It really drove home the quiet facts: pharmaceutical companies such as Bayer and Johnson & Johnson are the same ones in charge of manufacturing modern pesticides/herbicides, and distributing them to farmers and home-improvement stores.
They're also the self-same companies who've been producing the drugs designed to execute criminals. It's interesting how they've recently sort of balked on furnishing those drugs in service of capital punishment, isn't it?
Afaik, a lot of chemical companies basically just make stuff and then test it. If it turns out that it's lethal then it can be "binned" for lethal uses. If it turns out to be helpful than it can be "binned" for medicinal uses.
I'm sure they have a goal when testing new compounds but if it turns out to be a better matchstick they're not going to throw it into the trash because it was supposed to turn lead into gold.
As an aside, one thing that really disturbs me is that these industries can pollute our environment with all these complex chemicals without any real understanding of the long term negative effects. It seems wild that you can just roll the dice with things that are spread across millions of acres and presumably get into our food, water, etc.
> A profile of a London-based research professor who has spoken out against agrochemical companies and GM crops contains several deeply personal details of his life unrelated to his positions on crops or chemicals. The profile describes a wife who died of “suicide-related complications” after discovering an extra-marital affair by her husband and following a “23-year struggle with depression and schizophrenia …”
> The New Lede and the Guardian have previously revealed that Syngenta’s internal research found adverse effects of paraquat on brain tissue decades ago but the company withheld that information from regulators, instead working to discredit independent science linking the chemical to brain disease and developing a “Swat team” to counter critics.
Keep this in mind when these companies release any statement regarding how safe their products are. Their approach to public debate is finding unrelated dirt on their critics and killing their funding, while knowingly spreading lies to literally poison their customers. Treat them and their words accordingly.