Bayer Should Do Better: Why We Must Kill the Cancer Gag Act
Removing the right to legal recourse after people get sick from exposure to probable carcinogens is bad leadership.
[Image of a post-harvest cornfield provided by AJ Jones]
On Monday, February 10, a crowd packed the rotunda at the Iowa State Capitol for a rally to kill the Cancer Gag Act. The proposed law would shield pesticide manufacturers from legal action brought by the people of Iowa who have developed cancer after years of exposure to the probable carcinogens in their products.
People Are Pushing Back
Cancer can, in its many forms and a small number of cases, be due to DNA; that cannot be helped. Lifestyle choices, such as smoking, alcohol, poor diet, and lack of physical activity can also lead to cancer. Then, there are cancers that are thrust upon the average person by corporate choices that place profit over human lives. For that group, it is only reasonable that those affected have legal recourse when their lives are upended and shortened when they are unable to escape contaminates in their local environment.
This is especially true for the residents of Iowa, where pesticides containing chemicals that are “probably carcinogenic,” according to the World Health Organization, are widely used in corn and soybean fields. They seep into the groundwater and are carried on the breeze.
Iowa has the second-highest cancer rate in the nation, and it’s the only state where cancer cases are on the rise.
Cancer Is a Thief
Anyone who has ever had a family member diagnosed with cancer, no matter the cause, can relate to the toll the diagnosis takes. It begins with the shock and decisions that mark the start of a long and arduous journey. Questions arise around the effects of treatment versus quality of life. Often, 100% recovery is not on the table. The effects of radiation, chemotherapy, and surgery are horrendous. To watch as your loved one’s once-vital life force wanes is soul crushing.
The economic hardship associated with cancer is immense. Lost wages are an issue for the patient and those acting as caregivers. The accumulative time (and money) spent driving back and forth for doctor visits, consultations, and treatments add up, and also take a toll.
It’s a fact of life: In rural Iowa, there is a lot of travel just to obtain access to necessary medical services. Not to mention, in the middle of physical and mental torment are the repetitive calls to insurance companies, where a keystroke decision can mean the difference between going bankrupt or dying.
My stepfather was lucky, in a sense. He lived about 24 years after his cancer diagnosis. In a matter of hours he went from a truck driver who could back an 18-wheeler and trailer into the tiniest space available to a guy who would never again be able to hoist himself up into a big rig’s cab. He was found at work after having a seizure, and a couple of days later, a tumor was being removed from his brain. He was just past 57 years of age, and overnight the plans and dreams he and my mother were working toward disappeared. He was never able to work again.
My mother was, in a sense, not so lucky. At 67 years of age, cancer was found in her lung accidentally during a routine breast-cancer screening. She was a smoker, so no one was really surprised. The effects of chemo and radiation depleted her quickly. She went from being a gutsy, opinionated woman to a husk of her former self. She lived just a couple of years after her cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatments, and spent the last few months of her life addled and unable even to keep her balance.
Life Moves On; Death Moves On…
I share because people have choices in how they live their lives. Sometimes people don’t make the best choices. What bothers me is when there is no choice.
Drinking water, breathing air, and eating food grown from the soil are not poor lifestyle choices. They are the barest of necessities.
No person should be forced to breathe air, eat food, or drink water containing a likely cause of cancer. If companies won’t change the chemicals in their products, and lawmakers won’t outlaw those chemicals, who is footing the bill? It’s the person who is merely doing the things humans do to survive.
By not holding companies accountable and granting them immunity from any legal recourse, the question is, When will there be an incentive for them to change their products to something more sustainable if they are untouchable?
We’re Caught In a Trap…
Why would Iowa GOP legislators want to grant pesticide manufacturers legal immunity from their constituents who are victim to illness and economic harm? Unfortunate connections to campaign contributions and prior allegiances to Big Ag lead to questions about priorities.
Bayer, in the 2018 acquisition of Monsanto, cornered a market in ag toxicity. This umbrella corporation now owns the GMO seed for corn and soybeans, together used in over 95% of Iowa crops. Genetically modified seed that is resistant to…what? The chemical glyphosate, which is an ingredient in the pesticide Roundup, also owned by Bayer.
It was 2015 when WHO listed glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans,” and it is banned in many countries, having been found to be a likely cause of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Bayer, the same company that owns the GMO corn and soybean seeds, and Roundup, also owns the drugs to treat non-Hodgkin lymphoma. (You can’t make this stuff up, folks.)
Being paid on both ends of the equation appears to be the working model when it comes to Bayer. When Bayer acquired Monsanto, there were already thousands of lawsuits filed against the company. (And the number continues to grow.) It isn’t as though Bayer didn’t know what it was purchasing.
Our health should not be for sale.
Shift the Paradigm
There are many ways to do things differently. One possible shift involves Carbon Robotics, based in Seattle and Richmond, Wash., and a technology that zaps weeds with a laser. The company is working to address the overuse of glyphosate.
The LaserWeeder is a machine that can be pulled by tractor. Its lasers scan and lock onto a weed’s meristem (cells that allow replication) with submillimeter precision to eradicate the weed while leaving the crop plants untouched.
[Image from @carbon_robotics on Instagram]
Currently, their main sales have been in the countries which have banned or limited glyphosate use. This is exciting news for the environment, sustainability, and people’s health and safety.
As a lover of the Tulip Time Festival in Pella, Ia., this image of the LaserWeeder at work in a tulip field in the Netherlands caught my eye.
Which raised the question: If the LaserWeeder can work (tip-toeing) through a field of tulips, why can’t it work for row crops? When I called Carbon Robotics to inquire, I was told to keep an eye out for news about their new product line to be announced at the World Ag Expo, happening the next few days, in Tulare, Cali. (For more information, contact Jil Scollard at (206) 849-2657, or check out their website at CarbonRobotics.com.)
What’s Ahead?
We turn to lawmakers to remind them it is their responsibility to be good stewards of both the rights of the people, and the lands they govern.
Obviously, they need to be reminded. So let’s remind them.
AJ Jones is Iowa born and raised. She was a journalist in the Army, worked in the finance and mortgage industries, and in semiconductor manufacturing. As an autistic lesbian, she is deeply committed to neurodivergent and LBGQT advocacy. As a grandchild of family farmers on both sides of her parentage, she is equally passionate about the environmental issues facing Iowa today. She can be found at the following places:
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It is ludicrous that our employees whose salary is paid for by our taxpayer money would vote for coporations over people's health. People who use round up will stilll have acess to it. It's those of us that have or may have cancer that will suffer. Land can be farmed without roundup. Real farmers don't use roundup. I almost feel sorry for those who think growing things is impossible without chemicals.
I wrote a letter to editor in local paper about this horrible bill for Farmers and general public a month ago... Hope you can stop Bayer!!!!!