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This hits home for me. For years a few buddies of mine and I would go out coyote hunting in farm fields. In the mornings, there would be a lot of dew and our pa
by rcurry 4y ago
This hits home for me. For years a few buddies of mine and I would go out coyote hunting in farm fields. In the mornings, there would be a lot of dew and our pant legs would be soaked through from walking through freshly treated corn fields. All five of us came down with various thyroid disorders - nothing as scary as brain cancer, but I was telling my buddy that I had thyroid cancer and he was like “Weird, me too, and my son and a couple of other guys have it too.” Monsanto for the win I guess.
- ChrisLomont 4y agoIf Monsanto caused it with such certainty for you, given the widespread use of Roundup, you'd expect vastly more cases. However decades of testing have shown no such effects.
- eyelidlessness 4y agoShowing no conclusive causation doesn’t negate clusters of correlation. It just begs studies to clear up the correlating relationship.
- ChrisLomont 4y ago"Clusters of correlation" is another way of saying random clusters occur from mere statistics with no input from Monsanto, but you want to blame them anyway? If cosmic rays cause some rate of cancer, then clusters will occur, and you can then blame anything for "clusters of correlation." Or we can simply look at the hundreds of studies showing that Monsanto is not causing this, studies done fully aware of proper statistical methods, and realize what the science community has known for decades.
- eyelidlessness 4y agoYou interjected “random” and that seems odd. Correlation doesn’t mean causation but that also doesn’t mean correlation is random noise. It just means there’s an unknown relationship between facts.
- XorNot 4y agoThe point is that a random data set will spontaneously produce clustered groups of apparent events that are not due to any underlying cause.
- eyelidlessness 4y agoAnd a non-random data set will produce clusters of correlations which don’t have causal explanations. I’m well aware of this axiom which is why I found it important to address.
- ChrisLomont 4y agoAnd if there were such clusters beyond pure random noise, they'd show up in studies. They don't, hence they're random noise. How many heads in a row would you expect from an unbiased coin if you flip it long enough? That is your "clusters of correlation."
- ChrisLomont 4y agoCorrelation most certainly does not imply an unknown relation between facts. In fact, there are more completely unrelated correlations than there are correlations caused by related things. This is simple statistics. Proof? Consider M things related that show a correlation. Suppose some other thing randomly by chance correlates, and that thing has N items correlated by some other set of related facts. Then all the not causally related cross correlations between the M and N items vastly outnumber the causally ones. So no, correlation absolutely does not imply an unknown relation. It points to a place to look.
- toiletfuneral 4y ago
- tokai 4y agoAll the won lawsuits kind of support the link between cancer and Roundup. Also stuff like this makes believe that there are many cases out there: "the lawyer for the RoundUp Virginia plaintiffs had been charged with extortion after offering to stop searching for more plaintiffs if he was paid a $200 million consulting fee by a manufacturer of glyphosate." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundup_(herbicide)#Legal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundup_(herbicide)#Legal
- akyu 4y agoI have a bridge to sell you.
- wfme 4y agoIt seems to me that the companies producing these chemicals have a very strong vested interest in _proving_ that there is no connection between the chemicals they produce and any kind of serious health effects. On the other hand, there are many published studies that strongly support negative health effects: > The team determined that exposure to glyphosate may increase the risk of Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma by as much as 41 percent [0] [0] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/02/190214093359.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/02/190214093359.h...
- SapporoChris 4y agoIncreased risk by as much as 41 percent... Okay, most risk of developing cancer is pretty low. https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-basics/lifetime-probability-of-developing-or-dying-from-cancer.html https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-basics/lifetime-probabi... So, I found Hodgkin lymphoma at 2.43%. Increased by 41%, 2.43% * 1.41 = 3.43%. Now any increase in cancer risk is alarming, but this is a small increase. More important question would be. How many people are getting increased exposure to glyphosate? If it's only 1000 people annually, then it looks like ten more people gets cancer. If it's a global exposure, then yes, we have a big problem. Edited to correct math mistakes, thanks tomsmeding
- tomsmeding 4y agoIt's 41% increase, not 4% increase.
