Scientists Link GM Crop Weed Killer to Powerful Fungus

[posey]

I tried to see if this had already been posted here but did not come up with it when I did a search. I found the link to this article from "Educating Instead of Medicating "at CureZone.com

This is from ispnews.com

HEALTH: Scientists Link GM Crop Weed Killer to Powerful Fungus

WASHINGTON, Aug 20 (IPS) - Scientists are expressing alarm after finding elevated amounts of potentially toxic fungal moulds in food crops sprayed with a common weed killer widely used with genetically engineered (GE) plants.

Roundup, produced by food-industry giant Monsanto, contains a chemical called glyphosate that researchers are blaming for increased amounts of fusarium head blight, a fungus of often very toxic moulds that occurs naturally in soils and occasionally invades crops, but is usually held in check by other microbes.

If true, the allegations could not only call into question the world's number one weed killer, but they also jeopardise global acceptance of Monsanto's flagship line of genetically engineered Roundup Ready crops.

Those crops are themselves unaffected by the Roundup weed killer, which kills all competing plants, such as weeds, in the same area.

Monsanto has been producing a series of GE Roundup Ready seed stock for various crops, including cotton, soybean, wheat and corn, to be used exclusively with their successful glyphosate weed killer Roundup. But because they are genetically engineered, the crops have not found easy acceptance in many countries outside the United States, and they are still banned in Canada and Europe.

A four-year study found that wheat treated with glyphosate appeared to have higher levels of fusarium than wheat fields where no glyphosate had been applied, said Myriam Fernandez of the Semiarid Prairie Agricultural Research Centre in Swift Current, in Canada's Saskatchewan province.

"We have not finished analysing the four years of data yet or written up the study," she added in a recent interview with IPS.

While Fernandez' research recently made headlines throughout Canada, it was not the first to discuss the relationship between glyphosate-containing weed killers and increased levels of potentially toxic fungi, but it was the first to report on the possibility of potentially toxic damage in wheat and barley, two of Canada's most important crops.

A Monsanto spokesman was critical of the findings.

"It appears to be that Dr. Fernandez did a field survey looking at levels of Fusarium and then the factors that might be related," Harvey Glick, head of the company's scientific affairs division, told IPS.

"So, from what I can gather, that was not a cause and effect. It's just that they saw in the study area some fields that had higher levels of fusarium, for whatever reason, and then they looked at a list of factors that might be related and one of them was there was Roundup used in those fields the previous year."

Over the last two decades, several scientists from New Zealand to Africa have noticed and investigated the glyphosate-fusarium relationship through small-scale experiments in the relative obscurity of their labs and reported the results in academic journals.

The result of all of this work is almost 50 scientific papers, says Robert Kremer, a soil scientist at the University of Missouri. Overall, they describe an increase in fusarium or other microbes after the application of glyphosate.

Kremer's ongoing research deals with the glyphosate-fusarium relationship on soybeans, including a Roundup Ready variety.

His experiments with Roundup Ready and regular soybeans revealed that glyphosate seems to stimulate fusarium in the plants' roots, to such a degree that he considers the elevation of fusarium levels to be glyphosate's secondary effect.

While Kremer found enhanced fusarium colonies in the roots of the plants, which could potentially reduce the harvest, he did not find them in the harvested soybeans themselves. But he said he still worries that fusarium could accumulate in the soil at such levels to produce an epidemic that would move from field to field throughout a wide area.

He also noted: ''We didn't see enhancement of fusarium when other herbicides were used" without Roundup. But according to contracts, farmers planting Roundup Ready crops must use Roundup weed killer exclusively or in combination with other chemicals.

Monsanto's Glick rejected Kremer's suggestions. "Roundup is almost 30 years old, and scientists have been looking at all aspects of its use for at least that long. So there is a tremendous amount of information available."

"And that is why there is such a high level of confidence that the use of Roundup, based on all of this earlier work, does not have any negative impacts on soil microbes ... And a lot of it has been published."

