It’s a nightmare scenario: an herbicide used to kill weeds is discovered in vaccines, threatening to turn disease-preventing and often life-saving inoculations hazardous to health and even life.
The campaigning anti-chemical group Moms Across America [read Genetic Literacy Project profile here] announced that a study it commissioned found trace amounts of glyphosate—the world’s most-used herbicide, often used with plants genetically modified to resist it—in several vaccines.
Earlier this year, Moms Across America sent 5 childhood vaccines to an independent lab to be screened for glyphosate. All 5 tested positive for glyphosate, with the MMR vaccine showing levels 25X higher than the other vaccines.
Further, more accurate tests are urgently needed by the FDA and CDC to confirm exact amounts. However, any amount is unacceptable. Action must be taken to protect our infants and children.
Moms Across America sent letters to the FDA, CDC, NIH, EPA, California US Senator Barbara Boxer and the California Department of Public Health urging more testing on glyphosate and revoking the herbicide’s license. The report was picked up by many anti-GMO activist sites, including Natural News, March Against Monsanto, and Vaccine-Injury Info. Even Erin Brockovich, the consumer activist known for her work on environmental contamination (Julia Roberts starred as her in a profile feature film), amplified the frightening findings—if they were indeed accurate and meaningful— on her Facebook page:
Not sure what to make of this yet... but it should piss you off. .. Wondering if glyphosate could be contaminating not only our water, urine, breast milk, food, soil, beer and wine, but our vaccines as well.” Moms Across America ran some tests...Glyphosate, a chemical ingredient found in Monsanto’s Roundup and hundreds of other herbicides, has been found in vaccines.
Anti-vaccine groups, such as those supporting Stephanie Seneff and her papers on the alleged dangers of glyphosate, GMOs and vaccines have also lauded the study as evidence of harmful vaccination. Seneff is a MIT computer scientist with no expertise in genetics or chemicals. She was quoted on MAAM's blog Eco-Watch as claiming certain vaccine viruses including measles in MMR and flu are grown on gelatin derived from the ligaments of pigs fed heavy doses of glyphosate in their GMO feed."
Seneff has written several papers in what are known as predatory, pay-for-pay journals that have found correlations supposedly linking glyphosate, GMOs and vaccines to autism, cancer and other diseases—even though independent mainstream scientists have found no causative links. She discussed her opposition to vaccines and glyphosate in this video:
It's all sounds scary. However, it’s not clear that any glyphosate was actually in any of MAAM’s samples..and if glyphosate residues are present in vaccines, which is highly doubtful, t's almost certain that the residue exposure levels are so minute as to be meaningless.
The study
The "study", which has not been release for review let alone appeared in a peer-reviewed scientific publication was conducted by a private St. Louis company called Microbe Inotech which does not have the expertise to do a sophisticated assay on glyphosate, allegedly identified these concentrations of glyphosate:
Influenza vaccine, 0.331 ppb
MMR vaccine, 2.671 ppb
Pneumococcal vaccine, 0.107 ppb
Hepatitis B vaccine, 0.325 ppb
T Dap vaccine, 0.123 ppb
MAAM said that additional studies were conducted by Anthony Samsel, who calls himself a "research scientist/consultant", although there is no evidence he has a science degree or expertise in this type of research. He has collaborated and is a co-author with Seneff on numerous studies that mainstream scientists have labeled quack research. Apparently Samsel found similar trace amounts of glyphosate in vaccine preparations he tested. His "study" also has not appeared in a peer-reviewed scientific publication, but he did post this video:
Monsanto, the maker of Roundup, the patented form of glyphosate, responded that the study, like others commissioned by MAAM, has significant problems:
The testing method used here for vaccines appears to be a method that was developed as a quick and inexpensive screening test for water samples to decide whether additional testing with a more expensive and precise method is needed. Simply put, because of this method’s potential for false positives at very low concentrations, a negative result of the test on water means no further testing is required; a positive result means one should conduct the more expensive test to confirm. This quick and inexpensive screening test has only been shown to work well in water – not vaccines, not wine, not beer, not milk, not eggs. Just water.