- throwawaycities 4y ago> If Monsanto caused it with such certainty for you, given the widespread use of Roundup, you'd expect vastly more cases. Monsanto has settled 40,000+ cases, that’s significant and a lot of cases. I’m not sure your threshold of vastly more cases but when you consider Roundup only came to market in 1976 it’s even more staggering, whereas some of the major tobacco companies had been around 100+ years before losing similar lawsuits. Also it’s not very clear what your threshold of “certainty” is, but my guess is you are trying to apply a higher standard of proof than the courts and law require. > However decades of testing have shown no such effects. That’s just not true, the most complete study published concludes that using glyphosate increases the risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma by 41 percent.
- ChrisLomont 4y agoThere's 181 studies citing that one on Google scholar. I think the science has moved past the paper you claim as the most complete study. You should look through them instead of latching onto a single paper when there's ample rebuttals in the literature. You can find climatologists that deny global warming. Thus it's not credible to pick one of thousands of results as the truth. Pick the majority of expert opinions, not the outliers.
- throwawaycities 4y ago> You can find climatologists that deny global warming. It sounds like your argument is that if people can deny climate change, you can deny roundup causes harm…apparently without the need to cite anything. How many of those 181 studies citing the first concluded something completely inconsistent with the first study? If you think there is a more complete study disproving the 41% increased cancer risk, why not cite or link the study? > Pick the majority of expert opinions, not the outliers. In the case of Roundup/Glyphosate we can skip our own interpretations of hundreds of studies, do you know why? Because the company that manufactures the product in question settled ~96,000 claims for ~$10B. Therefore, we can confidently conclude that after taking into consideration the opinions of their own expert witnesses that they hired and who reviewed all available studies, and could have relied on only the most favorable studies at trial, their opinion was Roundup/Glyphosate causes harm and they should settle.
- TheCondor 4y agoAny chance this was in central Nebraska?
- kickout 4y agoInteresting location choice. Why central NE?
- TheCondor 4y agoFamily of a friend was involved with a cancer cluster near Grand Island. I think there is some environmental contamination of some sort, I know there are agg chemicals in the aquifer. Similar shockingly high numbers for a relatively small community.
- interstate 4y agoOne possibility: Operation Plumbbob, a series of open air nuclear tests in 1957, generated considerable fallout in north central NE.
- JKCalhoun 4y agoProject Sedan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedan_(nuclear_test) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedan_(nuclear_test)
- kickout 4y agoThat looks more probable for Iowa than NE. Still, great link! Never seen the before
- kickout 4y agoany link to fallout maps? None are listed in the wikipedia
- interstate 4y agoThis report might be of use: https://acsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.3322/canjclin.48.5.285 https://acsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.3322/canj...
- TeeMassive 4y agoMy and my extended family lived on a farm. One of my cousin was born with a severe heart defect and had to go through several open heart surgeries. Another cousin had a double acute leukemia when he was a kid. Lots of cancer (but most of them were smokers). Lots of thyroid problems too.
- dbt00 4y agoI'm sorry for what you and your friends have been through. I'm curious why you cite Monsanto here? A thyroid cancer cluster is far more likely caused by exposure to radioactive iodine than a pesticide.
- rcurry 4y agoI was just being glib, but we all figured it was from exposure to one or more pesticides: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6480006/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6480006/ But who knows, could just be coincidence.
- eurasiantiger 4y agoThis thread has got some wild traction around Monsanto and glyphosate, which is just funny doublethink and another level of control. The EPA regulations concerning various industrial chemicals are useless in general and have been from the very beginning: the chemical lobby managed to grandfather in close to a hundred thousand different chemicals that are ”Generally Regarded As Safe” just because nobody has cared enough to study most of their effects on humans. Regardless of glyphosate, if you live, breathe, drink and eat on U.S. soil, you are already fucked and it is only a matter of when the timer goes off.
- gnubison 4y ago> if you live, breathe, drink and eat on U.S. soil, you are already fucked and it is only a matter of when the timer goes off. In fact, come to think of it, this holds true almost everywhere. Us humans are in the middle of a mortality epidemic.
- eurasiantiger 4y agoSadly true, even in Europe PFOS has been dumped in the environment for decades and only lately attention has been paid to those and other endocrine disruptor forever-chemicals.
- gnubison 4y agoI meant more in the “100% of humans die” sense :)
- theknocker 4y ago