further recognize the existence and threat of GMOs thanks to his research, but numerous countries like Russia and others actually enacted a suspension on the import of genetically modified maize due to public health concerns.

This, of course, upset the Monsanto-funded corporate scientists who proverbially ‘unleashed the dogs’ on Dr. Séralini. Even Monsanto released a comment, stating that the lifelong rat study wasn’t sufficient to substantiate any real health concerns. The company itself, amazingly, only conducted a 90 day trial period for its GMOs before unleashing them on the public.

Previous Peer-Reviewed Evidence Highlighting GMO Danger Ignored by ‘Scientists’

It’s important to remember that Séralini’s work may be the most popular within the media, but it’s not the only research linking GMOs and Roundup to serious health effects. Monsanto and fellow goons failed to mention this truth, especially the fact that Monsanto’s Roundup has been associated with over 29 negative health conditions according to peer-reviewed studies available on PubMed. And these conditions are nothing minor. Health effects linked to Roundup include:

• Cancer
• Parkinson’s
• DNA damage
• Low testosterone
• Liver damage
• Infertility
• Endocrine disease

These are serious disorders that result from the very Roundup that is used on crops by farmers worldwide before hitting your dinner table. In fact an increased amount of usage is now needed thanks to ineffective GMO crops that are now being eaten by mutated superbugs that have developed a resistance to Monsanto’s built-in GMO pesticides. Roundup covered crops that eventually land on dinner tables worldwide.

But perhaps very few scientists around the globe actually dare speak about these dangers due to the overwhelming political influence Monsanto and other biotech companies have over nations around the globe. We know thanks to 2007 WikiLeaks cables that not only are most if not all U.S. ambassadors on Monsanto payroll, but that prominent U.S. political figures have threatened nations who oppose Monsanto with ‘military-style trade wars’. A threat that has managed to strike fear into many nations who would not risk massive retaliation from the United States.

Now, however, the awareness has grown stronger than ever before and consumers worldwide are taking a stand. A stand that countries around the globe can no longer ignore, nor can corrupt corporate scientists dissipate through phony bought-and-paid-for garbage science.

http://www.nationofchange.org/many-pro-gmo-corporate-biologists-own-gmo-patents-bed-monsanto-1353859536

Occupy’s New Offshoot Set to Cancel Millions in Medical Debts

On the first anniversary of Occupy Wall Street's eviction from Zuccotti Park, celebrity and local performers donated their time for a "post-modern variety show" last night at Manhattan's Le Poisson Rouge nightclub. They were there to raise money for what may be the most far-reaching project to grow out of the Occupy movement so far: a "bailout for the 99 percent" called Rolling Jubilee. Launched by Strike Debt, an offshoot of OWS, the Jubilee has begun erasing people's medical debt by infiltrating the debt-collection industry.

The tactic is to buy private debt the same way collection companies do—on the debt market, at tiny fractions of its original worth—and then cancel it in hopes of freeing debtors from their piled-up medical bills. It is hoped that the action will bring debt servitude to the forefront of our national conversation.

As donations surged past the $250,000 mark—five times Strike Debt’s stated goal for the evening—the soirée took on the bubbly energy of a victory rally.

Last night's live-streamed spectacle, billed as the People's Bailout Telethon, featured comedienne Janeane Garofalo, musicians Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth and Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel, and a three-hour-long vaudevillian line-up of mariachi and magic, gospel and hip-hop, striptease and performance art. Comedy writer Lizz Winstead and cartoonist David Rees emceed the event, badgering a fluctuating online audience to donate money. With local Strike Debt chapters holding viewing parties across the country, there may have been close to 2,000 online viewers.

The event had been planned as a launch party for Rolling Jubilee, which opened its bank account on Friday, November 9. But as donations surged past the $250,000 mark—five times Strike Debt’s stated goal for the evening—the soirée took on the bubbly energy of a victory rally. Organizers say these donations could buy 20 times their amount in debt, since distressed medical debts (that is, debts seen as unlikely to be paid) can sell for as little as five cents to the dollar. In other words, a collection company might pay a hospital $10 for the right to chase down a patient's $200 debt. Or, in the case of Rolling Jubilee, a $10 donation could cancel a $200 debt. According to Yates McKee, a Strike Debt organizer, the group has "friends in the industry" with debt-purchasing experience who are bidding discreetly on the group's behalf.

According to the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, about 30 million Americans have debts in collection.

Of the money raised this week, Strike Debt has already spent $5,000 on purchasing medical debt. Sometime soon, the first households will receive letters informing them that their debt has been cancelled, along with copies of a "Debt Resistor's Operation Manual.”

According to the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, about 30 million Americans have debts in collection—with tabs averaging $1,500. So, if the roughly $293,000 raised this week can indeed purchase $5.9 million of debt, this phase of the bail-out could help about 3900 families.

