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

Supreme Court to hear arguments in landmark Roundup weedkiller case

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 231 posts

Re: Supreme Court to hear arguments in landmark Roundup weedkiller case

#111

Post by tptacek »

vkou wrote: post #98
tptacek wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't even get smoked fish accepted through precautionary-principle logic like that. This is the same reasoning that puts cancer warnings on bags of potato chips.

Smoked fish is a side, wheat is a staple. Degree matters. If 90% of the raw food at the grocery were 'processed' in the same way that a smoked fish, or a french fry was, I think we'd have very valid reasons to be displeased with many of the myriad problems that come with that.

First, no it isn't, not in the cultures where it's believed to cause stomach cancer. Second: at the point where you're talking about distinguishing public policy based on whether something is a "side dish" or not, I think we've left the realm of plausibility and entered a wonderful new land I call "the voivodeship of special pleading".

Re: Supreme Court to hear arguments in landmark Roundup weedkiller case

#112

Post by tptacek »

rpmisms wrote: post #108
tptacek wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By itself, it's simply an argument that proves too much. Anything you ingest impacts your gut flora. There can be gut microbiome hypos about glyphosate! But you have to actually have them; you can't stop at "it impacts gut flora".

Well, I didn't intend that as a conversation-ender, but it is true. This particular substance inhibits a particular function of certain gut flora that seems important. I think it's safe to call that significant.

What "particular function" is that? If it's "the part that influences neurological function", you don't have a complete argument. If you can't be specific about this, your argument falls apart, because almost everything we eat potentially "inhibits" (or accelerates) different areas of our gut flora.

Re: Supreme Court to hear arguments in landmark Roundup weedkiller case

#113

Post by tptacek »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #83
jandrewrogers wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK the preponderance of the evidence is that most "gluten sensitivity" is actually just a FODMAP sensitivity, which also interacts with the gut biome.

Off topic, but can someone ELI5 (or at least ELI20) what the deal is with FODMAP? I keep hearing about it, but I don't understand it at all.

We just had a story about de-farting beans on the front page. The FODMAPs are (among other things) the bean farts.

Re: Supreme Court to hear arguments in landmark Roundup weedkiller case

#114

Post by tptacek »

themafia wrote: post #102
tptacek wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it isn't. What's your point?

Your quip follows a trope: "There's a weird reason the public wants this and it has little to do with the thing itself." Very often the implication being: "Therefore the public is wrong and should be ignored."

I think the public is in fact wrong, but that has nothing to do with my argument.

Re: Supreme Court to hear arguments in landmark Roundup weedkiller case

#115

Post by tptacek »

themafia wrote: post #100
parineum wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it required that the public have a "good reason" for wanting something? Not required but it's a nice to have, especially if the thing they want done is to have the desired outcome.

The desired outcome is simply not using Glyphosate. I'm not seeing how "reasonability" of this idea impacts it's implementation. If you find someone using it you severely fine them and/or put them in jail.

Why is that a desired outcome?

Re: Supreme Court to hear arguments in landmark Roundup weedkiller case

#116

Post by fragmede »

tptacek wrote: post #109
rpmisms wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a decent one: 13% of the UK reports gluten intolerance symptoms, and only 7% of Germany does. The UK allows pre-harvest glyphosate desiccation, Germany doesn't. I would be happy to bet that the trend continues past my quick Google search.

Surely there are no other lifestyle, supply chain, or medical system differences between the UK and Germany! Open and shut!

I mean, I went to an Ikea and a McDonald's in both those places, and they were the same, so surely everything else must be homogenized!

Re: Supreme Court to hear arguments in landmark Roundup weedkiller case

#117

Post by tptacek »

FireBeyond wrote: post #104
atrus wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those aren't really great examples, considering that Arsenic and Asbestos have been known to be harmful for centuries/millennia. Thalidomide never even made it to use in the USA. Fluoride being good for teeth was discovered by fluoride naturally being in the water already Can't speak for the other two, but I hope you're not basing your fears on stuff like that.

> Thalidomide never even made it to use in the USA. What? It was initially blocked by the FDA, but was later approved for use in cancer, where it is in fact a front line drug for some myelomas, albeit with significant usage warnings.

It was never approved in the US for the on-label use for which it gained its reputation (it's a potent teratogen and was prescribed --- never officially in the US --- for morning sickness).

Re: Supreme Court to hear arguments in landmark Roundup weedkiller case

#118

Post by tptacek »

vkou wrote: post #99
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is no legitimate reason for preemption to apply to labeling laws (even as broken as California's labeling law is), as labeling a product a certain way is not a mutually-exclusive action. That's not really what preemption is about. A major point of having "interstate commerce" -- actual products crossing state lines -- at the federal level, is to prevent states from enacting trade barriers. Suppose California…

> Meanwhile if the stuff is actually dangerous then it's dangerous in all 50 states, so the warning label should either be everywhere or nowhere according to the evidence, right? Only if other states or the federal government give that much of a shit about food safety, which is not a guarantee, both in theory and in practice. They might, for instance, care more about agri-profits than California does. > So they could…

It's the opposite of a race to the bottom. The federal government sets a single standard for the country. The same logic you're advocating is also the conservative argument for health care regulation --- that is, allow the states to preempt the federal standards so they can offer cheaper insurance by lowering standards.

Re: Supreme Court to hear arguments in landmark Roundup weedkiller case

#119

Post by yosamino »

tptacek wrote: post #33
yosamino wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apart from the health aspect, there is the thing were these GMOs are patented and the business model is one where farmers are not allowed to keep a portion of this years yield to use to seed for next year, but essentially get roped into a subscription model for the crops they plant. Essentially turning > You wouldn't download a car into > You wouldn't plant your seed for your crop. Which is obviously absurd. So while…

I don't think the case law supports this argument that farmers got roped into subscription crops. Farmers use this system because it has value, and is economically superior to the systems that preceded it (or they don't use it).

I worded it so carefully to not have an argument, just for illustration, but...

Yes, you are correct, and you are not contradicting me: This is a system that makes sense on the surface. It's economically superior to pay some more money to a seed supplier to get a better yield on my fields.

But this economic advantage is captured by the seed supplier after all farmers moved to this new system where you are no longer able to rely on the previous' harvest seeds. Once everyone is on the economically superior system, the seed supplier can start capturing more of the value that is created by farming.

The point here is that Monsanto creates a superior yield in a crop. All your farmer peers move to use it, and now you have to too or get priced out of the market.

hence: > skew towards concentrating money towards those who already live a comfortable life. > skew

The word "farmers" is doing some heavy lifting here - might be some multinational, might be a small family making a living.

The point is not that the market is pricing out inefficient farms, the point is that it turns a millennia old practice on it's head and using government force to enable monopolies to remove competition.

Farmers use it because their time horizon is 1-5 years, but the government monopoly on seeds is more like 20 years.

It's skewed.

Easy to disagree and argue with these points, but the original question was why there are people opposed to GMOs and while GMOs are not the only patented organisms they are the most obvious for people to have concerns over the economics

Re: Supreme Court to hear arguments in landmark Roundup weedkiller case

#120

Post by pfdietz »

tptacek wrote: post #71
keane wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn’t claim there was only one study. The concern is the corporate culture introducing biases into studies. In the tobacco industry, this was a pattern.

There was overwhelming evidence , some of it preceding modern human health science, that smoking was damaging.

Indeed. It's rare in environmental medicine to see an effect as strong as that from smoking. The straw the tobacco industry clung to for a while (it was debunked) was that people who had cancer smoked to sooth their lungs (or, that cancer caused smoking, not vice versa.)
Post reply on HN