Monsanto’s Roundup Is Harmful To Human Cells In Clinical Tests
We need to be very diligent in finding out the truth when it comes to GMOs and the methods big business will use to protect its GMO interests. The methods used can be very tricky and can muddy the truth. There are two issues here. One is the effect genetically modifying crops (soy) have on the body, though we are examining issue two. The second issue is a reason why soy crops are being genetically modified. In this case the reason for genetically modifying soy is so it can be resistant to the Monsanto Roundup herbicide that is sprayed on it.
The Monsanto Roundup herbicide is a very strong pesticide used to kill weeds and genetic modification of soy allows it to be resistance to Roundup. During the debate about whether GMO is harmful or not, we often lose sight of the implications of spraying soy and other crops with harmful chemicals. Dr. Greger’s video below carefully examines the effects of Roundup on our health.
Glyphosate is a major active ingredient in Roundup and the legal level for residue levels of glyphosate in foods had been at .1 to .2 milligrams per kilogram. The residue levels of glyphosate found in GMO soy crops exceed the legal limits by an average of two thousand percent. (It important to note that organic and conventional soy both had no levels of glyphosate). Something had to be done to get the residue levels within legal limits, and something was done.
Pesticide industries were able to convince countries to raise the maximum levels of residue glyphosate to 20 mg/kg which solved their problem. This is where some of the trickery comes into play.
For many years there has been evidence that roundup interferes with embryonic development, may disrupt hormones, and interferes with male fertility, but these have been animal studies and the same effect might not occur in human samples. This left doubt that glyphosate and Roundup had the same effect on human cells as they did on animal cells.
So now tests were done using glyphosate and Roundup on human cells. Since glyphosate is the active ingredient in Roundup a test was done on human cells using the isolated glyphosate ingredient and the test showed that glyphosate didn’t seem to have much of a toxic effect on human cells, even at high doses. This supported Monsanto’s and other herbicide companies’ claim that glyphosate was not harmful. Monsanto could now use this information to support the use of GMO soy and the use of Roundup that is used to protect the GMO soy crop.
The thing is Roundup is not only made up of glyphosate. Roundup is made up of other chemical ingredients that help the glyphosate penetrate cells. When the same study was repeated using Roundup it found that it did have harmful toxic and hormonal effects on the human cells, even at doses less than what is used to spray on crops. Roundup was found to be 125 times more toxic than its active ingredient glyphosate, and was among the most toxic pesticide product tested. It is commonly believed though that Roundup is among the safest herbicides used.
