For a growing number of critics, the breakthrough verdict against Monsanto for $289 million over its Roundup weedkiller is an indictment of the company’s corporate culture but also of academics who were used by the company to discredit scientific studies linking the herbicide to cancer. Former groundskeeper, Dewayne Johnson, 46, reportedly has only months to live but he just delivered a body blow to one of the largest corporations in the world. It is not that $289 million is a crippling fine for Monsanto, but the verdict of guilt based on a finding of actions taken “with malice or oppression” will likely trigger tens of thousands of such claims. Not surprisingly, Monsanto is now ditching its name in favor of Bayer after its recent acquisition.
The jury found that the company was guilty of “negligent failure” and knew or should have known that its product was “dangerous”.
The impact of the verdict is considerable given the key chemical involved — glyphosate. That is the world’s most widely used herbicide. A study by Professor Gilles-Eric Séralini at the University of Caen expanded on earlier research suggesting that glyphosate is a major health risk.
The plaintiffs showed not only internal emails that allegedly acknowledged and buried these risks, but also the use of academics to obscure or dismiss negative scientific studies.
Academics were allegedly paid for favorable scientific analyses and the company event helped write from the publications. It allowed for both funding bias and publication bias in shaping the literature to advance the interests of the company.
This controversy came to a head with the 2012 Proprosition 37 GMO labeling campaign in California where an expert named Henry Miller was criticized for his work in favor of Monsanto. Many criticized Miller for using his association with Stanford in the corporate campaign even though he is not technically a Stanford professor but rather a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, which is housed on campus. Worse yet, the New York Times described what it said was an arrangement for a key article to be ghostwritten for Miller.
“Documents show that Henry I. Miller … asked Monsanto to draft an article for him that largely mirrored one that appeared under his name on Forbes’s website in 2015 … An academic involved in writing research funded by Monsanto, John Acquavella, a former Monsanto employee, appeared to express discomfort with the process, writing in a 2015 email to a Monsanto executive, ‘I can’t be part of deceptive authorship on a presentation or publication.’ He also said of the way the company was trying to present the authorship: ‘We call that ghost writing and it is unethical.'”
This type of allegation was at the heart of the recent verdict against the company and could again raise questions over the role of academics in failing to maintain intellectual and scientific independence. Science is often funded by private industry, but there are ethical principles governing the relationship. The company may have appealable issues over the basis for the scientific link between Roundup and cancer. However, the newly released material on the use of academics by the company is likely to have ripple effects throughout academia for years to come.
https://apnews.com/2ca497384f01401394f4fbdd7e9aeb1d/Toxins-turning-up-in-dozens-of-public-water-systems
There are corporations.
There are evil corporations
And there is Monsanto who answers only to Satan
Glyphosate is the apex of an allegory to how corrupt our system for protecting the ecosystem became and the sleaze that infests politicians. Unfortunately it is beyond being just an abstraction. Glyphosate’s a threat to the health of every people and ecosystem it poisons.
I agree. It’s poison.
RELIABLE INFORMATION ON MONSANTO..
IS DIFFICULT TO FIND IN ONLINE SEARCHES
There are legions of dedicated Monsanto detractors producing endless papers critical of the company. The lion’s share of these papers are written by activists as opposed to scientists. Consequently a basic Google search for information on Monsanto requires expertise. Because one will surely encounter a thicket of propaganda.
In this regard Monsanto is a topic not unlike 9 / 11. Conspiracy theorists have produced so many ‘reports’ that non-scientists will be challenged in conducting an earnest online search. For this reason Monsanto and its products is difficult topic to master.
here let me introduce you to architects and engineers for 9/11 truth
one of your liberal icons Ed Asner was a “truther” so you can check it out inspired by him
I never liked the guy but he gets credit for an inquiring mind
https://www.ae911truth.org/
Kurtz, please, been there done that; no use for them.
Without discussing the tactics used by either side I think somewhere along the line we forget that trade-offs can be both favorable and unfavorable.
If a scientist were to find a cure for all forms of heart disease he would have condemned the vast majority of people to a death from cancer.
Think about it.
If you sell your soul to the devil, be prepared to pay the price. I guess (hope) this applies to free (paid) speech.
A large number of people still believe that most college professors are “wild-eyed liberals”. They aren’t. More and more, they’re likely to be craven conservatives for-hire by corporate and rich right wing foundations. THINK Koch, brother.
Ya got that right. The Koch’s have been buying college’s for a while now.
The stats do not bear that out.
Liberal professors outnumber conservatives 12:1
https://econjwatch.org/articles/faculty-voter-registration-in-economics-history-journalism-communications-law-and-psychology
39% of universities do not have a single Republican professor
https://www.nas.org/articles/homogenous_political_affiliations_of_elite_liberal%20
You can also investigate the harassment of the few conservative Professors on campus.
