We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Sunday, November 22, 2015

MIT States That Half of All Children May be Autistic by 2025 due to Monsanto

Click here to access article by Janet Phelan from New Eastern Outlook.

I rather vaguely remember an incident when I was working with adults with disabilities back around 1968 that brought to my attention an obscure disease called autism. Even though my job entailed only working with adults, I decided to investigate a child who had been diagnosed with this disease by actually interviewing the parent and observing the child's behavior. Now 47 years later this disease along with many others is quite common.
The rate of autism has skyrocketed from roughly one in every two thousand in the 1970’s to the current rate of one in every sixty eight. Alzheimer’s has become almost universal in the elderly.
One would think that a concerted effort would be made by researchers to uncover the causes of such dramatic increases in many diseases. However, in a capitalist society profits rule über alles. Hence very little research has been done, and what little solid research that has been done has been met with overwhelming resistance mostly from industry funded researchers.
The food and chemical giant [Monsanto] has constructed a webpage with links to scientific studies pronouncing the safety of glyphosate.

Other science writers have also taken up the Monsanto banner, scoffing at the scientific studies that prompted Seneff to make her claims. “They made it up!” pronounced Huffpost science writer Tamar Haspel, in an article thin on analysis but heavy on declarative prose.