Chemical round-up

Yesterday's post about people who are fact-resistant is an easy segue into today's topic, which is: a viral post I've now seen at least a half-dozen times on social media that claims that there's RoundUp in vaccines.

The article, written by one Catherine J. Frompovich, starts with the following:

An absolute BOMBSHELL has just hit Big Pharma's vaccine industry!

Which, in my opinion, is a phrase that means, "Nothing important has happened."  Every time we hear that there's an ABSOLUTE BOMBSHELL that's going to (1) destroy Hillary Clinton, (2) destroy Donald Trump, (3) expose the lies of Big Pharma, or (4) cause a devastating scandal in Congress, we wait breathlessly...

... and nothing happens.

Of course, the people making the claim have an explanation for that; the "MSM" (Mainstream Media), who in this worldview is second only to "Big Pharma" as a stand-in for Satan himself, has covered the whole thing up.

In this case, we find out that a research scientist named Anthony Samsel has discovered traces of glyphosate (better known under its trade name as the herbicide RoundUp) in vaccines.  Then we're given the following alarming information:

In high school chemistry aren’t students taught the importance of chemical interactions, especially when mixing several chemicals in a laboratory beaker?  What can happen?  An explosion!  A similar chemical reaction occurs within the human body — the largest living, working test tube on earth, however it causes adverse health effects, not an explosion.

So, what you're saying is: if you put "chemicals" together, they explode, except that we're talking about putting chemicals together here, and they don't explode?

But even so they're really really bad.  Because they're chemicals.  So q.e.d., apparently.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Then, of course (since it's RoundUp), we immediately launch into the argumentum ad Monsantum fallacy, which is to claim that anything even tangentially connected to Monsanto must be evil.   The implication is that Monsanto is deliberately tainting vaccines with their nasty chemicals for some diabolical reason, most likely to get rid of anyone who is stupid enough to fall for their cunning plans.

The whole argument falls apart, however, when you start looking at the details.  Going to the blog that brought Samsel's research to the public eye, we find out that there have been traces of RoundUp found in vaccines, most likely due to the inclusion of animal-derived products such as glycerine, but the amounts are almost all less than one part per billion.  Still, that doesn't tell us much about toxicity -- Frompovich is correct that some substances are toxic in vanishingly small quantities.  But then you look at the end of Samsel's data table, and you find out that "gummi bears" have quantities of RoundUp that are on the order of eighty times higher than any of the vaccines studied.

Interesting that there's all of this hoopla about Big Pharma and toxins in vaccines, but there's no mention of the role of Big Gummi in poisoning our children's candy.

A further, and more serious, problem comes to light when you start digging into the background of Anthony Samsel himself, and his alleged studies linking glyphosate to every human malady except the common cold via scary-sounding biochemical pathways.  An exposé by Tamar Haspel three years ago found that the supposed peer-reviewed research Samsel and a woman named Stephanie Seneff conducted into the presence of glyphosate and its effects on human tissue almost certainly never occurred.  Haspel writes:

Samsel and Seneff didn’t conduct any studies.  They don’t seem interested in the levels at which humans are actually exposed to glyphosate.  They simply speculated that, if anyone, anywhere, found that glyphosate could do anything in any organism, that thing must also be happening in humans everywhere.  I’d like to meet the “peers” who “reviewed” this.

Worse still, neither Samsel nor Seneff is a biochemist, or even a cellular biologist. Seneff is a computer scientist at MIT; Samsel is a "consultant" who does "charitable community investigations of industrial polluters."  As Haspel put it, "I think it's fair to say that they probably went into this with a point of view."

And if you needed one further death-blow to the whole argument, the woman who wrote the ABSOLUTE BOMBSHELL article, Catherine J. Frompovich, is a staff writer for...

... The Daily Sheeple.

