12 ms·
Monsanto leaks suggest it tried to ‘kill’ cancer research about weed killer
- jgalvez 9y agoMichael Clayton anyone?
- arca_vorago 9y agoYep, except he wouldve been taken care of by team B and even if he hadn't, the prosecuting DA would've been gotten to and dropped the case under prosecutorial discretion. The movie had to have a semi happy ending for the plots sake. Real life is much nastier.
- brndnmg 9y agoyawn, oh no they wouldn't do that would they? sips coffee
- 43224gg252 9y agoOf course they did. Anyone on the internet about a year - 2 years ago remembers every time you mentioned monsanto they would send shills in to defend them and call you a tin-foil hat conspiracy theorist.
- kfriede 9y agoTo be fair, I think a good portion of those 'shills' were organic (no pun intended). To this day, a lot of the popular "anti-monsanto", "anti-gmo" groups (e.g. David Avocado Wolfe) are pretty nutjob and have a large community of people who dislike them.
- wu-ikkyu 9y ago>lot of the popular "anti-monsanto", "anti-gmo" groups (e.g. David Avocado Wolfe) are pretty nutjob It's worth noting that having such groups is a commonly used counter intelligence tactic: create a loud and incoherent pseudo-strawman opposition to distract from those who are actually asking legitimate questions. An effective astroturf campaign calls for both pro-x and anti-x shills.
- nerpderp83 9y agoIf anyone was in a place to make a Strawman, it would be Monsanto.
- Laforet 9y agoSometime it feels like Monsanto is the strawman for the entire biotech industry.
- eip 9y ago> create a loud and incoherent pseudo-strawman opposition to distract from those who are actually asking legitimate questions. See flat earth as an obvious example of this.
- imcoconut 9y agoWow, i never considered this but it makes sense and i imagine is very effective. Do you know of any well documented cases of this (though by its nature, any case of this is probably not well documented)?
- wu-ikkyu 9y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO#Methods https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO#Methods https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_provocateur https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_provocateur
- themgt 9y agoIt's been really frustrating trying to have any nuanced stance on GMOs with proponents doing the "durr all modern crops are genetically modified by human selection" and such. Like no shit, it is still possible to acknowledge that and believe that there are legitimate concerns about intellectual property, or with modifying a crop to be resistant to a carcinogenic poison farmers are going to dump all over it. A lot of the pro-GMO people seem to argue in really bad faith if they're not paid shills.
- bllguo 9y agoI'd probably blame the fanatic GMO opponents first, who can typically be refuted by the simple arguments you mock. Unfortunately nuance and middle ground are hard to come by online. And it doesn't help when you dismiss all GMO proponents as paid shills.
- vbuwivbiu 9y agoExactly this. Every thread on GM quickly polarizes into useless for and against sides, when we need to be selective about it. And I've never bought the characterization of breeding/selection as a form of GM. Breeding is selection of a pathetically tiny set of modifications, but GM is on a whole other level. With GM we can write arbitrary binary strings of code into any organism. That's simply not comparable with breeding -- the space of realizable phenotypes is orders of magnitude larger with GM.
- Laforet 9y agoModern breeding involves actively mutating known species with DNA-altering chemical mutagen and ionising radiation. Think fuzzing vs. static code analysis, which one would you do first when it comes to debugging? >Breeding is selection of a pathetically tiny set of modifications, but GM is on a whole other level. The truth is probably closer to the opposite of this: most GM species in the pipeline are rather unimaginative ones improving one phenotype at a time, and the vast majority of them focus on pest or herbicide resistance. There is a couple of near commercial crops aimed at improving nutritional content such as golden rice and high-lysine corn, but they are more exceptions than the rule. The kind of totally disruptive GM e.g. introduce C3 photosynthesis in C4 plants, has not left the drawing board yet for a good reason.
- eadz 9y agoIt is a real shame not to be able to trust "science" anymore. We'll have to come up with a new word for what we used to call science because I don't think corporations and media set on manipulating public opinion and laws will give it back.
- yourapostasy 9y agoIt may take a shift in how we share information and perform science before we find a way to trust as much again. Beyond the existing standing question of why more science papers don't publish information like the computer code they used, I've wondered why there isn't a push for "science-as-code". For example, if there was a common DSL that describes science lab automation, then a futuristic science paper would come with some a package that would drive another lab's robots and equipment to do the exact same experiment with the same steps, and let other labs alter the steps as they see fit once they reproduce the same results to toy with the experiment's findings. Then all the calibration steps of each piece of equipment, all the sampling steps, all the measurement steps, etc. are all completely reproduced as code. Steps only expressible as "human hands do [insert-motions-here]" are translated to waldo motions, pressure sensing, etc. Then a lab notebook would be filled with human interpretations of what scientists are seeing, hypotheses, etc., alongside a time-series recording of every step taken, environmental metrics measured, expressed in that DSL.
