When looking for data points concerning a scientific topic, the opinion of twelve randomly chosen individuals about a complex, arguably related set of events is quite far down my list of reliable sources.
I wouldn’t trust a random group of 12 to design a study. I’d have a lot less difficulty with trusting the same 12 to decide whether they’re looking at an honest publication. I still wouldn’t trust them completely, but a lot more.
On the flip side, I’m not going to trust Philip Morris to tell me that tobacco products don’t cause cancer with billions in profits at stake.
As I wrote here three years ago, Monsanto became the poster boy for evil corporation ages ago, and I would regard any jury finding against them as being more motivated by some desire for pay-back on the part of the jury than anything scientific. Glyphosate went out of patent years ago, and the world is awash with generic production. Monsanto have produced targeted variants to try to hold onto some part of the market, but for more than a decade it has been more than Monsanto making the stuff.
Unless I saw a proper causative chain worked out, and epidemiological studies, I would regard this entire case as being based on zero science. Sure Philip Morris fought the case against tobacco, but it was scientifically unassailable, and it was epidemiological evidence that brought things to light. A long term study of causes of death of doctors was one of the first warnings. Huge significant correlation of smoking and cancer. That is a very long way from a few people with random cancers across the planet.
But as this article explains, agricultural products (including herbicides such as Roundup) is less than 1/4 of Monsanto’s revenue. And Roundup’s patent has expired, so it’s not as profitable as some of their other products.
On the other hand, tobacco products were probably close to 100% of Philip Morris’ revenue.
It’s not a scientific venue, to be sure, but it’s a venue in which evidence is evaluated, including legally compelled disclosures of internal Monsanto documents and presumably expert interpretations of scientific evidence. The jury had to address not just the scientific question about whether Roundup can be reasonably considered to pose a health risk, but with the legal question of whether Monsanto acted irresponsibly and negligently in failing to warn of those risks.
The evidence was apparently sufficient to render a $289 million verdict, which now establishes precedent for apparently some 4,000 other lawsuits pending against Monsanto for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma allegedly due to Roundup (5,000 according to the latest BBC article – the numbers just keep going up). Who knows how this will go – Monsanto may win its appeal, or get the judgment dramatically reduced. But if all the dominoes fall the wrong way this could be an existential risk to the entire company, now owned by Bayer after a $66 billion takeover in June.
Keep in mind that the case was about Roundup, not plain generic glyphosate. According to Monsanto’s own internal documents produced in court, one of which I cited earlier, the two are not the same: “… in the US we have some lawn and garden products with the Roundup name on them but they contain other active ingredients in addition to glyphosate and they may have different properties from glyphosate … The terms glyphosate and Roundup cannot be used interchangeably nor can you use “Roundup” for all glyphosate-based herbicides any more. For example you cannot say that Roundup is not a carcinogen … we have not done the necessary testing on the formulation to make that statement. The testing on the formulations are not anywhere near the level of the active ingredient.”
And there is indeed evidence that these formulations can be more toxic than glyphosate alone.
And my understanding is that part of the verdict was not so much about strong proof of carcinogenic or other health effects, but about negligence in that the products were marketed and labeled as if they were safe, when that safety had not in fact been established.
Sadly I would view this as just a way of weaselling around the basic principle that this was payback time. $250 million for the above transgression? Nearly every product on the market is guilty of that to some extent. I certainly don’t see safety labelling on most foods known to be harmful. Are we to see a massive payout from the sugar industry soon? Dairy? Just about every fast food? Trans fats are the latest - that should be worth billions.
Indeed I don’t know of any way of conclusively proving that anything is intrinsically safe. It would seem that everything known to mankind must be labelled as carcinogenic in California. That totally defeats any rational purpose in safety labelling. It becomes just a way of lawyers getting rich on the back of over regulation and lawsuits.
Reading the linked story, it’s clear that the preliminary toxicity study in question was done on cells growing in vitro, i.e. in a test tube/flask. There are a ton of things that kill cells in a test tube (recall the classic xkcd cartoon) but lack the same property in a living organism. And it’s a very long way from damaging or killing cells in vitro to causing cancer in humans. From the cited article**:
“DeVito said the (National Toxicology Program) first-phase results do not mean the (glyphosate) formulations are causing cancer or any other disease. While the work does show enhanced toxicity from the formulations, and show they kill human cells, the NTP appears to contradict an IARC finding that glyphosate and/or its formulations induce oxidative stress, one potential pathway toward cancer. The government still must do other testing, including examining any toxic impact on a cell’s genetic material, to help add to the understanding of risks, according to DeVito.”
