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People who have been exposed to the chemical got cancer. Internal Monsanto documents show the link and their concern. A man got a court to rule in his favour f

People who have been exposed to the chemical got cancer. Internal Monsanto documents show the link and their concern. A man got a court to rule in his favour for 289 million dollars, after the jury saw this evidence: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/10/monsanto-trial-cancer-dewayne-johnson-ruling https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/10/monsanto-tr...

User23 4y ago
Virtually everyone who eats food has been exposed to glyphosate at this point. You could use the same logic to conclude water is a carcinogen. Every case of cancer is clearly linked to water exposure.
- HPsquared 4y ago
  It also works the other way: people who stop consuming water almost never die of cancer.
gruez 4y ago
>A man got a court to rule in his favour for 289 million dollars, after the jury saw this evidence: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/10/monsanto-tr https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/10/monsanto-tr... You seem to be presenting this fact as some sort of that bayer is guilty, but it's not really convincing. For one, it's a 8 person jury in san francisco. I'd expect them to rule against bayer on ideological grounds (ie. little guy vs multi bililon dollar multinational corporation) alone. Second, if there's no scientific consensus on the effects of glysophate, I doubt a panel of laypersons would do better.
- emodendroket 4y ago
  If the jurors all just ruled against Bayer "on ideological grounds" then their counsel was asleep at the wheel.
  - noirbot 4y ago
    Perhaps, but there's also a reason most lawyers do their best to make sure their case is heard in a favorable jurisdiction. You can only strike so many jurors for something as banal as "doesn't like large multinational corporations", which it's not obvious that would entirely bias them. It's not to say that every juror walked in already decided on it, but I'd somewhat expect a panel of urban CA citizens to be at least 60/40 in favor of a person against a big corp, and so if the evidence is already somewhat in that direction, then that's how it goes.
  - smsm42 4y ago
    Why would that be? Lawyers aren't magicians, if the jury is predisposed to rule in certain way, the lawyer can flap their lips as long as they wanted, and change nothing. Ingrained convictions are remarkably hard to change, even if presented with undeniable contradicting evidence - see example of apocalyptic cults surviving failed prophecy repeatedly. Councils aren't wizards, and they can reject only so many potential jurors. If there are none to be found that would listen, then council can't do much.
    - emodendroket 4y ago
      Even in San Francisco I don't think your pool of potential jurors will be so single-mindedly anti-corporate that this is likely.
- more_corn 4y ago
  This is an absurd assertion. Also you’re literally quoting “Thank you for smoking” with your follow up defense.
  - gruez 4y ago
    >This is an absurd assertion Wow thanks for the thorough refutation! I have now realized my error and totally changed my mind! >Also you’re literally quoting “Thank you for smoking” with your follow up defense. So your idea of a refutation is to reference a fictional novel? I'm at a loss for words.
randomdata 4y ago
The jury believed that surfactants added to the product sold under the Roundup brand, not glyphosate itself, was the cause of cancer in that case.
WillPostForFood 4y ago
People who have been exposed to <everything possible in the world> got cancer, but that is meaningless in showing causation. Internal documents show concern, but show no evidence that it causes cancer, or that Monsanto had internal data showing it caused cancer.
- phkahler 4y ago
  It's safe to drink, here have some: https://youtu.be/ovKw6YjqSfM https://youtu.be/ovKw6YjqSfM
- hyperdimension 4y ago
  This comment contains allegations known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm.
- more_corn 4y ago
  Boy, the Monsanto shills are out tonight.
- pvaldes 4y ago
  The real question is why there is herbicide in your urine. Everything else is a smoke curtain. Why if it does not cause cancer but is behind the obesity epidemic?, or related with the autism increase starting at exactly the same years?. "Not causes cancer" does not mean "is harmless". This stuff shouldn't be there
- zzzeek 4y ago
  right and that's why they just settled instead of proving their product is safe
  - aetherson 4y ago
    Companies settle lawsuits all the time for claims they believe are meritlesss, for two reasons: 1. Going through a lawsuit all the way to conclusion, even if you win, is a long, expensive process that potentially exposes you to a considerable amount of negative publicity and causes a degree of internal chaos. 2. Juries are unpredictable and even a small chance of a bad outcome may be worth paying to avoid.
user3939382 4y ago
As far as I’m concerned Bayer and Monsanto are like evil incarnate and last time I brought up this lawsuit on HN I was shocked people were defending them. We’re talking about the company that intentionally sold HIV infected blood to people. If it was legal and they could increase profits by lighting people on fire they would do it. Yet people trust corrupt research that they paid for showing their product is safe. Well their crap poison is on almost all the produce in every grocery store in the country so I guess they get the last laugh.
- fleddr 4y ago
  There was a dutch researcher that claimed that their weed killer was responsible for the wiping out of many insects, notably bees and bumblebees, but possibly others. The man was ridiculed by his professional peers, whom later turned out to be bribed. The researcher was fully correct.
- imcoconut 4y ago
  >As far as I’m concerned Bayer and Monsanto are like evil incarnate Especially so when they were a subsidiary of IG Farben. >The company had ties in the 1920s to the liberal German People's Party and was accused by the Nazis of being an "international capitalist Jewish company".[8] A decade later, it was a Nazi Party donor and, after the Nazi takeover of Germany in 1933, a major government contractor, providing significant material for the German war effort. Throughout that decade it purged itself of its Jewish employees; the remainder left in 1938.[9] Described as "the most notorious German industrial concern during the Third Reich"[10] in the 1940s the company relied on slave labour from concentration camps, including 30,000 from Auschwitz,[11] and was involved in medical experiments on inmates at both Auschwitz and the Mauthausen concentration camp.[12][13] One of its subsidiaries supplied the poison gas, Zyklon B, that killed over one million people in gas chambers during the Holocaust.[b][15] The Allies seized the company at the end of the war in 1945[a] and the US authorities put its directors on trial. Held from 1947 to 1948 as one of the subsequent Nuremberg trials, the IG Farben trial saw 23 IG Farben directors tried for war crimes and 13 convicted.[16] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IG_Farben https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IG_Farben
- marc_abonce 4y ago
adrr 4y ago
There’s more than glyphosate in roundup. Also if glyphosate increased the risk of cancer, we would see cancer increase when it started to get widely used. Cancer rates except for skin cancer keep falling.
- lostlogin 4y ago
  It’s possible that rates would have fallen further if glyphosate wasn’t present.
  - aetherson 4y ago
    Sure. Anything's possible. This is a fully generalizable argument. Maybe you, personally, cause 10% of the world's cancer, but other factors have caused an overall falling cancer rate, but when you, personally, die or turn off your magical cancer-causing powers, rates will fall even further.
- emodendroket 4y ago
  As far as I can tell the lawsuits they've lost have concerned non-Hodgkin's lymphoma where the picture looks a bit more mixed. https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/nhl.html https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/nhl.html