McKee emphasizes that the campaign is not about charity, but "solidarity and mutual aid." Nor is the campaign calling for debt "forgiveness," which reinforces the notion that debtors are guilty of moral failures. Instead, it encourages debt resistance. After all, "We're calling for this to be a political act of economic non-compliance,” he told me. “We are intentionally withdrawing our consent from this system."

Strike Debt says medical debt directly causes 62 percent of all bankruptcies.

It may sound like a stretch to call this form of activism "resistance." A few online commenters have suggested that it validates the debt collection system by using its channels. But Strike Debt views the Rolling Jubilee as just one tactic in a long-term strategy to empower debtors. Others include the creation of a Debt Resistors Organizing Kit, and debt-resisting acts of civil disobedience. "We realized that debt was really the tie that binds the 99 percent," said Pamela Brown, an organizer with the Occupy Student Debt campaign. "It's the intersection of Wall Street and our lives."

While the campaign is focused on the problem of the personal debts many of us rack up in pursuit of education, health care, and housing, Strike Debt activists have only been able to purchase medical debt at this point. It’s a worthy focus—Strike Debt says medical debt directly causes 62 percent of all bankruptcies. Student debt, which in the U.S. amounts to a staggering $1 trillion, has proven a difficult target because federally backed student loans cannot be bought (though McKee says the campaign may find ways to buy up private college loans or for-profit school loans). Strike Debt cannot seek out and buy defaulted debt from specific people, since anonymous accounts are sold in bundles. "With 15 percent of Americans currently being pursued by a debt collector, looking for one person’s debt would be like looking for a needle in a haystack," their website says.

Strike Debt is hoping that lessons from last fall's occupations will help promote common cause among the 99 percent. McKee wants to see an existing "invisible army of defaulters" recognize each other as co-combatants and engage the debt system together. Perhaps that will happen when Jubilee’s good-news envelopes start landing in mailboxes.

http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/offshoot-occupy-set-to-cancel-millions-in-medical-debts?utm_source=november12&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=CancelMillionsMedicalDebts

Ways College Admissions Committees Stack the Deck in Favor of Already Privileged Applicants

Affirmative action has been the subject of much media debate recently, as the U.S. Supreme Court began hearing oral arguments on October 10 involving the controversial Fisher v. University of Texas “reverse racism” case. The plaintiff, Abigail Fisher, alleges that she was declined admission to the university as a result of affirmative action policies that left her at a disadvantage because she is white.

Contemporary debates about affirmative action policies that take race into account tend to presume that, in our post-Civil Rights era, the U.S. is a pure meritocracy that rewards the best and brightest. But this isn’t quite true. Affirmative action is used to offset other arbitrary identifiers that admissions committees are allowed to consider, many of which further enshrine existing social hierarchies according to race and class. Here are just four criteria admissions committees are allowed to consider that reward already privileged students.

1. Legacy Admissions

Six years ago, I had a conversation with a Canadian professor who had earned his PhD at an Ivy League American university. He told me he could never understand the U.S. tolerance for legacy admissions (in which a student with a family member who attended a given university would be privileged in that school’s admissions process) and suggested that legacy admissions “amounts to affirmative action for the rich.” Another Canadian professor who had earned her PhD at an elite American university overheard our conversation and chimed in. She recalled teaching numerous legacy students whose academic performances she found substandard at best.

Former President George W. Bush’s mediocre academic record at Yale is one of the more famous examples [3] of this phenomenon, one that is a particularly big problem [4] at Ivy League schools and other elite institutions. In their 2011 book, Higher Education, How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids – and What We Can Do about It, Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus note that each legacy applicant to Brown University has the word “legacy” written in the top corner of his or her file. It isn’t clear precisely what effect this has on an applicant’s chances; the Brown Alumni Association [5], whose Web site instructs viewers to contact it “for a discussion of Brown legacy statistics,” tells AlterNet that Brown does not publish information about legacy admissions. But we know that legacy status matters overall.

To wit: according to the Chronicle of Higher Education, a 2011 Harvard study [6] showed that, “all other things being equal, legacy applications got a 23.3-percentage-point increase in their probability of admission” to 30 elite universities. And students with at least one parent who attended the competitive institutions as undergraduates – called “primary legacies” – had a staggering 45.1-percentage-point admissions advantage. In other words, a non-legacy applicant with, say, a 10 percent change of admission would have a 33.3 percent chance of admission as a legacy student and a 55.1 percent chance of being admitted as a primary legacy.

Why do schools do this? Admissions departments are reluctant to discuss the practice, but as economist Peter Sacks told the New York Times [7], “Elite institutions have an implicit bargain with their alumni…You give us money, and we will move your kids to the front of the line.”

