Have you ever met a business major?

It's probably no more morally corrupt than being a tobacco lobbyist.

1. Lobbyists usually recruit from the ranks of lawyers.

2. Not all of any one major is evil. Some people are legitimately just trying to escape poverty.

Seems like people trying to escape poverty through education often want to do it by doing something useful to society, like engineering, medicine, etc.

People taking business majors seem to be the sort forced by their parents to go to get their inheritance.

Or they play sports for the school and get that degree in the mail later.

This guy wouldn't know, because he's not a Monsanto lobbyist. I don't know how or why this video went viral without the slightest bit of fact checking, but this is Patrick Moore, and he's a former environmentalist. He's definitely a bit of an asshole these days, but he's not linked with Monsanto.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Moore_%28environmentalist %29

The fact that a video went viral without any fact checking is depressing but also not surprising in the least. Thanks for clarifying, though I doubt anyone will acknowledge your correction. "Bit of an asshole" just doesn't have the same ring to it as PAID MONSANTO SHILL.

Perusing that Wikipedia article makes me suspect that this was probably started by one or another Internet environmentalist enclave.

Yes.

No, he doesn't. If anything, evil corporations should hire more people who lack filters.

He should have said something like, "Oh, but I drank a quart earlier today and I'm watching my weight. You know how many calories that shit contains."

No, you just look offended and tell them you're Jewish. It's not kosher so you can't drink it, bunch of insensitive antisemites.

How much of it did they eat?

People like this should be forced to subsist solely on their own products.

They are forced to eat The Stuff at the end of The Stuff.

There was a time before anyone realized there were problems with DDT; at first it really seemed to be a magic substance that could do no wrong.

Here's a guy eating DDT with porridge:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtcXXbuR244

DDT is still approved in the US, by the way -- but for disease control purposes only.

If I remember right, DDT actually IS safe to eat like that because of the rate that your body absorbs it - you're just going to pee it out. It's long term exposure, mostly for people working in crops, that's the real hazard. And the people behind the "eating DDT" stunts were well aware of this, or at least the "you'll just pee it all out so don't worry" part.

Could be confusing it with a different pesticide but I'm pretty sure it was DDT. I looked for the famous clip of the company president(?) drinking a glass of it on TV but can't find it.

"And the people behind the 'eating DDT' stunts were well aware of this, or at least the 'you'll just pee it all out so don't worry' part."

Gonna have to ask you to back that up, citizen. The fact that DDT's side effects are long-term and subtle makes it entirely plausible that, at least at first, they genuinely couldn't see any harm that DDT caused.

Bear in mind that there was great faith in the can-do nature of science for much of the 20th century, before your time and mine. We were born into the era when thalidomide babies were showing up and it seemed every new scientific advancement came at a price.

Well that's why I said "if I recall correctly" but to clarify, I'm thinking of one very specific, high profile stunt where the major US manufacturers of DDT send, I believe, the CEO on national TV with his wife to eat DDT in specific response to the calls for a ban, probably in the late 60s. I haven't seen the clip in the better part of a decade, though, and I haven't had much luck digging it up quickly (and don't have the time to really research) so yeah, take it with a grain of salt for now.

It's also very possible hat I'm mixing elements of the 1947 film linked earlier with J. Gordon Edwards eating DDT by the spoonful in the 70s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Gordon_Edwards_%28entomologis t_and_mountaineer%29

Actually, they used it to make a briefly popular cocktail. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Slim

So plenty of people were ingesting it, apparently.

In Zappa's autobiography he talks about his father's work as a chemist on army bases around the Southwest when he was a child. One of the perks was unlimited free DDT, he said they usually had one or two 50 pound bags in the closet.

"And the people behind the "eating DDT" stunts were well aware of this, or at least the "you'll just pee it all out so don't worry" part. "

That's the humanity I know!

You are missing the point. The Monsanto representative made that exact claim. His entire purpose in appearing on this program is to mislead the public by making a memorable statement that stupid people will remember and repeat--"You can drink a glass of RoundUp and be fine." It doesn't have to be true in reality for it to be true in the minds of the ignorant or gullible.

If he isn't called on that bullshit, and instead some poindexter rambles on about safety data sheets, the lobbyist has won. People will be less likely to care about any investigation or regulation.

Okay, good point.

The issue isn't whether glyphosate is safe, its whether its safer than other herbicide alternatives. On that count, there's not much contention that it is indeed safer to humans and the environment than other broad spectrum herbicides like paraquat, dichlobnil, diuron, or sethoxydim.

There are certainly organic alternatives that are still safer, but they are all MUCH more expensive to farmers and entail more tilling and soil erosion. Some organic herbicides (eg. inorganic copper) are potentially more hazardous to human health.

The moron in this video deserves to lose his job as a PR hack. The benefit in GMO herbicides is not that they're harmless, its that they're relatively lower in cost, human health and environmental harms, and soil damage.

It should be noted that the patents on both glyphosate and glyphosate resistance genes have long expired. Roundup isn't really a Monsanto issue, but an entire seed-industry issue, these days. Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta, Groupe Limagrain, Land'O Lakes, KWS, Bayer Crop Science, Sakata, DLF-Triflium, and Takii are all members of the seed oligopoly.

The lack of forward-thinking in corporations is the most appalling thing to me. There's nothing wrong with entities making huge sums of money, unless they aren't spending that money on constructive long term plans. Agriculture is without question the most powerful force that humanity has created. The fact that the largest corporation that benefits from it is solely focused on shareholder profits rather than advancing the fields of robotics, computation, topology, solar power, etc; is the greatest criticism of pure capitalism that can be devised.

I did not intend for that to be a reply, but it works.

When I make my first billion dollars, I will devote it all to advancing the science of topology.

Muahahaha!

Ahh, the Grand Seed Oligopoly. I believe we had an encounter with them on Rigel 7.

You are all missing the point. This man is not and never has been a Monsanto representative. The entire purpose in him appearing on this program is to mislead the public by making a memorable statement that stupid people will remember and repeat "A Monsanto representative said that you can drink a glass of RoundUp and be fine."

I love how his argument was that people REGULARLY FAILED, which implies a margin of success.

"You can drink a whole quart of it and it wont hurt you"

"You Can Drink A Whole Quart Of It And It Wont Hurt You"

"YOU CAN DRINK A -WHOLE- QUART OF IT AND IT -WONT- HURT YOU"

The parts of the interview that were edited out make it clear that they were talking about a different interview he'd given where he was discussing the 100:1 concentration used in farming, and while I assume that would probably make you sick, in context what he said is actually closer to the truth than the title of the video itself.

Although I suppose "French tabloid pulls a fake gotcha interview with some dumbass who's shilling golden rice and wind him up and edit it to make him sound extra stupid and anti-GMO activists lie about it and almost everyone falls for this because using Google to fact check retarded sound bytes is beyond their capability" wouldn't fit in the title field.

What's your job exactly? Perhaps you can tell me about the golden rice?