11 ms·

There are many conflicts of interest in the world - organic farming is an industry too. e.g. at least one of those 14 experts is an active member of the organi

There are many conflicts of interest in the world - organic farming is an industry too. e.g. at least one of those 14 experts is an active member of the organic industry and has long had a beef with the GMO industry: https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/glp-facts/charles-benbrook-former-washington-state-adjunct-consultant-organic-industry/ https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/glp-facts/charles-ben... As to the science: the original highly-questionable IARC determination has since been contested by both the European Chemical Agency and the European Food Safety Authority. It doesn't do us any good calling everything in the world a carcinogen. We have to rank-order risks in order to make reasonable choices in life, and glyphosate sits very low on that list compared to other industrial chemicals when you look at the evidence for mutagenicity or secondary carcinogenic mechanisms.

shriphani 10y ago
As Nicholas Taleb put it - stuff that is natural is time-tested. Food we've grown + consumed has a multi-millennium history of being safe to consume. The burden of proof is on the synthetic. And health issues can materialize with a time gap of a decade or so - essentially you can ruin a couple of generations with a mistake you didn't catch in time. It doesn't help when those who have to prove their validity have to resort to regulatory capture so often.
- sametmax 10y ago
  Particularly, they have been time-tested in a complex system. Our tests are not only limited in time, but also in complexity. Scientists take a sample of subjects in a defined environment. The benefit of that is that they can draw definitive conclusions because of the manageable variables. The problem with it is that you fail to see the big picture, the many interactions with the numerous components of a real life activity, and on the long run. When talking about living things and food, or in that case, living things that are food, the context is incredibly important to define what is safe or not.
- bojan 10y ago
  Is it really (time-)tested? How do we know what is safe to consume, especially long-term? We don't really have proper data to support most claims. We did not track and log the causes of death throughout the vast majority of our history.
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  >Food we've grown + consumed has a multi-millennium history of being safe to consume. Its not so simple. When you consider the significantly lower yields of organic farming[0], combined with a growing world population 71% of which lives on less than $10 a day[1] that will not be able to afford these increased food costs you are left with a question. Do you prefer to add perhaps a few years to the end of your life or do you prefer to allow a great many others to live? Personally even if GMO and others took a decade from me (I have seen no evidence this is the case. Humans are living longer lives than ever before.) if it allows more children to eat I support it. [0]https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Screen-Shot-2014-12-18-at-3.37.22-PM.png https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/wp-content/uploads/20... [1]http://money.cnn.com/2015/07/08/news/economy/global-low-income/ http://money.cnn.com/2015/07/08/news/economy/global-low-inco...
- pjc50 10y ago
  > stuff that is natural is time-tested This also applies to tobacco.
  - AstralStorm 10y ago
    It does, but not really to smoking. Tobacco is far safer chewed or insufflated than smoked, and cigarettes have a bunch of additional terrible chemicals in them.
    - tptacek 10y ago
      It is not in fact safe to chew tobacco.
      - petre 10y ago
        You can get gum and other mouth cancers.
    - LordKano 10y ago
      Any burning organic matter will contain carcinogens. Breathing a constant supply of wood smoke will wreak havoc on one's lungs. I'd be curious to find out if there's any place with a history of consumption of fresh tobacco leaves as a food item.
      - sjg007 10y ago
        No. You would get tobacco sickness.
- lambdadmitry 10y ago
