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Roundup herbicide ingredient connected to epidemic chronic kidney disease

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Re: Roundup herbicide ingredient connected to epidemic chronic kidney disease

#181

Post by wrs »

riversflow wrote: post #176
zzzeek wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

following that, the most prevalent use for GM crops is herbicide tolerance, where glyphosate is the most common herbicide targeted [1]. If you posted on Hacker News eight years ago that you thought it was a good idea for GM foods to be labeled, you'd be roundly mocked with all the data showing genetic modification is safe (as I'm sure is about to happen here anyway). That was never what the debate was about and it wa…

> Why GM is pushed so hard. Well go on, don't just eldude to it. Spell it out. My understanding is that GM is pushed so hard because while farming is the most necessary thing humans do, it's also highly undesirable labor and the pay is shit. It's also risky business, on a long enough timeline every crop fails. Consumers should grow their own food if they are worried. See how hard it is. My experience is that 99% of t…

Monsanto introduced proprietary GMO crops that were resistant to Roundup so you could easily wipe out every plant that wasn’t the crop (aka “weeds”). It was a package deal.

> In 1996, Monsanto introduced the Roundup Ready soybean, a genetically engineered crop resistant to glyphosate. In the few years after, Roundup Ready cotton, maize, and various other crops also made their debut.

https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2015/roundup-ready-crops/

Re: Roundup herbicide ingredient connected to epidemic chronic kidney disease

#182

Post by xpe »

tuatoru wrote: post #124
xpe wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you consider cost/acre and calories/acre, it is also abundantly clear that for all its flaws, modern industrial farming is a technological marvel. Modern farming seems optimized for the wrong thing all too often: cheap calories. Calories are important (for basic metabolic needs) but not the whole story. Nutrient density and sustainable practices are worth promoting.

Well, yes, nutrient density is worth promoting. But it seems to me that the populations of those who oppose herbicides like glyphosate, and those who oppose genetically modified crops with say extra niacin or vitamin D, overlap very heavily. We have a new mental illness, generalized antiscience disorder. Motto: "It is better that a hundred million die of famine or epidemic disease than one person die of cancer."

There are many other explanations for people that have these views that are not anti-scientific.

The precautionary principle is one.

Not wanting agribusiness to create patented crops is another.

Recognizing that what we mean by nutrient-dense foods are more than just synthesizing more vitamin D or niacin in a plant.

But sure, there is plenty of irrationality to go ‘round too. Just be rational yourself in understanding why people oppose some of these ideas.

Re: Roundup herbicide ingredient connected to epidemic chronic kidney disease

#183

Post by xpe »

mvdtnz wrote: post #76
xpe wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you consider cost/acre and calories/acre, it is also abundantly clear that for all its flaws, modern industrial farming is a technological marvel. Modern farming seems optimized for the wrong thing all too often: cheap calories. Calories are important (for basic metabolic needs) but not the whole story. Nutrient density and sustainable practices are worth promoting.

It's easy to be picky about nutrient density and sustainable farming when you have a full belly. Modern farming techniques have saved the lives of millions of people who would otherwise starve to death.

> It's easy to be picky about X when you have a full belly.

This is a cliché for a reason. Groan. See my other comment.

Re: Roundup herbicide ingredient connected to epidemic chronic kidney disease

#184

Post by parineum »

mandmandam wrote: post #110
parineum wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there no possibility that you're misinformed? No room for self reflection?

I supposed you could prove me wrong: Try to find a HN thread about glyphosate where no one gaslights, deflects, toxifies or baits. Any time, in the whole history of HN. One single story , where no one tries to pretend or insinuate that Roundup / glyphosate is perfectly safe, or attack people / studies / lawsuits that suggest otherwise. The only rule is that it must have at least a dozen comments - there's no need to…

> Try to find a HN thread about glyphosate where no one gaslights, deflects, toxifies or baits.

That's an impossible barrier. Not only are those complete subjective traits, that stuff is going to appear in nearly every online discussion, especially one with any sort of controversy attached.

It seems fairly clear to me that the harmfulness of glyphosate (when used as directed) is somewhere between none and inconclusive. Even in cases where it's been grossly misused, any "link" has come significantly short of a causal link since it's usually just a guy who got cancer and also used to work on a farm. Given the prevalence and duration of glyphosate use, compelling evidence should be readily available, just like it was with lead or asbestos. Absence of evidence is very much not evidence of absence but glyphosate has to be the number two most studied chemical behind aspartame, another chemical that's been routinely attacked and routinely proven to be safe.

Given that most of the assertions of glyphosate's harm is coming from the lawyers of people filing lawsuits, I'm not too swayed by their unsupported arguments.

