Via Thom Hartmann Program: America’s Lawyer, Mike Papantonio, joins Thom Hartmann to discuss how Monsanto is poisoning the public.
Transcript:
Tom Hartmann:
It’s always good having you on. You have been doing some just heavy lifting around Monsanto and Bayer, and the merger, and all the stuff that’s going on. Can you tell us about it?
Mike Papantonio:
Well, the merger that’s taking place, of course, is everybody’s heard about it, it’s going to be a disaster for consumers all over the globe. These two companies have been sued probably more than any two companies with the exception of maybe Dow and DuPont who also, by the way, happened to merge together recently. Now, these companies in the past have been charged with price fixing, negligence, environmental destruction, fraud, contamination of rivers, you name it.
As a matter of fact, in the 1980s, there was a case that I actually handled later in the ’90s that Bayer was actually sending blood tainted with AIDS virus to African countries to treat hemophiliacs. The problem was is that it was infected with HIV. We forced them to take it off the market in America. After they did that, all the other … their product that wasn’t taken off, they sold to South America, Asia, and another parts of the world-
Tom Hartmann:
With full knowledge that it was HIV contaminated?
Mike Papantonio:
Completely. Completely. Interesting thing-
Tom Hartmann:
Oh my God.
Mike Papantonio:
If you do a search on Factor VIII, you’ll find that the corporate media even back then, I was so intrigued in the story that you just told, Tom, that even the corporate media back then wasn’t willing to blow the whistle on companies like Bayer, and so there was very little information. Same thing really is happening with Monsanto, with Roundup, killing people by the thousands all over the globe and they’ve been able to get away from it. It used to be that news outlets were buzzing with information like this about Bayer and Monsanto. This has barely been a yawn where it comes to corporate media because they’re such big advertisers, and now they expect more money to be coming into this process.
Tom Hartmann:
Yeah. I’m constantly seeing ads for Roundup on TV, which is one of the big chemicals in question, right? [crosstalk 00:02:05].
Mike Papantonio:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s a huge problem. I think I’ve taken the last three depositions, most recent depositions, where I actually had documents that had been released that show how Monsanto went in their efforts to undermine scientific evidence showing that their chemicals were causing cancer. It is amazing what they called in, what they were able to accomplish. Theses documents paint a clear picture of a corporate coverup that rivals … Even the tobacco companies and asbestos industry that were engaged in a coverup decades ago, one of the biggest targets of this Monsanto coverup was the IARC from the World Health Organization, where IARC came out and said, “Yeah. This will cause human cancer.” After that happened, just understand the power, the power of what Bayer and Monsanto are going to able to do together, just Monsanto on their loan, by themselves, they were able to put a group that were classified … they were able to go after the World Health Organization to the point that they’ve actually convinced Congress that we shouldn’t fund the World Health Organization because they were mean to Monsanto about Roundup by saying that this stuff can cause cancer in human beings.
Tom Hartmann:
Holy cow.
Mike Papantonio:
Yeah. It is the legs of this company already, it’s astounding. But then when you think of what they’re able to do now with this merger, I don’t know how we can keep up with it. We can only do what we do every day and that’s take them to court, show these ugly documents, let the media, at least give it to the media, even though the media typically doesn’t do anything with that kind of information, because don’t want to offend their advertisers.
Tom Hartmann:
Yeah. It’s remarkable. What are we learning about the products that they’re selling?
Mike Papantonio:
Well, we know this much. If we’re just talking about Roundup since it’s right there-
Tom Hartmann:
Right. [crosstalk 00:04:08].
Mike Papantonio:
We know this. There are overwhelming studies from all over the world where people have been exposed to Roundup in huge volume. We’re not just seeing cancer, Tom. We’re seeing neurological diseases, we’re seeing Parkinson’s disease, you’re seeing a whole host of illnesses that the company has been putting on notice about.
Tom Hartmann:
Could this have anything to with the explosion in autism in the United States over the last few decades that seems to correlate with the explosion of the use of these herbicides and the genetically modified seeds that work with them?
