Brazil Admits Birth Defects Are Not Caused by the Zika Virus

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2016/08/16/birth-defects-brazil-not-zika-virus.aspx

Floridatexan wrote:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2016/08/16/birth-defects-brazil-not-zika-virus.aspx

Joseph Mercola, doctor of osteopathy, is a popular guru of alternative medicine and a member of the right-wing quack outfit Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. He advocates and provides a forum for many classic crank medical ideas, such as vaccine hysteria and the belief that modern (sorry, "allopathic") medicine kills more people than it helps. His website is a veritable spring of pseudoscience, quackery, and logical fallacies. He is a promoter of the idea of an AMA/Big Pharma/FDA conspiracy.[1]

Despite his claim that unlike other doctors, he is not interested in profit,[2] he advertises all manner of unproven products, and has a health center that dispenses alternative medicine for a steep price.[3]

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Joseph_Mercola

Thanks for the info, Bob.

http://www.march-against-monsanto.com/catastrophic-birth-defects-in-brazil-may-be-caused-by-glyphosate-not-zika-virus-study/

Forgotten Study Shows Favorite Monsanto Chemical May Be Cause of Birth Defects in Brazil, Not Zika

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I worked briefly for the international division of a Houston-based chemical company (a former client of the ad agency where I was employed)...very briefly, because I soon realized that the chemicals they were marketing to foreign countries were banned in the US. Several countries have now banned glyphosate, the main ingredient in RoundUp (TM). According to the article, Brazil surpassed the US in the use of pesticides in 2012, and the incidences of microcephaly are in areas of Brazil where high concentrations of glyphosate are used.



http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/tx1001749

Glyphosate-Based Herbicides Produce Teratogenic Effects on Vertebrates by Impairing Retinoic Acid Signaling


Alejandra Paganelli, Victoria Gnazzo, Helena Acosta, Silvia L. López, and Andrés E. Carrasco*
Laboratorio de Embriología Molecular, CONICET-UBA, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Paraguay 2155, 3° piso (1121), Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina
Chem. Res. Toxicol., 2010, 23 (10), pp 1586–1595
DOI: 10.1021/tx1001749
Publication Date (Web): August 09, 2010
Copyright © 2010 American Chemical Society
* Corresponding author. Phone: +5411 5950 9500 ext. 2216. Fax: +5411 5950 9626. E-mail: acarrasco@fmed.uba.ar.

Abstract:



The broad spectrum herbicide glyphosate is widely used in agriculture worldwide. There has been ongoing controversy regarding the possible adverse effects of glyphosate on the environment and on human health. Reports of neural defects and craniofacial malformations from regions where glyphosate-based herbicides (GBH) are used led us to undertake an embryological approach to explore the effects of low doses of glyphosate in development. Xenopus laevis embryos were incubated with 1/5000 dilutions of a commercial GBH. The treated embryos were highly abnormal with marked alterations in cephalic and neural crest development and shortening of the anterior−posterior (A-P) axis. Alterations on neural crest markers were later correlated with deformities in the cranial cartilages at tadpole stages. Embryos injected with pure glyphosate showed very similar phenotypes. Moreover, GBH produced similar effects in chicken embryos, showing a gradual loss of rhombomere domains, reduction of the optic vesicles, and microcephaly. This suggests that glyphosate itself was responsible for the phenotypes observed, rather than a surfactant or other component of the commercial formulation. A reporter gene assay revealed that GBH treatment increased endogenous retinoic acid (RA) activity in Xenopus embryos and cotreatment with a RA antagonist rescued the teratogenic effects of the GBH. Therefore, we conclude that the phenotypes produced by GBH are mainly a consequence of the increase of endogenous retinoid activity. This is consistent with the decrease of Sonic hedgehog (Shh) signaling from the embryonic dorsal midline, with the inhibition of otx2 expression and with the disruption of cephalic neural crest development. The direct effect of glyphosate on early mechanisms of morphogenesis in vertebrate embryos opens concerns about the clinical findings from human offspring in populations exposed to GBH in agricultural fields.

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http://www.globalresearch.ca/is-it-zika-virus-or-pesticides-and-birth-defects/5504928

My dad ran a couple of ad agencies in Houston. Foote, cone, and belding... and Ketchum, McCloud, and Grove. (Not sure about spelling) Any chance you worked for them? He also started his own agency and started a magazine that's still in publication. He also worked with several cartoonists.

PkrBum wrote:My dad ran a couple of ad agencies in Houston. Foote, cone, and belding... and Ketchum, McCloud, and Grove. (Not sure about spelling) Any chance you worked for them? He also started his own agency and started a magazine that's still in publication. He also worked with several cartoonists.

Ketchum is familiar, but no, I worked for Corporate Services, Inc., Yudell Communications and Karolik Advertising. I don't know if any of them are still in business. My nephew actually works for a printing company that took over the space Corporate Services once occupied...so he's in the same buildings where the agency and mail operation were located; the print shop was a few blocks away...Lithocraft. I'm not sure where I heard of Ketchum...maybe the Addy Awards.

My dad got an award for helping create a public service ad about pollution. The one where the Indian paddled his canoe though garbage and then had a tear at the end. Bob looked it up on YouTube once... but I think everyone in our generation saw it. It was a pretty cool time to work in advertising I bet.

From your linked article, Tex...

It’s well known that glyphosate, the main ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup, has been dubbed a probable human carcinogen by the WHO...

I've related this before, but my Dad worked a career at Monsanto so I regularly played the golf course Monsanto operated for it's employees and their families.
The time I used the course the most was in the early 70's. Roundup was first released in 1974. Before that, when they would have been testing the product prior to release, is when I was on the golf course.
I vividly remember the chemical smell that golf course had. And I also remember that whenever my skin made contact with the grass, it would make my skin crawl.
And then 40 years later I developed Lymphoma cancer.

I also remember years later encountering a man who worked for Monsanto as a Roundup salesman. To sell the product to commercial and industrial buyers, he would pour a glass of pure Roundup and drink it to show them how safe it was. He even offered to drink a glass of it to show me.
That was probably 25 or 30 years ago. I have little confidence he's still alive today.

PkrBum wrote:My dad got an award for helping create a public service ad about pollution.  The one where the Indian paddled his canoe though garbage and then had a tear at the end. Bob looked it up on YouTube once... but I think everyone in our generation saw it.  It was a pretty cool time to work in advertising I bet.

That was indeed a great, unforgettable ad and I'm impressed that your dad was involved in it. Agree with your statement about advertising at that time (vs. now, especially).

RealLindaL wrote:

PkrBum wrote:My dad got an award for helping create a public service ad about pollution.  The one where the Indian paddled his canoe though garbage and then had a tear at the end. Bob looked it up on YouTube once... but I think everyone in our generation saw it.  It was a pretty cool time to work in advertising I bet.

That was indeed a great, unforgettable ad and I'm impressed that your dad was involved in it.   Agree with your statement about advertising at that time  (vs. now, especially).

I think we should tape Rick Scott's eyeballs open and make him watch that ad over and over again!!

Yes...it was one of my favorites...still is...and I had a blast working in advertising then, although it sometimes felt like MAD MEN.