Re: Roundup herbicide ingredient connected to epidemic chronic kidney disease

#185

Post by zzzeek »

riversflow wrote: post #176
zzzeek wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

following that, the most prevalent use for GM crops is herbicide tolerance, where glyphosate is the most common herbicide targeted [1]. If you posted on Hacker News eight years ago that you thought it was a good idea for GM foods to be labeled, you'd be roundly mocked with all the data showing genetic modification is safe (as I'm sure is about to happen here anyway). That was never what the debate was about and it wa…

> Why GM is pushed so hard. Well go on, don't just eldude to it. Spell it out. My understanding is that GM is pushed so hard because while farming is the most necessary thing humans do, it's also highly undesirable labor and the pay is shit. It's also risky business, on a long enough timeline every crop fails. Consumers should grow their own food if they are worried. See how hard it is. My experience is that 99% of t…

Is there a shortage of farm workers ? I live in a rural agricultural town, farms have plenty of workers here who largely come from central and South America . That's like a big part of the economy here. The work being hard / low paying isn't why Monsanto pushed GM so hard, they pushed it so they could patent seeds and sell license fees, as well as a ton of glyphosate.

Re: Roundup herbicide ingredient connected to epidemic chronic kidney disease

#186

Post by throwaway290 »

LorenPechtel wrote: post #172
m00x wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So far, there is monumental evidence that it's non-toxic to humans at normal doses. This study doesn't prove it's toxic. It only introduces the aspect that it might be associated to kidney disease. Everything is toxic to humans at the right dose, even water.

I would call causing chronic kidney disease to be toxic. It sounds like they evaluated the chemical itself but didn't evaluate what could happen to the chemical once it was in the environment.

> It sounds like they evaluated the chemical itself but didn't evaluate what could happen to the chemical once it was in the environment.

I bet that's most of evaluations and it's probably not even required to take into consideration the environment and how it can change the response...

Re: Roundup herbicide ingredient connected to epidemic chronic kidney disease

#187

Post by rnk »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #151
squidbeak wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It works at giving people chronic kidney disease and killing them. Probably it shouldn't be used or legal to use it.

Every alternative will kill even more people. Other herbicides are even more dangerous, and not using herbicide will cause food prices to go up. High food prices kill far more people than herbicides do.

There are other alternatives than use a herbicide that kills a certain number of people. The thing is that massive multi-billion dollar companies absolutely try to sabotage any consideration of the safety of their pesticides, because it's so much money to them. If you are a researcher, you'll be getting into a fraught area if you are doing a study to validate it's safety. It's similar to looking into climate science - the crazies will come for you, and probably the pseudo-non-climate-scientist people taking money from exxon.

Re: Roundup herbicide ingredient connected to epidemic chronic kidney disease

#188

Post by bryanlarsen »

rnk wrote: post #187
bryanlarsen wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every alternative will kill even more people. Other herbicides are even more dangerous, and not using herbicide will cause food prices to go up. High food prices kill far more people than herbicides do.

There are other alternatives than use a herbicide that kills a certain number of people. The thing is that massive multi-billion dollar companies absolutely try to sabotage any consideration of the safety of their pesticides, because it's so much money to them. If you are a researcher, you'll be getting into a fraught area if you are doing a study to validate it's safety. It's similar to looking into climate science…

> There are other alternatives than use a herbicide that kills a certain number of people.

Like what? What impact would that have on food prices? Glyphosate costs $10 / acre, or maybe 15 cents per bushel of wheat.

Re: Roundup herbicide ingredient connected to epidemic chronic kidney disease

#189

Post by bluGill »

profsummergig wrote: post #89
algoatecorn wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Has anyone here tried the bespoke home-made weed-icide made with vinegar + salt + dish-soap? If yes, was it effective? A cursory google search suggests the internet is divided on this.

The safety data is clear, that mix is more toxic to humans. Vinegar works in high concentrations that are hard to buy because of how toxic it is. Dish soap generally doesn't biodegrade, so it builds up. Salting the earth is something you do to enemies when you want to starve them out and ensure their land is never useful again.

Re: Roundup herbicide ingredient connected to epidemic chronic kidney disease

#190

Post by pella »

bluGill wrote: post #175
diogenes4 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glyphosate kills far more than just weeds (whatever those are).

Glyphosate is well studied and affects cell paths that don't exist in humans.

"Does Glyphosate Affect the Human Microbiota?"

https://www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/12/5/707

"Abstract:

Glyphosate is the world’s most widely used agrochemical. Its use in agriculture and gardening has been proclaimed safe because humans and other animals do not have the target enzyme 5-enolpyruvylshikimate-3-phosphate synthase (EPSPS). However, increasing numbers of studies have demonstrated risks to humans and animals because the shikimate metabolic pathway is present in many microbes. Here, we assess the potential effect of glyphosate on healthy human microbiota. Our results demonstrate that more than one-half of human microbiome are intrinsically sensitive to glyphosate. However, further empirical studies are needed to determine the effect of glyphosate on healthy human microbiota.

...

4. Conclusions

Hence, does glyphosate affect the human microbiota? Contemporary research points to the herbicide’s potential to disrupt healthy microbiomes, including the human microbiome. Several empirical studies have determined the impact of glyphosate-based products on wild- and host-associated microbiota and called to control the potentially negative consequences on environmental health and sustainability. However, further empirical studies are needed to find a “smoking gun” that determines the effect of glyphosate on the healthy human microbiota. Moreover, additional experimental and epidemiological studies are needed to determine these proposed effects of glyphosate-based products on wild and host-associated microbes to control their potentially negative consequences on human health and ecosystem functions and services."

Other:

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=human+microbiome+glypho...

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