Mike Papantonio:
Yeah. There’s plenty material in studies that show that people misunderstand the angst about GMO. Okay, the angst about GMO, for example, is not just that we’re taking DNA and we’re modifying it to whatever we want. The problem with the GMO seed is it is saturated with Roundup. Imagine you’ve built a seed that’s able to withstand poison. Now, that tells you a lot right here. What we’re finding with Roundup is we’re finding it in people’s urine that have never even worked around … never been around a farm setting because there’s so much of this glyphosate, which is the main ingredient for Roundup. We’re finding it in beer, we’re finding it in wine, we’re finding it in children’s formula.
The problem that we have here is I’d like to say it’s just a government problem where the government won’t do anything. The Department of Justice understands that they’ve gone after these two corporations probably more than any two corporations in the world. They still say, “Yeah. We’re going to let these two thugs now merge together.”
It’s not just the government. It’s the media. The media will not tell the story about Roundup. It’s the same thing that I’ve run into so many times. I used to do some MSNBC and when Yaz came out … Yaz was a birth control pill that was killing women by the hundreds all over the country. We all the information. I had taken the depositions. I had all the information I needed. They needed to do a story. I said, “Certainly.” One of the producers wants to do a story on Yaz. Well, they didn’t do it because Bayer produced Yaz and Bayer was one of their big advertisers.
With this merger that we’re talking about here, take that fact situation and put it on steroids. They’re going to have contact with not just the media. What we found with Monsanto is they hired these professors all over the country. When we found out that Roundup will cause cancer, Monsanto went out and started hiring scientists all over the country. They developed something called Ag Bio Chatter. It was a website that industry-friendly scientists could go to who wanted to make a little extra money. The corporation, Monsanto, would ask them, “Well, if you’re willing to shill for us, we’re going to pay you extra money.” These shills went out and created literature that was completely fantasy literature. Basically, the company would write the literature, they’d ask the scientist to sign off on it, and what we started seeing immediately were these shills that were attacking IARC and these shills that were saying, “No, that’s not good science. It won’t really cause cancer.”
Tom Hartmann:
Wow. Wow. What can consumers do? What can people do? What can citizens do, for that matter
Mike Papantonio:
It’s gotten to the point, really, where boycotts really do matter. We’ve accomplished a lot with boycotts and we’ve gotten away from that. We’ve gotten away from the idea that we can really deal with the market, we can go after them in the market.
But I think, unfortunately, the only thing that we can do aggressively is to sue them, to tell the stories and depositions, and then not even count on corporate media to tell the story, but have those stories told in documentaries, have them told in social media. That’s been very successful.
As a matter of fact, the case I just finished called “The Devil We Know”, the movie’s called “The Devil We Know”, it’s about a case I just finished up in the Ohio River Valley. The movie will actually be released to the public in January of 2019. It’s a movie that tells the story. It’s a story of how DuPont went and caused cancer for thousands of people all along the Ohio River Valley by dumping a poison into their drinking water. You would think that would be a story that corporate media would tell, but they won’t tell it because, again, the same problem, DuPont is such a big advertiser. It’s up to social media, it’s up to shows like yours, it’s up to shows like mine on America’s Lawyer, a show I do every week, it’s up to documentary makers to tell these kinds of stories. Otherwise, they won’t be told.
Tom Hartmann:
Just on a digression here really quickly because we’re going to hit a break, we’re going to run out of time here in just a second, but are you familiar with the website TheyRule.net that shows … You can bring up, say, AT&T and Monsanto and then just click, “What’s the association?” and it’ll show you the entire board of directors of both corporations and they’ll say, “Okay, this director of AT&T is also on the board of Wells Fargo-”
Mike Papantonio:
Yes.
Tom Hartmann:
” … and that director of Wells Fargo is also on the board of Monsanto.”
Mike Papantonio:
Yeah.
Tom Hartmann:
It’s an amazing website.
Mike Papantonio:
Our producers use it all the time.
Tom Hartmann:
Yeah.
Mike Papantonio:
Farron Cousins has mastered that particular website.
Tom Hartmann:
Yeah. TheyRule.net, it’s just incredible. But it seems like, you know, I would love just to know about interlocking boards of some of these media companies as well. It’s just incredible.
America’s Lawyer. Mike Papantonio. Pap, it’s always an honor and pleasure to have you on the program. Thank you so much.
Mike Papantonio:
Tom, thank you.
