Monsanto's Roundup causes kidney failure in farmers exposed

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Monsanto's Herbicide Linked to Fatal Kidney Disease Epidemic: Could It Topple the Company?
Thursday, 10 July 2014 09:18
By Jeff Ritterman, M.D., Truthout | News Analysis


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(Photo courtesy of Vivien Feyer)

Also see: Dahr Jamail | Salvadoran Farmers Successfully Oppose the Use of Monsanto Seeds
Truthout Interviews Dr. Jeff Ritterman on Roundup and Chronic Kidney Disease
Monsanto's herbicide Roundup has been linked to a mysterious fatal kidney disease epidemic that has appeared in Central America, Sri Lanka and India.
For years, scientists have been trying to unravel the mystery of a chronic kidney disease epidemic that has hit Central America, India and Sri Lanka. The disease occurs in poor peasant farmers who do hard physical work in hot climes. In each instance, the farmers have been exposed to herbicides and to heavy metals. The disease is known as CKDu, for Chronic Kidney Disease of unknown etiology. The "u" differentiates this illness from other chronic kidney diseases where the cause is known. Very few Western medical practitioners are even aware of CKDu, despite the terrible toll it has taken on poor farmers from El Salvador to South Asia.
Dr. Catharina Wesseling, the regional director for the Program on Work and Health (SALTRA) in Central America, which pioneered the initial studies of the region's unsolved outbreak, put it this way, "Nephrologists and public health professionals from wealthy countries are mostly either unfamiliar with the problem or skeptical whether it even exists."
Dr. Wesseling was being diplomatic. At a 2011 health summit in Mexico City, the United States beat back a proposal by Central American nations that would have listed CKDu as a top priority for the Americas.
David McQueen, a US delegate from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who has since retired from the agency, explained the US position.
"The idea was to keep the focus on the key big risk factors that we could control and the major causes of death: heart disease, cancer and diabetes. And we felt, the position we were taking, that CKD was included."
The United States was wrong. The delegates from Central America were correct. CKDu is a new form of illness. This kidney ailment does not stem from diabetes, hypertension or other diet-related risk factors. Unlike the kidney disease found in diabetes or hypertension, the kidney tubules are a major site of injury in CKDu, suggesting a toxic etiology.

Moderator edit: The quoted text has been truncated. Please don't copy/paste entire articles here - this amounts to republishing and may cause problems due to copyright infringement. Always provide a link to the full article and either add your own summary or quote a short extract.

The original article can be seen here:
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/2487 ... e-monsanto

I've just read a short story based on just that, taking place in Latin America.

Should we trust a antinuclear, antifracking, anti GMO and anticoal group or not ?

I would like to point out that PSR are a NGO which is opposed to GMOs and roundup is a weedkiller which is currently being sold alongside GM seeds as part of a new system of farming.

I do not want to say that GMO / roundup is either good or bad but we should be careful not to accept blindly the views of either side in the debate.

http://www.psr.org/chapters/washington/enviro-health/

Also has anyone not connected with either PSR or the article reported kidney damage being caused by roundup exposure ? If a link between roundup and kidney damage exists then I would expect to see some other reports, for example I would expect to see some reports in the academic journals.

_________________
Health is a state of physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity I am not a jigsaw, I am a free man !

Diagnosed under the DSM5 rules with autism spectrum disorder, under DSM4 psychologist said would have been AS (299.80) but I suspect that I am somewhere between 299.80 and 299.00 (Autism) under DSM4.

The brother of a very good friend of mine was a scientist and helped develop a lot of Monsanto's products. He had extremely bad health problems that had a direct link to the Monsanto chemicals he helped develop. He died of those problems.

More on the evils of Monsanto.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/2 ... 83578.html

The problem with the second report is that it does not clearly mention Kidney effects, and it is a newspaper article about a "weedkiller" which does not give the link to the review article. So it is a poor 3rd hand source. What is needed is details of the secondary source, the review of the literature.

We should also ask is the review one which is cherry picking the literature to advance a political agenda or not, for all I know it might be a perfectly honest review which considers the whole literature and not just selected parts. But unless we can get to the review then no one can make a judgement as to how trustworthy it is.

The primary sources are the original research papers on roundup.

About the person whose family member died as a result of exposure to experimental Monsanto products, while it is sad that he died it does not prove anything. How do we know if the person's work involved round up and also how do we know if the occupational exposure was linked to the ill health. With a single case it is impossible to say for sure that the death was caused by an industrial disease given the data (lack of) which we have been shown.

I am not a pro-monsanto person or someone who is trying to protect monsanto, I just want to give them a fair chance. We should not allow trial by witchhunt on WP or guilt by accusation here.

_________________
Health is a state of physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity I am not a jigsaw, I am a free man !

Diagnosed under the DSM5 rules with autism spectrum disorder, under DSM4 psychologist said would have been AS (299.80) but I suspect that I am somewhere between 299.80 and 299.00 (Autism) under DSM4.

