Glisofate, Cypermethrin, 2.4 D, Endosulfan, Atracine, Chlorpyriphite... These are the names of drugs taken in Argentina and throughout the world that have spread with new GM crops. After destroying most of the native forests, the animals, who remembers the old millions of Argentine cows, reduced by the large number of plants that were sown in the fields, the only ones that have increased are poisons. And along with them, the diseases of the citizens who breathe their aromas.

At the end of last April, hundreds of doctors and health staff met at the University of Rosario to discuss the new epidemic at the Iº Latin-American Congress of Social-Environmental Health. Previously, the Argentinians had already held the II National Meeting of Doctors of Fumigated Peoples.

The professionals gathered in Rosario summarized the severity of the theme as follows: “The health of the population of countries that continuously smoke in Argentina is under a very serious attack. In addition, the situation worsens every day and serious diseases are detected in these places much more frequently than in other places, such as cancers, abortions, problems with fertilization, children with congenital malformations, etc.”

Both the meeting in Rosario and the first held in August of last year at the University of the city of Cordoba presented hard evidence of documentation by university professors and local health doctors.

As in the vast areas of Argentina everything is done wholesale, the expansion of soy has also been excessive. Half of the camps in that republic have been occupied today by that legume. When it was planted in four million hectares in 1990, in 2010 it exceeded 18 million hectares, almost all transgenic crops. The sum of rice, maize and other GMOs exceeds 22 million hectares.

Of course, GM soya is married from its origin with the venom, mainly with the Glisofate that the Monsanto corporation sells with the brand Rondup. This kills grasses; he's genetically modified to live in the midst of the poison. In addition to the medicine to dry the herbs, to kill insects in Endosulfa and other medications must be spread in the fields. In 1990, 35 million litres of herbicides were generalized in land in Argentina, and in 2010 they exceeded 300 million.

For the happiness of the masters of Monsanto, in addition to increasing the demand for soybean seeds that they have patented, many herbs and scrubs learned to confront Glisofate. A child can imagine the solution. More glyphates. This same hectare, with 2 liters of Rondup deployed in 1996, needed up to 20 liters today to stay clean.

In this system, entire villages and regions live, because the government of Buenos Aires has given all agriculture to the agro-industry. In these meetings, according to figures documented by doctors, 12 million Argentinians live. Because the usual way to spread “remedies” for crops is to spray from the plane, many of the 300 million liters of poisons reach the homes, schools, parks, fountains, orchards and workplaces where they live.

What you don't want to see from the capital

The congresses highlighted two problems that have worsened in recent years in these fumigated villages. On the one hand, children with congenital malformations, such as involuntary abortions of pregnant women, have increased. On the other hand, both cancers and other serious diseases have increased in children and adults.

In the first session of August last year there were already doctors who have been working in the same place for more than twenty-five years and from their experience the changes in the disease statistics that the government, due to the scarce work it does in epidemiological statistics, could not be known otherwise.

For example, Dr. María del Carmen Seveso, in charge of intensive therapy in a hospital in the department of Chaco, explained that the problems of malformations and carcinogens, as well as respiratory and allergic problems, as well as other complications of young pregnant women, have greatly increased. It has to be said that Chaco is one of the departments in which GM soya has spread wild.

Delegate of the Ministry of Health, Ana Lía Otaño, brought more concrete statistics. Congenital malformations, for example, were 19.1 out of 10,000 births in 1997, reaching 85.3 in 2008. Childhood cancer has increased from 8.03 to 15.7 cases per 100,000 population. Diseases multiply as they approach from city centres to the vicinity of growing fields, due to fumigation.

At the meeting in Córdoba, malformations in newborns were of great importance, including failures in nerve closure. The neurosurgeon Hugo Gómez Demaio, in addition to the data, showed a series of chilling photographs. Other experts, on the other hand, showed in the laboratories the results that the embryo of chicks and frogs found little by little contaminated by the Glisofate, which offer clues to understand the malformations that occur in humans.

As venom vendors always argue that it is difficult to demonstrate that a particular subject is the cause of a malformation or disease, concrete statistical studies have been presented to clarify doubts. Some of them have crossed the numbers of children who have been created with malformations to relate them to the month of their fertilization and the timetables in which pesticides are used. It appears that such statistical studies in the world have shown that children of pregnant women who have become pregnant during the months of pesticide and herbicide use in rural areas are the ones with the highest number of serious errors.

Doctors gathered at the Córdoba Congress in 2010 accepted six proposals, which this year have been ratified in Rosario. The first is that society must know that “pesticides are poisons, poisons that make us sick”. Secondly, in order to ensure the health of the inhabitants of rural areas, it is necessary to limit the use of apothecaries; it is unacceptable that in six months of the year all the people are perfumed three times a month.

Three, that the camps must be banned from fumigation of aircraft. Four, until the air smokers cease altogether, they must be forced to stop at a kilometre from the people. Five, that the drugs we mention must be banned, because “they are real chemical weapons.” The sixth point is the root of everything: the production model based on GMOs and the giant agro-industry must
be called into question. Millions of citizens who are still unable to live will have to move to it.