Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bayer hit with $332M judgement in Roundup cancer trial

fortune.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 255 posts

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

#121

Post by w0z_ »

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…

Wait until you hear about how healthy soy is farmed with 4x the herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, etc. as regular vegetables. Mmm.

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

#122

Post by cyberax »

genter wrote: post #5
sschueller wrote: post #3

Just like Dow Chemical and Union Carbide[1] they claim they are not responsible as the acquired only the assets of Monsanto not the liabilities.... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster

The MSDS for Roundup is hilarious. It's completely safe, no known health effects, as long as you're wearing a full hazmat suite.

MSDS are crap. They are literally worse than useless.

For example, I'm using perfluorohexyloctane eye drops. Its MSDS says that it's a severe eye irritant and requires eye protection when working with it.

Again, for literal eye drops.

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

#123

Post by hinkley »

amelius wrote: post #70
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…

> The most dangerous surface in a farm is the farmer’s hat I was told. How about the surface of the crops?

I figure it’s like dentists wearing aprons when doing teeth X-rays. It’s not that you are receiving a dangerous dose, it’s that they are exposed over, and over, and over again all day. That hat has seen every acre of that farm, at 10-30 foot intervals. Several times a year.

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

#125

Post by tanseydavid »

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…

Round-Up Ready and Terminator Seeds are two of the sickest inventions that humans have ever dreamed up.

The idea of engineering seed so that new seed which comes from its crop will not germinate is just beyond wicked and evil.

But we've had that for something like a quarter century now.

$332M seems like peanuts.

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

#126

Post by hinkley »

hirvi74 wrote: post #103
chubs wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chilli, for instance?

Nicotine and THC are two more.

Caffeine.

Tea is so simple to produce because tea leaves are booby trapped with caffeine crystals and the enzymes to break them down. When an insect eats them they mix.

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

#127

Post by dade_ »

lll-o-lll wrote: post #115
Ichthypresbyter wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

our understanding of DNA is pretty basic. I’d say we’re using a hatchet to do surgery.

Did she make any reference to studies?

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

#129

Post by lll-o-lll »

dade_ wrote: post #127
lll-o-lll wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

our understanding of DNA is pretty basic. I’d say we’re using a hatchet to do surgery. Did she make any reference to studies?

Yes, but I’m texting her to get info. I’ll update here, but it’ll probably take a while. Probably shouldn’t have said anything, but I was hopeful that there might be another plant molecular biologist in the audience who could clear things up.

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

#130

Post by hinkley »

Zigurd wrote: post #22
abeppu wrote: post #17

The idea of punitive damages being awarded to a single person in a situation like this seems unjust on its own. If Roundup is responsible for this person's cancer, it's almost certainly responsible for the cancer of many other people, alive and dead. Clearly I am not a lawyer, but in cases of such a finding, I feel like there ought to be some mechanism to identify an affected class, and make proceeds benefit that cla…

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.

Monsanto is the main culprit here. I don’t know how they convinced Bayer to buy them and tale on this albatross.
Post reply on HN