The Highwire with Del Bigtree - NEW ‘PARAQUAT PAPERS’ EXPOSE DEADLY SIDE EFFECT

Episode Date: December 4, 2022

The herbicide Paraquat has now been linked to increased risk of developing Parkinson’s Disease. Newly uncovered documents show that the manufacturers of Paraquat knew of these risks years ago. With the U.S. one of the few large countries still using this toxic chemical many are asking where is the EPA?Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

This is a piece by Carrie Gilliam. She's a longtime investigative researcher into environmental contamination. And her article here at the new lead, this is actually a new publication, Secret Paracquot papers reveal corporate tactics to protect weed killer linked to Parkinson's disease. Paracquot is an herbicide, just like glyphosate. And it's actually replacing glyphosate on the U.S. market because glyphosate is, you know, getting phased out in the popular culture because of the lawsuits and all of the, the papers that have come forward, the internal document showing the damage is caused and how they

knew it. So Paraguat is getting the same treatment right now. So this is what this article had to say, looking at a lot of these discovery documents. In one defensive tactic, the documents lay out how the company worked behind the scenes to try to keep a highly regarded scientist from sitting on an advisory panel for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The agency is the chief U.S. regulator for Paraquot and other pesticides. Company officials wanted to make sure the efforts could not be traced back to Syngenta, the document show. So there's one of the reasons that, you know, our regulatory agencies may be kind of having issues with this is because the industry is stacking them, you know, in their own documents,

is stacking them with people that favor their products. The article goes on to say in this research, as independent researchers continue to find more and more evidence that Paraguat may cause Parkinson's, the documents describe what Syngenta called an influencing strategy that proactively diffuses the, the potential threats that we face and to maintain and safeguard Paraquot registrations. The strategy must consider how to best influence academia and regulatory and NGO environments. So that's the conversation is Pariquot is leading to the development of Parkinson's, which is a horrible degenerative disease, neurological disease.

And so, you know, looking at the story, people are saying, well, what do we do about this? Well, here, this next graph, this next chart, this is an easy one. you look at this, you can see use by year and crop. This is Pariquot. This is from the U.S. Geological Survey. You can see here, obviously, it's been going up quite a bit. Obviously, in 2014, 2016, 2018, you're seeing it skyrocket. Those are really the years that glyphosate has been under a big microscope. So there's a switchover from glyphosate to Pariquot. But you can see corn, soybeans, and cotton. You're not going to be obviously eating cotton, but soybeans and corn are really the two biggest users of this. And they spray them on the fields, but they also

spray it on after they pick the crop as a drying agent. So there's a double, double shot on there they get. So when we're talking about Parkinson's, too, if you put that graph back up, the disease is the disease of Parkinson's blamed for causing almost 330,000 deaths in 2019. That's an increase of more than 100% since 2000. So if you look at 2000, you have an 100% increase in Parkinson's deaths, essentially. You can see since 2000 on this graph, there's an increase there. Now, you know, weak correlation maybe, but, you know, this is, this is what investigation we're trying to do here is, is keep people from, you know, give people an understanding of maybe how to avoid some of these things. But again, like Groundhogs Day, similar playbook. We have, you know, I almost want to call it an attack profile of these corporations,

you know, defend, deny. So we had, um, uh, Syngenta. That's the maker of Paracour. and Chevron, the oil company, they were another producer of Paraguat, but they had an interesting come to Jesus' moment, if you will, in 1985. And this was one of their internal memos. This is what it says here. Pariquot. Now, a Canadian study at that time came forth with a lot of information about Paracquot, and they added this to the memo, and they said, Pariquot is chemically very similar to the

byproduct of synthetic heroin manufacturer, NTPT, which produces almost instant Parkinson's by killing dopaminergic neurons in the brain. Pariquot is among the agricultural chemicals used in the area of Canada in which an extraordinary high correlation, 0.967, was found between levels of pesticide use and Parkinson's cases. The incidences of the disease in the area was about seven times the rate in areas where use was low. So Chevron officials looked at this and they said this. The bankruptcy of the asbestos manufacturer, the Manville Corporation, has high highlighted the especially severe financial risks involved in selling a product, which contribute

to a chronic disease. Parkinson's can go on for decades. So in this memo, they're saying, look, we're an oil company. We brought, you know, in the early 1900s, we broke off from standard oil. We do oil. This Paraguat thing could bankrupt our entire company, one product, because this goes on for decades. So what do they do? 1986, Chevron exits the Paraguat market. Gone. So now we have Syngenta. And Syngenta currently is facing over 2,000 lawsuits, alleging Paracquot caused Parkinson's. And those are going to start being heard in February of 2023. So we'll definitely be reporting on those first trials. But in early 2000, so now we have this handoff to Sygenta. They're the big dog in town, so to speak, when it comes to this paraquot, this chemical, this herbicide.