User23 4y ago

Virtually everyone who eats food has been exposed to glyphosate at this point. You could use the same logic to conclude water is a carcinogen. Every case of cancer is clearly linked to water exposure.

HPsquared 4y ago
It also works the other way: people who stop consuming water almost never die of cancer.

gruez 4y ago

>A man got a court to rule in his favour for 289 million dollars, after the jury saw this evidence: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/10/monsanto-tr https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/10/monsanto-tr... You seem to be presenting this fact as some sort of that bayer is guilty, but it's not really convincing. For one, it's a 8 person jury in san francisco. I'd expect them to rule against bayer on ideological grounds (ie. little guy vs multi bililon dollar multinational corporation) alone. Second, if there's no scientific consensus on the effects of glysophate, I doubt a panel of laypersons would do better.

emodendroket 4y ago
If the jurors all just ruled against Bayer "on ideological grounds" then their counsel was asleep at the wheel.
- noirbot 4y ago
  Perhaps, but there's also a reason most lawyers do their best to make sure their case is heard in a favorable jurisdiction. You can only strike so many jurors for something as banal as "doesn't like large multinational corporations", which it's not obvious that would entirely bias them. It's not to say that every juror walked in already decided on it, but I'd somewhat expect a panel of urban CA citizens to be at least 60/40 in favor of a person against a big corp, and so if the evidence is already somewhat in that direction, then that's how it goes.
- smsm42 4y ago
  Why would that be? Lawyers aren't magicians, if the jury is predisposed to rule in certain way, the lawyer can flap their lips as long as they wanted, and change nothing. Ingrained convictions are remarkably hard to change, even if presented with undeniable contradicting evidence - see example of apocalyptic cults surviving failed prophecy repeatedly. Councils aren't wizards, and they can reject only so many potential jurors. If there are none to be found that would listen, then council can't do much.
  - emodendroket 4y ago
    Even in San Francisco I don't think your pool of potential jurors will be so single-mindedly anti-corporate that this is likely.
more_corn 4y ago
This is an absurd assertion. Also you’re literally quoting “Thank you for smoking” with your follow up defense.
- gruez 4y ago
  >This is an absurd assertion Wow thanks for the thorough refutation! I have now realized my error and totally changed my mind! >Also you’re literally quoting “Thank you for smoking” with your follow up defense. So your idea of a refutation is to reference a fictional novel? I'm at a loss for words.

randomdata 4y ago

The jury believed that surfactants added to the product sold under the Roundup brand, not glyphosate itself, was the cause of cancer in that case.

