More on Monsanto...

Monsanto spent $2 million on lobbying in Q1 2009
[From grist.org]

Monsanto dominates the global market for GMO seeds like Microsoft dominates the operating-system software market.
You don’t skirt around antitrust enforcement like that without having good friends in Washinton. And to make friends, you’ve got have guys in suits working the Hill and the agencies. La Vida Locavore’s ever-enterprising Jill Richardson got her hands on Monsanto’s first-quarter lobbying disclosure form (PDF). Turns out, the GMO-seed giant spent $2 million pushing its agenda in Washington the first three months of the year.
[...]
Monsanto’s other big legislative concern? Strengthening already-draconian patent protection for the GMO seed industry—the one it dominates like Microsoft dominate operating system software.

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Monsanto Planting Seeds in the White House?
[From opednews.com]

Apparently, President Obama is considering appointing Michael Taylor to head the new Food Safety Working Group. Who's Michael Taylor? From Food Politics (care of Jill Richardson):
Mr. Taylor is a lawyer who began his revolving door adventures as counsel to FDA. He then moved to King & Spalding, a private-sector law firm representing Monsanto, a leading agricultural biotechnology company. In 1991 he returned to the FDA as Deputy Commissioner for Policy, where he was part of the team that issued the agency's decidedly industry-friendly policy on food biotechnology and that approved the use of Monsanto's genetically engineered growth hormone in dairy cows.
His questionable role in these decisions led to an investigation by the federal General Accounting Office, which eventually exonerated him of all conflict-of-interest charges. In 1994, Mr. Taylor moved to USDA to become administrator of its Food Safety and Inspection Service... After another stint in private legal practice with King & Spalding, Mr. Taylor again joined Monsanto as Vice President for Public Policy in 1998.

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The flu leaves us with a wake-up call [A Biased Appraisal by Henry I. Miller]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-oped0508flumay08,0,1653211.story

By Henry I. Miller*

Just when concerns about H5N1 avian flu seemed to give way to other worries -- especially the flagging economy -- a new strain of H1N1 swine flu swept into our consciousness. Its most recent predations, and the responses to them, led virtually every newscast for two weeks.
[...]
Characteristically, pronouncements from the World Health Organization, an agency of the highly politicized and self-serving UN, have not been reassuring. Most flu and public health experts consider that their decision last week to raise the pandemic flu threat to the penultimate Level 5, "Pandemic Imminent," far outpaced the data and was alarmist and unwarranted. The "imminence" of a pandemic has pushed governmental authorities and individuals into unwise decisions: unnecessary school, business and event closings and purchases of anti-flu drugs on the Internet -- as often as not, a source of counterfeits. But flawed decision-making is typical of the WHO, an organization that is scientifically mediocre, unaccountable and self-serving, and whose policy role should be limited. [Why?]
[...]
Although pandemic strains of flu often are both qualitatively and quantitatively much worse than the seasonal flu viruses, the H1N1 virus causing the current outbreak seems to be relatively benign. Except for Mexico (for reasons that remain unclear), illnesses have generally been mild, hospitalizations few, and mortality minimal. Where are we, then, after about two weeks of accumulated knowledge and widespread publicity about the outbreak? For one thing, we're bedeviled by cost-benefit decisions of all sorts. Only hindsight will pick the winners and losers, but it appears that U.S. public health officials -- particularly those at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health -- have acted with appropriate judgment and restraint: They continue to accumulate, analyze and disseminate information and to offer advice to the public and health professionals. They are preparing for a worsening of the situation but are not overreacting. They have made testing kits widely available around the country and abroad. Their research laboratories are working around the clock, performing sequencing and other analyses of swine flu isolates, and they are preparing contingency plans should the situation change suddenly. Perhaps most important, they are not making dubious, alarmist pronouncements. [Really?? So it's just an illusion created by the media? Geez....]

*Henry I. Miller, M.S., M.D., is a fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. A physician, molecular biologist and former flu researcher[?], he headed the Food and Drug Administration Office of Biotechnology from 1989 to 1993. [In other words, Mr. Miller joined the Food and Drug Administration in 1979 and served in a number of posts. He was the medical reviewer for the first genetically engineered drugs evaluated by the FDA and was instrumental in the rapid licensing (Meaning, without following the proper protocols for licensing...don't forget who were the presidents during the time Miller was in the FDA) of human insulin and human growth hormone. Thereafter, he was a special assistant to the FDA commissioner, with responsibility for biotechnology issues, and from 1989 to 1993 was the founding director of the FDA's Office of Biotechnology. During his government service, Miller participated frequently on various expert and policy panels as a representative of the FDA or the U.S. government. Miller was short-listed in 2006 by the editors of Nature Biotechnology as one of the personalities who had made the "most significant contributions" to biotechnology during the previous 10 years. Miller serves on numerous editorial boards and is an adjunct scholar at several thinktanks...Scary credentials, knowing what we know today]
For the entire article, go to chicagotribune.com