16 ms·

Bayer hit with $332M judgement in Roundup cancer trial

• lakomen 3y ago
  I find that funny. Bayer buys US government owned Monsanto. Did they not know what the deal entailed? Did they think that owning the world's food production was worth the risk of constant judical trials? 332M USD isn't that much considering how much controlling most of the global crop patents and pesticides to go along is worth IMHO. But then again, why did the US government get rid of it? To avert a much larger trial? I guess it's more mysterious than funny.
• sizzle 3y ago
  Seems like it’s off by a digit for the harm caused
• tempsy 3y ago
  People look at you like you're crazy if you tell them you avoid oats, grains, nuts that are particularly heavy in glyphosate.
  • throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
    Glyphosate breaks down within a few days, doesn't remain in plants, and is passed out the body quickly even if you were exposed to it while spraying. You're not going to get any of it by eating oats.
  • nemo 3y ago
    He was using glyphosate as a weed-killer and getting it on his hands and feet. Way higher levels of exposure than any foods. Also if you're afraid of glyphosate, the Roundup-ready crops are the ones to avoid especially - soy, corn, canola, sugar beets. There's no Roundup-ready wheat, oats, or nuts. (edit: apparently it's used as a desiccant so it winds up in cereals as well - lovely, though still there's no evidence it's got dietary effects). I'm not really concerned about its dietary effects since there's no evidence there, but as an amateur entomologist the effects of Roundup on butterfly populations have been devastating - in the past milkweed was pretty hard to completely weed out by hand, but modern farming can clear hundreds of acres of every trace of milkweed with Roundup/glyphosate.
    • Zigurd 3y ago
      Roundup is used to dessicate some crops to make harvesting more efficient.
    • moberley 3y ago
      Glyphosate is sometimes used a pre-harvest dessicant with cereal crops like wheat in which case the Roundup Ready gene is not required.
      • 1letterunixname 3y ago
        The Wikipedia datalinks opines it's a practice banned in Austria and frowned upon by buyers in Canada. Spraying chemicals on crops to make them cheaper to harvest is enough evidence to convince me it's best to avoid all cereal products unless they're organic.
    • szundi 3y ago
      Living in eastern europe I have not seen butterflies for decades. Now they seem to be returning a bit.
      • nemo 3y ago
        I keep records of butterfly sightings. This is the worst year I've ever seen by far. In a normal year queen butterflies are one of the most abundant migrants. So far I have seen 0. I've seen no swallowtails of any species at all, and massively reduced numbers of typical species or none. But that's because of the drought, not glyphosate.
  • vkou 3y ago
    Given that as of 2023: 1. Glyphosate is one of the more heavily studied chemicals known to man. 2. The evidence for it causing cancer is poor. Studies routinely fail to find evidence for it. 3. The subset of studies that do find evidence for such a link, find it in occupational exposure, by people who have been working knee-deep in it for decades. [1] Yes, people probably should look at you like you're crazy, because you're extrapolating from cherry-picked evidence that supports your priors. [1] Whose exposure is dramatically higher than that of someone eating food grown with it.
    • sharts 3y ago
      It would seem that #2 and #3 directly contradict one another and that the truth is that it does indeed cause cancer at a particular rate / exposure over time. Rather than saying it doesn't affect this group but does affect another group it would be more appropriate to establish the level of consumption/exposure that is likely to cause a statistical increase in the likelihood of developing cancer.
      • cma 3y ago
        Studies fail to find it doesn't mean all studies fail to find it, but it could have been clearer.
