Biotech’s next big disaster: seeds that emit multiple pesticides

Tom Laskawy, writing at Grist, points out how the next generation of GMOs is following in the track of present disasters:

“…the growing pest and weed problems for GMOs have caused farmers to turn to seeds that are coated with a different pesticide—a neonicotinoid. If that name rings a bell, it’s because these pesticides… have been implicated in the increasing epidemic of bee deaths.

“And that’s aside from the evidence that biotech’s ‘next big thing’ —seeds that emit multiple pesticides—may be doomed to fail. An international team of researchers, including USDA and biotech scientists, found what they termed ‘cross-resistance’ to these pesticides in [predatory] bugs exposed to the next-generation GMO seeds. Evidence, in other words, that GMO seeds are hitting a bug-covered wall.” The seeds don’t knock out the plant pests.

Yet the venerable journal Nature recently urged patience, because just over the next hill, the biotech giants will surely succeed in bringing us better GMO crops.

This reveals an underlying assumption about technology: when scientists discover a new way of doing things, it can never be retracted; it will eventually work well; improvements will come.

That false assumption sustains a tremendous amount of false science, as well as profits, of course, for the companies involved.

“Wait, better developments are being made.”

If scientists can shoot genes into plants, that’s a step that can never be taken back. It’s automatically a sign of progress. To admit defeat would be equivalent to admitting science can be wrong.

This is the insanity we are dealing with.

We’ve seen it in the field of psychiatric drugs, all of which carry heavy toxicity. If you push a researcher up against the wall, where he has to admit problems with the drugs, he’ll say, “But we’re working on next-generation chemicals. It’ll be different. We’re just starting to understand how the brain really works. Be patient. Help is on the way.”

In recent days, we’ve seen the US National Institute of Mental Health and its British counterpart defect from orthodox psychiatry in the interpretation of what a mental disorder is. Some people have taken this as a positive development. But that’s not the case.

The defectors intend to push brain research to new dangerous heights. Even though they have no baseline for “normal brain activity,” they are racing along the track of discovering “abnormal chemical imbalances.” In other words, their better science is no science at all.

They will invent new names for mental disorders, and there will be more drugs to treat patients, and the whole edifice will be founded on lies.

In the field of gene research, scientists are advancing on a road of manipulation of the human genome. This, they say, is yielding one breakthrough after another. New humans, better humans, more talented and healthy and intelligent humans will be the result.

But really, this translates into: we can shift genes around, we can substitute new genes for old genes, we can silence genes and provoke dormant genes to express themselves—therefore, we have to keep doing it. It’s science. We have to expand our work.

No they don’t. In the same way they don’t have to build even more destructive H-bombs, they don’t have to play roulette with the human body and brain.

Just because medical researchers can come up with new chemo drugs that kill cells and destroy immune systems, it doesn’t mean they have to.

Despite failures along every front of GMO-crop production, despite the fact that predictions of higher crop yields and reduced use of pesticides and herbicides have failed to materialize, Monsanto pushes on.

Monsanto lies and pretends their work is an enormous success. Their researchers, many of whom know the catastrophic failure they are dealing with, nevertheless keep going, keep telling themselves that this is science, and therefore it will ultimately succeed.

Translation: The seven billion people of earth are the guinea pigs in a vast corporate experiment.

Technocrats who envision trans-humans, a combine of brain and computerized brain, pin faith on the idea that, since brains can be hooked up to machines, they should be. It’s “scientific progress,” and therefore it has to happen.

All this used to be called scientism, a massive overreach of misplaced faith, but now the word is largely defunct. It was too accurate. It nailed the obsession and showed how crazy it was.

Years ago, I was invited to give a lecture to an atheist group in Los Angeles. The topic was HIV research, because I had written a book about it, AIDS INC.

I described the line of HIV research, and made a detailed case for the fact that researchers had never proved HIV caused a condition that was being called AIDS.

My analysis was met with strong opposition. The group was unhappy.

No problem. But it turned out their unhappiness was based on the notion that I was attacking science itself. And since they believed that’s what I was doing, they were angry because, get this, if I was against science, I must be for God. And they were atheists.

Therefore, I had to be wrong.

Their reaction mirrored 19th century attitudes about the rise of science. Its proponents felt they’d finally found an antidote to religion, and therefore, anyone who criticized science on any terms (e.g, flawed reasoning, bad data, bogus experiments) must be demanding a return to the Church, the Inquisition, and burning at the stake.

