Login
Within months of being soaked with a glyphosate herbicide while working on a cell tower maintenance crew, Tennessee teenager Arden Allison developed a tumor that grew into what he described as “this massive alien sucking the life off of me.”
Arden was 17 when he landed a job maintaining cell towers across the Midwest. According to his mother, Serene Allison, writing in RealClear Health, his duties included spraying weeds around tower sites with Roundup, a glyphosate-based herbicide first made by Monsanto, now owned by Bayer.
“I didn’t realize the danger,” Arden said in a recent interview on CHD.TV. During the two months he spent “mowing, weedeating and spraying around all the cell towers and access roads,” he said he experienced “several different big exposures of glyphosate.”
The worst came when a backpack sprayer malfunctioned. After Arden climbed over a fence, “the lid popped off” the sprayer. He was “completely doused … with glyphosate,” he said. The chemical soaked his neck, shoulders and upper body.
Wearing a tank top and without access to a shower, Arden rinsed off with a water bottle and finished his workday. He said the company didn’t provide protective gear.
“I was told it was … absolutely fine,” he said. But the exposure happened on a hot day when his “pores were open” and his body soaked up “all those chemicals.”
His mother said co-workers assured her son that glyphosate “wasn’t dangerous” because it was “just a regular pesticide.”
The exposure occurred in the fall of 2015. Just months later — five weeks after marrying his high school sweetheart in February 2016 — Arden was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma.
‘What’s happened out there?’ mom asked as healthy son deteriorated
Before taking the cell tower maintenance job, Arden was a healthy teenager who had been homeschooled, graduated at 16 and quickly entered the workforce.
He said he grew up in the rural “boondocks of Tennessee country,” where “there was nobody spraying any chemicals.”
When Arden returned from working out of state, his mother quickly noticed something was wrong.
“He’s always been a positive Pete kind of guy,” Serene said. “But immediately when he came home, I’m like, ‘What’s happened out there on the road?’”
Her tall, athletic son had grown pale and was losing weight rapidly. “He was getting thinner by the day,” she said.
He also developed persistent itching, night sweats and a scratchy throat. Eventually, one side of his face, neck and chest swelled dramatically.
Arden said the swelling corresponded with where the glyphosate had soaked into his body.
“I only … had an exposure, like an extreme exposure, in this area,” he said, pointing to his neck and shoulder. “I never had any cancerous lymph nodes in my whole lymphatic system besides … right here.”
‘One of the worst cases of Hodgkin lymphoma’ doctors had ever seen
Hoping to avoid chemotherapy, Arden traveled to an alternative cancer clinic after doctors initially diagnosed him with Stage 1 Hodgkin lymphoma.
At the time, the disease was visible only as a small lump above his collarbone, Arden said. But three weeks later, everything had changed.
Serene said she “will never forget” the moment she saw her son again.
“His features were overtaken by this alien on his neck,” she said. “I couldn’t even see my son anymore.”
Arden said his cancer progressed from Stage 1 to Stage 4 during those three weeks. New scans showed the disease had spread dramatically.
Instead of sending him through the emergency room, doctors admitted Arden directly to intensive care.
“The doctor said, ‘This is one of the worst cases of Hodgkin lymphoma we have ever seen,’” he recalled.
Arden said doctors warned his wife that he “is probably not going to make it.”
Even if he survived, they said, his lymph nodes would “never be normal again,” and the swelling to his neck and upper body would likely be permanent.
Doctors also said he would probably be infertile because they were “going to light him up” with chemotherapy, according to Arden.
‘I wanted to make my body the most undesirable place for illness to live’
What followed was a grueling seven-year fight.
Arden underwent what he described as a “massive, huge chemotherapy regimen.” But each time scans came back clear, the cancer returned.
His mother said he eventually became resistant to chemotherapy, leaving a “full stem cell transplant” as his only remaining option. “They basically nuke your entire immune system,” she said.