“A large number of people still believe that most college professors are “wild-eyed liberals”. They aren’t. More and more, they’re likely to be craven conservatives for-hire by corporate and rich right wing foundations. THINK Koch, brother.”
There is no study of any kind that has not found that academia has shifted significantly farther to the left in the past 40 years.
Actual conservatives make up less than 5% of academia today.
Somewhere in the Constitution and/or the Bill of Rights there must be something that references the hiring of ‘big guns’, whether they be lawyers, scientists, or what not. The US economy can be influenced by the ‘best of the best’ economists to turn in either of almost complete opposite directions. These advisors can determine whether or not currencies should change, interest rates should change, as well as other moves that can affect everyone, directly and/or indirectly.
The laws are influenced by lawyers, judges, and special interests such as Monsanto or Bayer. Given the near impossibility of obtaining objective perspective at the highest levels, it makes no sense whatsoever for the opinions of ‘experts’ that are engaged by the manufacturers of products to weigh in on issues of safety or other public matters. That is not the proper direction.
That is why we have government, to detach the expertise from the ‘free market’ desire to ‘what the market will bear’. Corporations make board room decisions that are driven by profit. There is always collateral damage factored in. The people must have the last word with board room decisions focused on the well being of the people and not the oligarchs and/or special interests. Regardless of how imperfect government institutions and regulators are, they are there for the protection of the people and not the bottom line of the oligarch or special interest.
History has proven that when left to their own devices the free market system will not put public safety before profit. History has also proven that when forced by government regulation, the free market system can and does produce safe alternatives. The Ozone layer, that was severely damaged a few short decades ago has continued to replenish itself almost solely due to government regulation. The final words must come from the experts that are completely detached from the profit issue.
The free market/what the market will bear system must adapt to the best interests of the people. There will always be opportunities for people to make buckets of money doing it the right way as well as the wrong way.
We have the natural right to life, liberty and property. History has proven many things to be a constant, nothing more so than these two: 1. the security of those rights are less secure living in the state of nature than in civil society. 2. Human nature is the same for the dirt farmer, the homeless, the corporate suit, the retiree, the bureaucrat and the politician. Never believe they will be motivated against their own sinful nature.
Garbage, start to finish.
I can name dozens of ways in which free markets have made your life better.
I can name dozens of ways in which government has made your life worse.
I am hard pressed to think of a way in which govenrment has made your life better.
Government serves ONE purpose – to secure our natural rights against infringment by FORCE
That is pretty much it.
“Corporations make board room decisions that are driven by profit. ”
Exactly – businesses constantly strive to deliver ever more value at ever lower cost, because that is how they profit.
Ever more value at ever lower cost has another name besides profit – “rising standard of living”/
“There is always collateral damage factored in.”
Absolutely!
In 1900 NYC produce 1,000,000lbs of horseshit and 250,000gal of horse urine each day.
Henry ford and the automobile ended that gargantuan polution and public health problem – replacing it with a much smaller pollution problem.
There is no perfection, only improvement. Each improvement, comes with some harm. But the new harm is always less than the old.
“The people must have the last word”
You are free to have the last word with regard to what is yours. You are not entitled to the last word with regarding others.
It is not only not your right but it is actually immoral to interfere with the non-violent actions of others within the own lives and property.
Humans are individuals, their rights are individual. There are no collective rights. Our choice to associate with others – is a right, and a choice.
The groups we form have no rights beyond those of their members.
“with board room decisions focused on the well being of the people and not the oligarchs and/or special interests.”
If you want Oligarchs go to Russia. Not free market has ever produced actual Oligarchs.
“Regardless of how imperfect government institutions and regulators are, they are there for the protection of the people and not the bottom line of the oligarch or special interest.”
Nope. Politicians, Regulators and bureaucrats are as self interested as the rest of us – if not more. But worse they play with power which is far more dangerous.
Whatever fears you have of humans engaged in free exchange – the danger of humans weilding govenrment power are far greater
“History has proven that when left to their own devices the free market system will not put public safety before profit.”
Actually it has proven pretty much the opposite. Every single bad thing that you want government to meddle in has existed for all of human existance.
For 99.99% of that time improvement has been abysmally slow. In the past 400 years with the advent of free markets the rate of improvement in the human condition has skyrocketed exponentially. It has done so before and after regulation. In fact I would challenge you to find a single instance in which ANY regulation has resulted in an improvement in a pre-existing trend. Safety, polution, life expectance, standard of living all improved – before any regulation and have continued after – though typically at a SLOWER rate of improvement.
“History has also proven that when forced by government regulation, the free market system can and does produce safe alternatives.”
Nope. History has shown that the free market can and will improve our lives. That all improvement that we value will occur proportionate to the extent that we value them as soon as those same free markets have raised our standard of living sufficiently to be able to afford the improvement.