WillPostForFood 4y ago

People who have been exposed to <everything possible in the world> got cancer, but that is meaningless in showing causation. Internal documents show concern, but show no evidence that it causes cancer, or that Monsanto had internal data showing it caused cancer.

phkahler 4y ago
It's safe to drink, here have some: https://youtu.be/ovKw6YjqSfM https://youtu.be/ovKw6YjqSfM
hyperdimension 4y ago
This comment contains allegations known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm.
more_corn 4y ago
Boy, the Monsanto shills are out tonight.
pvaldes 4y ago
The real question is why there is herbicide in your urine. Everything else is a smoke curtain. Why if it does not cause cancer but is behind the obesity epidemic?, or related with the autism increase starting at exactly the same years?. "Not causes cancer" does not mean "is harmless". This stuff shouldn't be there
zzzeek 4y ago
right and that's why they just settled instead of proving their product is safe
- aetherson 4y ago
  Companies settle lawsuits all the time for claims they believe are meritlesss, for two reasons: 1. Going through a lawsuit all the way to conclusion, even if you win, is a long, expensive process that potentially exposes you to a considerable amount of negative publicity and causes a degree of internal chaos. 2. Juries are unpredictable and even a small chance of a bad outcome may be worth paying to avoid.

user3939382 4y ago

As far as I’m concerned Bayer and Monsanto are like evil incarnate and last time I brought up this lawsuit on HN I was shocked people were defending them. We’re talking about the company that intentionally sold HIV infected blood to people. If it was legal and they could increase profits by lighting people on fire they would do it. Yet people trust corrupt research that they paid for showing their product is safe. Well their crap poison is on almost all the produce in every grocery store in the country so I guess they get the last laugh.

fleddr 4y ago
There was a dutch researcher that claimed that their weed killer was responsible for the wiping out of many insects, notably bees and bumblebees, but possibly others. The man was ridiculed by his professional peers, whom later turned out to be bribed. The researcher was fully correct.
imcoconut 4y ago
>As far as I’m concerned Bayer and Monsanto are like evil incarnate Especially so when they were a subsidiary of IG Farben. >The company had ties in the 1920s to the liberal German People's Party and was accused by the Nazis of being an "international capitalist Jewish company".[8] A decade later, it was a Nazi Party donor and, after the Nazi takeover of Germany in 1933, a major government contractor, providing significant material for the German war effort. Throughout that decade it purged itself of its Jewish employees; the remainder left in 1938.[9] Described as "the most notorious German industrial concern during the Third Reich"[10] in the 1940s the company relied on slave labour from concentration camps, including 30,000 from Auschwitz,[11] and was involved in medical experiments on inmates at both Auschwitz and the Mauthausen concentration camp.[12][13] One of its subsidiaries supplied the poison gas, Zyklon B, that killed over one million people in gas chambers during the Holocaust.[b][15] The Allies seized the company at the end of the war in 1945[a] and the US authorities put its directors on trial. Held from 1947 to 1948 as one of the subsequent Nuremberg trials, the IG Farben trial saw 23 IG Farben directors tried for war crimes and 13 convicted.[16] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IG_Farben https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IG_Farben
marc_abonce 4y ago

adrr 4y ago

There’s more than glyphosate in roundup. Also if glyphosate increased the risk of cancer, we would see cancer increase when it started to get widely used. Cancer rates except for skin cancer keep falling.

lostlogin 4y ago
It’s possible that rates would have fallen further if glyphosate wasn’t present.
- aetherson 4y ago
  Sure. Anything's possible. This is a fully generalizable argument. Maybe you, personally, cause 10% of the world's cancer, but other factors have caused an overall falling cancer rate, but when you, personally, die or turn off your magical cancer-causing powers, rates will fall even further.
emodendroket 4y ago
As far as I can tell the lawsuits they've lost have concerned non-Hodgkin's lymphoma where the picture looks a bit more mixed. https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/nhl.html https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/nhl.html