Without having had the opportunity to study the Monsanto trial transcript, I suspect the jury was not only swayed by the Evil Monsanto reputation, but by the deeply flawed IARC classification of glyphosate as a “probable carcinogen” (where key data supporting glyphosate safety was left out of the panel’s findings, involving a scientist who signed on as consultant for two law firms preparing to sue Monsanto on behalf of “glyphosate cancer victims”).
Depending on how well this verdict/award hold up and the outcome of other pending cases, we could be seeing a decline in or end to use of glyphosate, and a return to far more toxic herbicides, which people tend to forget were in widespread use before Roundup. Let’s have a big hand for paraquat, 2,4-D and atrazine! :dubious:
**Carey Gillam, the article’s author may be the absolute worst source on the planet for accurate, unbiased information about either glyphosate or GMOs.
I would have to dive into a lot more of the presented evidence to properly address all your comments, and I’m not here to either defend or condemn Roundup, but I think the situation is more clear-cut than you make it out to be. You can hardly compare sugar with a systemic herbicide that has known toxic effects and whose link to non-Hodgkin lymphoma is supported by at least some evidence. Furthermore, while Monsanto claims to have data on the alleged relative safety of glyphosate, they have no such safety evidence, by their own admission, on Roundup formulations which have other ingredients and which may be even riskier.
One thing I recall from the trial description was the groundskeeper’s testimony that at times he was completely soaked in the stuff, and would never have used it the way he did, or sprayed it around children, if he had known the potential risks.
Well then he’s an idiot. All herbicides should be treated as deadly poisons, because that’s mostly what they are. Roundup is actually less dangerous than most. I’ve never read the safety panel fine print on a spray bottle of Roundup (because I handle it as if it were a deadly poison without needing being told to do so), but I presume it warns against contact with skin. If this is not the case, then my sympathy (such as it is) for Monsanto would go way down, but I would be very surprised if that were the case.
Not to hijack, but I notice at least three different spellings being used in this thread: "glysophate’, “glyphosphate”, and “glyphosate”. Google seems to indicate that “glyphosate” is the correct spelling.
Carry on.
It’s not so much what the current profit level is, but rather the liability. If there is ever a causal link proven to any form of cancer, Monsanto will be looking at billions in liability for their role in history.
So yes, they can be expected to fight every claim as if their lives depend on it and do everything they can to derail or discredit any research into that linkage. Just like big tobacco did for decades.
This got me curious. Here is the label [PDF] for a commercial glyphosate-based Roundup product from Monsanto – this is likely what the school groundskeeper would have used, unlike the consumer products that in many cases don’t even contain glyphosate at all.
The label is 11 pages of small print focusing almost entirely on how to mix and apply the product, what it works on, how to store it, etc. Pretty much the only safety information I could find was two different, separated sections of small print that I repost below. Whether this would be considered an adequate warning of exposure hazards, especially considering the massive amount of other text it was embedded in, is I suppose a matter of opinion. Much more prominence is given to warnings about what plant material not to apply it to because it will kill it. Take a look at the huge, enormous label that these couple of little paragraphs appear in:
Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)
Applicators and other handlers must wear: long-sleeved shirt and long pants, shoes plus socks. Follow manufacturer’s instructions for cleaning/maintaining Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). If there are no such instructions for washables, use detergent and hot water. Keep and wash PPE separately from other laundry. Discard clothing and other absorbent materials that have been drenched or heavily contaminated with this product’s concentrate. Do not reuse them.
In another section of small print:
User Safety Recommendations
Users should:
[ul]
[li]Wash hands before eating, drinking, chewing gum, using tobacco or using the toilet.[/li][li]Remove clothing immediately if pesticide gets inside. Then wash thoroughly and put on clean clothing.[/li][/ul]
Indeed, the Canadian government has recently imposed more stringent labeling standards for glyphosate:
By April 2019, manufacturers will be required to update commercial labels for products containing glyphosate to include statements such as:
[ul]
[li]Re-entry into the sprayed areas should be restricted to 12 hours after its application in agricultural areas.[/li][li]The product is to be applied only when the potential to spread to areas of human activity, such as houses, cottages, schools and recreational areas, is minimal.[/li][li]Instructions for buffer zones to protect areas beyond those targeted as well as aquatic habitats.[/li][/ul]
This makes the guy sound very irresponsible; every job I’ve worked at for the past 20+ years gives you on day 1 training on what MSDS are and how to use them for any chemicals you may use on the job. It took me 30 seconds to google all sorts of round up MSDS and they clearly state to avoid inhalation and skin contact, and advise various types of PPE. For someone who professionally sprayed herbicide for years to be ignorant of such basic safety precautions and soak themselves in poison… then complain about effects later just makes you shake your head.
