71–80 of 156 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure? My point is just that the case wasn't about glyphosate but about a particular Monsanto product. I sort of don't care what happens to Monsanto.
Point taken in that respect, I agree with you that glyphosate hasn't proven to be toxic or mutagenic across quite a lot of research, but if there's no non-toxic delivery vehicle for it it doesn't matter much :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm confused, are you arguing that cellular changes cannot impact a larger organism because they have too many cells?
That's not how I'd interpret this sentence: "We have skin and other barriers that protect the cells." It sounds to me like the author claims that humans have skin, which is true, and that skin forms a barrier that protects internal cells, which is extremely plausible.
I vaguely remember watching an interview with an exec from Monsanto saying RoundUp was perfectly safe, safe enough to drink. Then immediately refusing to drink it when offered, because of course it's poison.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Salt is not safe to drink. Vinegar is to some extend (you can take several gulps) Glyphosate is not. Claim was BS. Good journalists to challenge them on the spot. Bad Monsanto for making that claim. It is clearly not safe to drink. Not one gulp. Microdosing is not the point there, the claim was not made for microdosing, the claim was safe to drink.
The journalist was right to challenge him if the claim was BS but I disagree that asking him to drink a glass of roundup and him refusing is a good argument. I mean take the position of the Monsanto lobbyist, he most likely never attempted such a stunt before, he doesn't know how it tastes, he doesn't know if drinking a whole glass of it at once is going to cause digestive distress etc... Of course he's going to refu…
I disagree that asking
him to drink a glass of
roundup and him
refusing is a good
argument
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the scientific consensus Uhh. You mean the lack of consensus. Which is bought and paid for by Monsanto. When it comes to their own products, they outspend any independent studies by orders of magnitude in order to create enough noise for there to be a lack of consensus long enough to make a profit. It's straight out of the tobacco industry playbook.
All of the independent studies say that Roundup causes cancer? Unscientific assholes downvoted me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I followed that argument a bit, and what I found was a Seralini study ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5756058/ ). He is known for some really bad studies about GMOs, those were simply terrible science and he obviously has an axe to grind. The POEA experiments in that paper were about exposing cell cultures to different roundup compositions and components. It is not surprising that POEA kills the cells…
I'm confused, are you arguing that cellular changes cannot impact a larger organism because they have too many cells?
That doesn't mean that a detergents can't have other effects that are harmful to humans. It just means that I don't think a cell culture experiment proves anything in such a case. A study in animals would be something different.
There has been a lot of studies about Glyphosate nocivity around the years, but the three most significant are the ones led by the World Health Organization (WHO), the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).
The controversy began with a report published by the IARC, an intergovernmental agency under the authority of the WHO of the United Nations. According to this report, the carcinogenicity of Glyphosate is 'probable'.
This result was contradicted in November 2015 by a study published by the EFSA. In the face of uncertainty, many Member States refused to renew the authorization of Glyphosate, which was due to expire on 30 June 2016. Pending a new study, this time by the ECHA, the European Commission has only extended the product's registration until 15 December 2017.
This new study was published in March 2017. Like EFSA, it rejects the potential carcinogenicity of Glyphosate.
However, the potential dangerousness of Glyphosate is not ruled out. But why you asked, my good friend?
As many scientists, NGOs and politicians denounce, the IARC, EFSA and ECHA reports are not comparable. While the first one decides on marketed products, such as Roundup, the other two only study Glyphosate alone, without the adjuvants that reinforce its effects. Moreover, when IARC bases its analysis on public studies, EFSA and ECHA work mainly on data directly transmitted by industry, including Monsanto, which would make their conclusions questionable.
Yes, two of the most cited studies saying Glyphosate and Roundup are safe use data directly gave by Monsanto itself! And wait, there is more...
Christopher Portier, an American scientist, denounces those facts in an open letter sent on 29 May 2017 to Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission, and relayed by numerous media. "Both EFSA and ECHA have failed to identify all statistically significant cases of increased cancer incidence in rodent studies," he writes. He also states that, using Monsato own data, he has detected "eight cases of significant increase in the incidence of different tumors", which appear in neither of the two publications. Mr Portier therefore 'respectfully' asks EFSA and ECHA to 'conduct their own analysis' and 'amend their conclusions accordingly'. To base his results, the American researcher relied on data used and published by EFSA, which until now had remained confidential.
If you still do not believe that, at least, the precautionary principle should apply here and that both Roundup and Glyphosate should be banned, I don't know what you need.
Sources:
https://www.touteleurope.eu/actualite/pourquoi-le-Glyphosate...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> So Monsanto were selling a dangerous pesticide and intentionally obfuscating its effects. The same Monsanto that manufactured PCBs and Agent Orange? That's a crazy coincidence.
Well, no, not the same Monsanto that did any of that. They spun off their chemical division in 1996. [0] More philosophically (and despite what SCOTUS has to say about it), companies aren't people; they are run by people. "Monsanto" can't do anything. The people running Monsanto have agency. And the people who did the things you mention here are dead . [0] https://www.nytimes.com/1996/10/11/business/monsanto-plans-t.…
If I poison my neighbour and I'm caught, I'm going to jail. (In the US I may face the death penalty.)
If I'm working inside a corporate and my decisions poison [unknown power of ten] people and cause [unknown but significant] number of serious and possibly fatal illnesses, I am protected by the profit motive - possibly forever, and in the best case until such time as there's a legal case which the corporate loses, and then loses again, definitively, on appeal.
This is not hypothetical. There are many historical examples - not least the tobacco industry, the fossil fuel industries, the car industry, and many, many more.
It's a curious situation, and not a very satisfactory one.
We really should not be allowing the pursuit of profit as an excuse for collectively harmful activities.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure? My point is just that the case wasn't about glyphosate but about a particular Monsanto product. I sort of don't care what happens to Monsanto.
> I sort of don't care what happens to Monsanto. And yet you comment on every thread that mentions them :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, no, not the same Monsanto that did any of that. They spun off their chemical division in 1996. [0] More philosophically (and despite what SCOTUS has to say about it), companies aren't people; they are run by people. "Monsanto" can't do anything. The people running Monsanto have agency. And the people who did the things you mention here are dead . [0] https://www.nytimes.com/1996/10/11/business/monsanto-plans-t.…
The people running Monsanto are buffered - if not always protected entirely - by numerous laws from facing the consequences of their actions, precisely because they take those actions in the context of a corporate entity. If I poison my neighbour and I'm caught, I'm going to jail. (In the US I may face the death penalty.) If I'm working inside a corporate and my decisions poison [unknown power of ten] people and caus…