    • defrost 3y ago
      While I'm in essential agreement with the comment above it's still worth fleshing out the case against for those interested. The specific papers (worst effects of a great deal of exposure) oft cited are: Myers, J.P.; Antoniou, M.N.; Blumberg, B.; Carroll, L.; Colborn, T.; Everett, L.G.; Hansen, M.; Landrigan, P.J.; Lanphear, B.P.; Mesnage, R.; et al. Concerns over use of glyphosate-based herbicides and risks associated with exposures: a consensus statement. Environ. Health 2016, 15, 19. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26883814/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26883814/ Leon, M.E.; Schinasi, L.H.; Lebailly, P.; Beane Freeman, L.E.; Nordby, K.-C.; Ferro, G.; Monnereau, A.; Brouwer, M.; Tual, S.; Baldi, I.; et al. Pesticide use and risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoid malignancies in agricultural cohorts from France, Norway and the USA: A pooled analysis from the AGRICOH consortium. Int. J. Epidemiol. 2019, 48, 1519–1535. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30880337/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30880337/ Zhang, L.; Rana, I.; Shaffer, R.M.; Taioli, E.; Sheppard, L. Exposure to glyphosate-based herbicides and risk for non-Hodgkin lymphoma: A meta-analysis and supporting evidence. Mutat. Res. Rev. Mutat. Res. 2019, 781, 186–206. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31342895/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31342895/ I'm in a grain growing district and glyphosate isn't being applied to grain ready to eat | harvest here, just sprayed pre harvest to kill weeds and mid season to suppress weeds coming up in competition. If people are concerned they could source from international suppliers that demand no glyphosate contracts such as https://www.grainmillers.com/grower-specifications/ https://www.grainmillers.com/grower-specifications/ For an industry review of the possiblities of avoiding Farming without Glyphosate? https://www.ahri.uwa.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/plants-09-00096.pdf https://www.ahri.uwa.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/plant... is a decent balanced paper - it points out the vast number of studies show no real cause for concern while also giving the papers that show issues for farmers and the possible future for glyphosate free farming.
  • UweSchmidt 3y ago
    Yet another invisible thing invented for substantial benefit and maybe serious harm over a long time; hard to prove cause-and-effect, difficult to protect yourself from, or to know how much you are exposed.
  • jjtheblunt 3y ago
    How do you know if particular ones are or are not?
  • pokstad 3y ago
    Isn’t the reason that people get ill from those foods is primarily due to excess calories causing obesity and inflation? Wouldn’t the same thing happen with other foods just as cheap and calorie dense?
  • pella 3y ago
    --> "Roundup herbicide ingredient connected to epidemic chronic kidney disease" (phys.org) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37905251 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37905251 ( 18 days ago )
  • cracrecry 3y ago
    They probably do not have that high concentration on seeds itself. The problem is that it thousands of tons need to be dispersed on the environment and its effect as an antibiotic on big scale. We have a very important microbiota that are bacteria themselves. The antibiotics on meat and environment can break havoc there, specially for people that work or live near those environments and can breathe or drink the pesticides.
    • Loughla 3y ago
      Does glyphosate act as an antibiotic? This is literally news to me. It's a weed killer?
      • sitharus 3y ago
        Glyphosate is toxic to some bacteria as they use the same enzyme as part of amino acid synthesis. It’s not a universal antibiotic.
    • 1letterunixname 3y ago
      Might be conflating different issues. I haven't seen the data or reporting on glyphosate residues. Without clear, unbiased proof of safety following the precautionary principle, there is no assurances that this shit is safe to eat. Also, yes, industrial meat ag is bad for creating new pandemics between human workers<->livestock animals packed together in CAFOs<->wildlife, antibiotic resistance (antibiotics injected to make animals grow faster), and climate change. Sometimes animal rights people tout animal cruelty, but few people are convinced because the cognitive dissonance "forcefield" is too strong to accept this idea. Adapting a quote by Upton Sinclair: "It's difficult to get someone to understand something when their tastebuds and drone-delivered fast food depends on their not understanding it." Probably a whole other area for discussion. :]
    • hinkley 3y ago
      Our digestive tracts aren’t fond of detergents either, and Roundup contains some. For that matter, so do the pods you use in your dishwasher, which is something that just came onto my radar recently. Are HE dishwashers removing enough detergent residue during the rinse cycle? Possibly not.