So to those folks who keep circulating this article and ones like it, I'm respectfully asking you to stop.  There's enough misinformation out there on health in general and vaccines in particular.  To say it for probably the 13,537th time: vaccines are safe, effective, protect you and your children from diseases that can kill you, and have a very very low likelihood of side effects.  Myself, I'll take the chance of the health effects of minuscule amounts of glyphosate rather than those from getting the measles, hepatitis A, or even the flu.

On the other hand, I am having second thoughts about gummi bears.

An argument over mosquitoes

I broke one of my own cardinal rules a couple of days ago, which is: never argue with strangers on the internet.  This activity is the very definition of futility -- I defy you to cite one example of someone being talked out of a previously-held opinion through a war of words on Facebook.

This particular go-round of vitriol was over the role of the Zika virus in the microcephaly cases in Brazil.  The woman who got my ire up claimed that the combination of irresponsible mainstream media and the outright evil of Monsanto et al. had conspired to pull the wool over our eyes; the actual culprit for the birth defects was a mosquito larvicide called pyriproxyfen.  As support, she cited an article in the Tech Times, because apparently that's not mainstream media.

Before giving up and saying "whatever" (which I did in short order), I referred to several peer-reviewed studies that have established a pretty firm causal link between the virus and microcephaly.  The New England Journal of Medicine published a case study in August 2016 of a microcephalic baby who was Zika-positive at birth and in fact continued to shed the virus for 67 days; three separate studies (outlined and cited in an article in Science from May of this year) demonstrated that Zika infection causes microcephaly and other neurological birth defects in rat fetuses; and a thorough analysis of the available evidence (also from NEJM) concluded that the criteria for establishing a causal relationship had been met.  The authors write:

On the basis of this review, we conclude that a causal relationship exists between prenatal Zika virus infection and microcephaly and other serious brain anomalies.  Evidence that was used to support this causal relationship included Zika virus infection at times during prenatal development that were consistent with the defects observed; a specific, rare phenotype involving microcephaly and associated brain anomalies in fetuses or infants with presumed or confirmed congenital Zika virus infection; and data that strongly support biologic plausibility, including the identification of Zika virus in the brain tissue of affected fetuses and infants.  Given the recognition of this causal relationship, we need to intensify our efforts toward the prevention of adverse outcomes caused by congenital Zika virus infection.

Add to this the fact that the connection to pyriproxyfen was thoroughly smashed by David Gorski over in the wonderful blog Respectful Insolence, and I think if you approach the question without bias, there's no other conclusion you can reach.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

On the other hand, if you assume your own conclusion, there's not a whole lot logic can do for you.  The individual I was doing battle with pulled out the argumentum ad Monsantum, claiming that Monsanto was involved (Monsanto being the stand-in here for "Satan"), even though Monsanto doesn't manufacture pyriproxyfen -- a Japanese company called Sumitomo does.  But Sumitomo is "a Japanese strategic partner to Monsanto," so there you are.  Satan by association.

The funny thing is, I don't have a dog in this race.  If the birth defects had been caused by a pesticide, I would have no problem saying so.  While I think that pulling out the word "Monsanto" is kind of a cheap trick, I certainly am not of the opinion that they're squeaky-clean.

But I think the preponderance of evidence supports Zika as a cause of the birth defects.  I asked (sort of as a parting shot) if my erstwhile adversary had read any of the peer-reviewed studies, and she didn't respond, which I'm taking either as a "no" or as a way of saying "fuck you."  In any case, once you start thinking this way, peer-reviewed studies aren't going to convince you, because you're just one step from claiming that the authors of the studies are shills for the pesticide company.

You can't win.

Which I hope I've finally learned.  I really shouldn't take the bait, but the combative side of my personality (never very deeply buried) just can't stand to let things lie.

Anyhow, I've said my piece on this topic, and I'm really done.

At least until someone claims that I'm a shill for Monsanto.  Because them's fightin' words.

