Genetic Engineering and Eugenics

Colin Todhunter writes:

In order to govern and control a population, apart from the use of violence, people’s consent must be achieved via what Louis Althusser once called ideological state apparatuses: the education system, entertainment, religion, the political system and so on. Noam Chomsky’s book ‘The Manufacture of Consent’ discusses the important role of the media in this, and Antonio Gramsci wrote much about hegemony – the methods used by the dominant class to legitimize their position in the eyes of the ruled over – a kind of ‘consented coercion’ that disguises the true fist of power.

However, possibly the most basic and arguably effective form of social control is eugenics, a philosophy that includes reduced reproductive capacity of ‘less desired’ people.

There is a growing fear that eugenics is being used for the purpose of population control – to get rid of sections of the world population that are ‘surplus to requirements’. In the West, due to automation and the outsourcing of jobs, there is likely to be a large section of the population that will be permanently unemployed or underemployed. In places like China, Africa and India, promoting birth control has been high on the agenda for some decades.

Millionaire US media baron Ted Turner believes a global population of two billion would be ideal and billionaire Bill Gates has pledged hundreds of millions of dollars to improve access to contraception in the developing world. Based on the misguided premise that the world is getting overpopulated, fewer people means elites and the better off can reduce the competition for the resources they covert so much and maintain their current high levels of material consumption. Gates has also purchased shares in Monsanto valued at more than $23 million. His agenda is to help Monsanto get their genetically modified organisms (GMOs) into Africa on a grand scale.

Here’s where things get interesting. In 2001, Monsanto and Du Pont bought a small biotech company called Epicyte that had created a gene that basically makes the male sperm sterile and the female egg unreceptive. In the US, GM foods are already on the market and unlabeled. The GM sector has spent millions to ensure this remains the case. US citizens thus have no idea of what could be in their food. These foods where not independently tested for their impact on health.

Would you like to know whether you are eating stuff that (according to Professor Seralini of the University of Caen in France) damages health?

Would you like to know if what you are eating contains something that could make you sterile?

Bill Gates’ father has long been involved with Planned Parenthood:

“When I was growing up, my parents were always involved in various volunteer things. My dad was head of Planned Parenthood. And it was very controversial to be involved with that.”

The above quotation comes from a 2003 interview with Bill Gates.

Planned Parenthood was founded on the concept that most human beings are reckless breeders. Gates senior is co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and a guiding light behind the vision and direction of the Gates Foundation, which is heavily focused on promoting GMOs in Africa via its financing of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).

The Gates Foundation has given at least $264.5 million to AGRA. According to a report published by La Via Campesina (The Peasants’ Way) in 2010, 70 percent of AGRA’s grantees in Kenya work directly with Monsanto and nearly 80 percent of the Gates Foundation funding is devoted to biotechnology. The report also explains that the Gates Foundation has pledged $880 million to create the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP), which is a heavy promoter of GMOs.

Rather than embrace a move towards genuine food sovereignty and address the underlying political and economic issues that cause poverty, the Gates Foundation has chosen the promotion of corporate-controlled agriculture which has led to the disempowerment of farmers.

As the GM sector continues to hammer at India’s door, we have every right to be concerned, not only because of the much reported impact of seed monopolies and GMOs’ well-documented detrimental effects on health and the environment, but also because of concerns over just which genes may be in the foodstuffs that we eat and are unknown to us.

Researcher F  William Engdahl states that genetic engineering cannot be understood without looking at the global spread of US power. Leading figures in the US financed ‘Green Revolution’ in the agriculture sector of developing countries in order to create new markets for petro-chemical fertilizers and petroleum products, as well as to expand dependency on energy products. Food has now become weaponised to secure global dominance.

The world’s problems are not being caused by overpopulation, but by greed and a system of ownership that ensures wealth flows from bottom to top. It’s not about stopping population growth in its tracks, but about changing a widespread global system and mindset that is based an over reliance on oil and unsustainable depletion of natural resources, with the US being the biggest culprit.

