Bayer hit with $332M judgement in Roundup cancer trial • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by dathinab » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 1:49 PM UTC

dehrmann wrote: post #173

w10-1 wrote: post #38

The judgment was based on failure to warn of risk, not negligence in design. On causation, as far as I can tell, the 2015 finding of epidemiological evidence for a 41% increase in non-hodgkins lymphoma (NHL) was rebutted by non-affiliated researchers, but paid experts are continuing to publish, and claim others have recently found a mechanism. But AFAIK there's no epidemiological or mechanistic proof, now or at the t…

I'm surprised these judgements are happening. The science isn't really nailed down.

see no judgment happend when Monsanto was US owned but the Moment it was bought up by a non US company somehow judges flipped their opinion and even did ruling on non peer reviewed non fully published studies (which later turned out to fail to proof that it causes cancer...)

nothing against banning this and similar roundups on suspicions of them being bad (actually I'm quite in favor of that)

but whats happening there in this case(es) really doesn't look like a proper state of law acting but like some geo political nonsense

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

#212

Post by edgyquant » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 1:50 PM UTC

dgroshev wrote: post #55

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…

"Chemicals killing the crop" aren't inherently dangerous to your body, that's just chemophobia. Best quality artisanal chocolate can easily kill your cat. Nicotine kills bugs and is benign in humans. Belladonna would kill you, but a goat can munch on it without much trouble. Lots of stuff is lethal to some species and harmless to others, "this chemical is so bad it kills plants" is as rational as "chocolate is so bad…

>chemophobia

How ridiculous. You should be afraid of chemicals you don’t understand. That’s common sense

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

#213

Post by probably_wrong » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 1:50 PM UTC

hinkley wrote: post #130

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.

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

Disclaimer: I used to work for Bayer, but nothing related to ex-Monsanto. Also, I have never had contact with the people who made these decisions, only heard things on passing, so take this with a grain of salt.

I believe the reasoning went like this: food security is the big issue of our times, making agricultural products a market with a high growth potential. And big companies like Bayer have an attitude of "top 5 or nothing". Monsanto was the last "big" company up for sale with a portfolio that could push Bayer's Crop Science division to the top, even when accounting for the possibility of losing the first trial.

I believe the CEO who led the merger (with the blessing of the board) will be remembered as the plague that brought Bayer to its knees. But the rich people on the board thought the idea made sense.

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

#214

Post by dathinab » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 1:58 PM UTC

lolinder wrote: post #141

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…

> In Europe where GMOs are banned and pesticide use is lower...yields are higher than in the US. While this may be causal, agriculture is incredibly complex, and I would hesitate to come to any conclusions about causality from this bit of data alone.

one major point is that you need to use the soil substainable

and as far as I know the US did do exact the opposite en mass

GMO by itself isn't bad, but a lot of GMO is made in a way which is harmful to the soil on the long term (and sometimes even short term)

Similar much higher limits for the amount of fertilizers used allow you to use approaches to growing crops which short and mid term have more yield but also drain the soil in a non-substainable way leading to a death spiral of needing increasingly more and more fertilizers, insecticides and at some point GMO modified crops.

While most EU countries had for a long time (but not necessary still have) laws which require a more sustainable ground usage and having a larger movement of people buying food which even more stricter constraints wrt. fertilizers and pesticides.

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

#215

Post by dathinab » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 2:04 PM UTC

jjoonathan wrote: post #80

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People tell me "GMO food is perfectly safe" and they do not seem to understand that in practice they genetically modify the food so they can dump glyphosate on it and that's what I want to avoid eating!

How does glyphosate compare to the usual alternatives?

Depending on who you ask there is no usual alternative which is in any way competitive and isn't so similar to phosphorylate that any harmfulness of glyphosate like applies to it, too.

Through other people will tell you this is propaganda bs.

I'm not in a position to make any proper judgement there, but it seems that not using glyphosate _or similar_ requires major changes to the approach of farming used.

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

#216

Post by dathinab » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 2:11 PM UTC

lll-o-lll wrote: post #101

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…

> 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…

There is a lot of indications that GMO crops are much more likely to "trigger" food intolerabilities then older crops.

Through this seems to be an issue about them being further distant from what humans did eat for over a thousand years then about GMO being bad per-se. I.e. this also seem to apply (but less so) to crops which used more tradition (modern speed up) methods of cultivating crop variants.

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

#217

Post by dathinab » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 2:16 PM UTC

Reptur wrote: post #10

Doubt they even blinked, these companies hire people to calculate risk and so they can continue to get away with it. Just a cost of business. Bayer's gross revenue for just 2022 was 53.4B. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/BAYRY/bayer/revenu...

They did because there is the thing:

Monsanto before it was brought by Bayer won all cases.

The moment they where bought by Bayer (i.e. no longer US owned) somehow they start losing cases and judges doing fun things like making ruling based on not peer reviewed not yet fully published studies....

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

#218

Post by reducesuffering » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 2:17 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #199

reducesuffering wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you wouldn’t drink a cup for fun, then do you know how many aggregate cups you’re getting per month from all the food you eat? They didn’t poof into existence. Every part of your food is from glysophate sprayed crops and animals that have food-chained them.

It is in food in part per billion quantities. You don't get a cup over you lifetime.

You've got a source for that? Looks like ~0.75 pounds per acre and a 3k pound per acre yield for soybeans. Of course not all of that ends up inside the edible part, but 1/4,000 is a long ways from 1/1,000,000,000

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

#219

Post by loeg » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 2:36 PM UTC

paulryanrogers wrote: post #191

loeg wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes companies attempt to achieve this fair resolution using bankruptcy courts. And then people get mad about that, too.

Shaving off a part of the company as a sacrificial lamb is like trying to say "my fingertip is responsible for the murder, here take some skin shavings from the tip".

That isn't an accurate description of the Johnson and Johnson example.

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

#220

Post by lightedman » Sat, Nov 04, 2023, 2:48 PM UTC

dgroshev wrote: post #55

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…

"Chemicals killing the crop" aren't inherently dangerous to your body, that's just chemophobia. Best quality artisanal chocolate can easily kill your cat. Nicotine kills bugs and is benign in humans. Belladonna would kill you, but a goat can munch on it without much trouble. Lots of stuff is lethal to some species and harmless to others, "this chemical is so bad it kills plants" is as rational as "chocolate is so bad…

"Nicotine kills bugs and is benign in humans."

One drop of nicotine put under your tongue will kill you deader than a doornail.