The world according to Monsanto : pollution, corruption, and

the bovine growth hormone affair, part one 101the national statistics and found that the rate of breast cancer among Americanwomen older than fifty has increased by 55.3 percent between 1994,the year rBGH was put on the market, and 2002. 12 Similarly, a study conductedby Dr. Gary Steinmann of Albert Einstein Medical College in NewYork showed that American women who consume dairy products every dayare five times more likely to give birth to twins than those who don’t, andthat the rate of twin pregnancies increased by 31.9 percent between 1992and 2002. All of that is the work of IGF-1.” 13“All right,” I said, rather taken aback, “but the GAO conducted an investigation.What did that produce?”“Not much. Without exaggerating, I would say that it capitulated in theface of lack of cooperation from the FDA and especially Monsanto.”In fact, at the initiative of the GAO, Congress asked the National Institutesof Health (NIH) to review the scientific findings on rBGH. From December5 to December 7, 1990, the NIH held a special conference, whichcame to very cautious conclusions but nonetheless recommended that“more research be conducted” to determine the acute and chronic actions ofIGF-1, if any, in the gastrointestinal tract.” 14 Three months later, it was theturn of the American Medical Association (AMA) to publish an article: “Furtherstudies will be required to determine whether ingestion of higher thannormal concentrations of bovine insulin like growth factor is safe for children,adolescents, and adults,” wrote the association’s Council on ScientificAffairs. 15“The FDA and Monsanto completely disregarded these recommendations,”Epstein said angrily. “That’s why I say their attitude is criminal.Worse: with respect to the problem of residues of antibiotics, everything wasdone to obstruct the search for truth.” Recall that one of Richard Burroughs’smajor worries had to do with the effect of the transgenic hormoneon the frequency of mastitis. Mastitis is an infection treated with antibiotics,which pass into the milk in the form of residues. The milk drinkerswallows these residues, which are in turn absorbed by the bacteria populatinghis or her intestinal flora. If you add to that the fact that this samemilk drinker may be prescribed antibiotics for conditions such as colds,which are not caused by bacteria and thus cannot be treated by antibiotics,or for very minor bacterial infections, you can understand why many bacteriathat were thought to have been conquered since Arthur Fleming discoveredpenicillin in 1928 have become resistant to antibiotics. The result, of