Millionaires like Ted Turner believe it should be a case of carry on consuming regardless, as long as the population is cut. This is the ideology of the rich who regard the rest of humanity as a problem to be ‘dealt with.’ He says there are “too many people using too much stuff.” He couldn’t be more wrong. For instance, developing nations account for more than 80 percent of world population, but consume only about one third of the world’s energy. US citizens constitute 5 percent of the world’s population but consume 24 percent of the world’s energy. On average, one American consumes as much energy as two Japanese, six Mexicans, 13 Chinese, 31 Indians, 128 Bangladeshis, 307 Tanzanians and 370 Ethiopians (mindfully.org)

So, should we be weary of a hugely politically connected sector that has ownership of technology that allows for the genetic engineering of food and a gene that could be used (or already is) for forced sterilization? Of course we should. This is a sector whose stated objective is to control the world’s food chain and, by implication, the global population.

In today’s technologically-driven world, state-corporate concerns are using the full panoply of hi-tech means to control us. Some decades ago, theorist and social philosopher Herbert Marcuse summed up the problem facing modern society by saying that the capabilities— both intellectual and technological— of contemporary society are immeasurably greater than before, which means that the scope of society’s domination over the individual is also immeasurably greater than ever before. It appears none more so than where the GM sector is concerned.

Monsanto's Plan To Dominate The World Food System

William Allen writes,


One of its most detested practices is its employment of Pinkerton “seed police” to monitor and investigate farms – organic or not – in the vicinity of other farms that are growing crops from its patented genetically modified (GM) seeds.

Woe to the family farmer who has the misfortune of not preventing pollen that has travelled from GM crops ten or more miles distant from pollinating a single plant in his or her field. Monsanto’s glass-towered legal hyenas will file suit for patent infringement.

According to Food Democracy Now – a non-profit consumer advocate group (I dislike the term “consumer,” but for the sake of familiarity I’ll use it) – Monsanto’s notorious agents investigate (bully) nearly five hundred farms in the US every year. Thus far, nearly two hundred farmers have been hauled into court while several hundred more have settled out of court for undisclosed sums.

While it is regularly the lawsuit plaintiff, Monsanto is no stranger to the defendants’ table, here and abroad. It has endured several major civil and federal lawsuits during the past three decades. Last July a consortium of nearly 300,000 individual farmers, 4,500 organic farms and several seed companies, all at risk of having their products contaminated, brought a pre-emptive lawsuit in an attempt to compel the company to cease its intimidation and litigation practices mentioned above. In February of this year the judge , almost mocking the plaintiffs, dismissed the suit, ruling “these circumstances do not amount to a substantial controversy and there has been no injury traceable to the defendant.” The farmers filed an appeal last week.

Monsanto is also co-defendant in a recent lawsuit brought by a number of small, family owned Argentina tobacco farms. The farmers claim they were forced to use Monsanto’s herbicides and pesticides without the required training and protective equipment, thus causing debilitating health effects to themselves, deformities to many of their newborn children, and serious environmental damage.

One can be certain a corporation this huge, wealthy and powerful has handmaidens in both state and federal government. Monsanto and its corporate biotech bretheren have spent more than half a billion dollars in campaign contributions and lobbying in Washington alone during the past ten years. And it’s paying off. (#Occupy Monsanto proclaims that Congress is now “GMO contaminated.”)

We learned from the Wikileaks memo dump, for example, that the US State Department has acted as a foreign frontman for Monsanto, muscling governments abroad into permitting GM crops to be grown despite widespread objections by those nations’ farmers and environmentalists.

A few months ago the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) inexplicably deleted from its website one million signatures and comments from a public petition calling for GMO labeling. (Current and former FDA deputy commisioners - old hands at passing through the well-greased revolving door between industry and its purported regulator – have been Monsanto lawyers. Might that offer us a clue?)