  >stuff that is natural is time-tested Unfortunately "time" doesn't test for cancerogenicity, as laypeople are terrible at inferring causality that may span months or years. Case in point [1]: several "herbal remedies" used in China for hundreds of years are linked to kidney failure and kidney cancer. We don't know if something is dangerous until we deliberately and scientifically test it. Given that "non-natural" stuff (e.g. GMO) is thoroughly tested, I would expect that it's way safer than "natural" one that was never really tested. [1]: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/1343598/Chinese-herb-remedy-linked-with-cancer-of-the-kidneys.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/1343598/Chinese-herb-...
- tptacek 10y ago
  This is a fallacy. All sorts of things are time-tested, in some cases over a millennium, and turn out to be carcinogenic: lutefisk, for instance, or the scalding hot tea Iranians drink.
  - shriphani 10y ago
    I'm talking conditional probabilities here. Conditioned on the natural, our track record isn't bad. Conditioned on synthetic substances, just in the last century we have thalidomide, high-fructose corn syrup and this wonderful collection: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Withdrawn_drugs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Withdrawn_drugs
- 0xfeba 10y ago
  > Food we've grown + consumed has a multi-millennium history of being safe The food we consume now has little resemblance past a visual one (and even not that in some cases), to food of the past. Time-tested? Only in the past 60 years or so have we actually been able to begin to understand the effects of any food, natural or GMO. That our ancestors didn't keel over immediately after consuming these "same" foods does not mean they are anymore "safe to consume" than GMO foods.
  - rhizome 10y ago
    The food we consume now has little resemblance past a visual one (and even not that in some cases), to food of the past. When did strawberries change?
    - lkbm 10y ago
      Looks like we first cultivated "garden strawberries" in 1714[1]. Before that we just had "wild strawberries", which are small and not very sweet. I don't know now they've changed nutritionally (probably more sugar), and I doubt they've changed chemically. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strawberry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strawberry
  - Tycho 10y ago
    > That our ancestors didn't keel over immediately after consuming these "same" foods does not mean they are anymore "safe to consume" than GMO foods. I think this is the wrongest statement I've ever read on HN.
sametmax 10y ago
Ockham's razor reasoning is that a gigantic profit driven structure with a huge lobbying activity, and high financial stakes should probably not be trusted with making the right choice between their business and our health. History tells it didn't work very well for us when the big guys said tobacco, asbestos, the Chernobyl cloud and PCBs were all safe and good. Given Monsanto's pretty poor moral track record (improper accounting for incentive rebates, Agent Orange, terminator seeds, patent trolling...), it's only fair to be suspicious by default with them.
- bkkssnn 10y ago
  Don't forget when Lead was claimed to be "safe" enough to put into gasoline - . -
  - sametmax 10y ago
    In France we had this wonderful scandal about donated blood that was provided by aids infected patients... but declared safe. It's been used to make transfusion to other people that were already plagued with hemophilia, so that they could really enjoy the benefit of having both diseases at the same time. I'm wondering what will be the next stuff like that. Will we learn in 30 years that milk is actually unhealthy and that "got milk" was a blatant lie ? Will we discover that too much computer activity reduce IQ while we all though we were getting so clever learning online ? "Don't worry, teleportation is totally safe. We are absolutely not copying your body and destroying the original" The future is going to be fun.
    - bkkssnn 10y ago
      I get to angry even thinking about it. Imagine your day job is to convince the public spreading poison globally is not dangerous only to make a marginal profit. And to give decision makers some excuse with some bullshit "proofs" that lets them stay "ignorant". Alot of enviormental issues comes to mind where this is happening today.
      - 10y ago
adsfqwop 10y ago