In a recent article titled 'GM Cotton Blamed for Disease', Australia's 'Farm Weekly' predicted that up to 90 percent of the country's cotton belt could be inundated by a fusarium epidemic within the next decade due to Roundup Ready cotton.

Fusarium contamination of cereals, such as the fusarium head blight (FHB) in wheat and barley that Fernandez is studying, has been responsible for serious crop losses.

About one-fifth of the wheat crop in Europe each year is lost to FHB, and in Michigan during 2002 it was estimated that 30-40 percent of crops were destroyed by the infestation.

When the mould passes into the food-chain undetected, fusarium epidemics on cereals can have even worse impacts: such an epidemic was considered responsible for thousands of deaths in Russia during the 1940s, and in 2001 it caused a series of deadly birth defects among tortilla-eating Mexican-Americans in Brownsville, Texas, after the blight infiltrated corn.

Minute amounts of fusarium continually enter commercial food products; it is at the higher levels that it can become a serious problem.

The fusarium fungus can produce a range of toxins that are not destroyed in the cooking process, such as vomitoxin, which as its name suggests, usually produces vomiting but not death. More lethal compounds include fumonisin, which can cause cancer and birth defects, and the very lethal chemical warfare agent fusariotoxin, more often referred to as T2 toxin.

During 2000, the U.S. Congress planned to use fusarium as a biological control agent to kill coca crops in Colombia and another fungus to kill opium poppies in Afghanistan.

Those plans were dropped by then-president Bill Clinton, who was concerned that the unilateral use of a biological agent would be perceived by the rest of the world as biological warfare.

Andean nations, including Colombia, banned its use throughout the region.

According to Sanho Tree, director of the drug policy project at the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies, "the U.S. has supplied tens of thousands of gallons of Roundup to the Colombian government for use in aerial fumigation of coca crops."

That operation has "been using a fleet of crop dusters to dump unprecedented amounts of high-potency glyphosate over hundreds of thousands of acres in one of the most delicate and bio-diverse ecosystems in the world."

"This futile effort has done little to reduce the availability of cocaine on our streets, but now we are learning that a possible side-effect of this campaign could be the unleashing of a fusarium epidemic in the Amazon basin."

Because of the glyphosate-fusarium link, Canada's National Farmers Union is already opposing Monsanto's application to introduce GE Roundup Ready wheat into the country. The federal government is expected to make its decision within months. (END/2003)


Posey

ya know, there is so much about this that is so very scary. In addition to The Twilight Zone's filthy morgellons and whatever the cause turns out to be, what else is going on which we are not aware of?

[Kritters]

hiya Posey,

I think this has been posted but it's always good to bring important information to the forefront again. What else is going on which we are not aware of? The answer is, there aren't enough hours, days, weeks or years to reveal what has, is and will be going on.

".......But according to contracts, farmers planting Roundup Ready crops must use Roundup weed killer exclusively or in combination with other chemicals. "

Talk about a monopoly! Reminiscent of the microsoft bundle Gates was under fire for. So, why is Monsanto allowed to do this? Same reason it can do whatever it wants....same as Merk, etc...........money, power, control, corruption at the expense of the citizens of the world.

Kritters

[jonsi]

Hi posey!

Welcome, it's always good to see new people post here

Bringing attention to monsanto is very important. Did you know Monsanto is involved with fast food chains also?

I haven't eaten at McDonalds, Sonic, Taco Bell, Burger King, etc... in over a year now.

Back to "real" food"... It's hard to find non-GMO foods ("Organic") but well worth it.

How legit is the labeling on foods, or the risks involved in vaccines? Please check this link out: Health Freedom Threats: Codex, FDA, Vaccinations, GMOs :: HealthFreedomUSA.org

Peace,
~jonsi

[posey]

I just typed some good dialogue and when I clicked to post I got the internet Explorer Cannot Page.

I have been copyng my post into Word before clicking post just incase that happens but this time I didn't. Once before when this happened, when I clicked on the back arrow I got the reply page with my reply still there. I was hoping I would again.