The inequalities perpetuated by legacy admissions are shocking on their own, but all the more so when you take into account how little consideration is given to poor students, in light of the academic and other difficulties they may have faced. In his book, Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul’s School, Shamus Rahman Khan writes that while the legacy children of elites receive special consideration, “poorer students are afforded no such luxury.” He explains, “Though poor students experience a host of disadvantages – from lower-quality schools to difficult access to out-of-school enrichment programs to the absence of support when they struggle – colleges are largely blind to such struggles, treating poorer students as if they were the same as rich ones.” Except, that is, when those wealthier students happen to be legacies.

2. SAT Scores

It’s a well-known truism [8] that the Scholastic Aptitude Test is a racist tool for college admissions. It’s also the first thing most admissions committees see on a student’s application.

The test’s racist reputation extends to its origins. Its creator, psychologist Carl C. Brigham, was a well-known eugenicist; his 1923 Army Alpha Test, first adapted as the Standard Aptitude Test for Harvard admissions in 1934, culminated in a racial breakdown of scores. Brigham felt that American education was in a downward spiral and argued [9] that deterioration in American intelligence would “proceed with an accelerating rate as the racial mixture becomes more and more extensive.” 

Of course, standardized testing did not have only reactionary proponents in its early incarnations. It was first taken up by universities to create a more meritocratic – and less legacy-based – admission system. But it hasn’t shaken out in such a meritocratic way. For example, students from relatively well-off families can take expensive courses through private companies like Kaplan and the Princeton Review to learn tricks for boosting their SAT scores. Kaplan’s most popular 18-hour course costs [10] $599. At Princeton Review, courses range [11] from $299 to $1999.

Studies still find that SAT scores discriminate against minorities and women – and do a poor job of forecasting future student performance. According to the non-profit advocacy group Fair Test [12], women score an average of 35-40 points lower than men on the SAT --despite earning overwhelmingly higher first year grades once enrolled in college. For non-native English speakers, test scores are about 91 points lower despite first-year grades equivalent to those of white native English speakers.

Finally, according to Fair Test’s Web site, “The ability of SAT I scores to predict freshman grades, undergraduate class rank, college graduation rates, and attainment of a graduate degree is weaker for African-American students than for whites.” The SAT has become such a rite of passage in US culture that its biases are rarely discussed. But, in fact, it disproportionately favors white male students, while putting equally deserving female students and students of color at a comparative disadvantage.

3. Parental Income

When I was applying to colleges from my home state of North Carolina in 1997, many of my peers chose not to apply to Duke University, believing that their parents’ middle-class income would be found wanting and prevent them from being admitted, given that Duke was not, at the time, a “need-blind” university. In those days, students were widely under the impression that they were required to list parental income and assets directly on the Duke application. Duke’s dean of undergraduate admissions, Christopher Guttentag, tells AlterNet that the policy was gone by at least 1992, when his tenure began. But the recent history of “need-aware” admissions at Duke helped create today’s deeply entrenched beliefs in urban North Carolina communities that Duke is a school for the children of wealthy parents.

Of course, any U.S. citizen who requires financial aid to attend college completes a Free Application for Federal Student Aid (or FAFSA) that includes similar information about parental income. When a college has a need-aware policy, this means that students from relatively well-off families – that is, families who may be able to pay close to full tuition -- could be privileged when it comes to the admissions game. In order to become need-blind (and forgo the need to weigh a student’s ability to pay for her or his education),  a school needs to have a way of funding the students it admits. This means need-blind policies will always be at risk during difficult economic times, and students in need always vulnerable to economic forces beyond their control.

Duke and many other research institutions have long since switched to a need-blind admissions process, but not by any legal mandate. And many colleges, especially small liberal arts schools, have started talking about ending need-blind admissions [13] since their endowments have not fully recovered from the 2008 economic downturn. According to an October 30 Inside Higher Ed report [13], the colleges considering the change include “wealthy institutions like Grinnell College and not-so-wealthy institutions like Albright College, in Pennsylvania.” And the prestigious Wesleyan University has already abandoned its need-blind policy because according to University President Michael Roth, it was just too expensive [13].  

4. Criminal Background Check

During the mid-1990s, college applications commonly asked whether or not applicants had ever been convicted of a felony. Felony conviction was – and is – considered a legitimate reason for discrimination against an applicant. Most high school seniors applying for colleges are asked this routine question on their applications, but for some, actual criminal background checks have become much more commonplace.

In 2007, when a Virginia Tech student opened fire on students and professors on campus before killing himself, many in the public and the media asked [14] why Virginia Tech hadn’t routinely subjected its applicants to criminal background checks. Since then, according toUniversity Business [15], criminal background checks have been on the rise. That same year, the University of North Carolina system started ordering background checks on certain students, “because they had unexplained gaps in their applications or admitted involvement in a crime.” The practice has only been taken up slowly, however, as universities fear [14] being accused of profiling potential students. Thus far, the checks have become more prevalent among students entering vocational fields like teaching, pharmacy, nursing or physical therapy, in which students must work with either minor students or vulnerable patients.

