Landmark lawsuit claims Monsanto hid cancer danger of weedkiller for decades
At the age of 46, DeWayne Johnson is not ready to die. But with cancer spread through most of his body, doctors say he probably has just months to live. Now Johnson, a husband and father of three in California, hopes to survive long enough to make Monsanto take the blame for his fate.
On 18 June, Johnson will become the first person to take to trial on allegations that it has spent decades hiding the cancer-causing dangers of its popular Roundup herbicide products – and his case has just received a major boost.
Last week Judge Curtis Karnow issued an order clearing the way for jurors to consider not just scientific evidence related to what caused Johnson’s cancer, but allegations that Monsanto suppressed evidence of the risks of its weed killing products. Karnow ruled that the trial will proceed and a jury would be allowed to consider possible punitive damages.
“The internal correspondence noted by Johnson could support a jury finding that Monsanto has long been aware of the risk that its glyphosate-based herbicides are carcinogenic … but has continuously sought to influence the scientific literature to prevent its internal concerns from reaching the public sphere and to bolster its defenses in products liability actions,” Karnow wrote. “Thus there are triable issues of material fact.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/may/22/monsanto-trial-cancer-weedkiller-roundup-dewayne-johnson
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Wednesday February 27, 2008 · 6:38 AM CST
School children from both Colombia and neighboring Ecuador actually drew these pictures included in this diary. The United States government's primary strategy for combating the narcotics industry and the leftist FARC guerillas that control an area of Colombia the size of SWITZERLAND involves aerial crop spraying with a deadly poison sold on the market as Roundup weedkiller. The spray not only kills coca plants, but any other, legal, crops in the vicinity. Sadly it also kills livestock and far worse it has also killed many children.
In the name of the "war on drugs" the Colombian people are being subjected to terror in the form of our government spraying deadly poison from airplanes. In August 2000 Congress approved President Bill Clinton's request for $1.3 billion to implement "Plan Colombia," when Bush became president he enthusiastically continued the evil policy. The U.S. involvement has not failed but has added to the violence in a land that has been war-ravaged by approximately 50 years of non stop civil war. Plan Colombia, which President George W. Bush renamed the Andean Regional Initiative, is being sold to the American people as a key component of the failed war on drugs.
Over 2.5 million people have now fled from the fighting and the aerial fumigation of their farms. These internal refugees, unemployed, living in squatters' communities in the cities to which they have fled, are the principal result of the war so far. Many Colombians believe that they are its intended result, that the real aim of the war against insurgents and against drugs is really to get small farmers off their land in order to make room for development. Under Colombia's coca fields is oil. Paramilitaries terrorize people into leaving their land, and labor organizers are the group most targeted for assassination. More than 3,000 have been killed in the past 15 years.
Colombia is a prime example of U.S. Military clout being used to serve the interests of big oil corporations . Plan Colombia is real bad news for the poor of Colombia because it increases the level of terror in their country. The Whitehouse fails to mention the group responsible for 70 percent of that violence is the government of Colombia and the right wing paramilitary forces which receive aid and full cooperation from Colombia's army.
More:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2008/2/27/464886/-
It may seem overwhelming that the images drawn by these little Colombian school kids reflect what they were seeing outside their houses as the Roundup killed absolutely all the plants, and so many of the animals, and clearly didn't do the humans any favors, either. However, Monsanto made the big bucks getting to sell so much of its poisonous Roundup to "fight the drug war."
If you have the time, please scan the photos in this older DU post, see the damage, maybe some more kids' pictures, and some information about the deadly effect of Roundup in Colombia.
DU thread on Roundup in Colombia:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/110839001
Oh, by the way, for anyone who cares, or anyone who remembers, Senator Paul Wellstone started looking into this aerial spraying of Roundup, and on one trip to Colombia, they discovered someone had planted a bomb where their car was scheduled to stop. Had no one found the bomb, he would have been gone then. Also, on another trip to Colombia, as Wellstone and aides got out of the car and went to watch an airplane spraying a field, the airplane "made a mistake" and drenched Senator Wellstone and his party with industrial strength Roundup.
Pretty damned vicious.
Colombia: Mr. Wellstone Goes to Barrancabermeja 12/8/00
Senator Paul Wellstone (D-MN) visited Colombia last week to inspect preparations for the government's US-sponsored Plan Colombia and to show support for human rights workers in that country. And what a trip it was.
Wellstone is a leading congressional critic of Plan Colombia, the $1.3 billion (so far) US effort to simultaneously defeat both long-lived guerrillas and a flourishing coca and cocaine industry. He offered unsuccessful amendments in the Senate to divert the funds into domestic drug treatment programs. His was also one of the few voices in Congress to challenge President Clinton's decision to waive certification that Colombia was complying with US human rights standards.
He got a very spooky reception from his Colombian hosts. First, there was the bomb scare. As Wellstone's party, including US Ambassador Anne Patterson, prepared to land in Barrancabermeja, an oil-refining city of 200,000 where nearly 500 people have been killed in political murders this year, a Colombian police colonel announced that a possible assassination attempt had been thwarted.
Two bombs had been found along a possible route and a man identified by police as a leftist guerrilla was arrested. The colonel did not explain to reporters why leftist guerrillas would wish to kill an opponent of US military aid to Colombia.
More:
https://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle-old/163/wellstone.shtml
. . .
Senator Wellstone fumigated in Colombia
Senator Paul Wellstone, (D-MN), was accidentally sprayed with herbicide during a police demonstration. According to some accounts, Sen. Wellstone and his traveling delegation were sprayed with a mist of herbicide as they watched the Colombian National Police demonstrate a new approach to fumigating coca, the raw product used to produce cocaine.
Wellstone was allowed too close to coca bushes in a remote area near the Tarasa River and was hit with a fine mist of the chemical from a helicopter flying less than 200 feet above him. He winced and rubbed his eyes later, but managed a joke, saying he could become a case study on possible dangers linked to the chemical.
Asked whether he was stunned to get hit, the Minnesota Democrat said, "Oh, yeah, and I'm imagining that I'm itching a lot, too." Police officials said it was an accident, blaming the wind for blowing the chemical - known as glysophate - from its intended path.
More:
http://www.november.org/razorwire/rzold/22/22013.html
