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Bayer hit with $332M judgement in Roundup cancer trial

fortune.com

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Re: Bayer hit with $332M judgement in Roundup cancer trial

#111

Post by tails4e »

dade_ wrote: post #44

The most dangerous surface in a farm is the farmer’s hat I was told. So they wear the hat in the sun, tilling the fields, but the reason the hat is dangerous is from spraying the fields. Pesticides and herbicides are downright scary chemicals, and we genetically modify crops to improve tolerance of these chemicals. And that is when I went all GMO free, not because I am worried about eating grain that has modified gen…

Shit. I remember clearly spraying roundup out of a backpack sprayer on a calm day, when a stray gust of wind blew some of the spray back up and into my face. I often wonder if I inadvertently sealed my fate despite that level of exposure being so brief. It was about 5 years ago,so far so good.

Re: Bayer hit with $332M judgement in Roundup cancer trial

#112

Post by ClumsyPilot »

vkou wrote: post #8
tempsy wrote: post #2

People look at you like you're crazy if you tell them you avoid oats, grains, nuts that are particularly heavy in glyphosate.

Given that as of 2023: 1. Glyphosate is one of the more heavily studied chemicals known to man. 2. The evidence for it causing cancer is poor. Studies routinely fail to find evidence for it. 3. The subset of studies that do find evidence for such a link, find it in occupational exposure , by people who have been working knee-deep in it for decades. [1] Yes, people probably should look at you like you're crazy, becaus…

> people probably should look at you like you're crazy, because you're extrapolating

People who claimed that UK government gave them AIDS, on purpose, were called crazy. 50 years later, it turns out they were right.

"The blood was imported from the US after a UK shortage, where people such as prisoners could donate in return for cash. The minutes ..shows that officials knew that haemophiliacs were being given dangerous blood from the US that was making them ill with hepatitis... No one raised the alarm to stop the spread of the blood and instead, officials hoped the imported goods would not get a "bad name".

There was a major effort to supress this information. People has to extrapolate based on limited data.

These situations are not rare - when the workers in Teflon factories were having birth defects and cancers, and started questioning that maybe it's related to their job, they were called crazy too.

In my family we extrapolated based on limited data, twice, and doctors were looking at us like we were crazy, and it turned out we were right. If we didn't press the issue, two family members would have been dead.

So now I am jaded and I have limited faith in Medical establishment and institutions doing their homework.

Re: Bayer hit with $332M judgement in Roundup cancer trial

#113

Post by [deleted] »

robertlagrant wrote: post #105
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discussing GMO's in general and not specific varieties is about as productive as discussing manmade materials- the topic is too broad. What are we even comparing- bricks vs stones? Copper vs a rock? Monsanto was producing crops that better withstand it's chemicals and China is producing Rice that can tolerate salt water. Clearly China is Innovating to feed it's people while Monsanto is 'Innovating' to boost their sha…

Comparing Monsanto to China is an even sillier comparison than copper vs rock.

[deleted]

Re: Bayer hit with $332M judgement in Roundup cancer trial

#114

Post by hinkley »

rschneid wrote: post #96
KennyBlanken wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Europe where GMOs are banned and pesticide use is lower...yields are higher than in the US. "We need to use poison to grow food to feed everyone" is bunch of false-dilemma poppycock. If it were truly a matter of "we need to feed everyone", we wouldn't be wasting massive amounts of grain on raising cattle, which is one of most wasteful ways of generating food there is. 80% of agricultural land is used for cattle, b…

Anecdotally, I think pesticides become 'necessary' when a specific farm desires greater than a particular density of crop. Sure, the collective can achieve sufficient production with less use of these chemicals however when a farm is at a point where their plants are touching each other then serious pesticides are required if they wish to increase their yield further without pests becoming a catastrophic risk to the…

Once we started expecting farmers to be specialists instead of generalists. If you only know apples you want as many of them as you can fit. Which means pathogens have a buffet laid out.

Re: Bayer hit with $332M judgement in Roundup cancer trial

#115

Post by lll-o-lll »

Ichthypresbyter wrote: post #107
lll-o-lll wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not because I am worried about eating grain that has modified genes, that’s plain stupid. So, it turns out this is not so stupid. I’m going to sound a little stupid, because this is not my field, but my sister is a plant molecular biologist. All her research/work is in plant DNA. Apparently it’s been recently discovered that the gene expression for the genetically modified plants was not as had been previously unde…

Does she let her kids eat sweet potatoes? While there is AFAIK no genetically engineered variety of sweet potato being cultivated, every cultivated variety of sweet potato bears genetic traces of having been modified by Agrobacterium tumefaciens , which is the bacterium which is widely used to edit plant genomes.

I think, to understand her concerns, you would need to be in the field. I’m pretty smart, and I have plenty of layman knowledge, but I’m completely lost once she gets technical.