But the practice is so new that its legal implications have yet to be hashed out, and there is no current mechanism for distinguishing non-violent felonies like marijuana possession from more serious crimes like armed burglary or assault. It’s already difficult for students with minor adolescent drug convictions to attend college – under current federal law [16], they are not eligible for student loans. And because black youth are imprisoned at a rate nearly 10 times [17] that of white youth for drug offenses, and black and Hispanic youth account for about 70 percent [18] of all youth arrests, this policy disproportionately penalizes youth of color, many of them poor. Furthermore, this policy means that one mistake in early adolescence can permanently destroy a student’s chances of attending college if they don’t earn full scholarships or their parents can’t afford to pay for their education.

Clearly, there are many arbitrary factors that go into a college admissions decision -- some of which benefit already-privileged applicants, and others that attempt to correct for deep historical imbalances. It’s long past time to stop stigmatizing affirmative action, and look instead at the various ways the system still unfairly privileges well-off students, while continuing to perpetuate the inequalities affirmative action is supposed to help eradicate.

http://www.alternet.org/education/4-ways-college-admissions-committees-stack-deck-favor-already-privileged-applicants

Nonprofit Medicine: Is Government About to Throw It under the Bus?

Unfortunately, that appears to be the case—unless we do something about it.

Who controls healthcare? We wish we could say it was consumers, but they have less and less of a voice. Actually, healthcare today is controlled by three entities: government, for-profit businesses, and nonprofits—and before long, the first two may muscle out the third.

Should those of us following a natural health approach worry about this? Yes, definitely—for two reasons. First, conventional medicine has wandered far from the old ideal of being a caring profession, but that perspective is more likely to be rediscovered in a nonprofit setting than in one controlled by government or by for-profits. Second, having different kinds of healthcare providers increases our options and reduces the chance of having one-size-fits-all medicine forced on us.

How much nonprofit medicine is there now? A lot. Fully 62% of hospitals are nonprofit (20% are government-run and the rest are for-profits), as are 30% of nursing homes, 17% of home healthcare agencies, and so on. The medical practices that President Obama has praised as role models that others should emulate are nonprofit.

Yet President Obama is trying to undercut nonprofit medicine. And so are the Republicans. They are both doing it at a time when the donations to nonprofit medicine, decimated by the Crash of ’08, have still not recovered—and at a time when states and localities are upping taxes on nonprofits to try to reduce their deficits.

Presidents Bush and Obama decided to bail out auto companies and Wall Street. So why try to tear down the whole nonprofit sector at the same time? That sector represents about 11% of the economy; it employs 13.5 million people, about 10% of the workforce. Is their work—devoted to the general welfare, typically done with lower pay and benefits than in either government or business—less important than the auto workers or Wall Streeters? The president famously said, “These aren’t games we are playing here. Folks are out of work.” Exactly—and they’re out of work in the charitable sector too, where we really need them working.

First let’s look at Obama on nonprofits in general, then the Republicans. Then we’ll come back to nonprofit medicine.

President Obama seemed to be praising charities in his Democratic Convention acceptance speech ^[2]. He said, “We know that churches and charities can often make more of a difference than a poverty program alone.” But look at that more closely, especially the words “often” and “more.” The president was really saying that charities do not always make a difference and if they do it is by adding to what government is already doing.

That was actually pretty dismissive. Most studies show that nonprofit social agencies are much more effective than government agencies, whether it is rehabbing drug addicts or delivering medicine to the poor. Furthermore, charities offer diversity. They are a laboratory of ideas and approaches, something that the government can never be. They also represent people-to-people solutions, the democratic ideal in action.

Earlier, the president had proposed a sharp curtailment in the ability of single people with incomes over $200,000 or families with incomes over $250,000 to take a tax deduction on charitable gifts. He proposed this several times, but most recently as a way to pay for his proposed 2011 jobs stimulus bill. And this reduction in the charitable deduction would be on top of another reduction (the “Pease limitation ^[3]”) that was already scheduled to come back with the end of the Bush tax cuts.

In 2009, Obama said ^[4], “I think it [reducing the charitable deduction] is a realistic way for us to raise some revenue from people who have benefited enormously over the last several years.” But that doesn’t make any sense. Taking away the charitable deduction doesn’t penalize the rich; it penalizes the charities and the people being served by the charities. If the rich don’t give, they will end up with more money, not less. They do not suffer at all.

Obama’s budget director at the time, Peter Orszag, seemed to acknowledge this—that it was the charities, not the big donors, who would suffer under this proposal—when he said that charities should be willing to make this sacrifice in return for more people getting health insurance under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ObamaCare”). But this didn’t make any sense either. First, yanking the charitable tax deduction was not part of the president’s plan to finance broader healthcare. Second, reducing the deduction actually makes it harder to cover more people.

This last point only requires a moment’s thought. If you want to cover more people, you need more doctors and nurses and clinics. In economic terms, if you increase demand, you should increase supply. Otherwise, people with the new health coverage still won’t be able to see a doctor, or they will have to wait for weeks and weeks, and prices will likely soar.