GMOs and the package-deal fallacy

One of the most frustrating of logical fallacies is the package-deal fallacy -- the tendency to lump together things that are similar (even superficially similar) and then paint them all with the same brush.  The fact that we here in the United States are in the middle of a particularly divisive presidential election makes it all too common.  How often do you see those stupid "internet memes" with captions saying things like "If you are a conservative, you believe ____" or "If you are a liberal, you think ____"?

The implication, of course, is that the universe is a simple and philosophically uniform place, a contention which you'd think that even a quick glance would prove wrong.  I know conservatives who are thoughtful, intelligent, well-spoken, and logical, and ones who are prone to fact-free, vitriolic rants.  I know liberals who fall into the same two designations.  I find it frightening that some people would like to have a word or two completely define a person -- and forthwith to cease thinking about the matter entirely.

Such thinking is hardly limited to politics, unfortunately.  Consider GMOs, which have been much maligned by the "pure foods movement" as being toxic, carcinogenic "frankenfoods" which are being foisted upon an unsuspecting public by evil corporations.  In this view of the world, Monsanto is being run by Satan himself, and any time you consume a genetically modified food item, you're running the risk of becoming ill from it.

[image courtesy of photographer Lindsay Eyink and the Wikimedia Commons]

The problem is that like everything, genetic modification isn't simple, and claiming that all GMOs have the same (negative) effects isn't so much ignorant as it is flat-out wrong.  Not all genes do the same thing; why would we expect genetically modified organisms to have the same results, including their effects (if any) on human health?

Take, for example, the genetically modified eggplants now being grown in Bangladesh.  These eggplants have a gene that produces a protein making them resistant to being damaged by the fruit-and-shoot borer, a moth larva that causes widespread crop damage.  The protein has been tested to a fare-thee-well and shown to have no adverse health effects in humans.  Growing the GMO eggplants has drastically reduced the use of chemical pesticides -- which do have a lot of adverse effects, not only on humans but on wildlife.

Even the criticism that the GMO industry only exists to make millions of dollars at the expense of poor farmers doesn't apply here.  This GMO was developed using funding from the Bangladeshi government, and the seeds are being sold at low (controlled) prices, or given away for free.

Explain to me how this is a bad thing.

The difficulty is that in order to understand how GMOs differ from each other requires that you know some science.  To see that the situation with the eggplants, the one with RoundUp Ready crops (which have been used as excuses to increase the use of herbicides, and are implicated in herbicide resistance genes "jumping" to weed species), and the one with "Golden Rice" (a modified rice that is rich in vitamin A, but which is often tagged with a "kill switch gene" that makes the seeds unviable, thus preventing seed saving by poor farmers) are not the same thing means having to do some research and learn how genetics works.  And, in the case of Golden Rice, to consider a thorny ethical question about who has the right to profit from research.

Much easier, of course, just to say "GMO = evil" and be done with it.  The whole thing reminds me of a quote from John F. Kennedy: "Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."

The enemy of my enemy is... um... wait.

In today's news from the Unintentional Irony Department, we have religious wingnut and young-earth creationist Ted Cruz calling the anti-GMO cadre "anti-science zealots."

"People who decide that is what they want, they can pay for it already, but we shouldn’t let anti-science zealotry shutdown the ability to produce low-cost quality food for billions across the globe," Cruz said. "GMOs help to provide food for people across the globe and strengthen farms across the nation...  The people who oppose GMOs and want to buy organic food can do that."

Then, because there is no bizarre news story that someone can't comment on so as to make it way more bizarre, we have Ted Cruz being called out by none other than Mike "The Health Ranger" Adams of Natural News, who believes that vaccines cause autism and that the United States government is deliberately and callously killing us all with "chemicals":

[Cruz] insults all those Americans who share ever rising concerns over food pesticides, herbicides and chemical contaminants that the scientific literature overwhelmingly proves can cause cancer.  If only guns could provide personal protection against pesticides, then Ted Cruz might find himself on the right side of this argument... but that's not how chemistry works.  Chemicals are insidious, slow, invisible killers that commit violence on a cellular basis, day after day, meal after meal, until the victim is rendered diseased and ultimately dead.  The primary defense against chemical violence is CHEMICAL AVOIDANCE.

