The world according to Monsanto : pollution, corruption, and

44 the world according to monsantonam veterans, “for a very simple reason: the two principal manufacturers,Dow Chemical and Monsanto, deliberately concealed the data they had inorder not to lose a very lucrative market. I’m not afraid to say that this wasan out-and-out conspiracy.”*With offices in Oakland, California, Gerson Smoger has specialized inenvironmental pollution cases—as noted, he represented residents of TimesBeach—and he has also been prominent in class actions against pharmaceuticalgiants and tobacco companies. But his most important workinvolves Agent Orange. For years he has been collecting thousands of documentsin his office basement, carefully arranged in numbered boxes, a mindbogglingsight. “It takes months to consult them all,” Smoger said with asmile at my look of distress. “But I have been able to find proof that the behaviorof Dow Chemical and Monsanto was criminal. First, contrary to whattheir executives said, they regularly tested the dioxin content of their products,but they never transmitted their results to the public health or militaryauthorities. The Monsanto case is particularly serious, because the AgentOrange the company produced in its Sauget factory contained the highestlevel of dioxin.”Smoger was referring to a memorandum from Dow Chemical dated February22, 1965, describing a meeting of thirteen executives of the firm inwhich they discussed the toxicity of 2,4,5-T. They agreed to organize a meetingwith other manufacturers of Agent Orange, including Monsanto andHercules, “to discuss toxicological problems caused by the presence of certainhighly toxic impurities” in samples of 2,4,5-T. “The meeting was keptstrictly confidential,” said Smoger. “Dow spoke of an internal study thatshowed that rabbits exposed to dioxin developed severe liver lesions. Thequestion was whether the government should be informed. As a letter, ofwhich I also have a copy, proves, Monsanto criticized Dow for wanting to revealthe secret. And the secret was kept for at least four years, the yearswhen the spraying of Agent Orange reached a peak in Vietnam.”By late 1969, government authorities could no longer say that they wereuninformed: a study conducted by Diane Courtney for the National Institutesof Health (NIH) found that mice subjected to significant doses of2,4,5-T developed fetal malformations and produced stillbirths. 20 The news*Seven companies produced Agent Orange: Dow Chemical, Monsanto, Diamond Shamrock, Hercules,T. H. Agriculture & Nutrition, Thompson Chemicals, and Uniroyal.