This is not an abstract idea. It is already happening just this way in Massachusetts under RomneyCare. Newly covered people can’t find a doctor, and prices are rising so rapidly that the legislature has just passed a price control system (even though price controls almost always fail). So if you need more healthcare supply nationally, how does it help to take a hatchet to nonprofit healthcare providers?

Obama also said ^[5] that “there is very little evidence that this [cutting the charitable deduction] has a significant impact on charitable giving.” In fact, the evidence says the opposite, that for every 1% reduction in the deduction, gifts from wealthy people fall 1%. That kind of drop in charitable giving would be devastating for nonprofits. As David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, wrote to the president ^[6], “Most nonprofits derive 70 to 80 percent of their donations from a small proportion of their donors who are major givers. This proposal will deal a major blow.”

Moreover, “taxing” major donors’ gifts would not even produce that much revenue for the government, only an estimated $54 billion a year. Compare that to the $300 billion in tax subsidies for health insurance or the overall budget deficit of $1.2 trillion. And let’s remember that charities would be expected to lose at least $54 billion and possibly much more.

President Obama added that he doesn’t think it is fair that someone in the 35% tax bracket gets a 35% deduction while someone in the 28% tax bracket gets a 28% deduction. Before we get too worried about this, let’s remember that the employer tax deduction for health insurance works the same way—the higher your income, the bigger deduction you get—and involves much more money. But the president did nothing to change that in his healthcare legislation because unions did not want it changed.

Also, speaking of fairness, why was the Affordable Care Act set up so that two families at the very same income level may receive government insurance subsidies that vary ^[7] by $10,000 or even as much as $20,000? That doesn’t seem very fair.

Furthermore, there is an easy fix to put everyone’s tax treatment for charitable giving on the exact same footing. Independent Sector, representing nonprofits as a whole, has proposed ^[8] that “charitable contributions should not be included in an individual’s adjusted gross income [subject to tax].” This change from a tax deduction to a tax credit would treat everyone alike and produce a torrent of income for charities. If government doesn’t want to go that far, how about a tax credit for charities that directly help the needy?

The president’s proposal to “tax” charities harder was first made when he had Democratic majorities in both the House and the Senate. Despite the majorities, it did not go anywhere. No one seemed to back it until Mitt Romney suddenly embraced it toward the end of the presidential campaign. But did he in fact embrace it?

What Romney actually said was that tax rates for everyone, including the highest earners, should be reduced in order to help the economy. In return, he would propose to cap itemized deductions to a maximum of $17,000, $25,000, or $50,000 (all three figures were “examples” rather than proposals). Romney also wasn’t clear about whether the cap would apply to all itemized tax deductions (e.g., state income taxes, mortgage interest, and charitable gift deductions, but not health insurance deductions) or just some of them.

Here ^[9] is how an online reader reacted to the Romney proposal, which he assumed meant that charitable deductions would be cut. “[Let’s say you give 5% of your income to charity and I give none. The Romney plan] stops rewarding you for being a better human being than me and [instead] rewards me for being a jerk.”

Regardless of what Romney actually intended, his remarks suddenly put the charitable deduction, part of the tax code since 1917, in grave peril. Only a few days after the 2008 presidential election, Democrats started pointing out that eliminating deductions was a Republican proposal, although they conveniently left out the part about cutting tax rates first.

Republican House Speaker Boehner (R-OH) said ^[10] he would be open to increasing government revenues, but not increasing tax rates. This was code for saying that tax deductions in general would be on the chopping block. Congressman and vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan said the same ^[11]. And now Mitt Romney’s chief economic advisor, Glenn Hubbard, has also come out in favor of cutting deductions.

How much nonprofit medicine will be wiped out if the charitable deduction falls? Potentially, quite a lot. It is hard to get firm figures on gifts for medicine, but as much as $32 billion may be going there, with about a third of that going to nonprofit hospitals. These hospitals are already endangered by threatened reimbursement cuts under the Affordable Care Act and many of them could be forced to close. How will low-wage earners benefit if they have “coverage” but don’t even have a hospital emergency room to go to?

Will the charitable deduction survive? It depends on how the American public reacts. Do we want more charity, or less? Do we want social services, including medicine, to be provided only by government or for-profit businesses, or do we want a thriving nonprofit sector?