Last month, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (Ind-Vt) introduced to the pending 2012 Agricultural Appropriations Bill (Farm Bill) an amendment that would allow states to pass legislation requiring food and beverages to be labeled as to whether or not they contain genetically engineered ingredients. The amendment was soundly defeated, with twenty eight Democratic senators joining their Republican counterparts despite several recent national polls that reported ninety percent of citizens want their food products labeled for GMO’s.

A new insidious strategy has recently come to light. Apparently, even a corporate colossus like Monsanto, accustomed to swatting away bothersome lawsuits like mosquitos, eventually wearies of swatting. Why not drain the swamp and prevent litigations from harassing us at all! It was revealed last week that the chair of the House Sub-Committee for Agriculture, Jack Kingston (R-RoundUp) attached a rider to the Farm Bill that would allow the Department of Agriculture (USDA) to flip-the-bird at courts and issue permits for cultivation of independently untested GM crops even if a court has issued an injunction against it. (Late last year, Kingston was unironically voted 2011-2012 “Legislator of the Year” by the Biotechnology Industry Organization, a trade association that represents Monsanto, Dow , DuPont and other biotech heavies.)

Food safety and organic farm organizations have gone to Red-Alert. Food Democracy Now states on its website: “This dangerous provision…would strip judges of their constitutional mandate to protect consumer rights and the environment., while opening the floodgates for the planting of new untested genetically engineered crops, endangering farmers, consumers and the environment.”

Take Action: Rep. Pete DeFazio has introduced an amendment that will kill the Kingston rider. The final bill may reach the floor of both houses in just a few days. It is imperative that we flood our congresspersons and senators with demands that they either approve the DeFazio amendment, remove the insidious rider during reconciliation, or failing those, defeat the Farm Bill altogether. (In addition to weakening already feeble GMO regulation, other provisions of the Farm Bill in its present form have led many of the above mentioned groups along with social welfare organizations to call it: “the worst piece of farm and food legislation in decades.”)

According to the Center for Food Safety, nineteen state legislatures considered some kind of GMO food labeling laws during the past year. So far, none have passed. Could that be due to aggressive lobbying or intimidation by the biotech giants? Ask Vermont. In April the legislature began the process of considering a bill that, if passed, would require food manufacturers to label products that are created partially or wholly from GM organisms. In addition, products with GM ingredients could not have the word “natural” and its variants, alone or in any combination with others such as “naturally grown,” on the labels. Monsanto publicly threatened to sue the state if the measure was approved. The bill is currently stalled in committee.

Monsanto and its allies are probably counting on the reality that in the current crappy economy, with state budgets hemorrahging red ink, few lawmakers (regardless of what the public wants) will have the stomach to battle the corporate Goliaths in costly court cases that can be dragged on for years.

Having achieved “Check” for the time being with state governments, the biotech, processed food, and grocery mega-companies have trained their gunsights on us – the voters of California.

Like the Pentagon sending nearly every carrier-led battle fleet into the Persian Gulf bathtub, these corporations are pouring millions of dollars into California to defeat the Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act (Prop. 37), a ballot initiative – similar in language to the proposed Vermont legislation – that will be voted on in November. More than a million voter signatures were gathered on petitions by the California Right to Know Campaign to qualify the initiative for the ballot.

Californians can expect to be bombarded by disinformation speakers, op-eds, and ads “paid for” by phony, industry sponsored “concerned citizens” groups with names akin to “Citizens Against Job Killing Regulations,” etc. Actually, two have now run-up the colors: the Coalition Against Costly Food Labeling, a start-up, industry backed group whose chief talking point is that open labeling will increase food prices and thus be an added burden to already struggling families; and California Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse, who claim with straight faces that GMO labels will render small businesses and family farmers vulnerable to costly lawsuits.

The hypocrisy of the latter deserves a derisory belly laugh A group co-funded by Monsanto - the company that has sued or threatened to sue several hundred US farmers at the drop of a pollen grain – is warning California’s organic growers and vendors that a law written in part to protect them will expose them to lawsuits.

