DOES MONSANTO DO TO NATIONS WHAT HARVEY WEINSTEIN DOES TO ACTRESSES?

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DeWayne Johnnson



Monsanto has lost the case!

My major issue with Monsanto has tended more in the direction of the food-sovereignty question.  If it is true, as reported, that almost half of the world's largest economies are international corporations, what are the small-economy countries to do to resist the will of mega-companies like Monsanto?  What I don't want is for companies like Monsanto to be able to do to nations what Harvey Weinstein does to actresses.  Monsanto’s PR often presents its as the Savior of the world, but what if your country doesn’t want to be "saved" by Monsanto?  And what about those poor countries, some of whom have very corrupt governments, do want to get ahead and Monanto gives them an offer they "can't refuse"? But even when one tries to search out how different countries feel about Monsanto, as likely as not the first place one will be directed to when doing an internet search is a page of PR spin provided by...Monsanto.
Were the scientific arguments against Monsanto in the case they just lost sound?

I don't know.  

But one thing I do know, 

Wherever there is money involved, science gets tainted,
Wherever there is no money, science tends not to take place.

Already in the early nineteenth century Friedrich Schleiermacher wrote an essay on the very possibility of the University which underscored this problem.

Those who pay for science, often do so because they have an interest in the results. Which means at the very least that where no interested parties are involved no science get paid for. My own view nobody can stand up and say “We are the advocates of pure science, we are not compromised in any way.” Not Monsanto, not the World Health Organization, nobody.

Monsanto's major strong point is that it has the best science money can buy, which is also its major weak point.

Major Premise: Humans incline toward corruption.
Minor Premise: All companies/organizations, even those devoted to fighting corruption, are run by human....

This does not mean that fighting corruption or trying to pursue pure science is useless, only that to the extent that we fail to be realistic about the problem, we will also fail to pursue pure science.

Monsanto has been ordered to pay $289 Million in damages to Dewayne “Lee” Johnson, a former groundskeeper who is dying of terminal cancer, which he believed was caused by long-term exposure to one of Monsanto’s products. I expect the amount represents a mere fleabite for Monsanto, and ten times that amount, one hundred times, would not save Johnson’s life, so what was accomplished? Well for one thing it provides an opening for other similar cases too proceed, which might in the long run constitute a little healthy counter-balance of that corporation's massive power.

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