Most countries do not have a thriving nonprofit sector. Europe does not have it, nor Japan. This has been a uniquely American phenomenon, recognized and encouraged by our tax laws. Now it is under attack. Whether that attack succeeds will make a big difference in the kind of country we are. If we care, and we should, we have to make our views known on Capitol Hill.

http://www.anh-usa.org/nonprofit-medicine-is-government-about-to-throw-it-under-the-bus/

Maddie Oatman – A Timeline of Sugar Spin

It’s striking to realize that such a basic commodity—a substance we spoon into our coffee every day and use in almost everything we bake—may play a causative role in some of our deadliest diseases. Ever since the mid-1900s, when cereal makers realized that sugar boosts sales, America’s food and beverage industries have been sweetening up their products. To buoy sugar’s popularity circa World War II, producers launched what would become the Sugar Association Inc. (SAI), which later turned its attention to undermining research that suggests that it’s more than cavities we need to worry about. As Gary Taubes and Cristin Kearns Couzens report in “Big Sugar’s Sweet Little Lies,” the SAI heavily funded sugar-friendly studies, ran misleading ads, and concocted a multiprong PR campaign to convince people that sugar was harmless and could even help us stay thin. Below are highlights from Big Sugar’s longstanding attempt to win America’s heart—and gut. (Be patient, as the timeline may take a few seconds to load.)

Read The Full Article Here:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/sugar-industry-marketing-timeline

Read more: http://prn.fm/2012/11/20/maddie-oatman-timeline-sugar-spin/#ixzz2CshJO1wi 
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution

Gary Null, PhD – Sugar, Sweet Suicides

In early April 2012, a report by Dr. Sanjay Gupta appearing on 60 Minutes finally acknowledged the connection between sugar consumption and the poor health of the American people. This link is now “official” because 60 Minutes is an “official” source of news and Dr. Gupta is an “official” spokesperson for the medical community. Unfortunately, the authorities we look upon as “official” are often biased and prone to distort reality.

In point of fact, I have been writing about the damaging effects of sugar on health extensively in books and articles since 1971. In 2002, my documentary “Seven Steps to Perfect Health” premiered on PBS stations including WETA in Washington, DC. As part of the PBS program, I poured sugar out of a bag which equaled the number of teaspoons that the average American teenager consumes in a given day. The quantity was verified by my General Counsel, David Slater, who had measured the number of teaspoons earlier in the day. If anything, my demonstration understated the true amount of sugar we are consuming.

The program was very well received and the program director informed me that it was so successful that it had set a record for a non-primetime programming and that he intended on replaying it eight or nine times. However, the next day I was informed by him that he was sorry but he had bad news: not only would the program not be aired again, but I would not be invited back to present on the station.

Read the full article right here:

Sugar Sweet Suicide

Read more: http://prn.fm/2012/11/20/gary-null-sugar/#ixzz2CsgqyXXZ 
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution

GMW: Organic farmers condemn US report, claim it favors GMO

Organic growers and food safety advocates on Tuesday condemned an advisory report to the Agriculture Department claiming its recommendations would be costly for farmers who want to protect their conventional crops from being contaminated by genetically modified (GMO), also known as genetically engineered (GE), varieties.

The groups were responding to a report submitted Monday afternoon to the U.S. Department of Agriculture by a committee assigned by USDA with studying how best biotech agriculture could "co-exist" with organic and conventional agriculture.

"Of particular concern in the report is the recommendation that organic and non-GE conventional farmers pay to self-insure themselves against unwanted GE contamination," said a statement by the National Organic Coalition.

"This proposal allows USDA and the agricultural biotechnology industry to abdicate responsibility for preventing GE contamination while making the victims of GE pollution pay for damages resulting from transgenic contamination," it said.

Since their introduction in 1996, genetically engineered crops have become popular with U.S. farmers and now make up the majority of corn and soybeans produced in the United States. But there are a range of environmental and health concerns tied to biotech crops, and many farmers prefer not to grow them and many markets, both domestic and international, pay a premium for non-GMO crops and other products.

In its report, the advisory committee, known as the AC21, said all American farmers have the right to make the best choices for their own farms, including the choice to grow genetically engineered crops, or to grow organic or conventional crops.

"It is important that every American farmer is encouraged to show respect for their neighbor's ability to make different choices," the report said.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said USDA would review the report and consider the recommendations. He said USDA supports "all segments of agriculture."

"The report is the culmination of a great deal of hard work and complex discussion and review," said Vilsack in a statement. "I understand that required compromises to find common ground."

COMPENSATION ISSUE UNRESOLVED

USDA had asked the advisory committee to analyze what types of compensation mechanisms, if any, would be appropriate to address economic losses by farmers due to contamination by GE crops. And while there was some dissent, a majority of AC21 members did not agree on any type of compensation mechanism.

The committee said its members could not agree about the extent to which a systemic problem exists and whether there is enough data to warrant a compensation mechanism to address it. While the committee acknowledged there are unintended GE materials found in commercial products, they differed in their assessment of the significance of the unintended presence.

The committee recommended that the USDA evaluate data to better understand actual economic losses by farmers tied to GE contamination. If a compensation program is needed, the committee said it should be modeled on existing crop insurance. Co-existence agreements between neighboring farmers should be developed, the committee said.

