When The S*** Hits the Fan

#Bayer’s Acquisition Offer Could Literally Make #Monsanto Disappear

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(ANTIMEDIA) United States — Bayer has now confirmed a buyout bid for agrichemical giant, Monsanto — the maker of Agent Orange, RoundUp, and genetically-modified crops — otherwise known as one of the most hated companies on the planet.

In a statement, Monsanto said Morgan Stanley & Co. is advising the company financially in the “potential acquisition,” but didn’t comment beyond basic information about what the deal might entail. The merger would combine Bayer and Monsanto into the largest agricultural supplier in the world.

Monsanto has experienced declining sales, particularly of its genetically-modified corn and soybean seeds, arguably as a result of customer backlash over RoundUp being designated a “probable carcinogen” by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer last year. GM corn, soy, cotton, and other RoundUp Ready crops rely on heavy dousings of the glyphosate-based herbicide to control weeds — but farmers have also admitted to using RoundUp to assist in the drying process prior to harvest.

On Tuesday, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine declared genetically engineered crops ‘safe’ for human consumption after a multi-year study, but still noted the benefits of labeling foods containing them. However, one day prior to its declaration, a report cited by EcoWatch revealed extensive connections between the National Academies and biotech companies like Monsanto — which donated millions to the division responsible for the study on the safety of GM food.

Further contaminating Monsanto’s already severely tarnished record of unsafe products, RoundUp has been specifically named the cause of four Nebraska farm workers’ non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in a lawsuit announced this week. In that case and several others, inert ingredients — and not just glyphosate — appear to have contributed to the development of cancer.

According to lawsuit cited by The Intercept, John Sanders, a farm worker from California suing the company for damages after he developed cancer, Monsanto “knew or should have known that RoundUp is more toxic than glyphosate alone and that safety studies of RoundUp, RoundUp’s adjuvants and ‘inert’ ingredients” were necessary.

Monsanto’s notoriety doesn’t end with shady agrichemicals — not by far. In March, the Portland, Oregon, city council voted unanimously to allow the city’s attorney to proceed with a lawsuit against the behemoth company for the contamination of various bodies of water with toxic PCBs. Seattle, Spokane, Berkeley, Oakland, San Diego, and San Jose have similar litigation pending for PCB contamination.

Though the potential buyout of Monsanto by Bayer comes amidst a number of other mergers of chemical industry corporations, it appears to be a move to save the former from its poor performance in the marketplace.

“Monsanto has struggled in recent quarters to deal with slumping corn prices in the U.S., which have reduced demand for its best-selling product: genetically-enhanced corn seeds,” ABC News reported in January. “Farmers are shifting more acres to other crops after surpluses of corn and other crops, including wheat, have squashed commodity prices.”

People have moved away from food potentially chemically soaked with RoundUp, making the world’s bestselling chemical herbicide’s future more uncertain by the day — and the merger with Bayer, which has its own questionable history, a possible business-saving proposition.

It’s likely that if the acquisition is successful, Bayer will completely drop the Monsanto name from its products to get away from the stigma the company has accumulated over the years. This would render it invisible to concerned consumers while retaining its products under a new name.

An entire protest movement called the March Against Monsanto has been built up around the company, with the latest incarnation taking place tomorrow.

This article (Bayer’s Acquisition Offer Could Literally Make Monsanto Disappear) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Claire Bernish and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

US Government Green Lights Experiments to #Reanimate the #Brain Dead

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(ANTIMEDIA) — It sounds like the logline from the recent sci-fi horror movie, The Lazarus Effect. But the story coming out of Bioquark Inc. is real. The biotechnology company is moving ahead with a groundbreaking experiment to reanimate the nervous systems of 20 clinically brain-dead patients.

With approval from the Institutional Review Board at the United States National Institutes of Health in the U.S., the ReAnima Project will begin recruiting patients who are all but clinically dead due to traumatic brain injury. With cooperation from their families, these patients will be kept alive by machines and administered a series of procedures meant to kickstart cellular regeneration.

CEO, Dr. Ira Pastor, hopes to prove the cells of human brains are as adaptable as those of salamanders, which can regrow limbs.

“This represents the first trial of its kind and another step towards the eventual reversal of death in our lifetime,” Pastor said. “To undertake such a complex initiative, we are combining biologic regenerative medicine tools with other existing medical devices typically used for stimulation of the central nervous system, in patients with other severe disorders of consciousness.”

Phase 1 of the project is a proof-of-concept study called “First In Human Neuro-Regeneration & Neuro-Reanimation.” For a six-week period in Anupam Hospital in Rudrapur, Uttarakhand India, scientists will administer peptides into the patients’ spinal cords. The next treatment will involve injecting stem cells into the brain. Then Bioquark will use transcranial laser therapy and nerve stimulation.

Researchers hope this combination of treatments will trigger cell regeneration in brains that have otherwise shut down all functioning.