The summary of the issue, as I understand it, is as follows.

The modifications do much more than we realised, and the impacts are poorly tested. That’s the gist. It’s enough for me to go “there could be dragons here”, but I honestly haven’t bothered to try and change any purchasing decisions. I think the horse has already bolted anyway. Doesn’t the gmo end up in pretty much everything regardless?

Re: Bayer hit with $332M judgement in Roundup cancer trial

#116

Post by robertlagrant »

rudyfink wrote: post #77
Zigurd wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reforming how class actions are done is probably a very good idea. But Bayer has a market capitalization of over 45 billion. This judgement will probably get appealed and negotiated down. And if it isn't, there is a lot of value in Bayer to pay out in a class action if one succeeds.

If by "reform" you mean weaken class actions, I would argue that is a bad idea. Larger businesses have already gone to great lengths to eliminate / curtail class actions. I'd argue that this weakening is the root cause of a chunk of the aggregate problems I see discussed on HN. It is in a company's interest to harm a great many people a little bit because the people often have to challenge the company as individuals…

Businesses aren't trying to harm. They aren't a Mao or a Stalin just going for The Greater Good no matter how many people they have to kill. They're trying to make a profit, and sometimes horribly unethical people in those businesses will not care about harm in order to make a profit. But the goal isn't harm.

Re: Bayer hit with $332M judgement in Roundup cancer trial

#117

Post by cyberax »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #84
conception wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-gmos use pesticides, nearly all farming does, and usually more than GMO crops. Eg https://i0.wp.com/sitn.hms.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/20... From https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2015/gmos-and-pesticides/

In Europe where GMOs are banned and pesticide use is lower...yields are higher than in the US. "We need to use poison to grow food to feed everyone" is bunch of false-dilemma poppycock. If it were truly a matter of "we need to feed everyone", we wouldn't be wasting massive amounts of grain on raising cattle, which is one of most wasteful ways of generating food there is. 80% of agricultural land is used for cattle, b…

> pesticide use is lower...

It's not. Europe uses somewhat lower amount of pesticides because it has more land that regularly freezes which helps to control insects.

When corrected for that, Europe uses more pesticides for similar climates.

> yields are higher than in the US.

They aren't, when corrected for the land area.

Re: Bayer hit with $332M judgement in Roundup cancer trial

#118

Post by robertlagrant »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #66
Reptur wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for pointing that out. So profit their 2022 32.523B [1]. 32.5 billion in profit dwarfs a 332 million settlement. You have made my point only stronger. 1. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/BAYRY/bayer/gross-...

Still not the right number. Net income is profit. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/BAYRY/bayer/net-in... Their revenue minus expenses is usually low single digit billions, and they had a $12B loss in 2020. They are earning less than $5B per year for many, many years, and already have a $12B loss to deal with from a couple years ago, there is no way to conclude that a multi billion dollar penalty is a “cost o…

> there is no way to conclude that a multi billion dollar penalty is a “cost of doing business”

Unless you're a small business in Mafia times, in which case that's exactly what it was.

Re: Bayer hit with $332M judgement in Roundup cancer trial

#119

Post by hinkley »

echelon wrote: post #87
LordShredda wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although we have seen very frequently that pesticides still affect some humans or animals. At this point, shouldn't we just reduce the possible points of failures instead of hoping the next miracle molecule doesn't kill us all twenty years later?

Very frequently? These chemicals are benign and the media and activists have been scaring people for decades without justification. The fact that their arguments are often convolved with arguments against lawns and lawncare should give you a better sense of their true motives. I'm shocked Bayer lost and that the plaintiff was awarded anything. Glyphosate has not been shown to cause cancer. If it had, such literature…

Roundup isn’t glyphosate. It’s full of glyphosate, yes. But it’s not glyphosate.

It also doesn’t always break down. Depends on if it binds with anything.

Re: Bayer hit with $332M judgement in Roundup cancer trial

#120

Post by hinkley »

nomilk wrote: post #90
dade_ wrote: post #44

The most dangerous surface in a farm is the farmer’s hat I was told. So they wear the hat in the sun, tilling the fields, but the reason the hat is dangerous is from spraying the fields. Pesticides and herbicides are downright scary chemicals, and we genetically modify crops to improve tolerance of these chemicals. And that is when I went all GMO free, not because I am worried about eating grain that has modified gen…

I must confess to not washing all fruit before I eat it. Especially berries. I sometimes wonder if there's any home testing kit to figure out how much chemical residue is on fruit and vege. Easy testing for pesticides/sprays could prompt changes in both consumer behaviour (e.g. preparation/washing), but also buying behaviour (if one farm's berries had less spray than another's, presumably the former's would be prefer…

Rinse them with vinegar.
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