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How do you square this with all the major regulatory organization's experts concluding that there is no evidence glyphosate poses a cancer risk to humans? Orga

• guelo 7y ago
  That Reuters article by Kate Kelland came up during the trial because internal Monsanto emails show that they fed that story to that reporter. That was used by the plaintiffs to show Monsanto's multimillion dollar effort to deceive the news and scientific media about glyphosate.
  • nearbuy 7y ago
    Is that not a good thing? It's a different matter entirely if Monsanto fed false information to the reporter. But it seems like they're pointing out that the IARC ignored scientific data and published an opinion on glyphosate contrary to the scientific consensus and every other regulator body. If the IARC's conclusions were flawed, Monsanto should be pointing it out. I'm also not sure why you'd need internal Monsanto emails to know that Monsanto is the source, since the Reuters article itself says Monsanto is the source about midway through.
    • sgift 7y ago
      The IARC didn't "ignore scientific data", they came to a different conclusion based on weighting multiple studies available against each other than the one Monsanto would have preferred. It is precisely the job of the IARC to find a scientific consensus based on the available data and publish it. Monsanto on the other hand used Reuters to spread FUD about the IARC. A strategy right out of the cigarette industries playbook.
      • nearbuy 7y ago
        > they came to a different conclusion based on weighting multiple studies available against each other than the one Monsanto would have preferred They also came to a different conclusion than every single other national and international agency on glyphosate. Which is why I'm inclined to believe the IARC is wrong here. Monsanto bribing or corrupting the scientists from every other agency studying glyphosate across many countries and the IARC being the only bastion of honest scientists is, in my opinion, pretty much impossible. If you read the Reuters article, it's quite specific about what the IARC removed from their earlier draft. For example, "In further discussion of the same 1983 study, IARC’s final published report refers to expert pathologists on a panel commissioned to reanalyze the work of the original investigators. The IARC draft notes that these pathologists “unanimously” agreed with the original investigators that glyphosate was not related to potentially precancerous tissue growths in the mice. IARC’s final report deletes that sentence. Reviewing a second mouse study, the IARC draft included a comment saying the incidence of a type of animal cancer known as haemangiosarcoma was “not significant” in both males and females. IARC’s published monograph, by contrast, inserts a fresh statistical analysis calculation on the data in male mice, and concludes that the findings were statistically significant." The IARC's final report removed the conclusion from every study finding that glyphosate was not carcinogenic (compared to the IARC's draft that was leaked to Reuters). That sounds like they're ignoring scientific data.
• rjf72 7y ago
  I think reading on the history of past events can answer this question quite clearly. History has this very odd tendency to repeat itself with striking similarity. This [1] is a reasonable brief on leaded fuel. You can find much more in depth and interesting articles on its history elsewhere. But there are many similarities to the current situation. As early as the 1920s the dangers of leaded fuel were somewhat apparent. Yet the official government position would be to proclaim its safety for many decades. It wasn't until the 1970s that efforts towards a gradual phaseout were implemented and that was more over environmental concerns than it's own dangers. So what happened? Again it's all very similar. There were various reports that were published throughout the decades about the dangers of leaded fuel but these studies, the individuals behind them, and even the journals that published such work were all vigorously attacked. By contrast the industry published large amounts of their own research and strongly incentivized "independent" research supporting the position that leaded fuel was safe. Thus you ended up with 'decades of research proving the safety of leaded fuel.' This, alongside further corporate influence, are what helped drive regulators and other government agencies to fall in line. I'd look at the World Health Organization's IARC report in a different way. A researcher leaked to Monsanto confidential internal drafts of a UN organization's internal deliberations. Think about the implications of that. Whoever leaked that did so precisely in an effort to undermine the final report. Do you think they were otherwise an impartial and objective researcher? Probably not. Yet somehow they made their way onto an IARC panel which makes all effort to control for conflicts of interests, both perceived and real. That sort of influence is exactly how you have things such as the EPA saying glyphosate is perfectly safe at the same time that other countries, such as France, find it necessary to phase out and ultimately completely ban the product. And the worst part here is that as corporations grow larger and become more effective at injecting themselves into positions of influence, government agencies can be expected to become less reliable. For instance this [2] is the former head of the FDA, in a special position created by the last president which he referred to as the 'Czar of Foods'. A Monsanto lawyer and VP known for a legal argument that companies ought be allowed to knowingly add at least a small amount of carcinogenic material into processed foods. That is the person who was the head of food safety in the US for the better part of a decade. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead#Controversy_and_phase-out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead#Controversy_and... [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_R._Taylor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_R._Taylor