I never do "National Novel Writing Month," which takes place in November. By and large I think the world has enough novels and, when new novels go slowly, there's usually a good reason.
Many years ago I wrote a novel about the "chronic mononucleosis," or whatever other name people gave it, some schoolmates and I had after having measles vaccinations from that batch, in Michigan. Well, it was fun at the time. The word at the time was that disease novels, however happy their endings, just didn't sell. The world has been spared my CFIDS novel. You're welcome.
This month, however, a niche publisher has specifically asked for disease novels...and I've chosen to stack the odds against myself by writing a whole new one, in one month, about the more timely topic of celiac disease and the celiac-like reactions non-celiacs have been having to glyphosate. I suspected in 1996 that there was some reason why four people living in one neighborhood got four different diagnoses for one identical symptom. At least two of those four diagnoses turned out to be accurate: I have the celiac gene, and my father, who didn't have that gene, was reacting to a prescription medication he was using. One of the four diagnoses turned out to be dead wrong: the man who was told he had fourth-stage cancer is alive and working today. But why did we all have the same symptom at the same time? I look back and can't believe that it took me until 2015 to make the connection...that was when other popular agricultural poisons were being displaced by "Roundup" in my part of the world.
I've made the decision to try to write up what I've been learning as a fact-based novel. Living people's identities will be falsified; events and documents will be accurate. I'll continue sharing and retweeting evidence as it rolls in, because it is rolling in by the truckload--the more people report that glyphosate is making us sick and/or ill, the harder the Monsanto Chemical Company seems to be pushing the stuff. I'll try, though, to put it all in one place, other than this web site, and then pray fervently that future #phenology posts won't have to continue documenting the horror and anguish #glyphosate is inflicting on plants, animals, and humans I know.
After closing on Friday the cafe plans to reopen on Wednesday the third of January. What will I do with all that offline time, when the weather won't be enticing me to take on some sort of outdoor chore? Curl up with a warm computer of course. Thanksgiving holidays were for the cookbook; Christmas-to-New-Year's will be for the novel.
This unfolding story is just so weird, Gentle Readers. Last night I was exposed to a TV news program where the news reader warned people that even egg-free cookie dough now needs to be considered unsafe to eat, because raw grain products may cause E. coli reactions. Now how would that happen? Because "Roundup-Ready" grain has been bioengineered to withstand spraying with glyphosate, even directly on the standing grain, by having DNA spliced into it from E. coli! Back when this bioengineering experiment was going on, E. coli grain "only" made a lot of poorer, darker-complexioned people in the Philippines sick, and there was a lot of foofarah about GMO grain released in the U.S. having been made with a strain of the bacteria that was less harmful to humans. Well...prolonged exposure and all that. Rich Anglo-Americans are now about to share those Filipinos' experience! Even those whom glyphosate has not already allowed to share the Irish celiac experience! And people just don't want to recognize the evidence that is jumping up and down and yapping in their faces...oh, cognitive dissonance is sooo hurtful!
But of course, Steve Milloy seems a little too eager to tell us...the morning after we learn that raw flour now harbors E. coli, we learn that (Monsanto-funded) studies did not show glyphosate to be a (direct, primary, unmistakable, SLAPS-you-in-the-face) cause of cancer.
https://junkscience.com/2017/12/monsantos-roundup-glyphosate-no-carcinogen-concludes-epa/
This web site is not surprised. This web site is not old enough to remember how long it took to prove that cigarettes (dioxin in the bleached white paper more than nicotine in et per se) caused cancer--but its writer and founding members are. Glyphosate produces a wider range of reactions than nicotine does; nicotine is downright predictable. And a lot of money is going into this denial.
Here's my latest activist e-mail, this one addressed to the E.P.A., spun off another Friends of the Earth form:
"
The extent to which different factors promote cancer may be impossible to prove, but I know for sure that glyphosate exposure makes me sick. I didn't want to live through years of experiments to confirm this; others have forced those experiments on me. Breathing glyphosate in the air makes my nose run. Eating glyphosate-contaminated food makes my colon bleed.