Both opposition arguments have been thoroughly discredited by reputable scientists, economists and experienced advocacy organizations, on the web and in print publications – easy for readers to find.

The essential issue is that the biotech industry, the food processors who use its products, and anti-GMO groups nationwide recognize the trend setting potential of this upcoming vote. If voters in the most populous state pass this labeling initiative it could galvanize citizens in other states to follow. They also recognize, given a growing public awareness and avoidance of GM foods, that the final outcome of such a trend may be radical: the end of GM poisons in most of the nation’s diet. Battle over.

Will California voters play the role of the no-name gunfighter who confronts and defeats El Diablo Monsanto and his gang in that Spaghetti Western?

Here‘s how Ronnie Cummins of the Organic Consumers Association put it  (via Mercola.com):

“For decades (Monsanto has) controlled the food supply by buying off politicians and regulatory agencies, intimidating small farmers, manipulating the outcomes of scientific studies, lying to consumers…

Despite Monsanto’s claims to the contrary, scientists are clear: genetically engineered food has been linked to a wide range of health hazards, including kidney and liver damage, infertility, auto-immune disorders, allergies, autism, accelerated aging and even birth defects. We have the right to know if the food we buy has been genetically engineered… It’s time to take back our food, our farms, our power. It’s time to show Monsanto what ordinary people like us can do when we come together.”

Via: "CounterPunch"

World's First Genetically Modified Humans Created

By MICHAEL HANLON
July 01, 2012
Courtesy Of "The Daily Mail"

The world's first genetically modified humans have been created, it was revealed last night.

The disclosure that 30 healthy babies were born after a series of experiments in the United States provoked another furious debate about ethics.

So far, two of the babies have been tested and have been found to contain genes from three 'parents'.

Fifteen of the children were born in the past three years as a result of one experimental programme at the Institute for Reproductive Medicine and Science of St Barnabas in New Jersey.

The babies were born to women who had problems conceiving. Extra genes from a female donor were inserted into their eggs before they were fertilised in an attempt to enable them to conceive.

Genetic fingerprint tests on two one-year- old children confirm that they have inherited DNA from three adults --two women and one man.

The fact that the children have inherited the extra genes and incorporated them into their 'germline' means that they will, in turn, be able to pass them on to their own offspring.

Altering the human germline - in effect tinkering with the very make-up of our species - is a technique shunned by the vast majority of the world's scientists.

Geneticists fear that one day this method could be used to create new races of humans with extra, desired characteristics such as strength or high intelligence.

Writing in the journal Human Reproduction, the researchers, led by fertility pioneer Professor Jacques Cohen, say that this 'is the first case of human germline genetic modification resulting in normal healthy children'.

Some experts severely criticised the experiments. Lord Winston, of the Hammersmith Hospital in West London, told the BBC yesterday:

'Regarding the treat-ment of the infertile, there is no evidence that this technique is worth doing . . . I am very surprised that it was even carried out at this stage. It would certainly not be allowed in Britain.'

John Smeaton, national director of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, said: 

'One has tremendous sympathy for couples who suffer infertility problems. But this seems to be a further illustration of the fact that the whole process of in vitro fertilisation as a means of conceiving babies leads to babies being regarded as objects on a production line.

'It is a further and very worrying step down the wrong road for humanity.' 

A spokesman for the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), which regulates 'assisted reproduction' technology in Britain, said that it would not license the technique here because it involved altering the germline.

Jacques Cohen is regarded as a brilliant but controversial scientist who has pushed the boundaries of assisted reproduction technologies.

He developed a technique which allows infertile men to have their own children, by injecting sperm DNA straight into the egg in the lab.

Prior to this, only infertile women were able to conceive using IVF. Last year, Professor Cohen said that his expertise would allow him to clone children --a prospect treated with horror by the mainstream scientific community.

"...adding that he had been approached by 'at least three' individuals wishing to create a cloned child, but had turned down their requests.