- hyperpape 9y agoScientists should publish more detail about methods in general, but we're a long way from the kind of precision that would enable robots to duplicate everything. A good deal of science happens with graduate students literally building their own apparatus.
- throwaway5752 9y agoScience is a process and is close to an infallible thing as we have created as humans. There is no problem with science. What is happening here is "lying". The people creating false and misleading scientific results are liars and it becomes a question of taking skeptical views towards sources and knowing who to trust.
- ourmandave 9y agoIsn't this right out of the Big Tobacco playbook when they "scientists" in lab coats producing studies that smoking was healthy? The Tobacco Industry: The Pioneer of Fake News https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5402187/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5402187/
- russdill 9y agoIs there a scientific consensus (or at least majority) as to the carcinogenic effect of the Roundup product?
- cholantesh 9y agoThere isn't. Glyphosate is well studied, and all evidence exonerate it. The constituent chemicals of Roundup may interact with each other to render the cocktail toxic. But that's not equivalent to carcinogenicity. And it's not well studied as yet.
- lumberjack 9y ago>Glyphosate is well studied, No. That is false. https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-016-0117-0 https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-... The studies on glyphosate are plenty, but most are inadequate.
- russdill 9y agoThis led me to a WHO FAQ, which I was hoping would answer all my questions. http://www.who.int/foodsafety/faq/en/ http://www.who.int/foodsafety/faq/en/ The only answer I have so far is that we need to fund our research institutes better to get more studies faster. I do appreciate though that glyphosate has replaced many less safe herbicides. I think even going off of the WHO FAQ, the comparison of the situation to one the tobacco industry faced is not the correct one.
- rockinghigh 9y ago
- ada1981 9y agoWho actually likes Monstanto? I imagine a vast majority of the American people would support an outright shutdown of their business.
- lumberjack 9y agoThey do create useful products so they cannot be shutdown. The problem is in doing so, we trust them with too much power. In this case we are trusting them, not to poison our children in the name of profit.
- bpodgursky 9y agoLuckily we still have the rule of law, so the majority can't simply shut down a company they dislike based on an internet misinformation campaign.
- colordrops 9y agoCampaign implies organization. Who do you suppose is working to shut down Monsanto?
- bpodgursky 9y agoA mob can be stupid and dangerous without a sinister corporate backing. Who is funding the anti-vaccine campaign? Nobody. It's stupid online bloggers and dishonest researchers egging each other on with fake news.
- colordrops 9y agoit's not a campaign then.
- cholantesh 9y agoBig organic.
- ada1981 9y agoSeems that Monsanto is running the misinformation campaign.
- jonplackett 9y agoNews-flash, company people have known was evil for ages, actually is still evil.
- nerpderp83 9y agoShouldn't this be illegal in some form? It is morally reprehensible to use "money as free speech" to suppress scientific truth.
- olliej 9y agoGiven the number of ghost written publications shouldn't there be a slew of retractions? It's unethical, and generally a violation of journal rules to publish another's work listed with yourself as an author. Then there's a journal editor that they pay, who they worked with to get a paper retracted, surely that should result in a re-review of everything involved there as well? Has anyone done the work to determine which papers are involved and start the retraction notification process?
- tptacek 9y agoI don't know what Monsanto did or didn't do and don't have any particular rooting interest for Monsanto, but I think it's worth noting that the published science for the carcinogenicity of glyphosate (the "weed killer" we're talking about here) is extremely flimsy. Most publicity about "cancer" and "Monsanto" is traceable back to an IARC report that the World Health Organization (IARC's parent) essentially retracted. The report itself concerned dozens of different pesticides and herbicides and mentioned glyphosate only in passing. The studies it referred to equivocated about any link between glyphosate and human cancer. (I'm going from memory here and someone will probably correct me on this, which will be great!) It would be surprising if glyphosate turned out to be toxic, because it straightforwardly targets a metabolic pathway that plants have and the entire kingdom of Animalia lacks. California recently added glyphosate to its list of chemicals that it's required to alert consumers about. But of course, that list is long and includes substances that virtually nobody controls their own exposure to, such as acrylamide --- a known human carcinogen --- which is universally present in cooked foods. Finally, and this is obvious, but we're reading articles on a plaintiff lawyer's website. That's fine, but you're clearly not going to get the whole story from them. For instance, the lawyers are happy to leave you with a headline about Monsanto trying to "retract a cancer study". But they're of course going to leave out the fact that the study in question was the Séralini study, of "Séralini affair" fame; you can look this up in Wikipedia to see what I'm referring to.
