06/28/2017 / By Cassie B.
How can you get people to buy what you’re selling? Many marketing experts believe in the power of celebrity endorsements, hiring the latest gossip page darlings to hawk whatever wares they are selling. These celebrities might not like or even use the products they are promoting, but they are happy to collect their check and move on to their next project.
Monsanto and other GMO firms clearly believe in the power of “celebrity”, hiring high-profile junk science icon Neil deGrasse Tyson to promote their poisonous herbicides and pesticides, and they’re laughing all the way to the bank. The joke is on society, of course, as people eat toxic weed killers because famous scientists told them it’s okay and then must deal with the subsequent health problems they bring about.
It is so hard to believe that someone who is as ostensibly intelligent as Tyson actually believes the type of “science” that GMO proponents embrace, so there really is just one viable explanation: The money is simply too good to pass up. That’s why you’ll hear his voice narrating the GMO industry’s latest propaganda film, deceptively named “Food Evolution”, and telling people that toxic weed killers actually help the planet somehow instead of destroying all the life on it and that they have no adverse effects on your health.
This extremely irresponsible piece of propaganda continues the Monsanto tradition of stopping at nothing to convince people that all the reputable scientists who have linked its herbicides to cancer, reproductive issues, kidney and liver problems, depression, diabetes and Alzheimer’s are dead wrong and that Monsanto sponsored scientists are the only ones who are right about the matter. It’s all a bit like the emperor’s new clothes; maybe they think that if they repeat their lies enough times, the people will believe them?
The film conveniently leaves out the fact that the World Health Organization has called glyphosate a “probable human carcinogen” and that it has been added to California’s list of cancer-causing chemicals. They also fail to mention the peer-reviewed studies linking serious health problems to Roundup and glyphosate and the lawsuits from farmers who got cancer from their products. There’s a good reason they’re known as “the world’s most-hated corporation.”
They say you can judge a person by who they choose to align themselves with, and on this basis, it’s hard to have a positive opinion of Tyson. After all, in this film, he is teaming up with Monsanto shills of highly questionable character like corporate propagandist Jon Entine, who regularly publishes false science in mainstream media publications and whose own wife filed court documents alleging physical threats, and Dr. Gilbert Ross, who has done hard time in federal prison for committing fraud and other offenses. Ross’s shady corporate front group with the misleading name “American Council on Science and Health” has given the film its seal of approval, which pretty much tells you all you need to know.
All of these people have no qualms about repeating the party line that their patrons feed to them – while feeding the world a toxic cocktail of chemicals. Sadly, people like Tyson are using their intelligence to destroy life for the almighty dollar instead of using their knowledge to help improve human life.
If this sounds unconscionable, it’s because it is – but money talks, and there’s quite a lot of it on the line. In fact, Monsanto’s Roundup brought the firm more than $994 million in net sales just from 2013 to 2014. The global market for glyphosate is expected to total $10 billion over the next five years. This is the kind of money that can get people to say anything you want them to, effectively creating a gigantic con to poison the world for profit.
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Tagged Under:
Food Evolution, Monsanto, Neil deGrasse Tyson
This article may contain statements that reflect the opinion of the author