Hillary Clinton's' long-time adviser, including for PR, and her chief campaign strategest, is Mark Penn, who works for Burson-Marsteller - Monsanto's PR firm, which represents some of the worst corporations in existence - including Blackwater. http://www.sourcewatch.org/... And DC Lobbyist and McCain campaign "senior advisor" Charlie Black also works for Monsanto: http://rawstory.com/...
I do not know about Obama's connections to Monsanto.
So, while people are counting delegates, and focusing on personalities, and wondering what "experience" tells us about anything, I thought we might look at the "thing" that is running the campaign.
About "it" we actually have a great deal of evidence. http://www.organicconsumers.org/...
In addition, we also possess rich information that tells us what we can expect if either Clinton or McCain get in. Given that Bill Clinton put Monsanto in charge of his FDA and USDA, and that the last Republican presidents - Reagan, GHW Bush and for George W. Bush - all did the same,
http://www.monitor.net/... http://www.mindfully.org/...
and given that Monsanto is running their campaigns and will likely look for "pay-back," we can reasonably expect Hillary Clinton and McCain to repeat Bill's actions and that of Reagan and the Bushes, putting Monsanto, one of the largest food and agricultural corporations in the world and one of the largest pharmaceutical corporations in this country, over all issues to do with its own genetic engineering of food, animals and drugs.
And finally, we have particular evidence about Hillary, not just an expectation of her putting Monsanto in charge, but since she claims 35 years of experience that includes her time in the White House when Monsanto was involved in the introduction of genetic engineering into the world, we know how she will behave when Monsanto wishes to promote other products it owns. For when that happened during Bill's term, we hear nothing about Hillary whatever. We must then logically assume she either didn't know anything this monumental thing happening to our country at the release of an irretrievable new technology (debunking her claim of being unusually thorough and knowledgeable), or she knew and was silent as things went badly wrong (debunking her claim of caring about women, children, families, health or of being especially suited to help this country around those issues), or she played an active behind-the-scenes role in the following story of milk and Monsanto's rBGH (making one reasonably question her ethics and even humanity, altogether):
Because Monsanto is the silent hand behind two presidential campaigns, and because the media is not covering this rather unusual "coincidence," I thought it might be informative for those who don't know about Monsanto, to get acquainted around only one of the many disturbing issues it is known for. And I thought it might be valuable to take a brief look as well at Bill Clinton and how he let Monsanto control our FDA (originally designed to protect the American public) and how that played out as the very first genetically engineered product ever approved - rBGH (a GE-hormone designed for dairy cows) - was given blanket approval, and then prevented from being labeled.
(With deep gratitude to Robert Cohen for doing his best to stand up for all the rest of us, who knew nothing then, and most of whom know nothing, still.)
FDA Testimony 11-30-99
By Robert Cohen
http://www.notmilk.com/...
[Robert Cohen appeared on an FDA panel in Washington on Tuesday, November 30, 1999…some of you may have seen his speech on C-Span…Mr. Cohen spoke last, and each of the other panel members read prepared statements. Members of the panel also included Mildred Cody, who represented the American Dietetic Association; Mario Teisl, a professor of economics at the University of Maine; John Gray, president of the International Food Service Distributors Association; Kendal Keith, president of the National Grain & Feed Association; and Richard Caplan, an environmental advocate with the US Public Interest Research Group.]
"Hi everybody, I've got to apologize first - I don't have a prepared statement like the other panel members. All I'm going to give here is some facts.
I have a copy of the Federal Register. It says here advertising this meeting:
"FDA is not aware of information that will distinguish genetically engineered food as a class from other foods."
[ROBERT COHEN TURNS AND ADDRESSES FDA PANEL MEMBERS.] I'm going to give you some information today, guys.
The greatest controversy in FDA history was the approval process for Monsanto's genetically engineered bovine growth hormone. We shouldn't be here today! We should not be in this room and I shouldn't be here because, in 1994, Congress HAD A BILL that was going to require mandatory labeling of all foods that were influenced by genetic engineering. I got my Congresswoman to co-sponsor that bill - 181 congresspeople co-sponsored that bill, and you know what? I learned how Congress works that year because in 6 months they stalled the bill - 12 members of the Dairy Livestock & Poultry Committee - they stalled the bill until the 1994 session of Congress expired and the bill died.
