Weedkiller ingredient tied to cancer found in 80% of US urine samples • Hacker News Board

Re: Weedkiller ingredient tied to cancer found in 80% of US urine samples

#261

Post by sofixa » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 7:52 PM UTC

kurthr wrote: post #106

tastyfreeze wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the chemical inputs to farms make them unprofitable. Each year takes more input to make the farm work. We broke the ecosystem, nitrogen cycle and phosphate cycle by tilling, monocropping, and chemical input. The way we farm kills the soil. We can support the population without chemical inputs if we manage the land differently. It takes about 3 years to transition to a regenerative management style. That is how lo…

Tell that to Sri Lanka. There is massive unrest, because people will starve. The farmers were not the ones saying, "don't use chemical fertilizer", the ex-government was.

That's extremely misleading. The (still current, power is mainly in the president who is refusing to leave) government banned chemical fertilizers on an extremely short notice, with no planning. That's just incredibly stupid.

Had it been planned, with subsidies, education, multi-year transition, it probably wouldn't have ended in a disaster as it did. But anyways, that's not the only reason for Sri Lanka's demise (lots of stupid money wasting in useless infrastructure, lots of corruption, and Covid). It was just lots of incompetence from very stupid people.

Re: Weedkiller ingredient tied to cancer found in 80% of US urine samples

#262

Post by phkahler » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 7:52 PM UTC

WillPostForFood wrote: post #120

abe_duarte wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who have been exposed to the chemical got cancer. Internal Monsanto documents show the link and their concern. A man got a court to rule in his favour for 289 million dollars, after the jury saw this evidence: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/10/monsanto-tr...

People who have been exposed to got cancer, but that is meaningless in showing causation. Internal documents show concern, but show no evidence that it causes cancer, or that Monsanto had internal data showing it caused cancer.

It's safe to drink, here have some:

https://youtu.be/ovKw6YjqSfM

Re: Weedkiller ingredient tied to cancer found in 80% of US urine samples

#263

Post by saiya-jin » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 7:55 PM UTC

telesoft wrote: post #239

user3939382 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I’m concerned Bayer and Monsanto are like evil incarnate and last time I brought up this lawsuit on HN I was shocked people were defending them. We’re talking about the company that intentionally sold HIV infected blood to people. If it was legal and they could increase profits by lighting people on fire they would do it. Yet people trust corrupt research that they paid for showing their product is safe. We…

>people were defending them. I believe that some company monitors websites like reddit and twitter for talk about Monsanto or Big Oil (fracking) and that company pays shills to defend them.

I mean, it would be strange that in 2022 HN would not be included in continuous campaigns to maintain good PR and keep getting baseless positive opinions, seed doubt and confusion to any criticism.

I would expect any big multinational corp to have few permanent people / external agency on permanent contract just for this. And considering how these corps in discussion are almost cartoonishly evil, there is probably a lot of work being done constantly.

Re: Weedkiller ingredient tied to cancer found in 80% of US urine samples

#264

Post by UweSchmidt » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 7:57 PM UTC

telesoft wrote: post #239

user3939382 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I’m concerned Bayer and Monsanto are like evil incarnate and last time I brought up this lawsuit on HN I was shocked people were defending them. We’re talking about the company that intentionally sold HIV infected blood to people. If it was legal and they could increase profits by lighting people on fire they would do it. Yet people trust corrupt research that they paid for showing their product is safe. We…

>people were defending them. I believe that some company monitors websites like reddit and twitter for talk about Monsanto or Big Oil (fracking) and that company pays shills to defend them.

Someone on reddit claimed he was on a US presidential campaign doing exactly that. Respond to posts with pre-made replies, if things got hairy, distract with humor or memes. Interestingly, they were aware when they were dealing with another paid shill from the opposing side.

After all those years on the internet I think I can also feel the impact of systematic forum activity; controversial topics that get swift, well articulated replies with links and upvotes. Another comment, declaring the winner of the debate!

Is it individual experts who weigh in, organically? Groups who are passionate about the topic and organize via Discord? Or professional shitposters and memers? Who can tell. But a few internet-addicted Reddit aficionados could cover a lot of topics in a lot of communities for a small salary and huge impact.

Re: Weedkiller ingredient tied to cancer found in 80% of US urine samples

#265

Post by tyrfing » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 8:04 PM UTC

mushbino wrote: post #167

tyrfing wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, 10B just isn't very much. 95,000 cases are being settled for $25-250k a person, where individual cases are 9 digit awards and only require convincing a jury. 100, max 1000, out of those 95,000 people getting awards at jury trials is enough to make that cheaper. It'll be interesting to see what/if 3M settles earplug liability for. Talc powder liability has already cost JNJ over 5 billion, and that's with t…

I believe they mean it's a lot of money to the company, not the plaintiffs. $10B is a lot of money to any company. You should see what Chevron has been doing to Steven Donziger for winning the $9.5B case against them for massively polluting the Amazon.