History tells us that all the facets of life you think that free markets have botched were worse in the past, improved as a result of free markets and rising prospertity. That nearly all that improvement occured BEFORE regulation.
“The Ozone layer, that was severely damaged a few short decades ago has continued to replenish itself almost solely due to government regulation.”
The size of the hole in the Ozone layer is directly proportionate to the extent of solar activity and radiation. The hole in the Ozone layer is quite small right now because the sun is the quietest it has been in 200 years. The hole is over antartica because phusics and geometry dictate that cosmic rays have a much longer path through that atmosphere at the poles – further the earth magnetic field attracts radiation to the poles.
“The final words must come from the experts that are completely detached from the profit issue.”
The “experts” outside of business have an abysmal track record.
Name a single malthusian prediction since Malthus – that has EVER come true.
“History has proven that when left to their own devices the free market system will not put public safety before profit. History has also proven that when forced by government regulation, the free market system can and does produce safe alternatives. The Ozone layer, that was severely damaged a few short decades ago has continued to replenish itself almost solely due to government regulation. The final words must come from the experts that are completely detached from the profit issue. ”
Mostly true BUT, here is the stickler—The final words must come from the experts that are completely detached from the profit issue.
I do not that anyone can rely upon the regulators to be detached, either ideologically, or financially. In some countries it is far worse. In Mexico, most officials are on the take, one way or another. Same with most African countries.
Assume a regulator/body is looking at standards for a coal plant. Will they be unbiased? I think not. Do lawyers and others stand to make money if the project is cleared, or not cleared? Yes. Do lawyers and others tend to make more money the longer the process goes on? Yes. Do various contractors tend to make more money the more difficult compliance gets? Yes. That is why some projects in America take ten years or more to get off the ground, and why Obama did not have “shovel ready” jobs.
Not everything is easy, but business has become way more difficult than it needs to be. As far as Libertarianism, I am not one. See this:
https://www.zompist.com/libertos.html
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
“The free market/what the market will bear system must adapt to the best interests of the people. ”
“Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice; all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things. All governments which thwart this natural course, which force things into another channel, or which endeavour to arrest the progress of society at a particular point, are unnatural, and to support themselves are obliged to be oppressive and tyrannical.”
Adam Smith
“There will always be opportunities for people to make buckets of money doing it the right way as well as the wrong way.”
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.”
Adam Smith
Free Markets already work exactly as you want them too with govenrment performing nothing beyond securing our natural rights.
This is why I ask for citations from David Benson.
How did the citation quest from Benson begin? I believe I missed that bit.
Karen S – he used a word oddly and I asked for a citation for it. He said he was using the OED. I said prove it. 🙂 It went from there. Since then I have asked, without success, for more citation, and added them to my list.
Paul C Schulte, every single one is readily available using your search engine.
Go have a visit with a mental health professional.
David Benson owes me nine citations (one from the OED) and the source of a quotation, after twelve weeks, and needs to cite all his work from now on. – Davie, only you know which of the many meanings is the one you meant. We have been over this before. Evidently, dictionaries are too intense for engineers. Oh, and you said you used the OED, not me. Now you are responsible for finding the correct definition in the OED. You also said it was a 5-minute walk to the university. It will be good for you. Talk quarters so you can copy the page(s). BTW, the reference librarians do not bite (much).
Got it, thanks!
Karen S — Paul C Schulte is just Making Stuff Up.
David Benson owes me nine citations (one from the OED) and the source of a quotation, after twelve weeks, and needs to cite all his work from now on. – Davie, I am not the one refusing to cite my work. That would be you. That is you Making Sh*t Up.
I am on PaulCS’s side on this one. I have come across D Benson being dead wrong about things in the past, and then when corrected, saying nothing in the way of apology. Or, explanation.
Not being an anal-retentive person, I did not make notes of all this stuff. I do recall one instance though, having to do with an alleged decrease in sea ice, or something like that.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
SqueeKKKy is, as usual, just Making Stuff Up.
David Benson owes me nine citations (one from the OED) and the source of a quotation, after thirteen weeks, and needs to cite all his work from now on. – got a cite for that? Can you prove Squeeky is Making Stuff Up or is it You Making Sh*t Up again.
David, a lot of us have caught your errors and you never apologize when corrected.
That private industry lies to the public about the dangers of its products, does not ipso facto mean that government is also guilty or that all products cause cancer. Face it. Predatory capitalism destroys life and the planet.
About 75,000 people are diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lympohoma every year. Quick, tell me how many are groundskeepers and how long they worked in that sort of employment.
Chris P Bacon — Privatize the gain and socialize the risk.
Private companies do lie sometimes – so does government.
In fact the track record of positive results from govenrment research is incredibly poor compared to private research.