I can't retype it right now, I have to leave for a while. Maybe later.

Be well to all

[Kritters]

Oh sorry, Posey....

We forgot to tell you about initiation! We do it to find out about new posters...what they can tolerate, what the blowing point is...how they handle stress.

You pass!!!!

LOLOL
Kritts

[carla]

While Fernandez' research recently made headlines throughout Canada, it was not the first to discuss the relationship between glyphosate-containing weed killers and increased levels of potentially toxic fungi, but it was the first to report on the possibility of potentially toxic damage in wheat and barley, two of Canada's most important crops.

A Monsanto spokesman was critical of the findings.

"It appears to be that Dr. Fernandez did a field survey looking at levels of Fusarium and then the factors that might be related," Harvey Glick, head of the company's scientific affairs division, told IPS.

"So, from what I can gather, that was not a cause and effect. It's just that they saw in the study area some fields that had higher levels of fusarium, for whatever reason, and then they looked at a list of factors that might be related and one of them was there was Roundup used in those fields the previous year."

Over the last two decades, several scientists from New Zealand to Africa have noticed and investigated the glyphosate-fusarium relationship through small-scale experiments in the relative obscurity of their labs and reported the results in academic journals.

The result of all of this work is almost 50 scientific papers, says Robert Kremer, a soil scientist at the University of Missouri. Overall, they describe an increase in fusarium or other microbes after the application of glyphosate.

Kremer's ongoing research deals with the glyphosate-fusarium relationship on soybeans, including a Roundup Ready variety.

His experiments with Roundup Ready and regular soybeans revealed that glyphosate seems to stimulate fusarium in the plants' roots, to such a degree that he considers the elevation of fusarium levels to be glyphosate's secondary effect.

While Kremer found enhanced fusarium colonies in the roots of the plants, which could potentially reduce the harvest, he did not find them in the harvested soybeans themselves. But he said he still worries that fusarium could accumulate in the soil at such levels to produce an epidemic that would move from field to field throughout a wide area.

He also noted: ''We didn't see enhancement of fusarium when other herbicides were used" without Roundup. But according to contracts, farmers planting Roundup Ready crops must use Roundup weed killer exclusively or in combination with other chemicals.

Monsanto's Glick rejected Kremer's suggestions. "Roundup is almost 30 years old, and scientists have been looking at all aspects of its use for at least that long. So there is a tremendous amount of information available."

"And that is why there is such a high level of confidence that the use of Roundup, based on all of this earlier work, does not have any negative impacts on soil microbes ... And a lot of it has been published."

In a recent article titled 'GM Cotton Blamed for Disease', Australia's 'Farm Weekly' predicted that up to 90 percent of the country's cotton belt could be inundated by a fusarium epidemic within the next decade due to Roundup Ready cotton.

Fusarium contamination of cereals, such as the fusarium head blight (FHB) in wheat and barley that Fernandez is studying, has been responsible for serious crop losses.

About one-fifth of the wheat crop in Europe each year is lost to FHB, and in Michigan during 2002 it was estimated that 30-40 percent of crops were destroyed by the infestation.

When the mould passes into the food-chain undetected, fusarium epidemics on cereals can have even worse impacts: such an epidemic was considered responsible for thousands of deaths in Russia during the 1940s, and in 2001 it caused a series of deadly birth defects among tortilla-eating Mexican-Americans in Brownsville, Texas, after the blight infiltrated corn.

[carla]

Minute amounts of fusarium continually enter commercial food products; it is at the higher levels that it can become a serious problem.

The fusarium fungus can produce a range of toxins that are not destroyed in the cooking process, such as vomitoxin, which as its name suggests, usually produces vomiting but not death. More lethal compounds include fumonisin, which can cause cancer and birth defects, and the very lethal chemical warfare agent fusariotoxin, more often referred to as T2 toxin.

During 2000, the U.S. Congress planned to use fusarium as a biological control agent to kill coca crops in Colombia and another fungus to kill opium poppies in Afghanistan.