I was so upset, I investigated these 12 men and found that collectively they took $711,000 in PAC money from companies with dairy interests, and four of the members of the committee took money directly from Monsanto.
Now we've got a lot of political intrigue and some real science here. We've got science fiction, we've got a combination of John Grisham and we've got a combination of Stephen King.
Nikita Khrushchev said that what the scientists have in their briefcase is terrifying - [ROBERT COHEN THEN OPENED HIS BRIEFCASE AND PULLED OUT A STACK OF PAPERS] and I've got some interesting things in my briefcase to share with you today.
When Monsanto made their genetically engineered bovine growth hormone, they noticed a couple of problems right towards the end - right before approval. They noticed that laboratory animals were getting cancer, and they noticed that cows were getting mastitis, ulcers in their udders. They were putting more pus and bacteria into the milk. So Monsanto arranged…
We've heard from Dr. Maryanski this morning, and Dr. Maryanski talked about the Pure Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act but what he didn't tell you was that in 1958, Robert Delaney, a congressman from New York, added the Delaney Amendment which was named after him. The Delaney Amendment stated that if a food additive caused cancer, it was not to be approved - a pretty good law - right?
Monsanto got their attorney, Michael Taylor from the firm of King & Spalding… By the way, when they started in 1979, they groomed their attorney who is now in the Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas, from the same law firm.
Anyway, Monsanto's attorney, Michael Taylor, wrote and minimized the Delaney Amendment- he wrote a scientific paper that was published in the "Journal of Toxicology". Lawyers they write in law review journals, but this lawyer wrote in the "Journal of Toxicology": "a DeMinumus interpretation of the Delaney Amendment" became the new protocol, the new standard operating procedure at FDA. They minimized cancer.
Michael Taylor was hired by the Food & Drug Administration, and became the second most powerful man there, Monsanto's attorney - he wrote the standard operating procedure. In other words, if you see cancer, ignore it. Margaret Miller and Suzanne Sechen, Monsanto's scientists, were hired by the FDA to review Monsanto's own research.
Margaret Miller knew cows were getting mastitis. The first week at the FDA, December 3, 1989, she was given broad power, and here's an affect of genetic engineering nobody has considered. She knew cows were getting sick from the genetically engineered hormone. She changed the amount of antibiotics that farmers could have in their milk. She changed it from 1 part per 100 million to 1 part per million - this is a fact! She increased it by 100 times.
There is a hero of mine in the audience, Michael Hansen from Consumer's Union - Consumer's Union tested milk in the New York metropolitan area and found the presence of 52 different antibiotics in milk samples.
FDA published on August 24, 1990, the first time ever in a peer-reviewed journal, in "Science". "Science" was started by Thomas Edison in the 1880's. They published a review of bovine somatotropin bGH the genetically engineered cow hormone. And in that review, there were seven tables of data. Five of those tables came from one study authored by Richard, Odaglia and Deslex. This is the famous "90-Day Study." Guess what? This was actually a study lasting for 180 days and when I first heard about this in 1994, I filed a Freedom of Information Act Request for that study - because I saw from the data that the average spleen of a lab animal increased 46%.
I called FDA and spoke with Dick Teske. I said, "46%? You said there were no biological effects!"
He said, "That's not statistically significant."
I said, "Well, let me see the raw data."
He said, "It's a trade secret."
I called Monsanto, they laughed at me. They said, "It's a trade secret and you will never see it."
I'm smart, I filed a Freedom of Information Act Request, but I didn't realize you can't find out the study. I went to Federal Court, I said, "Your honor - spleen increase of 46%, that's leukemia in 90 days!"
I met with FDA on April 21, 1995, and found out that this was actually a 180-day study.
In Canada, they had this study. I have a letter here [ROBERT COHEN REACHES INTO HIS BRIEFCASE], an internal memorandum:
"This is to advise you that the copies of reports, letters, etc. for drug submissions have been stolen from my files."