Nearly everything causes cancer – including organic foods.
“Predatory capitalism destroys life and the planet.”
Capitalism is so destructive that in the past 40 years the population of the world has doubled – yet today absolute poverty is a small fraction of what is was 40 years ago.
Across the world – in almost all countries – undeveloped and developed, standard of living in every quintile has doubled.
China has gone from the bottom of the third world to the bottom of the first world. India from the bottom of the third world to the top of the 2nd world.
Starvation today exists SOLELY as a consequence of political failures. No one starves because we are short on food.
The world has improved dramatically over the past 40 years.
Yet not a tiny bit of that improvement has been the consequence of aide – either private or government.
It is that predatory capitalism that you revile that has made the world a better place.
I wish that time travel was practical. We could send you back to some era before capitalism and let you thrive in that world of wonder.
Glyphosate does not cause cancer, in humans, when used properly. I have read about this product for years and no truly scientific paper has ever indicated otherwise. Listen to Dr. Kevin Folta in Talking Biotech. He is the former chairman of plant genetics at Flor. State U.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/10/monsanto-trial-cancer-dewayne-johnson-ruling
Here’s the article. Of course, Turley won’t even offer as a possibility that the lawyers in question and the man’s family have just received a payday courtesy a jury addled by ambulance-chaser-snake-oil. There is no medical consensus on what causes non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. The man worked as a groundskeeper at the school district in question for all of two years. There are just shy of 1 million groundskeepers in this country. It shouldn’t be that difficult to determine if they have a diminished life expectancy due to elevated mortality from cancer. I bet you Metropolitan Life has the data.
Whenever something bad happens people wish to assign fault and the passion causes insane amounts of money to be awarded to the plaintiff. This leads to tremendous costs for consumers when they buy a product that comes with warnings that are so long that even the important warnings are left unread.
Actually, only a modest minority react that way. You need a perfect storm of factors to get a result like this – lawyers, straw plaintiffs, bad judge, stupid jury. Without a doubt, the plaintiff’s attorneys have been trying every door for some time to find the room with the weather machine in it.
The threat of a suit sometimes can have more of an effect than the actual risk of a suit. The easiest one to see is the professional malpractice of physicians.
jury can make a conclusion about promixate cause. that’s what you’re referring to in legalese.
the defendant had its chance and lost. you can be sure they put on evidence about that point.
Epidemiology is difficult and comments by the ignoranti about DDT are not helpful. I point out that DDT is still in use to attempt to control malaria, although bed netting works much more effectively.
“although bed netting works much more effectively.”
Not when those you provide it to do not use it.
Gates poured a billion into netting for Africa and subsequently admitted the effort was a gargantuan failure – mosquito and tsetse fly born diseases INCREASED for the first time in a long time. People used the nets to fish, to cook and for many other things, but not to sleep.
Quite often solutions that are theoretically superior are disasterous in practice.
The pill is one of the most effective forms of contraception SOLELY because it makes little demands on people to change behavior.
Like it or not DDT is more effective than netting – in the real world, the one occupied by humans.
dhlii — Not according to the CDC page on malaria control.
I have no idea what the CDC says and you have not linked to them. I am not going to start debating problems with the CDC until I am actually aware they have made a mistake.
Regardless, Gates made his mea culpa regarding the billion wasted on netting publicly.
I am near certain you can find some prominent group to contradict the facts, many of the science are overrun by left wing nut malthusian idiots.
Wishful thinking is not science.
Nearly every problem in the undeveloped world is easy to solve – from the outside. Almost none are so easy in reality.
Over the past 40 years the west has pumped $1T in aide into africa – with ZERO to show for it.
During the same period of time China has gone from the bottom of the third world to the bottom of the first – and is now providing aide to Africa. 40 years ago they could not feed themselves. India over the same time has gone from the bottom of the third world to essentially the top of the 2nd – lagging behind china.
A major problem in Africa is water – but wells are easy to drill and the water table in much of africa is high.
Various groups have dug or drilled wells for 40 years. The wells last a few years and then fail. The locals do not maintain them.
Helping others is incredibly hard – whether in Africa or the US. Often it is not even possible.
What we have learned after 40 years (and not just in africa) is that if water is a problem the locals must solve the problem themselves, with local materials and resources.
Human behavior is a HUGE issue. Whether in the developing or developed world you can not force people to do what you think is best for them.
And doing so is immoral.
dhlii, using your search engine on the cited location brings up the page which contradicts your assertion. Nor did you give any indication where to find a statement by Bill Gates. Just Making Stuff Up?
David Benson owes me nine citations (one from the OED) and the source of a quotation, after twelve weeks, and needs to cite all his work from now on. – You never cite your sources, so you are really the King of Making Stuff Up.
