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Emails Show FDA Chemists Have Been Finding Glyphosate in Food

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Re: Emails Show FDA Chemists Have Been Finding Glyphosate in Food

#141

Post by gerbilly »

tptacek wrote: post #119
headsoup wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another fallacy: relative privation. Let's not worry about the bees and pesticides because of bigger problems. I think the problem here is that over-emphasis, bluster and hyperbole are so normalised and frequent now that the use of emphasis to try and draw attention to an issue is now practically useless (maybe it was never useful...). Perhaps we shouldn't worry about any of these 'small problems' because we're worki…

No, once again, the glossary of logical fallacies you're working from isn't serving you well. I would be arguing relative privation if I was saying "things are so bad elsewhere it doesn't matter if the bees were dying", or "the bees are dying and that's all that really matters". In fact, what I'm saying is that the bees are pretty much fine, and not an issue at all.

>what I'm saying is that the bees are pretty much fine, and not an issue at all.

You have stated this opinion many times, I think we are all clear on that.

Do we have more than your authority to go on in evaluating your claim?

I think HN would become a very uninteresting place to debate if every discussion devolved into unsupported arguments from authority, which seems to be the logical fallacy you are relying on in your 'argument.'

Re: Emails Show FDA Chemists Have Been Finding Glyphosate in Food

#142

Post by whatshisface »

sabujp wrote: post #114

serious question so why doesn't everyone have cancer?

A radioactive source could be distributed to the pockets of every living person, and while tons of people would get cancer there would still be some people who didn't. Carcinogens raise your risk of cancer.

Re: Emails Show FDA Chemists Have Been Finding Glyphosate in Food

#143

Post by pera »

tptacek wrote: post #11
fncypants wrote: post #6

I've noticed that Monsanto appears to be on an astroturfing campaign. Half of the ads appearing in my Reddit front page are promoted posts that are pro-glyphosate. They point to legitimate news articles, for example, that report on a study finding that glyphosate is not a carginogen. Of course, these studies contradict other studies that glyphosate is a carcinogen or otherwise a concern. In truth, I was ready to beli…

There are no credible studies indicating that glyphosate is a carcinogen, and it would be a little bit surprising it if was, since it targets a metabolic pathway not present in animals. Meanwhile, many of the herbicides that glyphosate displace, plenty of which remain in use, are known human carcinogens. The most widely reported declaration of glyphosate's carcinogenicity, by IARC, was disavowed by the WHO, IARC's pa…

> it would be a little bit surprising it if was, since it targets a metabolic pathway not present in animals

Maybe I'm misreading your comment, but for instance the following study (and some of its references) seems to contradict your assertion:

Glyphosate exposure in pregnancy and shortened gestational length: a prospective Indiana birth cohort study

https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-...

Re: Emails Show FDA Chemists Have Been Finding Glyphosate in Food

#145

Post by userbinator »

dvogel wrote: post #49
briandear wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who has supported the asbestos industry? Has there ever been a company that actually promotes asbestos?

Yes, in fact asbestos is still mined and marketed today: https://youtu.be/cy3piCUPIkc

Only white asbestos (also known as Chrysotile) --- and the great number of people who have been exposed to large amounts of it and lived long healthy lives certainly makes one wonder; AFAIK it's only the other types, particularly blue asbestos, which are unanimously carcinogenic and the industry stopped using them a long time ago, but the effects from that (and contamination of white asbestos with the other types) have continued and led the majority of fears.

This article is worth reading: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3581056/

Re: Emails Show FDA Chemists Have Been Finding Glyphosate in Food

#146

Post by TaylorAlexander »

zasz wrote: post #12
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #3

From the article: “All of the official samples passed the test and were within the legal limits of glyphosate residue. But those off-the-record, unofficial samples, though done with the same equipment and tested by the same chemists, showed glyphosate. That’s right. The chemists found glyphosate residue on just about everything: crackers, granola, cornmeal, honey, oatmeal, baby food, and even corn. Their surreptitiou…

I'm no fan of toxic chemicals in our food and I don't trust the government or corporations to do enough to protect it, but it seems fair to me to say that a PhD in philosophy and a master's in physics are not particularly relevant to claiming expertise in evaluating toxicological claims.

I would argue that her advanced degrees put her far above average in her ability to read technical literature on the subject. She’s not doing original research in the field, merely sharing what she has learned from reading existing research. Knowledge she would like to spread when our own FDA puts its head in the sand.

Re: Emails Show FDA Chemists Have Been Finding Glyphosate in Food

#147

Post by emodendroket »

tptacek wrote: post #85
emodendroket wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The information I've turned up suggests that commercial bee colonies are also rapidly dying off. https://beeinformed.org/2016/05/10/nations-beekeepers-lost-4...

Are commercial pollination services perhaps using robotic bees? Because pollination services went up by something like 1% since that article was published.

I am not an expert in the field or anything, but it's not necessarily the case that, because pollination services have gone up slightly, the problem is solved. It could be that they've been able to work through this problem so far but will not be able to do so indefinitely.

Re: Emails Show FDA Chemists Have Been Finding Glyphosate in Food

#148

Post by emodendroket »

tptacek wrote: post #120
headsoup wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are the bee sources still the same? Bees are often imported from other regions to meet supply.

I have no idea. Why does that matter?

If all the bees keep dying perhaps you'll eventually run out of bees to import.

Re: Emails Show FDA Chemists Have Been Finding Glyphosate in Food

#149

Post by topmonk »

random4369 wrote: post #14
dfxm12 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember watching a lecture from Vandana Shiva who claimed that glyphosate was harmful and making it in to our food. She cited some European studies that found glyphosate in a wide variety of products. She claimed that there were shady things going on in the US government that seemed to obscure these facts. While this might prove her true that the US government is trying to hide the glyphosate levels in food, does…

Every time the jury is out on a topic where one side has a vested interest and a billion dollar budget to protect it, you can be reasonably sure what the outcome will be. See: pesticides and bees, fossil fuels and climate change, food packaging plastics and cancer, pain treatment meds and addiction. The answer in all those cases is the harmful effects eventually became known, but the jury was out long enough for the…

Don't forget leaded gasoline: https://www.thenation.com/article/secret-history-lead/

Re: Emails Show FDA Chemists Have Been Finding Glyphosate in Food

#150

Post by airstrike »

tptacek wrote: post #27
dbasedweeb wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My concern is best summed up by this comment from above: Every time the jury is out on a topic where one side has a vested interest and a billion dollar budget to protect it, you can be reasonably sure what the outcome will be. See: pesticides and bees, fossil fuels and climate change, food packaging plastics and cancer, pain treatment meds and addiction. The answer in all those cases is the harmful effects eventuall…

This isn't so much an argument as it is innuendo. If you get glyphosate carcinogenicity wrong, you increase carcinogenic agriculture, because that's what the market alternatives to it are: clearly known human carcinogens.

The other market alternative is eating organic.
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