  • Reptur 3y ago
    If we're sharing thoughts, I need to point out that once you hit your late 60s, you're more likely to get cancer, and your risk keeps going up [1]. Our food is loaded with chemicals that can make you sick or even cause cancer [2]. That age is also when people usually retire and are no longer "productive". Here's where I might lose you. In our country, illness is a way to make money [3]. If you're really sick and trying to stay alive, you'll spend everything you've got. So the quickest way to turn people's savings into profit while also reducing the population of non-productive people is for them to fall ill, pay as much as they can to survive and then ultimately die an early death, which triggers a death tax event [4]. 1. https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/age https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/a... 2. https://www.eatthis.com/toxic-food-ingredients-linked-to-cancer/ https://www.eatthis.com/toxic-food-ingredients-linked-to-can... 3. https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucejapsen/2023/01/13/unitedhealth-group-reports-47-billion-profit-as-optum-and-health-plans-maintain-momentum/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucejapsen/2023/01/13/unitedhe... 4. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/death-taxes.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/death-taxes.asp
    • ok_dad 3y ago
      Maybe that’s why America has such high productivity. We’re have a culture and economy that agree that it’s better to die than be unproductive and rely on others.
    • rainbowzootsuit 3y ago
      This is a good reason to be long on hospice stocks. https://swingtradebot.com/stocks-tagged-as/12320-hospice https://swingtradebot.com/stocks-tagged-as/12320-hospice
    • theGnuMe 3y ago
      Yes! Processed food is loaded with preservatives which IMO probably increase the risk of cancer.
      • XorNot 3y ago
        Why would you think that? Which preservative additives are you concerned about?
  • 1letterunixname 3y ago
    Most people lack subject matter expertise on topics they espouse opinions impertinently, don't look at the evidence, and don't take sensible precautions against unknowns, so their opinions don't matter. In the absence of compelling precautionary evidence and systematic safety processes, it's clear that the faithful adherents of organic production are more likely to be safer than industrial megafarming done with the same blind faith in the miracles of chemical wizardry that brought us such hits as organophosphates, chlorpyrifos, DDT, and the over 85k compounds that are de facto unregulated because they are allowed until specific injury is proven after the damage is done ("whack-a-mole"-style), rather than first proven safe.
    • hinkley 3y ago
      At work we have a term for the people who completely dismiss the opinions of laypeople who have to use what they produce. We call them assholes. Or fucking assholes, depending on the degree.
    • gruez 3y ago
      >the faithful adherents of organic production are more likely to be safer than industrial megafarming But the "organic" label doesn't check whether the farmers were "faithful adherents of organic production", only that they fulfilled the organic checklist. They can use as much chemical fertilizer and pesticides as they want, so long they're on the approved list. In the same vain farming and "industrial megafarming" isn't mutually exclusive.
      • mikeiz404 3y ago
        That list appears to be relatively restrictive: - Bacillus subtilis - Bacilus thuringiensis - Beauveria bassiana - Boric acid: Structural pest control, no direct contact with organic food or crops. - Coniothyrium minitans - Copper: Copper hydroxide, copper oxide, copper oxychloride, includes products exempted from EPA tolerance, provided that copper-based materials must be used in a manner that minimizes accumulation in the soil and shall not be used as herbicides. - Copper sulfate: Application rates are limited to levels which do not increase baseline soil test values for copper over a timeframe agreed upon by the producer and accredited certifying agent. - Corn gluten - Cydia pomonella granulosis - Diatomaceous earth - Gibberellic acid - Horticultural vinegar - Hydrogen peroxide - Lime sulfer: Including calcium polysulfide - Minerals such as elemental sulfur, bicarbonate, or kaolin clay - Myrothecium verrucaria - Non-detergent insecticidal soaps: As a pesticide, fungicide, or algaecide for food crops - Oils, including petroleum, vegetable, and fish oils: Types include dormant, suffocating, and summer oils - Peracetic acid: For use to control fire blight bacteria. Also permitted in hydrogen peroxide formulations at a concentration of no more than 6% as indicated on the pesticide product label - Pheromones and pheromone traps - Plant-derived substances such as neem, caraway oil, seed fennel, quassia, or ryania - Ryania/Ryanodine - Sabadilla - Spinosad - Streptomycin sulfate and tetracycline - Sticky traps - Vitamin D3: As a rodencide https://www.agdaily.com/technology/the-list-of-pesticides-approved-for-organic-production/ https://www.agdaily.com/technology/the-list-of-pesticides-ap... See also https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-7/subtitle-B/chapter-I/subchapter-M/part-205/subpart-G https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-7/subtitle-B/chapter-I/su... And the farms are re-certified annually to be in compliance. To maintain organic certification, your certified organic farm or business will go through an annual review and inspection process. https://www.ams.usda.gov/services/organic-certification/becoming-certified https://www.ams.usda.gov/services/organic-certification/beco... - More than 45,000 onsite inspections per year by certifying agents to monitor compliance with USDA organic standards. Every certified operation has at least one onsite inspection each year. - Certifiers audited by USDA to make sure they are implementing the rules correctly. - Residue testing program to verify that prohibited pesticides aren’t being applied to organic crops. - Robust compliance and enforcement activities. - Risk-based investigations based on operation size, complexity, geographic location or compliance history. https://www.ams.usda.gov/services/organic-certification/organic-basics https://www.ams.usda.gov/services/organic-certification/orga...