Yup.  That'll work.  Avoid all chemicals.  Presumably including water, oxygen, vitamins, proteins, DNA, and RNA.  Because "that's how chemistry works."

Ted Cruz, as visualized by Mike Adams

He then hits Cruz where it hurts -- his faith:

Perhaps even worse than the betrayal of fundamental constitutional principles of liberty, by going all-in for Monsanto, Ted Cruz joins forces with the most evil corporate entity on planet Earth.  Because Ted Cruz claims to be a supporter of Christianity, Biblical principles and God's creation, his betrayal on GMOs is far more than a political betrayal; it is spiritual treason against God.

And if you haven't already done enough damage smacking your head against your computer keyboard, Adams goes on to tell us that humans were intended by god to do selective breeding, but not to do any other kind of genetic modification:

Monsanto has taken a corn crop that was perfected through natural selective breeding by early humans, then turned it into a food POISON that damages the kidneys, liver and reproductive organs.  This is a treasonous act against humanity, Mother Nature and even God. 

By supporting Monsanto, Ted Cuz[sic] is openly encouraging a devious corporate entity that systematically violates the laws of Mother Nature and believes that Man's engineered (poisonous) seeds are superior to God's seeds that gave rise to nutritious corn via natural selection (humans working in harmony with nature to gradually shape phenotype genetic expression of food crops).

And the coup de grâce comes at the end, where Adams calls Monsanto "Monsatan" and says that by supporting GMOs, Cruz is "aligning himself with the devil."

So we first have climate change and evolution denier Ted Cruz calling the anti-GMOers anti-science, and the vaccines-cause-autism, chemtrail-believing anti-GMOers countering that Cruz has sold his soul to the devil.  Me, I'm wondering what I should think.  My inclination is to let Adams and Cruz fight to the death, because either way, rationalism wins.  But the whole thing reminds me again of the Senegalese saying I have quoted more than once:  "There are forty different kinds of lunacy, but only one kind of common sense."

Food fight

There's a logical fallacy I've seen a lot lately.  It's called argumentum ad Monsantum (also known as argumentum ad Hitlerum).  The idea is that you can immediately cast doubt on the motives of a person or organization if you compare them to, or (worse) claim they got their ideas from, a stand-in for The Boogeyman.  Monsanto, Hitler, communists, Muslims, whatever one seems apt at the time.

Of course, this boils down to lazy thinking, which most of the fallacies do.

What's rather maddening about this is that the opposite can happen, too.  Give something an association with a name that's considered positive, and you automatically reap the benefits of a reflected glow of goodness, whether or not it's deserved.

You could call this the Compare-Yourelf-To-Mother-Teresa-And-Declare-Victory ploy.

The argumentum ad Monsantum strategy has been much used in the fight against GMOs, since Monsanto has been heavily involved in developing genetically modified crops for years.  How anyone who has even a smidgen of a background in science can fall for this is beyond me; comparing RoundUp-Ready Wheat with late blight-resistant potatoes makes no sense from any standpoint, from effects on human health to ecological impact.  (Consider that the former results in an increase in the use of chemical pesticides, and the latter decreases it.)

Saying that all GMOs are bad is, in fact, precisely equivalent to claiming that all genes do the same thing.

[image courtesy of photographer Elina Mark and the Wikimedia Commons]

What's wryly amusing about this is that the opposite side of the same coin -- the word organic -- is maybe not as squeaky-clean as it's been billed.  The reputation of organic produce for containing less in the way of Nasty Chemicals is apparently ill-deserved, considering a story by David Zaruk over at The Risk-Monger that revealed a startling fact -- that organic farmers in the United States are certified to use three thousand substances that are designated as toxic, and that are considered acceptable purely because they're "natural."