"This issue will only increase as new biotech products come to market so it is essential that the federal government step up now and establish strong policies that ensure coexistence measures are carried out by farmers, seed companies, and others who move food from the farm to the consumer's table," said Greg Jaffe, a committee member and director of the Biotechnology Project at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington-based non-profit.

Jaffe said he supported the report's recommendations.

The committee was comprised of 23 individuals from 16 states and the District of Columbia, representing academia, the American Farm Bureau, corn, wheat and soybean industry organizations, the organic industry, grain companies and others.

The committee also recommended that USDA should set up and fund a comprehensive education and outreach initiative to "strengthen understanding of coexistence between diverse agricultural production systems."

And the committee said the USDA should fund and research improved techniques for mitigating contamination and gather data from seed companies on contamination. It also recommended that USDA evaluate on an ongoing basis the pool of commercially available non-GMO seed and ensure that the seed supply remains diverse.

In criticizing the report, the organic growers said the committee "failed to make a single recommendation holding the patent holders of genetic engineering technologies responsible and liable for damages" caused by biotech seed use.

"We urgently need meaningful regulatory change that institutionalizes mandatory GE contamination prevention practices," the National Organic Coalition said. "USDA needs to stop dragging its heels, get serious and focus on making this happen."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/20/us-usa-biotech-report-idUSBRE8AJ19Z20121120

GM corn variety 'cannot be regarded as safe': Author of study linking it to cancer hits back at critics

The team of researchers who caused uproar when they claimed a variety of genetically modified corn causes cancer has insisted the crop 'cannot be regarded as safe'.

Leading scientists lined up to condemn the study after it was published two months ago, saying it lacked scientific rigour and had made a series of basic errors.

Russia banned the import of the corn and a group of six French scientific institutions carried out an investigation which accused the study authors of playing on public fears to hype their own reputations.

But French scientist Dr Gilles-Eric Séralini and his colleagues have now hit back maintaining the safety of the NK603 variety of GM corn remains unproven.

They accused many of their critics of lacking credibility because of links to the GM industry and said much of the criticism was led by 'plant biologists, some developing patents on GMOs, and from Monsanto Company owning these products'.

 Refusing to give in to demands to withdraw their study, they said their findings represented 'the most detailed test' of genetically modified crops that are ' independent from the biotech and pesticide companies' which develop them.

They said in their rebuttal, published as a letter to the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology, that unlike many other scientists involved in researching GM foods they were free from industry influence because they had no intention of 'commercialising a new product'.

It was also pointed out by the team that the research represented a 'first step' rather than a final conclusion about the potential impacts of NK603 corn and that further experiments may be able to establish its safety.

For their original study they carried out experiments on rats and concluded that the GM corn, developed by US biotech company Monsanto, increased the risks of breast cancer and liver and kidney damage.

Experiments carried out by the team also suggested that tiny quantities of the widely available weedkiller Roundup, also developed by Monsanto, was also associated with an increased risk of cancer.

The experiments were carried out over two years whereas, they pointed out, biotech companies have usually based claims that their GM products are safe after feeding new varieties to rats for 90 days.

After publication of the study, in the peer reviewed Food and Chemical Toxicology, a dozen senior scientists signed a letter to the journalsaying it should never have been published.

GM FOOD REGULATION

GM food and feed is strictly regulated within the EU.

Labels must indicate to consumers when GM ingredients are included in food

All products that are GM or include GM ingredients must meet traceability rules so that all retailers are able to identify their suppliers.

Risk assessments for all new GM products are carried out by the European Food Safety Authority before they can be sold in Europe

'This study does not provide sound evidence to support its claims. Indeed, the flaws in the study are so obvious that the paper should never have passed review,' they wrote.

'This appears to be a case of blatant misrepresentation and misinterpretation of data to advance an anti-GMO agenda by an investigator with a clear vested interest.'

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) ordered a French University to carry out a review of the research while in Russia the Institute of Nutrition was asked to conduct a similar exercise.

Monsanto said in a statement in September: 'Based on our initial review, we do not believe the study presents information that would justify any change in EFSA’s views on the safety of genetically modified corn products or alter their approval status for genetically modified imports.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2236219/GM-corn-variety-regarded-safe-Dr-Gilles-Eric-S-ralini-hits-critics.html

The Great Mexican Maize Massacre

Agribusiness giants Monsanto, DuPont and Dow are plotting the boldest coup of a global food crop in history. If their requests to allow a massive commercial planting of genetically modified (GM) maize are approved in the next two weeks by the government of outgoing president Felipe Calderón, this parting gift to the gene giants will amount to a knife in the heart of the center of origin and diversity for maize. The consequences will be grave – and global. With the approvals and December planting deadlines looming, social movements and civil society organizations have called for an end to all GM maize in Mexico. Mexico’s Union of Concerned Scientists (UCCS) has called on the Mexican government to stop the processing of any application for open-field release of GM maize in Mexico.[1] ETC Group joins these calls, and appeals to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) – intergovernmental bodies mandated to suppo
rt food
security and biodiversity – to take immediate action.