  • hinkley 3y ago
    There are a bunch of wheat free people who have no problem eating wheat in Europe. Nobody knows why, some people suspect Monsanto is why.
• sschueller 3y ago
  Just like Dow Chemical and Union Carbide[1] they claim they are not responsible as the acquired only the assets of Monsanto not the liabilities.... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster
  • genter 3y ago
    The MSDS for Roundup is hilarious. It's completely safe, no known health effects, as long as you're wearing a full hazmat suite.
    • RoyalHenOil 3y ago
      I used to work in the agriculture sector, and we had to fully suit up to spray anything whatsoever, even neem oil. But there were good reasons for this: 1. Human error: If the last user didn't clean it properly, there could still be residue in the sprayer from a different (more dangerous) chemical. Or you may have accidentally added the wrong chemical. 2. Bad luck: You never know who's going to have an allergic reaction to something, like a dye or a surfactant in the product. 3. Liability: Future research may reveal risks that we do not currently know about (e.g., who knows, maybe people with prior exposure will turn out to be more likely to get long covid or some random thing like that). Requiring a suit for absolutely everything means your employer doesn't have to stress about future lawsuits over unknowns like these.
    • vkou 3y ago
      How does its[1] MSDS compare to any other herbicide/pesticide in common use[2]? All the handling instructions for the them are nearly word-for-word identical. It seems to be a good idea to wear a hazmat suit when you're spraying a field with anything that's supposed to kill weeds. [1] https://labelsds.com/images/user_uploads/Roundup%20Pro%20Conc%20SDS%208-12-20.pdf https://labelsds.com/images/user_uploads/Roundup%20Pro%20Con... [2] https://labelsds.com/images/user_uploads/Atrazine%204L%20SDS%206-19-20.pdf https://labelsds.com/images/user_uploads/Atrazine%204L%20SDS...
      • sudhirc 3y ago
• LunaSea 3y ago
  America suddenly suying after Monsanto was bought by a European company, Bayer. What a coincidence!
  • jfghi 3y ago
    Are you claiming a lawsuit shouldn’t take place?
    • zetsurin 3y ago
      guessing the implication is that america doesn't sue it's own
      • projektfu 3y ago
        Several tobacco companies would like if that were true.
        • LunaSea 3y ago
          How long after the dangers of smoking were known? Aren't these same companies owners of large vaping brands now btw?
          • projektfu 3y ago
            How far do you want to move the goalposts?
            • LunaSea 3y ago
              Thanks for answering the question. So it seems that it takes 80 years for the American government to do something about it. Well past the golden age of profit of the tobacco industry. Now please explain to me again how this is the justice system suddenly genuinely caring about people's health instead of a strategic case to kill European competitors and extort money out of them? Chemical companies like Dow, 3M and DuPont are in the same basket and don't seem to get fined much.
• Reptur 3y ago
  Doubt they even blinked, these companies hire people to calculate risk and so they can continue to get away with it. Just a cost of business. Bayer's gross revenue for just 2022 was 53.4B. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/BAYRY/bayer/revenue https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/BAYRY/bayer/revenu...
