There is little doubt to honest scientists that Monsanto produces and distributes many chemicals that cause cancer. One notable dissenter was Sir Richard Doll. Doll wrote his name permanently into the history books by making the link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. Interestingly, any scientist actually discovering a causative agent in that alleged link is still headline news. Doll said it, and scientists have been scrambling to actually prove it ever since.

Even more interesting, given that many people have been lead to believe that tobacco use is the most evil and vile cause of cancer known to mankind, is the fact that Sir Richard Doll was on the payroll of Monsanto.

Doll's lung cancer research was based on statistical evidence. He found that cigarette smokers were more likely to contract lung cancer than non-smokers. However, despite statistical evidence of disease in veterans of the Vietnam War who were exposed to Agent Orange (an herbicide produced by his side employer, Monsanto) Doll rejected the idea that Agent Orange was a contributing factor in the disease.

In fact, Doll rejected any link between cancer and chemicals that Monsanto produced, preferring instead to lay the blame on tobacco in a statistical analysis that was dubious, at best. According to the UK toxicologist, Professor Simon Wolff,

...in rural China, where people tend to smoke very heavily and where air pollution is much less, the differences in lung cancer rates between smokers and non-smokers is very small, and lung cancer rates are about one tenth of the lung cancer rates in industrialised countries.

It seems that attacks like those detailed in this article are only one side of Monsanto's war on humanity. On the other side is obfuscation of the fact that the products they produce and the environmental pollution they contribute to are a major factor, perhaps the major factor in cancer deaths and a general decline in health around the globe.

Do you suppose that our "Fearless Leaders" know something we don't? Or at least, they hope we won't pay attention to the research and ask any questions? Things like:

Study finds smoking wards off Parkinson's disease

There is more evidence to back up a long-standing theory that smokers are less likely to develop Parkinson's disease than people who do not use tobacco products, researchers reported on Monday. ... What would cause such a preventive effect is not well understood, said the report in the Archives of Neurology, but studies on test animals suggested two possibilities.

One is that carbon monoxide or other agents in tobacco smoke exert a protective effect and promote survival of brain neurons that produce dopamine, which allows muscles to move properly and is lacking in Parkinson's cases.

Cigarettes may also somehow prevent the development of toxic substances that interfere with proper neurological functioning.

Gee, that reference to carbon monoxide reminds me of something mentioned by psychologist, Andrzej Lobaczewski:

Persons less distinctly inclined in the pathocratic direction include those affected by some states caused by the toxic activities of certain substances such as ether, carbon monoxide, and possibly some endotoxins, under the condition that this occurred in childhood. (Political Ponerology)

And more:

Smoking and Caffeine May Protect Against Parkinson's Disease

Nicotine helps Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Patients

Nicotine Found To Protect Against Parkinson's-like Brain Damage

Nicotine Lessens Symptoms Of Depression In Nonsmokers

Scientists Identify Brain Regions Where Nicotine Improves Attention, Other Cognitive Skills

Then, of course, there is this interesting material that I assembled some years ago:

Can Smoking be GOOD for SOME People?

Just in case you really think that the government is going after smoking for YOUR GOOD, think again. There are many studies that suggest that the problems that are being blamed on cigarettes may have entirely different causes that governments and big business are very interested in covering up.

"Secondhand smoke causes an estimated 46,000 heart disease deaths and about 3,000 lung cancer deaths among nonsmokers each year, according to statistics cited by the CDC."

But how does the CDC arrive at its calculations from those state reports? At least one enterprising reporter, Nickie McWhirter of The Detroit News, tried to find out. Her article was posted on the Internet by the American Smokers Alliance. She wrote:

I recently read that 435,000 Americans die every year from smoking-related illnesses. That sounds like a rock-hard, irrefutable fact, and pretty scary. How are such statistics determined? I phoned the American Lung Association's Southfield office to find out.