David, you like to hide behind vague statements which protect you from having to know something about the subject matter. The netting that is generally recommended is coated with pyrethrin. When I travel to such areas I take medication and protect myself in a multiplicity of ways.
By the way, pyrethrin has caused liver tumors in mice and rats. If you are one of those two species make sure you don’t take too much of it.
“dhlii, using your search engine”
I do not have a search engine.
“on the cited location”
Can I buy a noun ? I do not recall citing a page.
“brings up the page which contradicts your assertion.”
I do recall noting that the CDC is not always a reliable source.
“Nor did you give any indication where to find a statement by Bill Gates.”
Wow! you looked one place, which you have not identified and instantly reached a conclusion.
“Just Making Stuff Up?”
If you wish to make such a claim, YOU are going to have to prove there is nothing to the contrary on the entire internet.
When you accuse someone of lying. You bet your integrity against theirs – with the burden of proof resting with you.
We have been round and round on your credibility already.
You did poorly.
Do you want to go again ?
dhlii, install Duckduckgo. Then you too will have a search engine, and for free…
David Benson owes me nine citations (one from the OED) and the source of a quotation, after thirteen weeks, and needs to cite all his work from now on. – I know this is going to seem pretty basic, however you need a search engine to find Duck Duck Go to install it. Didn’t you say you taught Computer Science? Wouldn’t that be pretty basic?
dhlii – David Benson is the King of Making Sh*t Up.
For all we know David B. Benson on this blog is pretending to be Professor David B. Benson. That might be thought to be far fetched, but I quoted a piece from something he and others wrote without any comment from him though he was commenting on the same thread. I then used the name of a co-author of his and he didn’t seem to recognize it. His field is in the sciences and he doesn’t seem to think like one trained in the sciences. I can give a few other reasons but I can also blame it on age and that he got the professorship when the field was in its infancy so he might have gotten into it in an unusual way.
He could be the real professor, but I would expect him to act more like a professor. Then again in college I got into a tussle with my physics professor (?) teacher (?) because of her lack of knowledge of physics. I learned my biggest lesson. It didn’t make sense that she was teaching physics so I should have recognized a dangerous reason for my future. She was the wife of the chairman of the physics department. Fortunately as a lousy “professor” she was a decent person so I got my A without a fight.
Allan – I got into a tussle with more than one professor. Some were better about it than others. 😉
Paul, I know the feeling. That tussle, however, involved the wife of the chairman of the department where I had to take other courses and need all A’s. Had I known of the husband and wife relationship I would have kept my mouth shut.
Allan – I made the mistake of taking a class from the head of the dept. who I suspected was not actually reading my papers. So, about half way through the paper I inserted the line; “If you get this far, I owe you a six-pack of beer.” He handed the paper back with an A on it. Never asked for his beer and I made the mistake of going into his office and showing him what I had done.
To prove a point to me, he gave me a B for the course. 😉
” I made the mistake of going into his office and showing him what I had done.”
Did you learn from your mistake? That is key to one’s education.
Allan – Nope 🙂
That goes on the ‘your loss’ side of the ledger. I didn’t have that type of freedom.
Allan – I do not respond positively to unreasonable punishment.
You must have a different standard of what “unreasonable punishment” is. I believe in choosing my fights.
Presumably you think the NYT is a reliable source.
In this article they confirm a major point that I made.
The nets rarely get used to protect against mosquito’s.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/25/world/africa/mosquito-nets-for-malaria-spawn-new-epidemic-overfishing.html
If NYT is not credible enough for you I think Rush Limbaugh ran the same story.
As you have inspired me to look into this further, I also tripped over a large debate regarding whether the mosquito nets need to be treated with insecticides.
There are many scientists who beleive that it is a huge mistake treating the nets with insecticides. That they are perfectly effective without them and that the insicticide being used is a carcinegen. Of course there are also those arguing that the nets are ineffective without the insecticides. Interesting the insecticide companies fall on the side of insecticide treated nets – which are only manufactured by companies in the US. Hmh.
Elsewhere I found an article accusing the Gates Foundation of fraud and bribery for pushing nets without insecticides in Cambodia.
The bribery is real the only question is whether nets without insecticides are effective.
I would further note that if nets without insecticide are ineffective – the alternative before the nets was to spray homes with insecticides.
I am having a hard time understanding how the world is safer if instead of spraying buildings with insecticides – which we know is effective.
we spray nets with insecticides bringing them even CLOSER to humans – especially CHILDREN.
You can check on the GF web pages.
gatesfoundation.org/What-We-Do/Global-Health/Malaria
gatesfoundation.org/Media-Center/Press-Releases/2005/10/Gates-Foundation-Commits-2583-Million-for-Malaria-Research
Which continue to list insecticide laced nets as effective, but they are no longer on the list of things GF is spending money on.