On preview I see that the same or similar MSDS has been looked up already. Yes, that’s a standard wording. You aren’t meant to read every word top to bottom like a novel; you skip to the relevant section such as storage, use, etc. It seemed very straight forward to me.
FWIW, the soaking incidents were accidental:
Johnson, 46, applied Roundup weedkiller 20 to 30 times per year while working as a groundskeeper for a school district near San Francisco, his attorneys said.
He testified that during his work, he had two accidents in which he was soaked with the product. The first accident happened in 2012.
Two years later, in 2014, he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
On bad days, Johnson is too crippled to speak. Lesions cover as much as 80% of his body.
The first link shows no “toxic effects”, unless you count aquatic animals or heating (which can release toxic fumes when it breaks down).
The second is basically a meta-analysis of existing papers on insecticides and herbicides. Of the three studies that included roundup, one showed no effect (or possibly even a positive effect - lower rate of NHL), and the other two were based on asking the subjects what they used and how much of it (not extremely scientific) and had small sample sizes (23 in one study, 29 in the other). Not really a smoking gun.
The first thing is a product safety sheet and I’d definitely consider the list of “acute hazards” and associated symptoms to be toxic effects. Glyphosate is officially characterized as a moderately toxic herbicide.
I agree the meta-analysis isn’t strong evidence, just another data point. The author himself summarizes as follows:
McDuffie et al. [43] and Eriksson et al. [32] observed increased odds of NHL in association with a greater number of days/year of glyphosate exposure. De Roos et al. [31] did not observe a similar relationship in analyses of Agricultural Health Study data.
Here’s the thing that gets me about this debate. You can still be anti-GMO and anti-Monsanto even if there’s nothing inherently wrong with genetically modified food crops or Roundup. Here’s the various important bits as I see them.
-
Genetically modified foods are generally safe for consumption.
-
GMOs are not the same thing as selective breeding and hybridization. It is either impossible or would take centuries to develop these type of crops via traditional means.
-
Roundup is generally safe when used on food crops, with the possible exception of industrial-scale exposure.
-
The success of both genetically modified foods, whether Roundup-ready or for improved yields or other pest/herbicide resistance, increases monocultures as they become the “go-to” crops.
-
Monocultures lead to greater risk of widespread crop failure due to unexpected new pests and diseases, including those developing resistance to the herbicide/pesticide they were engineered against in the first place.
-
The patent system and licensing allows for external control of food crops by those providing the seeds rather than those growing it.
So overall the health and safety concerns seem to be mostly moot. That does not mean one has to support GMO crops and/or Monsanto because you can still oppose having one company be the gatekeeper, so to speak, of some of our most important foods. A very quick look suggests that Monsanto controls 80-90% of the GMO corn and soybean supply in the US, which is about 1/3 of all corn and soybeans grown. I’m surprised that the amount of GMO corn and soybeans aren’t higher, but within that group Monsanto is pretty close to a monopoly. At the same time, you don’t have to support the increase in monoculture that these crops encourage. Similarly, you may not support patenting genes or living organisms at all. It is kind of getting into the weeds of intellectual property 
and our IP laws in the US are really going crazy (more so for copyright than patents, but they’re both far out of whack from their original intent).
I think this is the overall root of much of the resistance to GMOs in Europe. It’s not so much that they think they’re unsafe or even unhealthy, but they don’t want to lose control of their own food production to a big corporation, and a foreign one at that. The benefits of GMO crops accrue mainly to the seed and herbicide suppliers, and less so to the farmers and the rest of the people. There might also be concerns about contamination of heirloom crops which are much more important than they are in the US (France is one of the most vociferous opponents to GMOs, which isn’t surprising as they don’t even like foreign words contaminating their language). I can certainly see skepticism in trusting a company like Monsanto trying to peddle their wares overseas, especially to cultures whose identities revolve around their foods. It’s also fair to say that it’s just too soon to know all the potential problems of GMOs, so a more conservative “wait and see” attitude is preferred over diving in head-first, future be damned. It’s not so much “anti science” as it’s “anti big foreign corporation factory farming.”
Assuming the jury verdict stands up, it might only mean that they choose to believe one piece of evidence presented by the plaintiff and disregard everything presented by Monsanto; that’s largely within their prerogative, and there’s nothing scientific about their evaluation. Nothing about their determination world be legally precedential for other cases, but it may affect public opinion.
My experience with the anti-GMO crowd is that they are beyond scientifically illiterate. They have invented their own “science”.