It could be a conditional effect of dehydration affecting kidney function leading to an increased vulnerability to certain toxins.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/04 ... al-america

It is sort of funny that Woodpecker has a chemical in his avatar on this thread. That's not punch is it??
I don't like Monsanto,never will.I had an experience with Roundup years ago,I don't have any way to prove it,you'll just have to take my word on it.The Electric co-op did aerial spraying on the power lines one year,they were suppose to avoid water sources,they didn't,they were very sloppy and even got drift on people's gardens and fruit trees.They sprayed over our water source,we didn't know it because the foliage doesn't turn brown instantly.I got sick later with a weird intentional problem,won't go into the details,you really don't want them,did tests for parasites,etc,nothing.Told the doc about the Roundup,said it was possible.Anyway I got better.
I blame Roundup,but I can't prove it.Chemical companies have been know to say something is safe when it isn't,DDT,Malathion,Agent Orange,and so on.They are about profits,not people.

I would rather not say what the chemical is in my avatar, but it is not roundup.

Roundup is not a strong poison to people, it kills plants by preventing the biosynthesis of some amino acids by attacking a pathway which is absent from humans and other animals. Some people are allergic to roundup but I am not sure how common it is or how bad it is. However it is possible to kill yourself with a large dose of roundup, I have heard it normally needs large amounts (over 100 ml) to kill a person.

Why do you mention DDT, malathion and agent orange (24D + 245T) these chemicals have nothing to do with roundup.

I think that roundup is a wounderful chemical which is far better and safer than chlorate, paraquat and the hormone weedkillers such as 24D and 245T. I think that the day that roundup is banned will be a sorry sad day which I hope never comes.

On the other hand roundup should not be used in a careless manner, I think it has a short lifetime in soil so it should not build up in soil or pollute ground water as long as it has had plenty of time to decay in the soil before it is washed into layers from which water is extracted for use by people.

_________________
Health is a state of physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity I am not a jigsaw, I am a free man !

Diagnosed under the DSM5 rules with autism spectrum disorder, under DSM4 psychologist said would have been AS (299.80) but I suspect that I am somewhere between 299.80 and 299.00 (Autism) under DSM4.

I mentioned those chemicals becuse they were thought to be safe,in time they were proven not to be.I think it's ridiculous for someone to go out in the yard and spray a dandelion in the crack of a sidewalk,and I really doubt most even bother to read the safety directions about application.People can be pretty clueless.We were visiting some of my ex's friends once and they were sprinkling these yellow granules around,it was some sort of fly bait,flies eat it and die.They also had chickens running loose and they started pecking at the granules.I looked at the label and it plainly said to not apply around poultry,I mentioned this to them, they just shrugged it off.A week later they told my ex that their chickens were going under the house and dying.People can sure be stupid around toxic stuff.
I don't trust the chemical companies and have little faith in people following directions.

Oh dear about the chickens, I feel sorry for them.

I always read the label before use or otherwise find out how to use it correctly, I wish other people would take the time to read the directions on the packet before using it.

Years ago someone stole a very large drum of something from me, I had left it in a chemical stored marked it with my name. But they took it becuase the first letter of my name was the same as their boss. I think I asked them if they would swap tabasco sauce with tomato sauce, well they two start with a t. This is an example of chemists not reading the label correctly.

_________________
Health is a state of physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity I am not a jigsaw, I am a free man !

Diagnosed under the DSM5 rules with autism spectrum disorder, under DSM4 psychologist said would have been AS (299.80) but I suspect that I am somewhere between 299.80 and 299.00 (Autism) under DSM4.

It's sad because they probably didn't do it on purpose.

Why do you say that roundup accumulates in humans, it is water soluble so it should be something which comes out in urine with ease unlike the breakdown products of DDT which are water insoluble and fat soluble.

Please could you provide me with a source to support your claim.

_________________
Health is a state of physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity I am not a jigsaw, I am a free man !

Diagnosed under the DSM5 rules with autism spectrum disorder, under DSM4 psychologist said would have been AS (299.80) but I suspect that I am somewhere between 299.80 and 299.00 (Autism) under DSM4.

Some good links in this article.
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/dramat ... ate?page=2

Well I could not find a source in the article which suggests that glyphosate can last for a long time inside a human.

A paper was cited (http://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/11/2/2125) which suggests that roundup plus metals causes kidney damage. But it is not about the biological half life of roundup in people, the paper does not appear to me to offer evidence that roundup has a long biological halflife in humans.

Calcium does make roundup less toxic to plants, but does it make it more toxic to humans ? I would like to see some evidence, it is important to note that the above paper is about a hypothesis being suggested rather than being strong evidence to show that something is occuring.

F.M. Garlich et. al. CLINICAL TOXICOLOGY, 2014, volume 52, issue 1, pages 66-71 does indicate that acute exposure to roundup at a high level can damage the kidneys, but the literature does not clearly suggest that long term exposure at a low level to roundup causes damage to the kidneys.

_________________
Health is a state of physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity I am not a jigsaw, I am a free man !

Diagnosed under the DSM5 rules with autism spectrum disorder, under DSM4 psychologist said would have been AS (299.80) but I suspect that I am somewhere between 299.80 and 299.00 (Autism) under DSM4.