BTW the insecticide used is pyrethrum based, and mosquito’s become resistant to pyrethrum rapidly. While Malaria deaths spiked after DDT was abandoned, in the 70’s and started dropping again when african companies said “screw you” to the WHO and started spraying homes with DDT again.
Here is a long list of the spectacles of charity for show – Gates being only one example.
city-journal.org/html/philanthropic-spectacle-13603.html
Here Robert Barro repeats and argument I have made. Gates the entrepeneur did far more good for the world than Gates the Philanthropist.
And in fact in the past 40 years almost 3 Billion people have been raised from abject poverty – as a result of the demise of socialism and the rise of capitalism and greater economic freedom. All the Gates foundations and Mother Theresa’s that ever were have not done as much good for the least well off of the world than has been done in just 10 of the last 40 years by greater economic freedom.
And here you can follow the debate in aide to africa.
EVERYONE agrees we have blown $1T over the past 50 years with no discernable results.
The only disagreement is over continuing to waste more.
dhlii,
You might not have been made aware, but this website only permits two links per comment. I edited your comment above so that it would post.
If you’d like the viewers to review more than two links, this may be accomplished by using multiple comments of two links.
now gates is smarter and focusing on a better solution for the general ills of africa:
birth control
your bed wetting is indeed a problem
Karen, this is an another issue close to our hearts, I’m sad I’ve so many issues to attend, but I can assure you Honorable people are making every effort to permately displace/cure these important issues.
Think fast you silly people, you must now days, you spray all kinds of cancers causing chems on your lawns/n gardens & yet you wonder why your loved ones get the horrible Cancers. That’s Stupidity on Your Part!
I have no idea what the facts are regarding RoundUp – nor do you.
But I do know something that you apparently do not. Roundup is NOT responsible for massive increases in cancer – because there are no massive increases in cancer.
There are myriads of things that are both beneficial and cause harm – some of them cause cancer. In fact most of our food is both highly beneficial and causes some form or another of cancer.
Ultimately we must establish the actual risks and develop suitable procedures for dealing with them.
When we declare something is a carcinegen – we immediatley decide we have to ban it – no matter how much benefit it might also have.
I do not know for certain that roundups benefits exceed its risks – but I suspect that is STRONGLY true.
It might be that some handling precautions need implemented in some industries.
I’ m out, but you sir are an idiot.
This recent court case showed internal emailes they knew Round up was causing cancers.
Why are you such a Lying piece of trash?
For the better part of a year I’ve been living at CTCA & speaking with people with cancer or their family members. A lot of them likely won’t make, but I Pray as a Christian for them anyway.
If I were you I wouldn’t mouth off about this issue, those people have my full protection, you have none.
https://www.cancercenter.com/southwestern/
Okyl;
Hey look just go down to on of their facilities
, have lunch ,talk to some real people there, then get back with me.
They won’t bite you.
Then I’ll welcome you to the real world.
You seem to think it is OK to force your life on everyone.
CAN YOU READ ? I have quite literally spent YEARS dealing intimately with people dying of cancer.
You are utterly thoroughly clueless.
My daughters boyfriend, who lives in my house, is in his twenties and has had cancer TWICE. His parents through him out in the middle of the last bout.
That is how he ended up with me. At the moment he is cancer free.
Almost know one today is utterly divorced from experience with cancer.
Grow up.
My father in laws kidney cancer was near certainly caused by chemical exposure in his work many years earlier.
But they did not know those chemicals were a risk then.
Regardless zero tolerance for carcinogens means mass starvation – not merely because it would reduce the food we can produce drastically, but because many food are themselves carcinegins.
Okyl;
According to the American Cancer society the single largest cause of cancer in the US is plants – particularly vegitables
Nearly everything causes cancer at some dose.
I am not surprised that Monsanto wrote emails that found roundup correlated to cancer. As noted everything does.
People die. If you live long enough – you WILL get cancer. If we ever prevent that – you will die of something else.
That does nto mean we should not fight cancer, or that we should bath in carcinegens.
Every single person you know will eventually die – yourself included. All will die of something. Most will die of something “preventable”
Old people in particular die of things that should not kill people – because if you are old enough you may have enough things wrong with you that trying to mitigate one makes the others worse.
But we should not deprive ourselves of things that are benefiical because they are also harmful if the benefits except the harm, and/or the harm can be mitigated.
Is that the case with Roundup – I do not know – neither do you.
BTW inhaling gasoline vapors absolutely causes cancer – are you going to cease driving ?
Get a clue – I am not the idiot. Nor does saying something you do not like make it a lie.
The facts are often unpleasant. The world it not utopia.
My mother died of colon cancer (and stupidity, she likely had it for 10 years but did not get a colonoscopy until it was too late).
My father in law died from complications from a treatable kidney cancer.
My father died from vascular dementia. Given a choice – I pick cancer. Vascular dementia is a horrible way to die – and Alzheimers is worse.