Even then, Arden refused to give up. Despite feeling “absolutely terrible,” he forced himself to walk a mile each day through the halls of the hospital while recovering from his stem cell transplant.
“I wanted to make my body the most undesirable place for illness to live,” he said.
His faith also became central to his recovery.
“My wife and I … had to just straight up give my life to the Lord,” he said. “I had to be like, ‘Hey, I’m OK if I live or die.’”
He credits family, faith and determination for helping him survive. “I refused to quit,” he said.
His mother believes the way she raised her son helped prepare his body to endure years of chemotherapy, radiation and a stem cell transplant.
The family produced much of its own food, including meat, milk from goats and vegetables from an organic garden.
“The meat we raised here, milk from our goats, veggies from our organic garden,” she said. “And if you ate bread, it was like 36-hour fermented ancient grain.”
While Serene credits her son’s recovery first and foremost to God, she also believes the nutrient-rich foods he ate growing up gave him the strength to survive.
“If he had a very … weak immune system, if he was raised on soda pop and white Wonder Bread, I don’t think he’ll be here,” she said. “I think even the alternative treatment we did before … helped strengthen him for that fight.”
Today, Arden said he is healthier than ever. “I’m cancer-free.”
Doctors had warned the aggressive chemotherapy would likely leave him infertile. Instead, he and his wife now have two children and are expecting a third.
“These are miracle children,” he said.
This article was funded by critical thinkers like you.
The Defender is 100% reader-supported. No corporate sponsors. No paywalls. Our writers and editors rely on you to fund stories like this that mainstream media won’t write.
‘Get this disgusting poison out of our food supply’
Surviving cancer gave Arden a new purpose.
Today, he coaches men around the country and overseas on physical, mental and spiritual health, saying he hopes to help others before they face the kind of health crisis he endured.
“I can’t explain, besides a miracle, why I’m here today, besides to stand up and encourage other people,” he said.
He and his mother have become outspoken critics of glyphosate, urging consumers and lawmakers to push for changes to food and agricultural policy.
Arden said he believes environmental chemicals are driving an alarming rise in aggressive cancers.
“It starts by chemicals,” he said. “We have record diagnoses of crazy cancers, new cancers. … The doctor said, ‘We’ve never seen … Hodgkin lymphoma this aggressive.’ It has to be … fed by chemicals.”
Glyphosate exposure is so widespread that people are routinely exposed to it through farms, lawns golf courses and other everyday settings. “It’s on everything,” Arden said.
His mother said watching her son fight for his life transformed her into an advocate.
Referring to the U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision shielding Bayer, the maker of Roundup, from certain failure-to-warn lawsuits, she said, “I’m rising up. I’m telling my story. I’m telling our story.”
Calling glyphosate “barbaric treatment into our food,” she encouraged viewers to choose organic oats, beans and grains when possible, noting that “oats is a big dirty one.”
Arden said protecting future generations will require action from both lawmakers and consumers.
“You gotta fight. We gotta do what we’re … called to do,” he said. “It also takes all of us worldwide making a stand.”
Serene echoed that message, urging people to contact lawmakers and “help them … change the laws so that we can get this disgusting poison out of our food supply.”
Watch Arden Allison and his mom on CHD.TV here:
Related articles in The Defender
- U.S. Supreme Court Sides with Pesticide Giant Bayer in Landmark Cancer Lawsuit
- ‘Deceptively Toxic’: How Regulators, Chemical Companies Get Away With Calling Glyphosate ‘Safe’
- Environmental Working Group Sues EPA Over Glyphosate in Oats, Citing Risk to Children’s Health
- ‘We’ve Addicted Our Farmers’ to Glyphosate, RFK Jr. Tells Joe Rogan
- Glyphosate Poses ‘Profound and Permanent’ Risks to Kids: Children’s Health Defense Urges U.S. Supreme Court to Rule Against Bayer