Did you read the article? The court documents included Monsanto’s internal emails and email traffic between the company and federal regulators. The records suggested that Monsanto had ghostwritten research that was later attributed to academics and indicated that a senior official at the Environmental Protection Agency had worked to quash a review of Roundup’s main ingredient, glyphosate, that was to have been conducted by the United States Department of Health and Human Services. Yet the first thing you think about is accusing organic farming of conflicts of interest? You are a perfect example of extreme cognitive dissonance. What's even more scary is you're working in the field of biotechnology. It only reinforces my view that many of you are living in your own dogmatic information bubble.
- jpttsn 10y ago
  What does "cognitive dissonance" mean, these days? I used to like that term, but I guess I should give the 3D reboot a chance.
- tptacek 10y ago
  What do you want them to say? They provided, just one further comment downthread, a pretty persuasive case that a letter of concern about the carcinogenicity of glyphosate is athwart the scientific consensus. You're asking them to ignore the science, because Monsanto is a big scary company.
- ConfuciusSay02 10y ago
  No need to go through mental gymnastics, just call a spade a spade. He's a shill, and the poisoning-our-food industry employs the most shills overall.
  - dang 10y ago
    We've banned this account for violating the site guidelines.
    - ConfuciusSay02 9y ago
      What guidelines were violated?
mmjaa 10y ago
Nice deflection. This story is as much about the info-war that kept glyphosate from being 'poisonous in the public mind' as it is about the fact that there are worse carcinogens in the world .. Sure, depleted Uranium is a much worse pollutant for us to be worried about. But, that's no reason for us to continue paying millions into an industry that lied to us so that we would keep spreading it on our food sources now, is it?
joelthelion 10y ago
> It doesn't do us any good calling everything in the world a carcinogen I think it would help tremendously if we started expressing everything in terms of Disability-adjusted life years[1] lost. So instead of "Drinking hot tea causes cancer!", the headline would read "Drinking hot tea causes you to lose an average 20 minutes of disability-adjusted life expectancy". A lot less scary, and a lot easier to compare with other things. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disability-adjusted_life_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disability-adjusted_life_year
- hammock 10y ago
  Hot tea causes cancer?
  - abandonliberty 10y ago
    http://www.livescience.com/55130-how-hot-beverages-increase-cancer-risk.html http://www.livescience.com/55130-how-hot-beverages-increase-...
luca_ing 10y ago
> There are many conflicts of interest in the world - organic farming is an industry too. Your point being? > e.g. at least one of those 14 experts is an active member of the organic industry and has long had a beef with the GMO industry: https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/glp-facts/charles-ben.. https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/glp-facts/charles-ben.... This particular debate is not about GMO though, is it? > It doesn't do us any good calling everything in the world a carcinogen. We're not calling everything a carcinogen. Some people are suspecting Glyphosate of being one. > We have to rank-order risks in order to make reasonable choices in life, and glyphosate sits very low on that list compared to other industrial chemicals when you look at the evidence for mutagenicity or secondary carcinogenic mechanisms. But I eat very few of these chemicals (I hope).
- andrewla 10y ago
  > This particular debate is not about GMO Indirectly it is; Monsanto promotes Roundup as a weed killer and simultaneously promotes Roundup Ready crops that are genetically modified to be resistant to Roundup, thus letting farmers safely apply Roundup without endangering the crops themselves.
abandonliberty 10y ago
I'm in full agreement unfortunately as there is substantial asymmetry in funding between the parties with vested interests it's unsurprising it starts to get complex. Ultimately, I think it's appropriate for things to be tested in the context they are used. It's just really weird to me that some governments are examining the evidence but not requesting 2nd (let alone 3rd) party testing. It seems very irrational. Chemicals have different breakdown characteristics when mixed. Dosages are different from before. Consumer exposure is different. Even if the impact is minimal, you should test and prove that it's minimal. That they have avoided it makes me think they have something to hide.

