7 ms·

Glyphosate perturbs the gut microbiota of honey bees

128 points by LolWolf 8y ago

kryogen1c 8y ago
>Since fewer than 20% of bees reintroduced to the hive were recovered, recovered bees may not represent the total effect of glyphosate on treatment groups. I'll say! What a damning line. How many trial replications does it take to create resultant certainty when each trail loses >80% of it's data?
- vixen99 8y ago
  its data
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - dang 8y ago
    I sympathize with orthographic passion but can you please stop posting many such corrections to HN? An unsubstantive comment is worse than a superfluous apostrophe.
- lallysingh 8y ago
  A 20% sample isn't bad by itself. Is the sample size sufficiently large? Unbiased? One question is whether recoverability depends on the effect of the glycophosate.
OnlyRepliesToBS 8y ago
counter with paragraphs of tech speak
klmr 8y ago
Previous discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18084054 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18084054
ianai 8y ago
Looks like not even organic food is free of glyphosate. Is there any way to buy (vegan) food without any glyphosate?
- ianlevesque 8y ago
  Organic is the only route I know of to avoid it. Where did you find organic food with glyphosate?
  - ianai 8y ago
    For instance https://sustainablepulse.com/2018/09/05/bobs-red-mill-faces-class-action-lawsuit-over-glyphosate-weedkiller-contamination/ https://sustainablepulse.com/2018/09/05/bobs-red-mill-faces-... During the search, I saw bobs had a supplier “pre-treating” fields with glyphosate prior to seeding.
    - mercutio2 8y ago
      Farmers can’t use glyphosate and be certified organic. Certification can certainly miss things (hence the lawsuit). But I don’t think you can get much closer to glyphosate-free than organic, except by growing your inputs and the final product yourself.
      - devy 8y ago
        The problem is with seeds. Take a look at this: https://www.organicconsumers.org/essays/us-and-monsanto-dominate-global-market-gm-seeds https://www.organicconsumers.org/essays/us-and-monsanto-domi... Monsanto pretty much dominates the global seed market. I'd be surprised if there is still any truly nature wild seeds in human operated farms. It's simply not economical for farmers to farm on wild seeds any more, which is sad. And I don't trust Monsanto for their seeds either.
        nielsbot 8y ago
        I speculate you could specialize in "heirloom" grains and charge a premium... maybe that's one way around it?
sschueller 8y ago
I am curios how it affects human gut microbiota if at all, as our gut microbiota appears more and more to be vital for our health and also manage general weight.
- jokoon 8y ago
  I think scientists know too little about the gut microbiota. There could be a million things disturbing it. I heard the main difficulty is being able to do experiments, and it might be too difficult to reproduce the conditions to observe it.
  - ianai 8y ago
    Glyphosate harms organisms shikimic acid pathway. It’s not supposed to “exist” in non-plants(?). But it definitely affects microbiota. I would almost guarantee it affects gut microbes in humans - for one because it affected microbiota in bees.
    - Obi_Juan_Kenobi 8y ago
      > It’s not supposed to “exist” in non-plants(?). No, it exists in many clades, which include many bacteria. It's most notable for being absent in Animalia. "exist" doesn't need to be in scare quotes, it simply means that animal genomes don't have the genes that encode for this pathway. The basic premise of the paper - that glyphosate may be affecting animals indirectly via their gut microbiota - is sound enough, but the paper itself is of very poor quality. It follows a pattern of dubious papers critical of glyphosate (e.g. Seralini) that 'throw data against a wall and see what sticks'. * 20% recollection rate of already small samples (n=80 IIRC, so just over a dozen to compute statistics on, patently absurd). * No dose response: 10mg/L exposure shows no results, while 5mg/L does. * The affected microbes appears random and likely a result of poor sampling and multiple comparisons. The paper is a joke. A bad one. Any of those three issues should result in immediate rejection. Think whatever the hell you want about glyphosate, Monsanto, etc., but science matters and this isn't fucking science.
swerner 8y ago
Someone smarter than me discussing this paper: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xdnW8ldDoZU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xdnW8ldDoZU
mothsonasloth 8y ago
If colony collapse disorder escalates to all pollinating bees then we're gonna have to figure out artificial pollination