And so in the early 2000s, they started doing their own in-house testing. Now this is where it gets really interesting because we've seen a lot of seen a lot of this Johnson and Johnson as well but when they started doing their own testing their position at that time in the early 2000s was to defend the idea that Paraquot does not cross the blood brain barrier so that's their defensive position okay so look at this slide from the early 2000s because it doesn't cross the blood brain barrier seems simple enough great talking point to defend for legislative so look here highlighted this was highlighted by somebody else but avoid measuring paraquot levels in the brain, since the detection of any paraquot in the brain, no matter how small,

will not be perceived externally in a positive light. This is their research activity at Syngenta strategy to be followed. Don't look at the brain. The best way to prove that it doesn't cross the blood-brain barrier is don't do any tests on the brain. I mean, folks, this is exactly what the CDC and the NIH, and this is what they just did with the COVID vaccine. Don't test if it's stopping infection, then we don't have to say to the world, it doesn't work. You know, don't test the heart or the lungs or the kidneys or the liver to see if the vaccine is actually going there, because if you do, then we can't say it stays located in the arm.

They want to be able to lie to you so they avoid doing the most obvious science. Like a study to prove it doesn't go to the brain, that doesn't involve looking in the brain. I mean, you can't make this stuff up. It would be a comedy if there weren't so many lives being destroyed by this level of corruption. Exactly. And, you know, as we continue just put out these playbooks, hopefully it becomes so just normal to understand this is how the operation happens. Anybody listening will just reflectively not believe because this is the playbook. So in 2011, there's a study that came out that really just threw everything, threw everything out the window when it came to defending Paraquot and causing Parkinson's. So this was on the NIH's own website. This was the press release. NIH study finds two pesticides associated with parking. So it's kind of over at that point. And this was Tanner. He was the lead author on this. Rottenau, Paraguat and Parkinson's disease. This is the study. And it says in here, and this was really one of the big nails here, results in 110 Parkinson's disease cases and 358 controls. Parkinson's disease was

associated with use of a group of pesticides that inhibited mitochondrial complex 1, including rotanow and with use of a group of pesticides that cause oxidative stress. including paraquot. And if you see the OR after the word paracrot, that's the odds ratio is 2.5. So you have a 2.5 times higher rates of Parkinson's disease when you use this paracot than not using it in this study. And it says the authors went on to say, to our knowledge, we have performed the first analysis, a pesticide classified by presumed mechanism rather by functional categories, you know, example of herbicides or chemical classes, example of organochlorines. We found significant associations of Parkinson's disease with use of groups of pesticides classified as complex one inhibitors

or as oxidative stressors providing support in humans for findings from decades of experimental work in particular Parkinson's disease was strongly associated with Rottenau and Pariquot. So with that being- And I don't understand by what they're saying that we think we've performed the first actual study of Paraquot in directly how it affects the human body, unlike the modeling we've done, looking at herbicides in general and other things in general that we used to approve this, right? That's what they're saying. They didn't look at the actual product. This is the first time ever. Once they finally did that actual study, as it turns out, we shouldn't have been spraying

this all of your crops for the last 20 years. Right. And that, you know, understand that was similar to glyphosate. Remember, glyphosate is only one. It's the active ingredient in Roundup. All the other ingredients weren't tested. So there's one one ingredient. How about synergistically testing these ingredients? That was the big secret with glyphosate. Here's the other angle with Syngenta, and this is an overlay for the vaccine conversation, for the drug conversation. So they influenced the regulators, and they did so directly by this internal memo. This is from 2003. And in 2003, the European Union was about to vote to reinstate Paracot throughout the entire European Union. So they had a strategy. This is the regulatory strategy 2003. And this is in their executive summary. And listen to the word,

see if you can pick this out. Pariquot continues to attract significant regulatory and NGO scrutiny, often as a result of the perceived environmental persistence or acute toxicity hazard to man. Development of science, particularly in the field of neurotoxicity and the development of precautionary regulatory policy over risk-based decision-making, present the prospect of additional challenges in the future. So they're saying the development of science is a challenge to our product. Regulatory agencies wanting to take a precautionary principle is a challenge to our product. How do you read between the lines?