- laser 9y agoMy understanding is that the danger of glyphosate is one step removed from direct action on "human" cells, so bringing up metabolic pathways is a straw-man argument. The suspected danger is from disruption to the symbiosis of the entire human system, including the ~10x bacterial cells for every human cell that can be killed by glyphosate. https://www.nature.com/articles/npjbiofilms20163 https://www.nature.com/articles/npjbiofilms20163 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3945755/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3945755/
- tptacek 9y agoIf this effect is real, can you link to animal studies conclusively demonstrating it? Because obviously we've been feeding a lot of rats a lot of glyphosate.
- znpy 9y agoUh... My grandpa used to use Roundup in order to kill weeds in his cultivation land.
- tnorgaard 9y agoI see there is a few posts repeating the common interpretation that glyphosate is not dangerous because it only targets metabolic pathway only animals has, so for the sake of discussion here is another viewpoint: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVolljHmqEs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVolljHmqEs (disregard the clickbait title), summary: Glyphosate is not bad for your body, but it does kill everything in your stomach, and that is not so awesome.
- mgh2 9y agoHere is a study of 12 diseases correlated with glyphosate, it is not official as in a published journal, but given that even pubmed states there are not enough toxicity studies, that most safety papers are not independently funded, and scientists who dare to say the contrary are shut down, I rather be more cautious than sorry: https://people.csail.mit.edu/seneff/glyphosate/NancySwanson.pdf https://people.csail.mit.edu/seneff/glyphosate/NancySwanson....
- _Codemonkeyism 9y agoWalking by a Bayer - Monsanto owner pending regulatory approval - building every morning, with people streaming in and I'm reminded most people will work for anyone who pays them.
- _Codemonkeyism 9y agoIt's interesting how the discussion of Monsanto shifted. The discussion was about how Monsanto changed the seed/weed business from a buy model to a subscription/license model for farmers - which is a disruptive fundamental change. Now the discussion is mainly ab Glyphosate.
- Zarath 9y agoIt's weed killer. Literally poison. Can we just curb our faith in science just a little bit and use some common sense. It's incredibly likely that ingesting poison is bad for you. Let's leave open the possibility that it isn't, but I personally require that people prove it's safe rather than continuing to ingest it until proven otherwise. It's honestly just baffling to me that people find it surprising that consistent, low doses of poison may cause cancer.
- stouset 9y agoJust because something is poisonous to the biology of plants, in doses typically used as a weed killer, doesn't make it toxic to humans. That's not to say this doesn't cause cancer. Whether or not it does is irrelevant to the point that plant biology is not human biology — hell, other mammals' biology isn't human biology (see: cats and chocolate, grapes, macadamia nuts, and onions) — and making inferences based upon this hypothesis is not particularly likely to result in correct assessments. Further, "the dose makes the poison". Alcohol is a poison. Oxygen is a poison in high enough doses. Is weed killer a poison? In some arbitrarily high dose, certainly. In some arbitrarily small dose, no. In the dose you're likely to encounter on the surface of produce? Possibly, perhaps even probably. But again, making inferences based on the fact that it kills weeds is faulty thinking. By that logic, one would be forgiven for avoiding onions at all cost; after all, they're cat poison.
- jacobr 9y agoIf my cat is poisoned I would definitely avoid what it ate until there's overwhelming evidence that it's not harmful for me.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 9y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmakon_(philosophy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmakon_(philosophy) > "the ambivalent quality of pharmakon is more than purely a matter of ‘wrong drug, wrong dose, wrong route of administration, wrong patient’. Drugs, as is the case with anti-retroviral therapy, have the capacity to be beneficial and detrimental to the same person at the same time."
- akvadrako 9y agoY'all should take this with a grain of salt. Monsanto is hated as a company; the media just loves to vilify them. I've been suspicious of any anti-Monsanto news since looking into their lawsuit[1] against a farmer who grew illegally obtained patented seeds. The media and commenters made a big deal about predatory behavior but they it was clearly the farmer being an asshole. Anti-science/GMO nuts just latch on to anything without a care where the evidence points. [1] Monsanto Canada Inc v Schmeiser
- ionised 9y agoColour me surprised.