Copper sulfate, used as a fungicide, is highly toxic to fish, and is completely non-biodegradable.  Pyrethrin and azadirachtin (neem oil), insecticides that come from plants and therefore are somehow thought to be better than synthetics, are lethal to honeybees and carcinogenic in humans.  Rotenone, from the leafy parts of the jicama plant, kills damn near everything you put it on.

Also on the list is nicotine.  Made, presumably, from all-natural, organic, health-supporting tobacco plants.

Worse still, once produce is certified organic, it bypasses any kind of requirement for pesticide residue testing.  Because organic produce isn't supposed to have any pesticides on it, right?

Of course right.

Monsanto = bad.  GMO = bad.  Organic = good.  All a way to give yourself a nice warm feeling of being socially and environmentally responsible, not to mention healthy, and then to stop thinking.  Myself, I would rather the responsible use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, which comes along with mountains of information on hazards and requirements for residue testing, than giving free rein to people who believe that Natural Must Mean Good For You.

Now, don't get me wrong; I think that a lot of the organic food movement is driven by the right motives.  Creating our food with as little negative environmental impact as possible, and producing food that is healthy and nutritious, are certainly goals to be lauded.  What is unclear is whether the rules governing organic food production as they now exist are meeting those goals.

But the beat goes on, which is why there was an apparently serious article over at The Organic Authority wherein we learn that artist and practitioner of magic Steven Leyba is mounting a one-man campaign against Monsanto, spurred by his own personal health experiences:

In 2010 I had been overweight and decided to get healthy.  I started eating large amounts of fruits and vegetables from my local grocery store.  I got sick and that was the time I found out about GMOs.  I was appalled.  I couldn’t understand why I would get so sick by eating what I thought was so healthy.  When I switched to organic food I got healthy again.

And since anecdote with a sample size of one is apparently data, Leyba decided to take matters into his own hands, and is launching a magic spell against Monsanto:

Death curses work like any manifestation of will like Gestalt psychology; you visualize and act in accordance and at some point what you can conceive and believe you can achieve.  Medicine men practice this and even medical doctors to some extent practice this.  They plant suggestions in people’s minds for healing and those people start to do things that promote their own healing.  For me I see a great need to identify the cancer (Monsanto and Nestlé) and attack with full force and mirror back this so-called Black Magic they are doing to all of us.

So he made a book full of disturbing imagery that includes demented portraits of executives who work for Monsanto, and also Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who worked as an attorney for Monsanto in the 1970s.  

"I encourage everyone to Death Curse Monsanto and Nestlé," Leyba says.  "Justifiable Death Curses are effective on many levels, fun, cathartic... and completely legal."

Article author Jill Ettinger, far from casting a wry eye at Leyba's Eye Of Newt approach to taking down Monsanto, seems to think it's a great idea.  And given the recent push in the United States for mandatory labeling of GMOs, "it may just be working," she says.

No harm, I suppose, if it amuses him.  But wouldn't it be better to learn some actual science, rather than giving in to fear talk and ignorance?  Not to mention (literal) magical thinking?

The world is complex, and when the motives of people and corporations get involved, it becomes even worse.  It'd be nice if categorical thinking really worked.  The difficult truth is, if you want to give yourself the best shot at making smart choices for yourself, both with respect to your personal health and the environmental impact, there's no substitute for bypassing the hype on both sides and understanding the reality beneath it all.

The stars against Monsanto

In the last week my Environmental Science class has been discussing the production, use, and safety of genetically-modified organisms (GMOs).  It's a balancing act for me; addressing the legitimate concerns about their effects on human health and the environment, without buying into all of the alarmist hype, is never easy.  Additionally, the subject always brings up the questionably ethical practice of patenting genes and crop strains, so it is a topic that stirs up good discussion -- and strong feelings.

