Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Monsanto leaks suggest it tried to ‘kill’ cancer research about weed killer

baumhedlundlaw.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 131 posts

Re: Monsanto leaks suggest it tried to ‘kill’ cancer research about weed killer

#71

Post by driverdan »

themgt wrote: post #8
43224gg252 wrote: post #4

Of course they did. Anyone on the internet about a year - 2 years ago remembers every time you mentioned monsanto they would send shills in to defend them and call you a tin-foil hat conspiracy theorist.

It's been really frustrating trying to have any nuanced stance on GMOs with proponents doing the "durr all modern crops are genetically modified by human selection" and such. Like no shit, it is still possible to acknowledge that and believe that there are legitimate concerns about intellectual property, or with modifying a crop to be resistant to a carcinogenic poison farmers are going to dump all over it. A lot of…

It's been really frustrating trying to have any scientific stance on GMOs with opponents doing the "durr all GMOs are bad and are going to kill us" and such. Like no shit, it is still possible to acknowledge gaps in research and believe that there are legitimate concerns about intellectual property, or with not modifying a crop to increase its nutritional content to save starving people.

A lot of the anti-GMO people seem to argue in really bad faith if they're not paid shills.

See, I can create straw man arguments too.

Re: Monsanto leaks suggest it tried to ‘kill’ cancer research about weed killer

#72

Post by yourapostasy »

KekDemaga wrote: post #65
burntrelish1273 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a video where a Monsanto lobbyist spouts circular talking-points about how glyphosate was safe to drink, offered either Round Up or glyphosate and refused to drink it. https://youtu.be/QWM_PgnoAtA?t=25s It's irrelevant if glyphosate alone is cancerous or not, because 99.9999% of deployment is via sprays like Round Up. The combined product , in both animal and human models, need thorough mutagenic research. It…

I think you'll find if someone who thinks you are evil offers you a glass of liquid of unknown providence you to would decline it as well.

This presents an interesting conundrum. Monsanto doesn't trust anyone who proposes a Monsanto employee drink a cup of Roundup because ostensibly they're afraid the cup is something other than Roundup. People who want to propose this "prove it" don't trust Monsanto to supply the cup of Roundup because they're afraid Monsanto will just give some colored, scented water that only looks like Roundup.

The actual Roundup product toxicity is from the inactive ingredients used as a carrier for the glyphosate [1]. Supposedly pure glyphosate itself is low toxicity. If (and this is a big if) the LD50 for humans follows mice models [2], at the highest amount of glyphosate required of 10,000 mg/kg, then the average human at 70 kg would require 700,000 mg of glyphosate to incur a 50% chance of a lethal dose. That is 0.7 kg solid form glyphosate, well over what we might find in a cup that is roughly diluted to the concentration levels one finds in the least concentrated form of Roundup. The lower end of the animal models is rabbits, acute dermal LD50, at 2,000 mg/kg, five times lower, 0.14 kg solid form glyphosate for that average human.

If there are 540 grams glyphosate per liter of Roundup R/T 540 Liquid Herbicide (the term of art is "540 grams acid equivalent per litre", please, some chemistry hacker out there correct my quantities, I'm sure I'm getting this wrong), then a US customary cup of this kind of Roundup contains 127.76 g glyphosate. I chose this kind of Roundup because it looks like the least concentrated. The rabbit LD50 toxicity translated to a 70 kg human is 140 grams. The mouse LD50 toxicity translated to a 70 kg human is 700 grams. That cup is uncomfortably close to those levels for me, if my numbers are close to the ballpark; I sure as hell wouldn't drink that cup if my numbers are correct. I welcome corrections.

[1] http://www.roundup.ca/_uploads/documents/RT540_label_Mar2014...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate#Humans

Re: Monsanto leaks suggest it tried to ‘kill’ cancer research about weed killer

#73

Post by cholantesh »

russdill wrote: post #60
ourmandave wrote: post #7

Isn't this right out of the Big Tobacco playbook when they "scientists" in lab coats producing studies that smoking was healthy? The Tobacco Industry: The Pioneer of Fake News https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5402187/

Is there a scientific consensus (or at least majority) as to the carcinogenic effect of the Roundup product?

