(Pseudo)science, in the dock

At the end of reading

(Editorial Octaedro, 2022), by Gilles-Éric Seralini, gave me existential vertigo.

I have the impression that the ground, which seems stable, is actually moving under my feet.

Who tells the truth and who lies?

Is Roundup, a product sold for decades by Monsanto, a herbicide that is harmless to health and therefore suitable for sale?

Or is it actually the cause of serious diseases like cancer for those who used it?

In July 2020, a California court ruled in favor of Dewayne Johnson, a 48-year-old gardener suffering from terminal cancer, and condemned the Monsanto company because it believed that Roundup had contributed "significantly" to his illness.

The Bayer pharmaceutical company, which was by then the new owner of the defunct Monsanto, was ordered to pay Johnson 20.4 million dollars, just over 19 million euros, as compensation.

A tree does not make a forest, obviously.

A particular story does not have to become a generalization.

But the fact is that, in the year 2020, there were already 100,000 people who had filed lawsuits against Monsanto for the same reasons as Dewayne Johnson.

I read in the book that that same year, Bayer was forced to sign a 10,000 million euro agreement for those 100,000 plaintiffs to cease their accusations.

Despite this, several tens of thousands turned him down and his lawsuit continues.

Can so many people be wrong?

Gilles-Éric Seralini is not an investigative journalist, but an expert in molecular biology who has written in detail the scientific, media and legal history of the so-called "Roundup scandal".

The book was published in France in 2020. It arrived in Spain last March and in Mexico in April.

The German edition will also see the light throughout this year.

Cover of the book 'The Monsanto Papers'. Editorial Octaedro

Its author is one of the experts who has published the most articles in scientific journals on toxicity and activation and detoxification mechanisms in mammals and humans, as well as on agricultural GMOs (genetically modified organisms) and their pesticides.

As he himself explains in his book, written in collaboration with Jerôme Douzelet, he found himself in the middle of the eye of the hurricane simply because he wanted to carry out his research, publish the resulting conclusions and want to alert public opinion about the dire consequences of the use of Round-up.

Little by little he was earning, without looking for it, the enmity of colleagues from the academy, who accused him of creating problems;

the antipathy of politicians, businessmen and journalists, who among all blamed him for not doing his job well: that is, carrying out investigations not in accordance with the parameters of science.

They were relegating him to his outcast instead of recognizing him as one more voice of authority.

On a trip to England, he was even forced to cancel his schedule.

He was rushed to the hospital and underwent surgery in which he risked losing his life.

The doctors thought he would not survive.

And all because in the London underground a suitcase hit him on the leg, which caused him a certain stinging that he did not give much importance to.

The truth is that he struggled between life and death due to a "streptococcal infection of unknown origin", according to the medical file.

While reading

I had the impression at times that I was watching Alfred Hitchcock's thriller

.

As in the film, the essay tells the story of a normal person, mistakenly considered exceptional, a CIA agent in the film, and therefore faced with an extraordinary situation: forced to constantly defend himself in order to survive. .

If throughout history religious, political, and economic prejudices and interests have prevailed over scientific truth, why should it be different today?

Seralini 's

, according to him, was wanting to reveal the truth and dismantle more than one myth, which means questioning the good faith of companies, politicians, public health control agencies, and journalists.

Hence, the vertigo I felt.

The problem is not just Monsanto's Roundup.

The question falls under its own weight: are we in good hands?

Can we blindly trust the institutions that govern us?

Who is the defender of science and who is hiding behind pseudo-science to justify their interests?

Seralini writes very harsh statements that do not leave almost a puppet with a head.

He denounces that we live in a "techno-scientific dictatorship" imposed by multinationals that impose their production on the market without their innocuousness having been truly demonstrated.

At the end of the book, the biologist charges against the scientific community in general: “Never before has science been so criminal or blind to the degradation of health and the Earth.

Despite the reviews of commissions launched, so many times too late, it is the scientific experts themselves who have justified the massive marketing, and without adequate control tests, of plastics, pesticides, detergents that are corrosive to the brain made with tobacco, GMOs with pesticides, toxic nanoparticles, poorly made or poorly tested vaccines, endocrine and nerve disruptors.”

In this sense, I wrote not long ago that the expression "for sure" has unfortunately passed into history.

As I see it, we all have to keep awake the awareness that science has its limits, not only those of knowledge, but the borders established by the interests that animate and finance it.

Who has forgotten that for centuries it was said and insisted that the Earth was flat and the center of the universe, and that someone even died at the stake for holding a different thesis?

If throughout history religious, political and economic prejudices and interests have prevailed over scientific truth, why should it be different today?