128 points by LolWolf 8y ago

>Since fewer than 20% of bees reintroduced to the hive were recovered, recovered bees may not represent the total effect of glyphosate on treatment groups. I'll say! What a damning line. How many trial replications does it take to create resultant certainty when each trail loses >80% of it's data?

vixen99 8y ago
its data
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- dang 8y ago
  I sympathize with orthographic passion but can you please stop posting many such corrections to HN? An unsubstantive comment is worse than a superfluous apostrophe.
lallysingh 8y ago
A 20% sample isn't bad by itself. Is the sample size sufficiently large? Unbiased? One question is whether recoverability depends on the effect of the glycophosate.

OnlyRepliesToBS 8y ago

counter with paragraphs of tech speak

klmr 8y ago

Previous discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18084054 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18084054

ianai 8y ago

Looks like not even organic food is free of glyphosate. Is there any way to buy (vegan) food without any glyphosate?

ianlevesque 8y ago
Organic is the only route I know of to avoid it. Where did you find organic food with glyphosate?
- ianai 8y ago
  For instance https://sustainablepulse.com/2018/09/05/bobs-red-mill-faces-class-action-lawsuit-over-glyphosate-weedkiller-contamination/ https://sustainablepulse.com/2018/09/05/bobs-red-mill-faces-... During the search, I saw bobs had a supplier “pre-treating” fields with glyphosate prior to seeding.
  - mercutio2 8y ago
    Farmers can’t use glyphosate and be certified organic. Certification can certainly miss things (hence the lawsuit). But I don’t think you can get much closer to glyphosate-free than organic, except by growing your inputs and the final product yourself.
    - devy 8y ago
      The problem is with seeds. Take a look at this: https://www.organicconsumers.org/essays/us-and-monsanto-dominate-global-market-gm-seeds https://www.organicconsumers.org/essays/us-and-monsanto-domi... Monsanto pretty much dominates the global seed market. I'd be surprised if there is still any truly nature wild seeds in human operated farms. It's simply not economical for farmers to farm on wild seeds any more, which is sad. And I don't trust Monsanto for their seeds either.
      - nielsbot 8y ago
        I speculate you could specialize in "heirloom" grains and charge a premium... maybe that's one way around it?

sschueller 8y ago

I am curios how it affects human gut microbiota if at all, as our gut microbiota appears more and more to be vital for our health and also manage general weight.

jokoon 8y ago
I think scientists know too little about the gut microbiota. There could be a million things disturbing it. I heard the main difficulty is being able to do experiments, and it might be too difficult to reproduce the conditions to observe it.
- ianai 8y ago
  Glyphosate harms organisms shikimic acid pathway. It’s not supposed to “exist” in non-plants(?). But it definitely affects microbiota. I would almost guarantee it affects gut microbes in humans - for one because it affected microbiota in bees.
  - Obi_Juan_Kenobi 8y ago
    > It’s not supposed to “exist” in non-plants(?). No, it exists in many clades, which include many bacteria. It's most notable for being absent in Animalia. "exist" doesn't need to be in scare quotes, it simply means that animal genomes don't have the genes that encode for this pathway. The basic premise of the paper - that glyphosate may be affecting animals indirectly via their gut microbiota - is sound enough, but the paper itself is of very poor quality. It follows a pattern of dubious papers critical of glyphosate (e.g. Seralini) that 'throw data against a wall and see what sticks'. * 20% recollection rate of already small samples (n=80 IIRC, so just over a dozen to compute statistics on, patently absurd). * No dose response: 10mg/L exposure shows no results, while 5mg/L does. * The affected microbes appears random and likely a result of poor sampling and multiple comparisons. The paper is a joke. A bad one. Any of those three issues should result in immediate rejection. Think whatever the hell you want about glyphosate, Monsanto, etc., but science matters and this isn't fucking science.

swerner 8y ago

Someone smarter than me discussing this paper: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xdnW8ldDoZU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xdnW8ldDoZU

mothsonasloth 8y ago

If colony collapse disorder escalates to all pollinating bees then we're gonna have to figure out artificial pollination