I suspect the only reason why studies fail to show one consistent health risk for glyphosate is that genetic factors cause people to react differently. I've seen five people in one house each show a different reaction--but all of them reacted after exposure to this poison.
Walking through a neighborhood, I can tell when some fool's been spraying glyphosate somewhere by the dead songbirds on the ground. Last summer I was able to save my adult cat after she'd eaten one of those birds and become ill, but not the foster kittens she'd just started allowing to nurse...and my house wren also died. I lost plants and helpful insects that were dear to me.
Because the mountain spring close to my home was contaminated, I became unable to drink, cook with, or bathe with my own water. I've known I had the celiac gene for about twenty years, and everyone in town knows I'm an alien freak who can't eat human food anyway...but several of the people who drank that water after it was processed through the town water system have been sick too, and they don't know why.
One friend complained that ever since she had flu *last March* she had bronchitis and vertigo and felt unable to drive or enjoy her grandchildren, some days worse than others, but she couldn't predict or control which days. A few minutes later she mentioned spraying "Roundup" on her garden. I asked whether there was any correlation with her bronchitis and vertigo. She screamed! She hadn't wanted to see it, but the correlation was there.
*In theory*, Monsanto says, glyphosate interferes only with photosynthesis. Over the years since this poison has been used, I've seen that in reality that's just not true.
I find it particularly ironic that the claim that glyphosate *may* not be a *primary* cause of cancer came out hours after the CDC admitted that GMO grain containing DNA from E. coli might give people the E. coli reaction. For those of us who have the celiac gene, wheat is worse than E. coli in any case--but corn, rice, soybeans, nuts, and just about all foods other than wheat, *used to* be safe and we *used to* be able to expect a normal healthy life if we just avoided one food.
Now, in this glyphosate-saturated world, I never know what I can eat with any confidence about not being sick the next day.
I urge the EPA to revoke glyphosate’s registration and pull it from use.
(Yes, this is a form provided by an organization. I'm sure whoever reads this letter has read dozens or hundreds of copies of the data provided in the form below...what I wrote above this paragraph is fresh data from a separate person.)
Apart from significant risks to human health, the U.S. Geological Survey routinely finds glyphosate in U.S. waterways. Ecological data also reports that glyphosate and glyphosate-formulated products are toxic to aquatic organisms and are extremely lethal to amphibians.
Independent studies have found concentrations of glyphosate in human urine and breast milk. Recent studies even indicate glyphosate has the potential to be even more harmful in combination with other chemicals.
In the past 19 years, glyphosate use in U.S. agriculture has increased 20-fold. Glyphosate’s long term impacts are just starting to be apparent with monarch decline serving as just one example. Glyphosate is widely used among the monarchs' migration route -- virtually wiping out milkweed, the only food young monarchs eat. A recent report found monarch butterflies would need a 5-fold increase to recover from risk of quasi-extinction.
Monsanto’s glyphosate is harming our environment and the very ecosystems we depend on for sustainable food and farming systems -- and it’s also harming our health.
The studies are clear -- we need action now. I urge the EPA to protect our health and the environment by revoking glyphosate’s license and pulling it from use.
Sincerely,
(Fair disclosure: Maybe I should have mentioned that pesticide poisoning of amphibians is wiping out the primary natural predator on mosquitoes, which spread diseases. Maybe not. Scott Pruitt undoubtedly knows that and a few dozen other people probably reminded him. But any students out there who may be looking for a winter term paper topic might want to check out the latest updates on endangered frogs and toads.)
For those who feel moved to share your own thoughts, insights, "Aha" moments, gross-outs, whatever, with Scott Pruitt and our Environmental Protection Administration (U.S. readers only, please), click here to open the form and send your own e-letter. German, Italian, and Polish readers, a group I hope includes some old e-friends from Bubblews and even AC, have your own glyphosate ban campaigns, with which this web site wishes you well.
For Amazon, a book about monarch butterflies...it's National Geographic, so you know the pictures will be awesome. (So are the butterflies.)
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