  • jstanley 3y ago
    I don't understand why this type of comment comes up every time a big company gets a big fine. It seems no big fine is big enough to satisfy people. It is crazy to think they don't care about losing $332M. Of course they care! That's an enormous amount of money no matter how big you are. It's enough money to pay for literally hundreds of engineers to work full-time for multiple years to solve the problem. The point that you don't care about a $332M fine is the point you stop bothering to run the business at all.
    • martin82 3y ago
      Maybe 332M was a lot when you were a child. Thanks to compounding monetary inflation year after year, 332M is actually not much any more. It's enough though to make normal people believe that some kind of justice has been served.
      • tomhoward 3y ago
        No, it's a big amount of money, particularly if it happens repeatedly. Governments have responded to companies' practice of just breaking laws and taking the hit, by continuing to push fines up to they point that they really do hurt and drive down the share price, which directly hurts the wealth of the senior executives and directors. Bayer's share price is 70% down off its 2015 peak and 65% off its peak since the Monsanto acquisition bid was launched, and has even dropped 30% in just the past 6-7 months. These fines and judgements, and the worry that they may keep happening into the future, are definitely damaging the company.
  • dathinab 3y ago
    They did because there is the thing: Monsanto before it was brought by Bayer won all cases. The moment they where bought by Bayer (i.e. no longer US owned) somehow they start losing cases and judges doing fun things like making ruling based on not peer reviewed not yet fully published studies....
• abeppu 3y ago
  The idea of punitive damages being awarded to a single person in a situation like this seems unjust on its own. If Roundup is responsible for this person's cancer, it's almost certainly responsible for the cancer of many other people, alive and dead. Clearly I am not a lawyer, but in cases of such a finding, I feel like there ought to be some mechanism to identify an affected class, and make proceeds benefit that class. The alternative seems to be that the first individual plaintiff whose judgement drains the defendant of funds pulls resources from later plaintiffs whose case is just as sound.
  • cainxinth 3y ago
    The primary function of the U.S. civil judicial system is to adjudicate disputes, which is what it did here. Making society more just is an overarching, but ultimately, secondary goal.
    • abeppu 3y ago
      But the concept of punitive damages is about some claim on justice, right? Like, "in addition to causing harm to this other party worth $m, because your behavior was so bad, you should pay a further $n whose value is about your badness which demands punishment, rather than about their loss." $7M in compensatory damages and $325M in punitive damages sounds like almost all the dollars in this are about justice, not dispute settlement.
  • Zigurd 3y ago
    Reforming how class actions are done is probably a very good idea. But Bayer has a market capitalization of over 45 billion. This judgement will probably get appealed and negotiated down. And if it isn't, there is a lot of value in Bayer to pay out in a class action if one succeeds.
    • rudyfink 3y ago
      If by "reform" you mean weaken class actions, I would argue that is a bad idea. Larger businesses have already gone to great lengths to eliminate / curtail class actions. I'd argue that this weakening is the root cause of a chunk of the aggregate problems I see discussed on HN. It is in a company's interest to harm a great many people a little bit because the people often have to challenge the company as individuals rather than as a group. And the economics often make no sense in that way, so the company is functionally immune to the effects of its harm. Further weakening the remaining viability of that case type stands to only encourage companies to commit more aggregate harms.
• TheBigSalad 3y ago
  And with no evidence that it causes cancer.
  • fsckboy 3y ago
    but it's made of chemicals!
    • reducesuffering 3y ago
      Feel free to drink a cup of it then
      • dehrmann 3y ago
        > Amongst mammals, glyphosate is considered to have "low to very low toxicity". The LD50 of glyphosate is 5,000 mg/kg for rats, 10,000 mg/kg in mice and 3,530 mg/kg in goats. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate I wouldn't just go drink it for fun, but for what it is, it's surprisingly safe.
        • reducesuffering 3y ago
          If you wouldn’t drink a cup for fun, then do you know how many aggregate cups you’re getting per month from all the food you eat? They didn’t poof into existence. Every part of your food is from glysophate sprayed crops and animals that have food-chained them.
          • bluGill 3y ago
            It is in food in part per billion quantities. You don't get a cup over you lifetime.