In the second half of the 20th century, a new class of people came into being. Amateurs who wanted to pretend they were scientific thinkers. Even though they knew nothing about what really went on in laboratories, they could spout a few pseudo-scientific truths and win friends and influence people at cocktail parties and academic confabs. They were “up on the latest developments.”

More and more, this also became the m.o. in media. Reporters, broadcasters, anchors, government spokespeople, and pundits issued proclamations about science, without in fact having a clue about the truth or falsity of what they were saying.

We saw this (and still do), for example, in the area of so-called climate science. Everyone is now an expert on global warming and its imminent threat to the planet. The evidence is “settled.” Well, that’s what the president said, so it must be right.

After all, he personally knows all there is to know about methods of compiling historical temperature records, about alternate periods of cooling and warming, about computer modeling, about the mathematics of climate prediction.

Through cutouts, the White House has recently launched a campaign to defame anyone who doubts or questions or criticizes the manmade warming hypothesis. This is science by PR and intimidation.

The very best medical researchers assured us that Swine Flu was an emerging pandemic. In the spring of 2009, on the basis of 20 cases of Swine Flu, and after changing the very definition of “pandemic,” so it no longer needed to include “widespread death and devastation,” the World Health Association declared Swine Flu a level 6 pandemic, the most dangerous threat level.

Eventually, it turned out that Swine Flu was far less significant than ordinary seasonal flu. But no mea culpas emerged. No one admitted the hoax. No one stepped up and confessed.

It was science, and science (and profits) had to be protected, even and especially if it was wrong.

Many of these science projects are designed, at the highest level, as ops. The lies are told from the top, the deceptions are arranged. But much, much support is given, at lower levels, by people who swallow generalities about science.

They entertain delusions about science as a continuous march of progress which shouldn’t be interrupted. They will swear up and down they’re defending rational thought, logic, and the experimental method, when in fact they’re merely mouthing sentiment and propaganda.

Monsanto, like a stage magician working a cheap club in Vegas, says, “Look! We can insert genes in plants! Isn’t that incredible?”

And the rubes in the audience, enchanted by the trick, applaud, ready to support all the coming variations. For their part, these yokels only want to be able to say they’re on the cutting edge of science.

Lower, not higher crop yields? Nutritionally deficient food? Increased, not decreased use of pesticides and herbicides? Superweeds that don’t die under the assault of Roundup, as advertised, but instead thrive and spread? Health problems for people consuming GMO food? Who cares? It’s the magic trick that counts.

They can insert genes in plants. No one could do that before. It’s got to be a good thing. You want proof? Now they can make the plant exude more than one pesticide. What a feat.

Let’s eat.

For those who continue to parrot the company/government line that there is no difference between GMO and conventional crops, and claim “that’s good science,” here are smoking gun data from Mosanto’s own researchers.

The data were uncovered by science writer Barbara Keeler in 2000. Keeler published pieces in the Whole Life Times and the LA Times. The Whole Life Times piece was titled: “Buried Data in Monsanto’s Study on Roundup Ready Beans.”

Keeler discovered that, in 1994, when Monsanto submitted studies to the FDA, to win approval for GMO soybeans, highly significant data were hidden.

Roundup Ready (RR) Monsanto beans contained 29% less choline than conventional non-GMO beans.

RR beans contained “27% more trypsin inhibitor, an allergen that inhibits protein digestion, can retard growth in animals fed raw soybeans, and has been connected to enlarged cells in rat pancreases.”

In data Monsanto failed to submit to the FDA, from its Puerto Rico field trials, RR beans “were significantly lower in protein and the amino acid phenylalanine.”

In retoasted RR soy meal, “levels of allergens called lectins…almost doubled the levels [found] in controls [non-GMO meal].”

In other words, there was quite enough evidence, in 1994, to halt the whole FDA approval process of Monsanto soy. It was there in Monsanto’s own studies. And it was ignored and buried.

Now new biotech masterpieces are on the way. Plants that emit multiple pesticides. We’re supposed to believe this is good science that will do no harm.

We’re in the technological age, and it’s all wonderful, and because we’re rational people, we should jump on the bandwagon.

Jon Rappoport is the author of two explosive collections, The Matrix Revealed and Exit From the Matrix, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at www.nomorefakenews.com