Those plans were dropped by then-president Bill Clinton, who was concerned that the unilateral use of a biological agent would be perceived by the rest of the world as biological warfare.

Andean nations, including Colombia, banned its use throughout the region.

According to Sanho Tree, director of the drug policy project at the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies, "the U.S. has supplied tens of thousands of gallons of Roundup to the Colombian government for use in aerial fumigation of coca crops."

That operation has "been using a fleet of crop dusters to dump unprecedented amounts of high-potency glyphosate over hundreds of thousands of acres in one of the most delicate and bio-diverse ecosystems in the world."

"This futile effort has done little to reduce the availability of cocaine on our streets, but now we are learning that a possible side-effect of this campaign could be the unleashing of a fusarium epidemic in the Amazon basin."

Because of the glyphosate-fusarium link, Canada's National Farmers Union is already opposing Monsanto's application to introduce GE Roundup Ready wheat into the country. The federal government is expected to make its decision within months. (END/2003)



 HYPERLINK "http://www.morgellons.org/" \t "_new" http://www.morgellons.org/




 HYPERLINK "http://www.headlice.org/lindane/new/2005/drhouse.htm" \t "_new" http://www.headlice.org/lindane/new/2005/drhouse.htm
"The future will depend"on our wisdom not to replace one poison with another."
National Pediculosis Association®, Inc.

An Emerging Health Crisis -- Where's Dr. House When You Need Him?
If it weren't so tragic, it could be the story line in a Stephen King novel. Each day, the National Pediculosis Association (NPA) is contacted by individuals describing the torment and horror of oozing skin lesions, sensations of bugs biting and crawling under their skin and doctors who diagnose it as nothing more than a delusion.
Needham, MA (PRWEB) May 19, 2005 -- If it weren't so tragic, it could be the story line in a Stephen King novel. Each day the National Pediculosis Association (NPA) is contacted by individuals describing the torment and horror of oozing skin lesions, sensations of bugs biting and crawling under their skin and doctors who diagnose it as nothing more than a delusion.

In a 1994 Ladies Home Journal article about children who suffered seizures after being exposed to Lindane, a treatment for lice and scabies, the NPA provided a toll free number to launch the first national reporting registry for lice and scabies outbreaks, product failure, and adverse reactions to treatments. Adverse reaction reports to the NPA registry about Lindane led to the FDA giving Lindane a black box and its strongest warning. The NPA registry available at  HYPERLINK "http://www.headlice.org" \o "test" \t "_blank" www.headlice.org also provided the earliest reports of head lice having developed resistance to the most widely used pediculicides.

However, almost as soon as the NPA's registry was launched, reports of a bizarre health problem began to surface. Individuals reported biting and crawling sensations -- symptoms for which they could find no explanation and assumed were related to lice and scabies. But such symptoms were inconsistent with lice or scabies, signaling a very different problem.

The compelling nature of the reports prompted the NPA to contact the Centers for Disease Control (CDC)in 1995 and on numerous occasions thereafter. Deborah Z. Altschuler, NPA's president says the CDC as an agency has not shared the NPA's concern.

Unable to find any studies where such a population had their skin assessed in a single site clinical setting, the NPA in 2000 conducted its own clinical research in conjunction with the Oklahoma State Department of Health. The research identified Collembola (also known as springtail) in 18 of the 20 participants. According to Stephen Hopkin, author of The Biology of Springtails, Collembola are among the most widespread and abundant terrestrial arthropods. Collembola can be large enough to be seen on the backside of a leaf, but also minute enough to require the use of a microscope. The majority of them feed on fungal hyphae or decaying plant material, but they can also feast off of each other. Known mainly as soil-dwellers, they can swarm and aggregate in the millions. Referred to as decomposers, their primary function is to break down organic matter.

