Monsanto Claims That Chemical Glyphosate in Roundup is ‘Medicine’

You might be willing to spray some Round-Up on some particularly nasty weeds to get rid of them. And it will do that. But did you ever consider its possible use as a medicine? Let’s hope not — and please do not. But that does not mean that a component of Roundup hasn’t been considered for medicinal purposes. The U.S. Patent Office allowed Monsanto to patent it as a medicine:

While you’d be hard pressed to find anyone willing to use a known herbicide for medicinal purposes, that hasn’t stopped Monsanto from patenting the star ingredient of their flagship herbicide, Roundup, as a type of antibiotic. In 2003, the corporate giant first submitted a patent for glyphosate as a parasitic control-type antimicrobial agent — or, in other words, a type of antibiotic.

The patent was granted in 2010, and you can view it here. Monsanto patented the combination of glyphosate and polyvalent anion oxalic acid as a method for preventing and treating pathogenic infections like malaria.

It sounds like you need a chemistry degree to understand this article, but that’s not true. Apparently, Monsanto discovered that a component of Roundup could be used to make an antibiotic for humans. But then there’s a problem.

Recent research has revealed that the herbicide could indeed be a contributing factor to the “superbug” epidemic that is being seen around the world. Scientists from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand have piloted new research that shows glyphosate is not just an herbicide, but a potential vector for antibiotic-resistant disease.

The study is the first of its kind. Professor Jack Heinemann, from the university, says that while herbicides may be tested for their ability to kill bacteria, they are not tested for what other effects they may have on microbes.

“We found that exposure to some very common herbicides can cause bacteria to change their response to antibiotics. They often become antibiotic resistant, but we also saw increased susceptibility or no effect. In most cases, we saw increased resistance even to important clinical antibiotics,” Heinemann commented.

We’re familiar with the problem of antibiotics being used so frequently that the microbes they are designed to attack change and become resistant to that antibiotic rendering it far less useful. Could this same thing be happening with the widespread use of Roundup? Could Roundup be making some conventional antibiotics prescribed for humans useless?

There’s another problem, too. It could be that glyphosate is also damaging the “good bacteria” that resides in a person’s gut.

Pathogenic bacteria are not the only microbes susceptible to the ill effects of glyphosate. The bacteria that reside in the human gut can also be harmed by the toxic herbicide. The very same shikamate pathway that glyphosate uses to target weeds and pathogenic bacteria species is the same pathway it would use to destroy the friendly and beneficial bacteria that inhabit the intestinal microbiome. This, of course, would come with its own host of adverse health effects.

Source: Natural News

Photo: Rodalesorganiclife