No one there seemed to know. However, a friendly voice said most such numbers come from the National Center for Health Statistics. That's a branch of the National Centers for Disease Control. The friendly voice provided a phone number in New York City. Wrong number. The New York office collects only morbidity [the rate of occurrence of a disease] data, I was told. I needed mortality data [the death rate].

Several bureaucratically misdirected calls later, I spoke with someone in Statistical Resources at NCHS. He said his office collects mortality based on death certificates. Progress! Data is categorized by race, sex, age, geographic location, he said, but not smoking. Never. No progress.

He suggested I phone the Office of Smoking and Health, Rockville, Md., and provided a number. That phone had been disconnected.

Was I discouraged? No! Ultimately, and several unfruitful phone calls later, I found a government information officer in Washington, D.C., with a relatively new phone directory and a helpful attitude. She found a listing for the elusive Office on Smoking and Health in Atlanta.

Bingo! Noel Barith, public information officer, said the 435,000 figure probably came from its computers. S&H generates lots of statistics concerning "smoking-related" stuff, he said. It's all done according to a formula programmed into the computers.

Really? Since I had already determined that no lifestyle data on individual patients and their medical histories is ever collected, how can the computer possibly decide deaths are smoking related? Barith didn't know. Maybe the person who devised this computer program knows. Barith promised to have a computer expert return my call. The next day, SAMMEC Operations Manager, Richard Lawton, phoned. SAMMEC, I learned, is the name of the computer program. Its initials stand for Smoking Attributed Morbidity, Mortality and Economic Cost.

The computer is fed raw data and SAMMEC employs various complex mathematical formulas to determine how many people in various age groups, locations, and heaven knows what other categories are likely to get sick or die from what diseases and how many of these can be assumed to be smoking related.

Assumed? This is all guesswork? Sort of. Lawton confirmed that no real people, living or dead, are studied, no doctors consulted, no environmental factors considered.

Lawton was absolutely lyrical about SAMMEC and its capabilities, however, provided one can feed it appropriate SAFs. What are SAFs?

"That's the smoking attributable fraction for each disease or group of people studied," he said. It sounded like handicapping horses. Lawton began to explain how to arrive at an SAF, using an equation that reminded me of Miss Foster's algebra class.

"Wait a minute!" I commanded. "I don't need to know that. I need to know if the SAFs and all the rest of this procedure yield valid, factual information. To know that we must know if sometime, somewhere, some human being or human beings actually looked at records of other human beings, smokers and nonsmokers, talked to their doctors, gathered enough information from reality to BEGIN to devise a mathematical formula that MIGHT be applied to large groups of people much later, without ever needing to study those people, and could be expected to yield TRUE FACTS within a reasonable margin of error. Who did that? Can you tell me, Mr. SAMMEC expert?" [Caps in original.]

Nice guy, Mr. Lawton, but he didn't have a clue. He said he thought the original work concerning real people, their deaths and evidence of smoking involvement was part of work done by a couple of epidemiologists, A.M. and D.E. Lilienfield. It's all in a book titled Foundations of Epidemiology, published about 1980 by Oxford University Press, he said. SAMMEC came later, based on the Lilienfield's [sic] work. Maybe. He wasn't sure.

I was unable to find the book, or the Lilienfields.

So there you have it. Research shall continue, but so far it has only revealed that no one churning out statistics knows anything about smoking and its relationship, if any, to diseases and death. A computer knows everything, based on mystical formulas of unknown origin, content and reliability. Raw data in, startling statistics out. SAMMEC speaks, truth is revealed! Oh, brave new world. Are there 435,000 smoking-related deaths per year in America? Maybe. I can tell you this with absolute certainty, however: No human beings are ever studied to find out. 32

[32. Nickie McWhirter, "Computer blows out smoking-related death figures with no real human facts." The Detroit News, October 18, 1992. Cited in Don Oakley, Slow Burn, pp 240-42.]