Something else has happened when the U.S. court ordered Monsanto to pay $289,000,000 in damages to a man who suffers from cancer due to his job as a groundskeeper, and his role spraying Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup.
More victims of the Monsanto’s chemicals are encouraged to come forward the open floodgates and demand payment for damages obtained from the chemical corporation, that is now embedded in the multinational agrichemical giant Bayer.
One of the first things critics of Monsanto will tell you is that the corporation sold Agent Orange (in conjunction with DOW chemical, also tied to powerful American politicians including Bill Clinton).
Monsanto provided the US government with Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. Soldiers were convinced to risk their own health and well-being as they spray it out of airplanes, and straight out of hoses, up-close and personal on the Vietnam foliage. They were able to coat the forest with chemicals, thereby killing tree leaves and revealing the location of enemy combatants.
Today, many children are still being born in Vietnam with birth defects that could invoke nightmares in any people. In that country, the persistent harmful chemical still lurks in the environment. Because of a decision made by Monsanto almost 50 years ago now, people are still born with crippling birth defects.
Reporters interviewed the spokesperson for the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, named Nguyen Phuong Tra and he stated that:
“This case is a precedent that rejects previous arguments that the herbicides supplied to the U.S. military by Monsanto and other U.S. chemical companies during the Vietnam War are not harmful to people’s health. We believe Monsanto should be responsible for compensating Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange for the damages caused by the company’s herbicide.”
The U.S. government dumped on Vietnam somewhere around 45 million liters of Agent Orange, which was primarily composed of dioxin. This action led to a slow-onset disaster whose devastating economic, health, and ecological impacts are still being felt today.
The news outlet Viet Nam News reported that the Association for Victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin (VAVA) is trying to represent and work for justice on the behalf of about 3 million residents of Vietnam who were affected by this brazen act of chemical warfare.
These people they represent are becoming more hopeful in facing Monsanto’s legal failure.
QuáchThành Vinh VAVA’s chief of office and director of liaison lawyers office said:
“No matter how difficult and prolonged this case might be, we won’t ever give up on it, for the sake of the millions of Vietnamese victims.”
Dewayne Johnson, a man who today suffers from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma thanks to Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup, who may not even survive the ordeal, but still managed to secure that momentous victory against the corporation on August 10.
If Johnson did not survive, what he did to strike a blow against Monsanto will help the victims who deserve financial compensation to at least lessen the blow of deformed children who need to live their lives in hell mainly because of what this corporation and the U.S. government did.
It was even reported by CNN that Johnson’s victory could “set a massive precedent for thousands of other cases claiming Monsanto’s famous herbicide causes non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.”
