The world according to Monsanto : pollution, corruption, and

dioxin: manipulation and corruption 65have been contaminated by food or by breast milk from their own mothers.We also know that dioxin can produce chromosomal anomalies, which mayalso explain the transmission from one generation to the next.”“Have you verified that the parents of these children have dioxin in theirbodies?”“According to admission records, 70 percent of the children treated herehave parents living in areas that were sprayed by defoliants. Unfortunately,tests to detect dioxin are very expensive—about g1,000—and there are nolaboratories in Vietnam that are able to perform them. The only time we didhave a test done was on the mother of Viet and Duc, Siamese twins bornwith three legs, one pelvis, one penis, and one anus, whom we successfullyseparated. We found a rather high level of dioxin in her fatty tissue. Mycountry’s medical authorities estimate that 150,000 children today have deformitiesdue to Agent Orange and that 800,000 people are ill.”“Are their birth defects characteristic of dioxin?”“No, but dioxin acts inside cells like a hormone favoring the growth ofdeformities and diseases that exist otherwise.”“How do you explain that a company like Monsanto and even some Americanscientists continue to deny the existence of a link between dioxin exposureand genetic deformities?”“It’s history repeating itself. First they denied the link with cancer, andnow, to avoid responsibility, they deny the link with birth defects.”Among the thirteen diseases currently acknowledged by the UnitedStates to be linked to dioxin, only one is a birth defect, spina bifida.* “Theproblem,” explained Professor Arnold Schechter, who was in Ho Chi MinhCity at the time of my visit, “is that we lack scientific data. Only animal studieshave been done: they show that when a female is exposed to dioxin theprobability that she will have offspring with severe handicaps or deformities,including cerebral deformities, increases considerably.” A professor at theUniversity of Texas, Schechter is one of the world’s most eminent dioxinspecialists. In the early 1980s, he defied the American embargo on Vietnamand joined with scientists in Hanoi to conduct long-term research on thedissemination of dioxin in the environment.*Latin for “spine split in two.” Spina bifida is a defect in the spinal column in which one or morevertebrae are not correctly formed during gestation, forming a space that allows the spinal cord tostick out.