shriphani 10y ago

As Nicholas Taleb put it - stuff that is natural is time-tested. Food we've grown + consumed has a multi-millennium history of being safe to consume. The burden of proof is on the synthetic. And health issues can materialize with a time gap of a decade or so - essentially you can ruin a couple of generations with a mistake you didn't catch in time. It doesn't help when those who have to prove their validity have to resort to regulatory capture so often.

sametmax 10y ago
Particularly, they have been time-tested in a complex system. Our tests are not only limited in time, but also in complexity. Scientists take a sample of subjects in a defined environment. The benefit of that is that they can draw definitive conclusions because of the manageable variables. The problem with it is that you fail to see the big picture, the many interactions with the numerous components of a real life activity, and on the long run. When talking about living things and food, or in that case, living things that are food, the context is incredibly important to define what is safe or not.
bojan 10y ago
Is it really (time-)tested? How do we know what is safe to consume, especially long-term? We don't really have proper data to support most claims. We did not track and log the causes of death throughout the vast majority of our history.
cmdrfred 10y ago
>Food we've grown + consumed has a multi-millennium history of being safe to consume. Its not so simple. When you consider the significantly lower yields of organic farming[0], combined with a growing world population 71% of which lives on less than $10 a day[1] that will not be able to afford these increased food costs you are left with a question. Do you prefer to add perhaps a few years to the end of your life or do you prefer to allow a great many others to live? Personally even if GMO and others took a decade from me (I have seen no evidence this is the case. Humans are living longer lives than ever before.) if it allows more children to eat I support it. [0]https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Screen-Shot-2014-12-18-at-3.37.22-PM.png https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/wp-content/uploads/20... [1]http://money.cnn.com/2015/07/08/news/economy/global-low-income/ http://money.cnn.com/2015/07/08/news/economy/global-low-inco...
pjc50 10y ago
> stuff that is natural is time-tested This also applies to tobacco.
- AstralStorm 10y ago
  It does, but not really to smoking. Tobacco is far safer chewed or insufflated than smoked, and cigarettes have a bunch of additional terrible chemicals in them.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    It is not in fact safe to chew tobacco.
    - petre 10y ago
      You can get gum and other mouth cancers.
  - LordKano 10y ago
    Any burning organic matter will contain carcinogens. Breathing a constant supply of wood smoke will wreak havoc on one's lungs. I'd be curious to find out if there's any place with a history of consumption of fresh tobacco leaves as a food item.
    - sjg007 10y ago
      No. You would get tobacco sickness.
lambdadmitry 10y ago
>stuff that is natural is time-tested Unfortunately "time" doesn't test for cancerogenicity, as laypeople are terrible at inferring causality that may span months or years. Case in point [1]: several "herbal remedies" used in China for hundreds of years are linked to kidney failure and kidney cancer. We don't know if something is dangerous until we deliberately and scientifically test it. Given that "non-natural" stuff (e.g. GMO) is thoroughly tested, I would expect that it's way safer than "natural" one that was never really tested. [1]: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/1343598/Chinese-herb-remedy-linked-with-cancer-of-the-kidneys.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/1343598/Chinese-herb-...
tptacek 10y ago
This is a fallacy. All sorts of things are time-tested, in some cases over a millennium, and turn out to be carcinogenic: lutefisk, for instance, or the scalding hot tea Iranians drink.
- shriphani 10y ago
  I'm talking conditional probabilities here. Conditioned on the natural, our track record isn't bad. Conditioned on synthetic substances, just in the last century we have thalidomide, high-fructose corn syrup and this wonderful collection: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Withdrawn_drugs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Withdrawn_drugs
0xfeba 10y ago
> Food we've grown + consumed has a multi-millennium history of being safe The food we consume now has little resemblance past a visual one (and even not that in some cases), to food of the past. Time-tested? Only in the past 60 years or so have we actually been able to begin to understand the effects of any food, natural or GMO. That our ancestors didn't keel over immediately after consuming these "same" foods does not mean they are anymore "safe to consume" than GMO foods.
- rhizome 10y ago
  The food we consume now has little resemblance past a visual one (and even not that in some cases), to food of the past. When did strawberries change?
  - lkbm 10y ago
    Looks like we first cultivated "garden strawberries" in 1714[1]. Before that we just had "wild strawberries", which are small and not very sweet. I don't know now they've changed nutritionally (probably more sugar), and I doubt they've changed chemically. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strawberry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strawberry
- Tycho 10y ago
  > That our ancestors didn't keel over immediately after consuming these "same" foods does not mean they are anymore "safe to consume" than GMO foods. I think this is the wrongest statement I've ever read on HN.

sametmax 10y ago

Ockham's razor reasoning is that a gigantic profit driven structure with a huge lobbying activity, and high financial stakes should probably not be trusted with making the right choice between their business and our health. History tells it didn't work very well for us when the big guys said tobacco, asbestos, the Chernobyl cloud and PCBs were all safe and good. Given Monsanto's pretty poor moral track record (improper accounting for incentive rebates, Agent Orange, terminator seeds, patent trolling...), it's only fair to be suspicious by default with them.

bkkssnn 10y ago
Don't forget when Lead was claimed to be "safe" enough to put into gasoline - . -
- sametmax 10y ago
  In France we had this wonderful scandal about donated blood that was provided by aids infected patients... but declared safe. It's been used to make transfusion to other people that were already plagued with hemophilia, so that they could really enjoy the benefit of having both diseases at the same time. I'm wondering what will be the next stuff like that. Will we learn in 30 years that milk is actually unhealthy and that "got milk" was a blatant lie ? Will we discover that too much computer activity reduce IQ while we all though we were getting so clever learning online ? "Don't worry, teleportation is totally safe. We are absolutely not copying your body and destroying the original" The future is going to be fun.
  - bkkssnn 10y ago
    I get to angry even thinking about it. Imagine your day job is to convince the public spreading poison globally is not dangerous only to make a marginal profit. And to give decision makers some excuse with some bullshit "proofs" that lets them stay "ignorant". Alot of enviormental issues comes to mind where this is happening today.
    - 10y ago

