democracynow
Published on Feb 21, 2014
http://www.democracynow.org
- We speak with a University of California scientist Tyrone Hayes, who
discovered a widely used herbicide may have harmful effects on the
endocrine system. But when he tried to publish the results, the
chemical's manufacturer launched a campaign to discredit his work. Hayes
was first hired in 1997 by a company, which later became agribusiness
giant Syngenta, to study their product, Atrazine, a pesticide that is
applied to more than half the corn crops in the United States, and
widely used on golf courses and Christmas tree farms. When Hayes found
results Syngenta did not expect -- that Atrazine causes sexual
abnormalities in frogs, and could cause the same problems for humans --
it refused to allow him to publish his findings. A new article in The
New Yorker magazine uses court documents from a class-action lawsuit
against Syngenta to show how it sought to smear Hayes' reputation and
prevent the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from banning the
profitable chemical, which is already banned by the European Union.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Hello and thank you for visiting my blog. Please share your thoughts and leave a comment :)