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Monsanto Weed Killer Roundup Faces New Doubts on Safety in Unsealed Documents

nytimes.com

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Re: Monsanto Weed Killer Roundup Faces New Doubts on Safety in Unsealed Documents

#171

Post by sambe »

TillE wrote: post #147
eeZah7Ux wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> whether I'm arguing with GMO-skeptics or climate-change-skeptics, I can't prove that this scientific consensus is worthy of your respect What about GMO-skeptics that belong to the scientific community?

Americans literally, honestly, do not know that they exist. Which is a fantastic achievement by Monsanto, tbh. People who care should really look into why GMOs are banned in the EU.

They aren't banned in the EU.

Do you have a link to any individual nation state bans being based on scientific evidence rather than public/media outrage? Because the EFSA has been against the bans.

Re: Monsanto Weed Killer Roundup Faces New Doubts on Safety in Unsealed Documents

#172

Post by cholantesh »

TillE wrote: post #147
eeZah7Ux wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> whether I'm arguing with GMO-skeptics or climate-change-skeptics, I can't prove that this scientific consensus is worthy of your respect What about GMO-skeptics that belong to the scientific community?

Americans literally, honestly, do not know that they exist. Which is a fantastic achievement by Monsanto, tbh. People who care should really look into why GMOs are banned in the EU.

Because of political pressure. Trade bans aren't issued by scientists. They don't have that power.

Re: Monsanto Weed Killer Roundup Faces New Doubts on Safety in Unsealed Documents

#173

Post by tptacek »

adsfqwop wrote: post #131
alevskaya wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many conflicts of interest in the world - organic farming is an industry too. e.g. at least one of those 14 experts is an active member of the organic industry and has long had a beef with the GMO industry: https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/glp-facts/charles-ben... As to the science: the original highly-questionable IARC determination has since been contested by both the European Chemical Agency and th…

Did you read the article? The court documents included Monsanto’s internal emails and email traffic between the company and federal regulators. The records suggested that Monsanto had ghostwritten research that was later attributed to academics and indicated that a senior official at the Environmental Protection Agency had worked to quash a review of Roundup’s main ingredient, glyphosate, that was to have been conduc…

What do you want them to say? They provided, just one further comment downthread, a pretty persuasive case that a letter of concern about the carcinogenicity of glyphosate is athwart the scientific consensus. You're asking them to ignore the science, because Monsanto is a big scary company.

Re: Monsanto Weed Killer Roundup Faces New Doubts on Safety in Unsealed Documents

#174

Post by tptacek »

shriphani wrote: post #82
alevskaya wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many conflicts of interest in the world - organic farming is an industry too. e.g. at least one of those 14 experts is an active member of the organic industry and has long had a beef with the GMO industry: https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/glp-facts/charles-ben... As to the science: the original highly-questionable IARC determination has since been contested by both the European Chemical Agency and th…

As Nicholas Taleb put it - stuff that is natural is time-tested. Food we've grown + consumed has a multi-millennium history of being safe to consume. The burden of proof is on the synthetic. And health issues can materialize with a time gap of a decade or so - essentially you can ruin a couple of generations with a mistake you didn't catch in time. It doesn't help when those who have to prove their validity have to r…

This is a fallacy. All sorts of things are time-tested, in some cases over a millennium, and turn out to be carcinogenic: lutefisk, for instance, or the scalding hot tea Iranians drink.

Re: Monsanto Weed Killer Roundup Faces New Doubts on Safety in Unsealed Documents

#175

Post by tptacek »

AstralStorm wrote: post #149
pjc50 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> stuff that is natural is time-tested This also applies to tobacco.

It does, but not really to smoking. Tobacco is far safer chewed or insufflated than smoked, and cigarettes have a bunch of additional terrible chemicals in them.

It is not in fact safe to chew tobacco.

Re: Monsanto Weed Killer Roundup Faces New Doubts on Safety in Unsealed Documents

#176

Post by NikolaeVarius »

jpttsn wrote: post #154
adsfqwop wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You fail to account for the possibility of unknown unknowns, and again you're displaying biased cognitive dissonance. You can't determine generational toxicity from LD50 profiles. You are simplifying everything way too much. Glyphosate is an analog to glycine. You know, the building blocks for proteins. DuPont did a study in 2007 that shows glyphosate is integrating in protein structures. Does that not worry you? Gly…

If only people remembered to check for unknown unknowns.

And that doesn't apply to the "Organic" Industry because...?

Re: Monsanto Weed Killer Roundup Faces New Doubts on Safety in Unsealed Documents

#177

Post by huxley »

gadders wrote: post #110
sametmax wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ockham's razor reasoning is that a gigantic profit driven structure with a huge lobbying activity, and high financial stakes should probably not be trusted with making the right choice between their business and our health. History tells it didn't work very well for us when the big guys said tobacco, asbestos, the Chernobyl cloud and PCBs were all safe and good. Given Monsanto's pretty poor moral track record (improp…

You can't trust charities either. They have a vested interest in maintaining their world view in spite of contrary evidence. For instance, the banning of DDT in Africa despite the fact that using it to control malaria saves lives.

This is a zombie lie that never ever stops. You can't trust whatever psycho-website you got that misinformation from.

DDT was NEVER banned for public health purposes in Africa or anywhere in the Developing World.

It was restricted for use in agriculture to ensure --in part-- that it continued to be useful for public health. As far back as the late 1950s it was known that mosquitos easily developed resistance to DDT and other insecticides.

Re: Monsanto Weed Killer Roundup Faces New Doubts on Safety in Unsealed Documents

#178

Post by ryanalam »

In the US, the alternative to this would be to consume organic produce. However, most people don't realize that organic produce still uses plenty of, if not more pesticides than traditional production methods; they just use organic pesticides.

I wonder which is worse: highly mechanized, high efficiency, and low volume synthetic pesticides in traditional production methods - or low efficiency, high volume natural pesticides in organic production methods.

Re: Monsanto Weed Killer Roundup Faces New Doubts on Safety in Unsealed Documents

#180

Post by Noseshine »

x0x0 wrote: post #133
bkkssnn wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget when Lead was claimed to be "safe" enough to put into gasoline - . -

BTW, lead gas additive was known to be pretty dangerous at the time see eg https://www.wired.com/2013/01/looney-gas-and-lead-poisoning-...

The point is not that someone knew something was/is dangerous - in retrospect you always find them (see financial crisis too). The point is what/who actually impacted the real large-scale actions.
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