> The tribunal unanimously held that a $9.5 billion pollution judgment by Ecuador’s Supreme Court against Chevron “was procured through fraud, bribery and corruption and was based on claims that had been already settled and released by the Republic of Ecuador years earlier.”

That case?

Bayer settled the class action for 3 orders of magnitude less than some jury awards. They don't have to believe it causes cancer, just that a low percentage of juries can be convinced that making Bayer pay up is a good idea. Straightforward math. They still have 10s of thousands of other court cases to deal with, too.

Re: Weedkiller ingredient tied to cancer found in 80% of US urine samples

#266

Post by fennecfoxen » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 8:06 PM UTC

hammock wrote: post #190

microSnowball wrote: post #21

Not knowing anything about glyphosate, I went to the article before reading the comments. I’ll just put this here because it was clear the researchers wanted to be sure people see it. From the first paragraph of the article—> > In 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer determined that glyphosate is a “probable human carcinogen” (IARC, 2015). However, the European Food Safety Authority and the Joint Foo…

> the European Food Safety Authority determined that glyphosate is unlikely to be a carcinogen Yet Europe has banned glyphosate (it is allowed in the US). Curious

The EU was concerned about marine toxicity and the potential for the concentrated forms to cause serious eye damage!

Re: Weedkiller ingredient tied to cancer found in 80% of US urine samples

#267

Post by rascul » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 8:07 PM UTC

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #211

xattt wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This type of rhetoric isn’t helpful, except to companies and manufacturers looking to minimize the attention around specific products with known carcinogenic properties.

well it also doesn't help to make assumptions based on skewed correlations. Every living animal, including us, drinks water. Every living animal dies. Is there something in the water maybe? I don't see how this line of reasoning can be helpful honestly. --- There is no limit on how much damages this mentality can do. Think about the recent stream of people got COVID vaccine, then died

> Is there something in the water maybe?

It has DHMO in it. It's pretty bad.

https://dhmo.org/facts.html

Re: Weedkiller ingredient tied to cancer found in 80% of US urine samples

#268

Post by saiya-jin » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 8:09 PM UTC

slowking2 wrote: post #80

rasz wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a sense of here mister lobbyist this is a glass of perfectly safe glyphosate, drink it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWM_PgnoAtA

The dose makes the poison. It’s possible for a chemical to be perfectly safe if ingested in low quantities but dangerous in extremely high quantities. The duration of exposure for the same dose matters a lot too. Drinking glyphosate could be a much larger acute exposure so it’s perfectly reasonable to say it’s safe as normally used but not want to drink it. For example, you need trace amounts of copper to live, but v…

I dare you to ingest small amount of Caesium-137 every day if you truly stand by your reasoning.

I can argue with list of names of firemen that didn't die from radiation poisoning while putting off fire in Chernobyl.

Re: Weedkiller ingredient tied to cancer found in 80% of US urine samples

#269

Post by pohl » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 8:13 PM UTC

microSnowball wrote: post #21

Not knowing anything about glyphosate, I went to the article before reading the comments. I’ll just put this here because it was clear the researchers wanted to be sure people see it. From the first paragraph of the article—> > In 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer determined that glyphosate is a “probable human carcinogen” (IARC, 2015). However, the European Food Safety Authority and the Joint Foo…

One thing I've noticed with regard to all of the safety claims made about glyphosate is that it only claims that it's safe with respect to humans directly.

They never discuss what it might do to your gut biome. That seems like a curious omission, to me, for a substance like this.

Shouldn't that be a standard part of the risk analysis?

Re: Weedkiller ingredient tied to cancer found in 80% of US urine samples

#270

Post by Dylan16807 » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 8:15 PM UTC

pohl wrote: post #269

microSnowball wrote: post #21

Not knowing anything about glyphosate, I went to the article before reading the comments. I’ll just put this here because it was clear the researchers wanted to be sure people see it. From the first paragraph of the article—> > In 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer determined that glyphosate is a “probable human carcinogen” (IARC, 2015). However, the European Food Safety Authority and the Joint Foo…

One thing I've noticed with regard to all of the safety claims made about glyphosate is that it only claims that it's safe with respect to humans directly. They never discuss what it might do to your gut biome. That seems like a curious omission, to me, for a substance like this. Shouldn't that be a standard part of the risk analysis?

Yes that should be part of the full regulatory analysis, but then you're talking about active effect concentrations, which are generally going to be much higher than possible carcinogen concentrations.