The report on the NPA research was published in the Journal of the New York Entomological Society in the spring of 2004. ( HYPERLINK "http://www.headlice.org/news/2004/pr071204.htm" \t "_blank" http://www.headlice.org/news/2004/pr071204.htm)

The report spoke to the challenges of the trailblazing research and demonstrated how easy it had been for these minute arthropods to remain overlooked by the medical community for over a century and also by the entomologists who had not utilized the NPA's approach. Entomologists have thought it impossible for Collembola to colonize humans, although they've acknowledged them as first of the decomposers to appear on human corpses. The research provides evidence of tremendous numbers of these organisms concealed, if not disguised, in their own aggregations. Yet the CDC maintains the position that Collembola cannot be human parasites and therefore they are of no medical importance. While the presence of Collembola in human skin continues to be met with skepticism by some collembologists; the relationship of Collembola to humans is an area of research the NPA maintains has not been adequately explored. Where's Dr. House when you need him?

It was in the late 1800’s that people with the sensation of bugs in their skin were first classified as having a delusional illness, a diagnosis still accepted although now challenged by the NPA’s research. Many physicians have never heard of Collembola – let alone expect to find them in humans.

Dermatologists and entomologists appear comfortable diagnosing Delusional Parasitosis (DOP)on the basis of the reported biting and crawling and without consultation with a psychiatric specialist. Some physicians will attempt therapeutic trials with pediculicides, scabicides, fungicides and mega doses of antibiotics, using treatment failure as a basis for a delusory diagnosis.

Individuals can often pinpoint a time and place when they first noticed the feeling of being bitten. A young mother in New York said the first time she felt the skin problem was in the middle of the night while sleeping in a hotel. Others first noticed symptoms after taking in a stray animal. Many have had water or sewage problems in their homes. A number of nurses reporting these symptoms remember caring for a patient who had a shaven head or was covered with skin sores. Reports also come in from individuals who have moved into new homes built on land previously used for agriculture or cattle grazing. Others, and most worrisome, report symptoms after being exposed to someone with this condition.

Michelle of Canada states: “I’ve watched my father go from a happy, balanced, reasonably healthy individual to the brink of suicide because of this condition. He had to quit working at a good job and is teetering on financial ruin. He has been treated so cruelly and inhumanely from so called ‘care-givers’, that if I hadn’t seen it for myself, I probably wouldn’t have believed it. This disease is destroying people’s lives. There is no help, not even basic curiosity, from the majority of the medical community. New diseases, bacteria, virus strains pop up all the time, so why is this situation so outlandish to the doctors? It’s time for the medical community to stand up and acknowledge this disease, and start doing their jobs.”

A nurse from the state of Washington says that both she and her ten year old suffer with this condition and came down with it at the same time. “I’m outraged that my human rights have not been taken into consideration because my complaint of having parasites did not fit into the medical community’s way of thinking. This in turn caused my family to abandon me as ‘crazy’. I have not been allowed to see my five beautiful grandchildren for 2 ½ years now.”

The NPA reports advances in its image research technique since the original digital imaging work was done in 2000. However, interpretation of slides and digital images still requires skill and experience. Without it people are left misdiagnosed, misguided and with secondary complications from the arsenal of chemicals and pesticides they feel forced to use in desperation. To date, the NPA reports that Collembola in human skin appear impervious to treatment.

Whether a crisis of delusional illness or Collembola in human skin, the longer it takes for the medical community and the Centers for Disease Control to take this seriously, the more widespread and well established it appears to become.

The National Pediculosis Association is a 501 (c)3 nonprofit organization serving the public since 1983. It's website is  HYPERLINK "http://www.headlice.org" \o "test" \t "_blank

[Kritters]

Thanks Carls,
Excellent stuff. Who is that Fernandez hero? Is he still around? I've mentioned that I had 'roundup' on my skin and took my good ol' time cleaning it off. that'll teach me LOL.

"Whether a crisis of delusional illness or Collembola in human skin, the longer it takes for the medical community and the Centers for Disease Control to take this seriously, the more widespread and well established it appears to become."

Yeah.... I think that's the plan, don't you?

xoxoxo
Kritts

[carla]

I do believe it is intentional Kritts. Without a doubt .

[carla]

Maybe thats what this is all about. Listen to the audio if you can .

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