Carey Gillam’s new book, Whitewash, The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer and the Corruption of Science is so compelling that I read it in one afternoon and evening. It’s carefully researched; skillfully written.
I’ve personally followed and reported on the safety and regulatory aspects of Roundup since it swept through crop fields across America. I was intrigued to learn the many details on regulatory cover-ups that Carey Gillam exposed from below the secretive layers within FDA, EPA and USDA.
May 20, 2018 By Jerry Carlson — It’s tempting to compare the book Whitewash with Rachael Carson’s Silent Spring. Carson’s classic was published in 1962 as she struggled to finish the book before dying of cancer. Silent Spring unleashed a public fury that swept in America’s ban on DDT, once praised as totally safe around humans.
Now, Gillam’s Whitewash makes it clear that America’s battle to document and disclose glyphosate’s impact on health is far more subtle and sinister than the DDT disaster. Glyphosate’s financial stakes are higher. The political pressure is vastly greater. And the worldwide damage to human health may eventually prove far more severe.
My fear is that America’s “silent springs” in coming years won’t be only missing birds, bees and butterflies. It will be the silence of departed Dads. Moms. Sons. Daughters. Grandkids.
My wife and I live on a small farm surrounded by GMO corn and soybean crops. For many counties around us, farmers have sprayed Roundup or generic glyphosate formulations once or more every season for almost 20 years. We’ve never used Roundup on our crops, which are all non-GMO. But my wife and I have both endured cancer in the past 10 years. Hardly a week goes by without hearing of another friend or relative who just received a biopsy report: “It’s cancerous.” We’re motivated to become keenly aware that glyphosate residues infest virtually all our food, water and soil.
Carey Gillam’s case-by-case analysis documents the struggles to evaluate glyphosate’s health consequences, and regulate ag chemicals responsibly. She concludes on page 248:
“The damage already accrued to the environment and to individual lives cannot be undone. But the evidence of the dangers of glyphosate and other agrochemicals can no longer be suppressed, can no longer be whitewashed. The time to act is now. Some steps forward are small; others require a more aggressive stride. But we cannot stand still.”
I encourage you to read Whitewash, available through Carey Gillam’s website and its link with Amazon. When you’ve finished reading so many alarming facts about so many regulatory coverups which have persisted for decades, you’ll probably be tempted to lay down the book and say, “Nothing I can do about it.”
But there is something you can do.
For the future of your own health as a farmer, and for your family’s health, you can begin planning and managing to make your own farming operation glyphosate-free in an orderly transition, if you haven’t already. We work with many farmers who already do. Gillam’s book is a motivator. Don’t wait until a cancer diagnosis becomes your motivation.
Carey Gillam lives in Overland Park, Kansas, with her husband Don and three children. Coincidentally, also living in Overland Park is our longtime friend, Dr. Arden Andersen, whose medical practice focuses on healing patients suffering from multiple toxins. He’s an articulate opponent of glyphosate. He puts it bluntly in seminars with farmers who insist on spraying glyphosate and other toxic chelators: “What is there about your grandchildren that you don’t like?” Sometimes, a few farmers walk out after hearing that challenge. We’ve cited several warnings from Dr. Anderson and others like Dr. Huber in previous reports on this site. (Oh yes… Arden’s frustration with “things as they are” in our food and society is so profound he’s running for Governor of Kansas. The Democratic primary election is Aug. 7.)
Gillam’s book makes it clear: USDA, EPA, FDA and the “regulatory” watchdogs have long been so chained and muzzled by the pesticide/biotech industry that you can’t expect any government agency to actually protect you, or your food-buying clients. Many government scientists are objective and dedicated to the public. But they’re often curbed by superiors in political-level pay grades. Government agencies haven’t even systematically measured glyphosate residue in foods and the environment. Their excuse: It’s safe as table salt… Hundreds of scientific studies prove that… Waste of money to measure it. Even label warnings on GMO-linked foods, the primary carriers of glyphosate residue, have been thwarted and disguised by federal lawmakers under intense lobbying pressure.
Whitewash exposes the regulatory weaknesses around glyphosate with the same penetrating documentation that attorney Steven Druker presents in his book on regulatory failures of GMO crops, Altered Genes, Twisted Truth. Side by side with Whitewash, the whole hidden scenario is finally taking shape.
Millions of your food customers in America and worldwide aren’t waiting on government protectors. They’re buying non-GMO or organic, in hopes of at least reducing the glyphosate load which laces most ag products, even baby food. If an open rebellion against glyphosate residues ignites in America like it has in many overseas nations, non-GMO growers who’ve substituted their own management for the “easy” traited crops and their linked herbicides are likely to see non-GMO price premiums widen profitably.
I’ve been an ag journalist for over 50 years, and greatly admire Carey Gillam’s research and writing ability. You will too. She interviewed many of our longtime friends, like Dr. Don Huber, Dr. Bob Kremer, Dr. Michael McNeill and others. Her affiliation with the U.S. Right to Know organization helps empower her with the legal clout to extract hard-to-find facts via Freedom of Information requests.
For several years our Renewable Farming website has reported many of the case histories of glyphosate damage which Gillam documents in her book. But she goes deeper, revealing facts behind the scenes with the intensity of a spy hunt, excavating the roots of the corporate and political adversaries in these cases. Such as the “regulators” who disparaged Argentine physicians in their struggle to provide chemical-free zones around glyphosate-sprayed rural villages where childhood cancer and endocrine disruption has soared. Such as the officials who overturned a glyphosate ban imposed after Sri Lanka rice growers were devastated by unexplained kidney disease. Such as U.S. regulators who’ve blocked epidemiological studies in the U.S. which could track links between glyphosate and many diseases such as endocrine disruption and human gut biome destruction.
You’ve heard it takes a village to raise a child. But will our cities and villages even raise enough healthy children to regenerate a healthy, prosperous future for America? The answer depends largely on you. And your farming neighbors. Don’t wait on a captive “protection agency” in Washington. You don’t have enough time.