There isn't. Glyphosate is well studied, and all evidence exonerate it. The constituent chemicals of Roundup may interact with each other to render the cocktail toxic. But that's not equivalent to carcinogenicity. And it's not well studied as yet.

Re: Monsanto leaks suggest it tried to ‘kill’ cancer research about weed killer

#74

Post by colordrops »

bpodgursky wrote: post #47
colordrops wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Campaign implies organization. Who do you suppose is working to shut down Monsanto?

A mob can be stupid and dangerous without a sinister corporate backing. Who is funding the anti-vaccine campaign? Nobody. It's stupid online bloggers and dishonest researchers egging each other on with fake news.

it's not a campaign then.

Re: Monsanto leaks suggest it tried to ‘kill’ cancer research about weed killer

#75

Post by cholantesh »

colordrops wrote: post #44
bpodgursky wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luckily we still have the rule of law, so the majority can't simply shut down a company they dislike based on an internet misinformation campaign.

Campaign implies organization. Who do you suppose is working to shut down Monsanto?

Big organic.

Re: Monsanto leaks suggest it tried to ‘kill’ cancer research about weed killer

#76

Post by code_duck »

meric wrote: post #31
tptacek wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this effect is real, can you link to animal studies conclusively demonstrating it? Because obviously we've been feeding a lot of rats a lot of glyphosate.

Well there's https://www.cornucopia.org/2017/01/glyphosate-harmful-rats-l... but I suppose fatty liver disease is not as serious as cancer...Wash your vegetables before eating. EDIT: I think it's prudent to wash vegetables to clean off any herbicides and other chemicals even if they are "known" to be harmless.

You can't wash off chemicals that are absorbed by the plant systemically, like glysophate.

Re: Monsanto leaks suggest it tried to ‘kill’ cancer research about weed killer

#77

Post by tnorgaard »

I see there is a few posts repeating the common interpretation that glyphosate is not dangerous because it only targets metabolic pathway only animals has, so for the sake of discussion here is another viewpoint: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVolljHmqEs (disregard the clickbait title), summary: Glyphosate is not bad for your body, but it does kill everything in your stomach, and that is not so awesome.

Re: Monsanto leaks suggest it tried to ‘kill’ cancer research about weed killer

#78

Post by mgh2 »

Here is a study of 12 diseases correlated with glyphosate, it is not official as in a published journal, but given that even pubmed states there are not enough toxicity studies, that most safety papers are not independently funded, and scientists who dare to say the contrary are shut down, I rather be more cautious than sorry: https://people.csail.mit.edu/seneff/glyphosate/NancySwanson....

Re: Monsanto leaks suggest it tried to ‘kill’ cancer research about weed killer

#79

Post by legulere »

nixonpjoshua1 wrote: post #66
vbuwivbiu wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. Every thread on GM quickly polarizes into useless for and against sides, when we need to be selective about it. And I've never bought the characterization of breeding/selection as a form of GM. Breeding is selection of a pathetically tiny set of modifications, but GM is on a whole other level. With GM we can write arbitrary binary strings of code into any organism. That's simply not comparable with bree…

I agree that the polarization is useless. However what you said about selective breeding vs GM is just wrong. Selective breeding introduces numerous mutations, including ones often not even related to the desired traits. In contrast human directed genetic modification often changes a single gene, the state of the art in research universities for specific modifications is only in the tens of genes. You can only say th…

> In contrast human directed genetic modification often changes a single gene

Even CRISPR-CAS9 is not perfect and introduces a lot of unwanted genetic changes when used. Further the big advantage of GM compared with selective breeding is that you can inject Transgenes. This makes them totally incomparable.

Re: Monsanto leaks suggest it tried to ‘kill’ cancer research about weed killer

#80

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

0xbear wrote: post #68
ada1981 wrote: post #9

Who actually likes Monstanto? I imagine a vast majority of the American people would support an outright shutdown of their business.

I like Monsanto and use roundup to spray weeds behind the house so I don't have to trim them. I would be very disappointed if I could not do this, because those weeds grow on a rather steep grade and trimming there is a nightmare. For the record, based on the science available to me (nut job tree hugger sites are not science), I consider roundup to be safe when used as intended.

You could at least buy generic glyphosate and not fund them. The generics tend not to have the modern cocktails of other chemicals that are suspect.
Post reply on HN