            • reducesuffering 3y ago
              You've got a source for that? Looks like ~0.75 pounds per acre and a 3k pound per acre yield for soybeans. Of course not all of that ends up inside the edible part, but 1/4,000 is a long ways from 1/1,000,000,000
• w10-1 3y ago
  The judgment was based on failure to warn of risk, not negligence in design. On causation, as far as I can tell, the 2015 finding of epidemiological evidence for a 41% increase in non-hodgkins lymphoma (NHL) was rebutted by non-affiliated researchers, but paid experts are continuing to publish, and claim others have recently found a mechanism. But AFAIK there's no epidemiological or mechanistic proof, now or at the time they made warnings. (I would assume a failure to warn requires some proof they knew of the risk?) In this case, 57 is barely on the young side of the affected population, but decades of exposure is hard to overlook. Warnings are something of a fiction. Detailed legalese is regularly ignored, and if it's unclear any commercial gardener avoids glyphosate even today after all the scary news. But the hugely differential impact is a legitimate environmental justice concern, and the lawsuits might be the tip of the iceberg. It would be best if Monsanto/Bayer negotiated a pool to pay affected people and more importantly to do outreach and monitoring for those who might be affected. The incentives are all wrong here: huge 100X punitive damages based on failure to warn when there's no proven risk just make any rational decision-makers dig in if not suppress research. It'd be better for companies to pitch in for investigations and treatment over the lifecycle of the product, in exchange for protection from legal lotteries.
  • fyokdrigd 3y ago
    > unclear any commercial gardener avoids glyphosate even today you fell for the spin dr work. roundup have tons of that, but it's not what 1) might cause cancer or 2) what is defended in their patents. well, it might cause cancer too. but not what was always argued against roundup.
  • dehrmann 3y ago
    I'm surprised these judgements are happening. The science isn't really nailed down.
    • edgyquant 3y ago
      “The science,” is such a cringe term
      • 3y ago
• dade_ 3y ago
  The most dangerous surface in a farm is the farmer’s hat I was told. So they wear the hat in the sun, tilling the fields, but the reason the hat is dangerous is from spraying the fields. Pesticides and herbicides are downright scary chemicals, and we genetically modify crops to improve tolerance of these chemicals. And that is when I went all GMO free, not because I am worried about eating grain that has modified genes, that’s plain stupid. Nature does that all day. But when chemicals so awful they kill the crop, the crop’s genes need to be modified so that they don’t die and that chemical residue ends up all over our food system, well buddy, get me off this stupid crazy train. I hope the settlement hits trillions. Burn the fuckers down.
  • conception 3y ago
    Non-gmos use pesticides, nearly all farming does, and usually more than GMO crops. Eg https://i0.wp.com/sitn.hms.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/fig2pesticides.png https://i0.wp.com/sitn.hms.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/20... From https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2015/gmos-and-pesticides/ https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2015/gmos-and-pesticides/
    • jdblair 3y ago
      Roundup isn't a pesticide, or an insecticide (as the charts above are labeled). Roundup is an herbicide, which is why it is so useful to combine with GMO crops. When you spray a field for weeds with Roundup, your crop doesn’t die because it has resistance built in. More clearly, Roundup kills weeds, not bugs.
      • selcuka 3y ago
        > Roundup isn't a pesticide, or an insecticide (as the charts above are labeled). Roundup is an herbicide Pesticide is an umbrella term for herbicides, insecticides, and other types of substances. If you've read the paper, it mentions that too: > Pesticides are substances used to repel, kill, or control animals (insecticides) or plants (herbicides) that are considered to be pests. You are correct, though, in that while insecticide use decreased (because GMOs help insect resistance), herbicide use has actually increased because of herbicide tolerance of GMO crops.
