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Friday 14 June 2019

Monsanto paid American Council on Science and Health front group to hide evidence

Dr. Joseph Mercola
Mercola.com


Monsanto's new owner, Bayer, has been slammed with judgments in the first three Roundup lawsuits to go to trial. The verdicts, which have sided with plaintiffs in all cases so far, have found not only that Roundup herbicide caused the plaintiffs' cancers but also that Monsanto engaged in malice, oppression or fraud in their attempts to cover up Roundup's toxicity.1

Some of the evidence brought to light during the trials has been particularly eye-opening, including internal emails showing that Monsanto paid an industry front group for the favor of publishing pro-glyphosate media, right around the time the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) determined it to be a probable carcinogen.2

 

Monsanto paid front group for glyphosate-favorable content


The American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) is a nonprofit organization that claims to be a "pro-science consumer advocacy organization" with the focus of publically supporting "evidence-based science and medicine." Their website states:3

We do not represent any industry. We were created to be the science alternative to "news" that is often little more than hype based on exaggerated findings. We help policymakers see past scaremongers and activist groups who have targeted GMOs, vaccines, conventional agriculture, nuclear power, natural gas, and 'chemicals,' while peddling health scares and fad diets. We fight back against activists who have attacked the credibility of the overwhelming consensus of academic and private sector scientists who dispute their claims, undermining the integrity of the scientific enterprise.
ACSH also claims to be funded mostly by readers, but their financial statements do not reveal who, exactly, their more than $1 million in yearly revenue comes from.4 In 2015, however, internal emails revealed that Monsanto contributed to ACSH, with impeccable timing, as IARC's glyphosate (the active ingredient in Roundup) was set to be released.

The emails were first revealed as evidence during Dewayne Johnson's Roundup lawsuit. The trial, the first to be heard, ended with Monsanto being ordered to pay $289 million in damages to Johnson, although the award was later reduced to $78 million.

The evidence made another appearance during the third Roundup case, in which a married couple, Alva and Alberta Pilliod, claimed they both developed Non-Hodgkin lymphoma after regular use of Roundup. The jury decided in the Pilliods' favor, ordering the chemical giant to pay $2 billion to its victims


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