Actually my father did not die of Vascular dementia – he died of pneumonia, that he got in a home where he was put against his will, when he chose to risk bleeding to death over having more strokes. One way or another he was going to die.
dhlii,
You’re ok I think.
You seem a lot like me, getting older & taking care of all those around you as you can.
Gnite.
Have you been at CTCA, as in Cancer Treatment Centers of America? If so, then I’m so sorry, whether it’s for yourself or a loved one.
I hate cancer.
Karen,
I just wrote a few pages & 30/45 min later started to post & it was Gone!!!! What the heck!.lol
Very short version, we got our family across town to the better treatment at CTCA, chemo mix/Keyturda. a new immune therapy drug.
Almost a year later knock on wood the stage 4 cancer seems to be in full remission.
Yes, this has been at least $750,000 more to the insurance co., then the stuff across town.
I’ve met people coming here from most everywhere in the USA.
Even those that their treatments failed elsewhere & they’re claiming it’s helping them here…
BTW: St. Fran/St John are both partners with MD Anderson. Which at one time I thought was an option.
Anyway, the way things are going in just a few years I think if we live long enough we’ll all be hoping for better cancer treatments.
The problem is not perfectly correctable.
Government research is atleast as corrupt. All kinds of issues including politics corrupt science. Nor is any of this new.
The core problem is the expectation that science is somehow an incorruptible domain.
In numerous domains that have little intersection with either government or business such as anthropology, dominant figures have foresclosed credible challenges to their work for decades.
The most important improvement that we can make is to get past our religious beleif in the sanctity of science.
I am next to shocked to find out it’s still on the market and under the same name except perhaps ion other countries I’ve been successfully out of the house,lawn and garden business, as an owner for near 20 year and thought it was long gone.
But our system for testing for carcinogens and other criipplinig disease causing chemicals seem s at least partlly to blame. i’m thinking of DDT the absence of which without ready replacement killed massive amounts of people promarily in Africa and now we read it wasn’t as bad as first though.; Agent Orange and I’ve walked through those areas up close and personal has yet to show any affect on me but others yes.
Still who wants to play a form of russian roulette especially after Flint Michigan and trust either the civilian sources or the government.
At my age maybe it doesn’t matter. but IF Government is goingi to get involved I expect them to at least do more than write write over reaching regulations or at least up hold the basics and the premier case for that statement was the BP Gulf Oil Spill whee they used a make it sink additive to oil on the surface a practice outlawed for some time…since Exxon Valdez as it happens. All this is side comments offered around the main point.
Who can you trust?
Most of the food you eat is a carcinogen. We have to get past this zero tolerance concept.
I do not know enough of the actual facts regarding roundup to assess whether it should be on the market – but an educated guess is that it near certainly should be.
We can mitigate risks.
You note the mess that occured with DDT – today 60 years later we STILL do not know whether DDT was a real problem.
All of its purported effects were both limited and established by correlation, not causation.
dhlii:
Obviously no one said zero tolerance for carcinogens. Acrylamide is a carcinogen produced in charred foods. You are fighting an argument no one maid.
Glyphosphate is more toxic than broccoli. You are equating two entirely different things, Roundup and vegetables.
In addition, your argument does not take into account that when a farmer plants Monsanto Roundup Ready wind pollinated crops, like corn, that corn contaminates all of his neighbors, some of which don’t particularly want to grow GMO. But once one farmer in the area does it, all the crops are contaminated. It is impossible to exercise your own judgment as to whether you want to grow GMO or not. Once your crop has become GMO, you can no longer save seed to plant the following year.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/12/monsanto-sues-farmers-seed-patents
I recall years ago in chemistry class, my professor remarked that there are a great many chemicals released every year by the chemical industry. It is literally impossible to test every possible combination of chemicals already on the market, let alone their long term effects. At the time he surmised that the annual output of new chemicals may exceed the human body’s ability to deal with them in the environment.
Also, I am not terribly surprised to find academic bias. We’ve been complaining of this for years. There are safeguards that can help separate the money from the outcome, but they are not used. That is also rampant in Climate Change research, where grants have strings attached, conflict of interest, and are awarded based on whether research will yield the desired results.
In science, you get what you get. The data is not supposed to be muddled by what the researcher wants.
This is another blow to the reputation of universities.
None of what you reference is new. Does the story of Galileo need repeated ?
There are no perfect safeguards.
One of the most important criteria of science – reproduceability has been replaced by peer review, with horrible results.
I agree. Peer review has released some really questionable stuff. Researchers even hold back raw data, crucial for reproducibility.
If this judgement finally ruled against Monsanto for burying and discrediting studies that proved Roundup was a major health risk, then this is also a blow to their GMO industry.