This was stolen from a scientist's file in Canada. They stole the second half of the "90-Day Study."
We've got real science here. I'm going to talk briefly about the real science because when Monsanto made this hormone, they had to tell the FDA - they had to draw a chart of every amino acid - the 191 amino acids. And when FDA wrote their paper in "Science" magazine they wrote that one amino acid changed - it was a different hormone than the naturally occurring one.
At the same time, somebody hired C. Everett Koop to come and say that genetically engineered milk and the good old wholesome milk is indistinguishable. Well, it wasn't. Something happened to the hormone that Monsanto made. The FDA said that there was one change in the endamino acid. It became epsilon-N-acetyllysine. FDA had written if there was a change in the middle of the protein, there could be disastrous results. They cited Jerome Moore. I got Jerome Moore's paper. It said if there is a protein change in the middle, there could be Alzheimer's or sickle cell anemia or diabetes.
Four months after the hormone was approved, one of Monsanto's scientists, Bernard Violand, published in the July 3, 1994 issue of the journal "Protein Science" evidence that Monsanto made a mistake.
Oops! Monsanto created a freak amino acid. Did you ever see that movie "The Fly" with Jeff Goldblum when the fly comes in and he becomes half-human and half-fly? Monsanto created a freak amino acid. Monsanto admitted it but didn't tell the FDA. [ROBERT COHEN TURNS AND POINTS TO THE FDA PANEL MEMBERS].
Gentlemen, the hormone that's on the market today is different than the one you tested for seven years. Monsanto spent 500 million dollars, submitted 55,000 pages of information to you, learned late in the process that they created a freak amino acid - that's what was tested on laboratory animals and it didn't matter because FDA said to Monsanto, you know something? It's safe because when you pasteurize milk, you destroy the hormone.
They performed this research up in Guelph, Ontario by Paul Groenewegan, and I've got his study. [ROBERT COHEN AGAIN ADDRESSES FDA PANEL MEMBERS] To this day, FDA thinks it's on your web page that 90% of the bovine growth hormone is destroyed by pasteurization. But what Paul Groenewegan did working with Ted Elasser and Brian McBride, two Monsanto scientists, was he pasteurized milk for 30 minutes at 162 F, and when I read that - I said, wait a second, milk is pasteurized for 15 seconds at that temperature - not 30 minutes. They intentionally tried to destroy the hormone, they only destroyed 19% of it - somebody lied. And at that moment, FDA said to Monsanto:
"Because you destroy it by pasteurization, you don't have to do further toxicology studies. You don't have to develop a test for this hormone in milk. It's now safe to drink."
They (FDA) developed a zero day withdrawal - they determined it was safe to drink.
We have a lot of political intrigue here. We have an interesting situation where people have said that a revolving door policy exists at FDA. I mean, where is the ex-FDA commissioner, guess who he is working for? He is working for Monsanto. Bob Dole ran for President, his Chief of Staff was Donald Rumsfeld (ex-president of Searle, owned by Monsanto). I have one last comment…
[AT THIS POINT, THE MODERATOR INTERRUPTS MR. COHEN AND TELLS HIM TO WRAP IT UP AND TO ADDRESS LABELING…]
I know, but we have a labeling issue here - we have a right to know - I have listened to comments about "multi-faceted educational effort that we need" - that's called brainwashing! I don't want a "multi-faceted educational effort" - I want a double helical structure (AUDIENCE APPLAUDS) on a piece of food that I'm going to buy in the supermarket because I have a right to know.
Because the bottom line is - mistakes were made and when I hear from the American Dietetic Association, [ROBERT COHEN ADDRESSES A MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN DIETETIC ASSOCIATION WHO PREVIOUSLY SPOKE AGAINST LABELING], I want to remind you that Monsanto gave you $100,000 to set up a toll-free hotline about the bovine growth hormone.
Mistakes were made! We've got political intrigue here and the bottom line is we have a right to know what we are eating. Thank you. (APPLAUSE)"