• 1letterunixname 3y ago
  Patrick Moore: "You can drink a whole quart of it and it won't hurt you." Presenter: "You want to drink? We have some here." https://youtu.be/uh8lxKrFmQs https://youtu.be/uh8lxKrFmQs
• iamthepieman 3y ago
  My brother worked as a landscaper and spilled concentrated roundup all over his back and down his legs about two years ago when a backpack tank sprung a leak. About a year ago, he was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. 2 months ago, he passed away - less than a year after he was diagnosed. Is there a cause/effect relationship between these events? I don't know but hearing about the various trials and studies of roundup just make me feel so helpless. How would I even go about helping his widow and children get justice? I don't want to encourage litigious behavior but man if there's a pair of companies that deserve litigiousness it's Bayer and Monsanto
  • cactusfrog 3y ago
    What’s strange about this case is that there are lot of carcinogens and evil pesticides out there that are not heavily regulated. For example processed meat has a very strong link with cancer and the nitrites added to processed meat are likely the culprit. No one seems to care and no one is suing the meat companies. There are “export only” pesticides that are truly scary that contaminate the us food supply and cause birth defects and cancer for entire villages. Roundup isn’t mechanistically tied to cancer and there isn’t a scientific consensus surrounding if/how carcinogenic it is. I wouldn’t be surprised if your brother’s cancer was environmentally related but I would bet that a boring chemical like gasoline/exhaust would be the cause. Gasoline and exhaust products are known to be carcinogenic.
  • pravus 3y ago
    I'm not telling you what to do, but I really wish this kind of thinking would stop. I've spilled concentrated round-up all over my arms and legs many times because I used it regularly as weed control all over my property in Texas. I've also been regularly exposed to all sorts of noxious chemicals like acetone, gasoline, diesel, various alcohols, and many different organic compounds in general. On bare skin (solvents get your hands clean fast!). Part of my life is a mixture of agriculture, oil/gas, and just general West Texas grime. I eat virtually 100% meat now which is also supposed to give me cancer. The teflon-coated pan I use to cook eggs doesn't have much teflon anymore because I've scraped most of it off through cooking (I never wash it). When I was a child, J&J baby power was an absolute staple in all households I ever visited and I've inhaled clouds of it. I have been sun-burned countless times in my life and still regularly seek long intervals of intense sun with no sun-screen. My family were early adopters of cellular phones so I've been exposed to brain-cancer causing RF/EM radiation for over 30 years now. No cancer. No diseases. No allergies. No excess pains. No respiratory issues. No mental fog. No general health issue to report in any way. I'm the healthiest and fittest in my life at 47. I never go to the doctor any more because the last few times I went all of my lab work came back perfect. Maybe one day I will get some fatal disease or just get run over by a truck. For now I'm going to just keep betting on the odds, though. Most of the health fears I see today seem to have an extremely low chance of occurrence (if at all) and many times is confined to very niche cohorts. The science behind most of it is pure garbage and popular opinion is generally driven by court case outcomes rather than verifiable facts. I'm sorry for your loss, but there doesn't need to be "justice" for every case of bad fortune. There has never been a causal link to cancer with glyphosate and it has been well studied and used for many, many, many years by many, many, many people.
• givemeethekeys 3y ago
  Shouldn't the title say, "Bayer fined 332M for man getting cancer from RoundUp?". After all, they've lost in court.
• justinclift 3y ago
  With a judgment of this size, I wonder if one of the cutting edge customized CAR-T/DNA/RNA/etc cancer treatments would be practical? If so, then these large payouts might be actually useful for undoing the harm that was caused.
• cyberax 3y ago
  These lawsuits have to end. It's a clear post-truth society nonsense. It doesn't matter that there's zero link between glyphosate and cancer. The evidence needs to be there before these lawsuits are allowed to proceed.
  • throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
    Actually what they found is that Roundup is potentially cancerous, not glyphosate. Roundup has a host of additive chemicals aside from glyphosate which have been shown to be likely cancerous. Glyphosate by itself is fairly benign.
• irrational 3y ago
  The same Bayer that killed tons of Holocaust victims in drug trials during WWII? That Bayer? I’m having trouble feeling sorry for anything that ever comes their way. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/bayer https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/bayer
  • dehrmann 3y ago
    You're not wrong, but VW, Ford, and GM all have ties to Nazi Germany.
    • irrational 3y ago
      Yeah, but were they murdering holocaust victims to design their vehicles?