Roundup Ready GMO crops are resistant to Roundup. The crops are sprayed with even more Roundup than a conventional crop can tolerate. Weeds become more resistant, which requires more and more Roundup to be used every year.
This exposes agricultural workers to hazardous conditions. I have followed the plight of immigrant agricultural workers for many years. They suffer a higher rate of cancers and neurological disorders. That is an unfortunate side effect of creating an illegal immigrant serf class. They are willing to do jobs that legal citizens and visa holders are less likely to do, such as work with hazardous chemicals like Roundup. Perhaps there would have been more movement on improving the safety of agricultural jobs if all workers were legal, and therefore able to hold out for better conditions.
Roundup also contaminates the food itself. Would a blast of cold water wash off the taint of a carcinogen and neurotoxin enough to feed it to your toddler? I think not.
Your immigrants will likely be out of work soon. Farmers have been demonized as you have for hiring migrants for decades – atleast as far back as Steinbeck.
Farming is poorly suited to automation – but the shaming of farmers is an incredibly strong impetus, and farms are becoming increasingly automated.
After that – you are free to choose what you feed your toddler. But I would note that “organic” farming produces foods that have all kinds of dangerous contaminants.
Do you think nature is a friendly place ? Humans have spent 150,000 years trying to protect themselves from nature while living in it. For 90% of that life expectance was abit more than 20 years – because nature is really dangerous. Further organic farming methods require atleast twice the land of other methods and more labor and more …..
that is why organic foods cost so much more. The poor and most of the world can not afford them and would starve if we returned entirely to organic farming.
Would you kill billions to lower the risks of cancer to a few farm workers ?
Most of the questions in life are not so simple as you make them.
Almost everything that exists today that you oppose, was near certainly a vast improvement in health, and safety decades or centuries ago.
dhlii:
I have farmers and ranchers among my family and friends. Organic farming is very expensive due to the requirements to get and keep certification, among other things.
Conventional farming with GMOs require more herbicide use than non GMOs, exposes its workers to toxic chemicals, and the weeds are winning the battle. If you follow farming, you will read how it requires more and more Roundup as time goes on. In addition, the seed is patented. Non hybrid seed can be saved by the farmer and planted the following year. You cannot hold back any GMO seed or their lawyers will sue you right off your land. GMO wind pollinated crops, and even those who use pollinators, contaminate neighboring non-GMO fields. Monsanto sends out employees to test fields in the area, and then they sue the farmers for patent infringement if any of their crops test positive for GMO. The farmer has to pay up and is forced to buy Monsanto GMO seed, as there is no way to prevent contamination. He does not have the right anymore NOT to grow GMO if his land gets contaminated. Seed Saving companies that harvest seed have also gone out of business. The farmers’ individual rights have been infringed.
When I was in college, we were taught that GMOs were going to solve world hunger. It was an amazing development. We learned we could add the gene for making antifreeze from the halibut into a strawberry. However, genes affect others far upstream and down in the genome. There are often unintended consequences when you add a gene.
Herbicides, pesticides, and antifungals are serious health hazards for workers. A relative worked on a project where farm workers in another country growing vegetables for American companies were experiencing catastrophic birth defects and cancers. It was the pesticide that was banned in the US, that they were still allowed to use at the time elsewhere. I was in the Caribbean on vacation years ago, touring a banana packing facility. The workers all had symptoms of extensive fungal skin infections. They sprayed all the bananas with antifungals prior to shipping. This led to anti fungal resistant fungal infections proliferating in their own skin.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5437486/
“A total of 9515 incident cancer cases (7295 in males) occurred in agricultural workers. Among men, increased risks were observed for non-Hodgkin lymphoma (HR = 1.10, 95% CI = 1.00–1.21), prostate (HR = 1.11, 95% CI = 1.06–1.16), melanoma (HR = 1.15, 95% CI = 1.02–1.31), and lip cancer (HR = 2.14, 95% CI = 1.70–2.70). Decreased risks in males were observed for lung, larynx, and liver cancers. Among female agricultural workers there was an increased risk of pancreatic cancer (HR = 1.36, 95% CI = 1.07–1.72). Increased risks of melanoma (HR = 1.79, 95% CI = 1.17–2.73), leukemia (HR = 2.01, 95% CI = 1.24–3.25) and multiple myeloma (HR = 2.25, 95% CI = 1.16–4.37) were observed in a subset of female crop farmers.”
Female farm workers on conventional farms suffer the additional risk of birth defects when they work while pregnant.
The “organic” label does not necessarily denote quality. After all, organic milk can still be factory farmed in filthy, high density feed lots with grain and hay and no fresh grass, in a stressful unhealthy environment. That said, having seen for myself the consequences on workers of chemical exposure, as well as the taint on crops, I prefer to avoid conventional food when grocery shopping. We all still eat conventional any time we eat in a restaurant.