But not everyone is convinced the treatment will work — or that it is even possible to regenerate dead brains. Dr. Dean Burnett, a neuroscientist at Cardiff University’s Centre for Medical Education, made the following comment:

“While there have been numerous demonstrations in recent years that the human brain and nervous system may not be as fixed and irreparable as is typically assumed, the idea that brain death could be easily reversed seems very far-fetched, given our current abilities and understanding of neuroscience. Saving individual parts might be helpful but it’s a long way from resurrecting a whole working brain, in a functional, undamaged state.”

However, even if the treatment fails, researchers believe their findings will provide valuable knowledge. According to Dr. Sergei Paylian, founder, president, and Chief Science Officer of Bioquark Inc.:

“Through our study, we will gain unique insights into the state of human brain death, which will have important connections to future therapeutic development for other severe disorders of consciousness, such as coma, and the vegetative and minimally conscious states, as well as a range of degenerative CNS conditions, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.”

This article (US Government Green Lights Experiments to Reanimate the Brain Dead) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Jake Anderson and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

The iPhone Is Just the Beginning: FBI Already Accessing Your DNA

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Jake Anderson
March 9, 2016 

(ANTIMEDIA) Private genetic databases like 23andMe and Ancestry.com are increasingly used by people for genealogy tracing and medical diagnostic tests. With a million customers each, the two companies receive a great deal of attention from privacy advocates, who for years warned the government would eventually seek access to citizens’ DNA in order to assist with law enforcement.

They were right, and yet another conspiracy theory becomes conspiracy fact…

It turns out both the FBI and local law enforcement departments routinely seek DNA samples from these companies for familial DNA searches. In fact, according to Ancestry.com’s recently released transparency report, the company received 14 law enforcement requests in 2015. They provided customers’ genetic information in 13 of those cases.

A similar, recently released report by 23andMe discloses there were four law enforcement requests to the company in 2015.

The issue has received increased attention in part because of a frightening article by Wired. The story recounted the legal imbroglio filmmaker Michael Usry endured after Idaho Falls police “matched 34 of 35 alleles” from a crime scene to Usry’s father’s DNA.

Years earlier, his father had donated some DNA to a genealogy project funded by his Mormon church. Ancestry.com purchased the project and made the database of samples publicly available. Though Idaho Falls police ultimately concluded Usry was not involved in the murder of Angie Dodge, they had been able to obtain a search warrant for Michael’s cheek cells based on the sample they found online.

Ancestry.com didn’t realize police would be able to use their information to conduct genetic searches, but as they would soon learn, law enforcement authorities around the country are looking to expand their ability to conduct DNA searches beyond the FBI’s current national genetic database.

Anti-Media reached out to Ancestry.com for more information regarding how the company responds to national security requests. They referred to their transparency report, which states:

“As of December 31, 2015, Ancestry has never received a classified request pursuant to the national security laws of the United States or any other country. In other words, Ancestry has not received a National Security Letter or a request under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.”

Could this change in the wake of a terrorist attack? In the midst of the increasingly rancorous debate over civil liberties and national defense — epitomized by the FBI’s court case against Apple — it doesn’t seem like too big of a stretch, given the right political climate, to imagine private DNA databases being turned over to Homeland Security.

In Kuwait, citizens must submit their DNA to a government database to assist with criminal cases. Some actually argue the United States should have a similar mandatory DNA database, though this seems unlikely to gain widespread support given the backlash over electronic privacy violations in the aftermath of controversial NSA surveillance programs.

For now, the debate revolves around whether the United States government and local law enforcement should have the legal authority to access private DNA databases while investigating crimes. There hasn’t been a major Supreme Court ruling on this issue, so for the time being, companies like 23andMe and Ancestry.com will have to deal with police requests on a case-by-case basis.

As 23andMe’s first privacy officer Kate Black has stated:

“In the event we are required by law to make a disclosure, we will notify the affected customer through the contact information provided to us, unless doing so would violate the law or a court order.”

This article (The iPhone Is Just the Beginning: FBI Already Accessing Your DNA) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Jake Anderson and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. Image credit: thierry ehrmann. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

From theantimedia.org Team

Study: FDA Allows Glyphosate in Your Food Based on Monsanto’s Faulty Research

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Claire Bernish
February 23, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) Despite the World Health Organization’s classification of glyphosate — the main ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup — as a probable carcinogen for humans last year, the product remains the top-selling herbicide worldwide. Though the agrichemical behemoth vociferously disputes the findings, researchers recently found Monsanto’s claims are based on outdated and inadequate science.

Enough glyphosate, Truthout noted, “is now used to cover nearly every acre of cultivated cropland in the U.S.,” leading to widespread glyphosate tolerance, including reports of “superweeds” that are virtually immune to repeated drenchings. Use of the dangerous weedkiller has increased by more than 100 times since it first came to market in 1974.

[Read more…]

From theantimedia.org Team