adsfqwop 10y ago

Did you read the article? The court documents included Monsanto’s internal emails and email traffic between the company and federal regulators. The records suggested that Monsanto had ghostwritten research that was later attributed to academics and indicated that a senior official at the Environmental Protection Agency had worked to quash a review of Roundup’s main ingredient, glyphosate, that was to have been conducted by the United States Department of Health and Human Services. Yet the first thing you think about is accusing organic farming of conflicts of interest? You are a perfect example of extreme cognitive dissonance. What's even more scary is you're working in the field of biotechnology. It only reinforces my view that many of you are living in your own dogmatic information bubble.

jpttsn 10y ago
What does "cognitive dissonance" mean, these days? I used to like that term, but I guess I should give the 3D reboot a chance.
tptacek 10y ago
What do you want them to say? They provided, just one further comment downthread, a pretty persuasive case that a letter of concern about the carcinogenicity of glyphosate is athwart the scientific consensus. You're asking them to ignore the science, because Monsanto is a big scary company.
ConfuciusSay02 10y ago
No need to go through mental gymnastics, just call a spade a spade. He's a shill, and the poisoning-our-food industry employs the most shills overall.
- dang 10y ago
  We've banned this account for violating the site guidelines.
  - ConfuciusSay02 9y ago
    What guidelines were violated?

mmjaa 10y ago

Nice deflection. This story is as much about the info-war that kept glyphosate from being 'poisonous in the public mind' as it is about the fact that there are worse carcinogens in the world .. Sure, depleted Uranium is a much worse pollutant for us to be worried about. But, that's no reason for us to continue paying millions into an industry that lied to us so that we would keep spreading it on our food sources now, is it?

joelthelion 10y ago

> It doesn't do us any good calling everything in the world a carcinogen I think it would help tremendously if we started expressing everything in terms of Disability-adjusted life years[1] lost. So instead of "Drinking hot tea causes cancer!", the headline would read "Drinking hot tea causes you to lose an average 20 minutes of disability-adjusted life expectancy". A lot less scary, and a lot easier to compare with other things. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disability-adjusted_life_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disability-adjusted_life_year

hammock 10y ago
Hot tea causes cancer?
- abandonliberty 10y ago
  http://www.livescience.com/55130-how-hot-beverages-increase-cancer-risk.html http://www.livescience.com/55130-how-hot-beverages-increase-...

luca_ing 10y ago

> There are many conflicts of interest in the world - organic farming is an industry too. Your point being? > e.g. at least one of those 14 experts is an active member of the organic industry and has long had a beef with the GMO industry: https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/glp-facts/charles-ben.. https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/glp-facts/charles-ben.... This particular debate is not about GMO though, is it? > It doesn't do us any good calling everything in the world a carcinogen. We're not calling everything a carcinogen. Some people are suspecting Glyphosate of being one. > We have to rank-order risks in order to make reasonable choices in life, and glyphosate sits very low on that list compared to other industrial chemicals when you look at the evidence for mutagenicity or secondary carcinogenic mechanisms. But I eat very few of these chemicals (I hope).

andrewla 10y ago
> This particular debate is not about GMO Indirectly it is; Monsanto promotes Roundup as a weed killer and simultaneously promotes Roundup Ready crops that are genetically modified to be resistant to Roundup, thus letting farmers safely apply Roundup without endangering the crops themselves.

abandonliberty 10y ago

I'm in full agreement unfortunately as there is substantial asymmetry in funding between the parties with vested interests it's unsurprising it starts to get complex. Ultimately, I think it's appropriate for things to be tested in the context they are used. It's just really weird to me that some governments are examining the evidence but not requesting 2nd (let alone 3rd) party testing. It seems very irrational. Chemicals have different breakdown characteristics when mixed. Dosages are different from before. Consumer exposure is different. Even if the impact is minimal, you should test and prove that it's minimal. That they have avoided it makes me think they have something to hide.