I mean, honestly, people, someone wrote that. I mean, someone wrote that. A panel of people sat around and read it and said, I like that languaging. That's perfect language. That states it. Now we know what our mission is. Our mission here is to figure. out how to get the European Union to not see how toxic our product is, and forget that

Chevron backed out of this, because, man, we got billions of dollars to be made here, and this toxicity problem is really getting on our way. These are human beings supposedly that literally put that in ink and sit around and go, yeah, all right, that's good, this should work. We should be able to push this stuff through and get it back into innocent people's lives. And I'm sure we'll pay off a couple regulatory agents to help us with the process. Right, right. And going back to that same document, if you want to see pressure points, so if you flip these words around in this next sentence, you can see the pressure points that the corporations

are really concerned about. So it says here in that same internal memo, that strategy executive summary, retailers and other organizations are increasingly placing Paraquot on a negative or blacklist based on image, hazard, or perceived risks, indicating that growers cannot use the product. together these developments present a serious threat to Syngenta's Gramoxone business objectives. So that's how you do it. You place Paraquot on a negative or blacklist. You make it unappealing to retailers.

And that's a really big deal to these companies. So in 2007, so there's a short window in the European Union, 2003 to 2007. In 2007, the European Union court reimposes a ban on Paraguat weed killer. That was the headline out of Reuters at the time. Yep. And they basically said, they found in court. court that the the regulars did not do the sufficient testing to see if this harms humans. They said there was plenty of evidence and studies and they did not look at those and incorporate

those in. So we're banning it. It's been banned ever since, it's banned today. So that brings us to headlines like this current one here. And the big question that might be on people's minds in America, why does the U.S. allow a controversial weed killer banned across the world? And if you look at this map here, these are the few countries that still allow Paraquot, you know, arguably one of the most toxic herbicides. U.S., Argentina, South Africa, India, Australia, and Japan. And in 2021, the U.S. greenlit further use of paraquot, so that was up for a reanalysis. They said, hey, move along, nothing to see here.

Keep it going, guys. But there's going to be a reanalysis. But as people are waiting for this reanalysis by the EPA, this is what is happening behind the scenes. California is being urged the regulators in that state. California urged to ban Parkinson's linked herbicide paraquot. So you have a lot of NGOs, even Michael J. Fox's organization, a foundation is in here, really pushing California to do this on a state-by-state level to get some action.

So instead of waiting for the federal government, this is why these votes are so important to get people in here that will move this needle on points that matter like this. Yeah, really. I mean, all three of those stories are all sort of, linked in many ways to the stories we keep telling. And it's what I say. You know, my feeling, Jeffrey, and I think life has shown me that people lie, they cheat. From the time we're little kids, we have our hand in the cookie jar who took the cookie, wasn't me, I wasn't there, you can't prove anything. It doesn't matter if your, you know, BP oil and you spill oil,

if you've got a product that's poisoning people, time and time again, only after a multi-billion dollar lawsuits, do we get these interned emails and we see the right to, you? And we see the right where they actually admit, yeah, we got this problem. We got to figure out how to hide it from everybody. And these people poison us. They poison our children. They poison us. They poison our food supply, our water supply.

And you know who's not stopping them is helping them get away with it? Our own regulatory agencies. And then you see that map. Can we bring that up really quickly? If you have any idea, if you really believe that US is really, you know, the greatest nation in the world, and we have the best scientists in the world, look how few people in the world still allow this guard. to be sprayed on their food.

And the U.S., that bright red burning horror show, that's what our regulatory agencies are doing for us. That's what currently the Biden administration is doing for us. Thank you very much. Yeah, just keep putting in, you know, people from Shenzhena and Monsanto into our EPA and our FDA and just keep putting, you know, Pfizer and Merck

and, you know, Sinopia Ventus executives into our CDC and NIH. And we'll just see how well this plays out for our longevity as human beings.