Outrage and alarm rang out through Mexico when the world's two largest commercial seed companies, Monsanto and DuPont (whose seed business is known as DuPont Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc.), and Dow AgroSciences (the world's 8th largest seed company) applied to the government for the planting of 2,500,000 hectares (more than 6 million acres) of transgenic maize in Mexico.[2] The land area is massive – about the size of El Salvador. Scientists have identified thousands of peasant varieties of maize, making Mexico the global repository of maize genetic diversity. If the agribusiness applications are approved, it will mark the world's first commercial-scale planting of genetically modified varieties of a major food crop in its center of origin.

"If Mexico’s government allows this crime of historic significance to happen, GMOs will soon be in the food of the entire Mexican population, and genetic contamination of Mexican peasant varieties will be inevitable. We are talking about damaging more than 7,000 years of indigenous and peasant work that created maize – one of the world's three most widely eaten crops," said Verónica Villa from ETC’s Mexico office. "As if this weren't bad enough, the companies want to plant Monsanto's herbicide-tolerant maize [Mon603] on more than 1,400,000 hectares. This is the same type of GM maize that has been linked to cancer in rats according to a recently published peer-reviewed study."[3]

To read the full release, please download the PDF.
http://www.etcgroup.org/sites/www.etcgroup.org/files/ETCNR-GMmaizefinal15Nov2012_links_1.pdf

[1] UCCS (Unión de Científicos Comprometidos con la Sociedad), "Statement: Call to action vs the planting of GMO corn in open field situations in Mexico," November 2012, available online: http://www.uccs.mx/doc/g/planting-gmo-corn.

[2] The list of commercial applications for environmental release of GMOs is available here: http://www.senasica.gob.mx/?id=4443. (In Mexico, DuPont Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc., is known by the name PHI México.)

[3] Gilles-Eric Séralini et al., "Long term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize," Food and Chemical Toxicology, Volume 50, Issue 11, November 2012, pp. 4221–4231. See also, John Vidal, "Study linking GM maize to cancer must be taken seriously by regulators," The Guardian, 28 September 2012, available online: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/sep/28/study-gm-maize-cancer.

http://www.etcgroup.org/content/great-mexican-maize-massacre

White House Petition to Label GMOs Gaining Thousands of Signatures Per Day

In another display of widespread grassroots support for GMO labeling following the suspicious failure of GMO labeling bill Prop 37 in California, a new petition calls upon the Obama administration to require the FDA to label GMOs within consumer products. Growing in popularity each hour, the petition is receiving thousands of signatures per day and currently stands at over 13,390.

The petition comes as more and more activists have been taking to the streets and labeling GMO-containing products for themselves using printable warning stickers.

It seems that the bottom line is that the public will not settle for major corporations dictating what they can and cannot know — especially when it comes to what they are putting into their mouths. As the petition description states plainly on the White House website, corporations have taken over the food supply through patented genetically modified seeds and various extortion methods. And on the economic side, what happens if these juggernauts use their agricultural foothold to secure further profits through charging unknowing consumers exorbitant prices?

The petition description states:

“Corporations have patented our food with GMOs and now control of our food supply… what happens if they decide there is a shortage or raise prices?”

Label GMOs: Monsanto Bankrupting Small Farms, Eliminating Competition

We have seen in the past the numerous ways in which Monsanto takes advantage of small farmers, ultimately thought to be a major influence in the shocking number of farmer suicides within India’s poverty-stricken ‘suicide belt’ where a farmer commits suicide every 30 minutes. In total, there has been a quarter of a million suicides over the past 16 years.  Suicides that experts believe Monsanto’s expensive and ineffective seeds and biopesticides are one of the largest (if not the largest) contributing factors.

Back in 2008, the Daily Mail labeled the scenario the ‘GM genocide‘. In the report, journalists spoke to families ruined by Monsanto’s GMO seeds that failed to increase yield and ultimately bankrupted many poor farming communities — many taking their own lives with Monsanto’s very own biopesticides. In a disturbing statement from one of the farmers to a Daily Mail reporter, the wife of a farmer who committed suicide after signing his finances away to Monsanto explained:

‘We are ruined now,’ said one dead man’s 38-year-old wife. ‘We bought 100 grams of BT Cotton. Our crop failed twice. My husband had become depressed. He went out to his field, lay down in the cotton and swallowed insecticide.’

The time is now for citizens to demand labeling to put Monsanto out of business. As more and more consumers realize what they are eating contains GMOs, they will simply choose products that do not contain them. In the process, corporations will be forced to switch to non-GMO alternatives. It would be the end of Monsanto, or at least a financially crushing blow that they would likely not recover from. Take action below and sign the petition. It currently needs around 11,000 more signatures before it is legally required for the Obama administration to respond.

http://www.nationofchange.org/white-house-petition-label-gmos-gaining-thousands-signatures-day-1353161110