And, of course, inevitably the name "Monsanto" comes up.  Monsanto has become such a stand-in for "Evil Corporation" that a new fallacy, the argumentum ad Monsantum, was coined a while back -- the logical error that allows you to smear anyone or anything as long as you can tie it to Monsanto.

It's an increasingly hot topic.  So no wonder the woo-woos have gotten involved, this time to see if they can get some information about GMO safety, and the corporate practices of Monsanto...

... from astrological readings.

I swear I'm not making this up.  I'm not nearly creative enough to invent something this completely idiotic.  If you don't believe me, you'll have to check out the article on Activist Post entitled, "GMOs: What Do the Stars Say Astrologically?", by Catherine J. Frompovich.  In it, we learn that not only are the anti-GMO folks worried, the stars are, too.  Frompovich tells us that an astrologer, Eric Coppolino, has done a complete astrological work-up for Monsanto and its founder, John Francis Queeny, and what he found should alarm the hell out of you, as long as you have a single kernel of KettleCorn where most of us have a brain.

The first thing that Coppolino tells us is that when President Gerald Ford signed TOSCA (the Toxic Substances Control Act) into law, in October of 1976, "Mars and Chiron were in opposition."  Chiron, which is a comet-like body that has an orbit between Saturn and Uranus, is one I hadn't heard of before in connection to astrology, but Cafe Astrology tells us that it "is symbolized by the 'wounded healer.'  It represents our deepest wound, and our efforts to heal the wound."  So there you are, then.

Why that's important, Coppolino tells us, is that this reflects "a cosmic pattern that occasionally sets into Monsanto’s horoscope negative aspects that affect Monsanto’s genetically modified foods ‘mission’."  Whatever that means.

But things may not be all that rosy for Monsanto in the future, Coppolino says.  "Monsanto’s 11th house provides a description why the company seems so intractable, including its stranglehold on the public.  Monsanto survived the onslaughts against genetically modified food by its usual tactics – the use of government influence.  However, Monsanto’s Jupiter-Saturn conjunction will experience a simultaneous conjunction from Pluto and square from Uranus, which happens in 2015."

Oooh.  Scary.  "While there is no way to predict exactly what the Uranus-Pluto square will bring," Coppolino says,  "there are few astrologers who would dare to underestimate its potential power.  Those who are working for a sane response to genetic modification or to stop Monsanto outright, should know that the company is approaching a vulnerable moment, which is an invitation for activists to persist in their efforts."

Yeah.  So take that, Monsanto.

As I've said before, astrology falls into the category of "mostly harmless" -- the only damage done being the suckering of gullible people.  Still, it always bothers me when two kinds of woo-woos join forces.  The anti-GMO crowd rely largely on discredited and dubious information in their claims for harm to human health from genetically-modified crops -- most notably, the now-retracted "study" by Gilles-Eric Seralini that allegedly showed that rats fed GMO corn developed tumors.  The data, after months of peer review, were deemed "inconclusive" -- and the conclusions of the study were therefore ruled suspect.  Even so, it's still considered gospel by people who think that any genetic tampering with anything is scary and immoral (despite the fact that we've been tampering with genetics for centuries, via selective breeding of domestic animals and plants).

So teaming up with astrologers, who have about the same level of scientific veracity on their side, is not good news for those of us who want to approach the whole thing in a more fact-based, logical, scientific fashion.  One has to hope that the number of people who would appeal to an astrologer on these matters are few in number, and that the astrological prognostications of Eric Coppolino will mostly be ignored, in favor of an actual consideration of the evidence -- i.e., the real information, not just some blathering on about Pluto and Chiron and Mars.

But as we've seen many times before, optimism is sometimes a losing proposition.  I predict that the next thing we'll see is either covens of witches casting spells to stop Monsanto, or else the homeopaths coming up with anti-GMO "remedies," made from shaking up RoundUpReady tomatoes in water, and then diluting it 5,000 times.