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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

#241

Post by vGPU »

RoyalHenOil wrote: post #237
dathinab wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ther…

>nothing against banning this and similar roundups on suspicions of them being bad (actually I'm quite in favor of that) This would be a terrible mistake. Even if it turned out that glyphosate causes cancer (it's extremely unclear that it does), it is still the least dangerous herbicide of its type, which is what makes it the most popular herbicide worldwide. The alternatives are much, much more harmful to people and…

This makes no logical sense. If a heavy penalty is established for the use of roundup, an even more prohibitive one would be appropriate for anything more harmful, making it extremely cost-inefficient to use them.

This would drive the development of new farming methods and research into different classes of chemicals.

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

#242

Post by cyberax »

ftrobro wrote: post #181
cyberax wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

What do you mean by "corrected for the land area"? According to this study, in the period 2016-2020 wheat yields per acre were more than twice as high in Germany than in North Dakota or Kansas. https://ag.purdue.edu/commercialag/home/resource/2022/05/int...

You need to compare yields for the land in similar climatic conditions. This is complicated, because most of the US is to the south of most of the European landmass. New York is on the same latitude as Madrid.

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

#243

Post by robertlagrant »

Zigurd wrote: post #207
robertlagrant wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Tobacco? Asbestos? Leaded gasoline? Uncontained mining tailings and failures of tailings piles? Oil w.r.t. global warming? They are working to continue harm. As if I accidentally stabbed someone and decided the best next step is to stab deeper.

This doesn't argue against the point I was making.

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

#244

Post by martin82 »

jstanley wrote: post #185
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...

I don't understand why this type of comment comes up every time a big company gets a big fine. It seems no big fine is big enough to satisfy people. It is crazy to think they don't care about losing $332M. Of course they care! That's an enormous amount of money no matter how big you are. It's enough money to pay for literally hundreds of engineers to work full-time for multiple years to solve the problem. The point t…

Maybe 332M was a lot when you were a child. Thanks to compounding monetary inflation year after year, 332M is actually not much any more. It's enough though to make normal people believe that some kind of justice has been served.

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

#245

Post by tomhoward »

martin82 wrote: post #244
jstanley wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why this type of comment comes up every time a big company gets a big fine. It seems no big fine is big enough to satisfy people. It is crazy to think they don't care about losing $332M. Of course they care! That's an enormous amount of money no matter how big you are. It's enough money to pay for literally hundreds of engineers to work full-time for multiple years to solve the problem. The point t…

Maybe 332M was a lot when you were a child. Thanks to compounding monetary inflation year after year, 332M is actually not much any more. It's enough though to make normal people believe that some kind of justice has been served.

No, it's a big amount of money, particularly if it happens repeatedly. Governments have responded to companies' practice of just breaking laws and taking the hit, by continuing to push fines up to they point that they really do hurt and drive down the share price, which directly hurts the wealth of the senior executives and directors.

Bayer's share price is 70% down off its 2015 peak and 65% off its peak since the Monsanto acquisition bid was launched, and has even dropped 30% in just the past 6-7 months. These fines and judgements, and the worry that they may keep happening into the future, are definitely damaging the company.

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

#246

Post by cyberax »

ftrobro wrote: post #203
bluGill wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

North Dakota and Kansas are deserts or near desert. Germany gets 2 to 7 times more rain per year (depending on which part of Germany you look at)

That is probably a major reason for the higher yields in Germany, but the person I replied to claimed that yields aren't really higher in Europe than in the US. According to data from the UN, in 2020 North America used 2.77 kg pesticiedes per hectare cropland and Europe used 1.69 kg/ha, and yet Europe has higher yields per hectare. So clearly Europe uses less pesticedes per produced amount of food. https://www.fao.or…

I'm sorry, I was a bit unclear. Instead of:

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

I should have said "for the geographical area". You need to compare yields in similar climates and soils.

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

#248

Post by dang »

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…

Please don't fulminate or call names on HN. You can make your substantive points without any of that.

Your comment was fine until "well buddy [...] burn the fuckers down".

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

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

#249

Post by dathinab »

josefx wrote: post #236
dathinab wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using non peer reviewed studies means using studies which have not yet been properly error checked! It's like making decision based on draft laws which have not yet been passed i.e. it fundamentally undermines the justice systems claim to be based on facts, because creating a study which uses various form of "subtle accidental mistakes" to twist the truth is very viable (and sadly also often enough tricks peer review…

> and sadly also often enough tricks peer reviews A process which Monstantos internal discussions assumed to be completely under its control. > I mean you are basically saying because the judge belived that it's probably true that it causes cancer You are going even a step further and skipping any evidence entirely. Which afaik (not a lawyer) there is even a legal principle that would have allowed the judge to go tha…

> A process which Monstantos internal discussions assumed to be completely under its control.

you are mixing up writing and reviewing paper

it's very obvious that this paper was not under any control of Monsanto

> You are going even a step further and skipping any evidence entirely

I'm not a non peer reviewed paper is no evidence at all, that given example is the best proof because pretty much all evidence went away once errors where found in peer review and corrected. Furthermore it where errors which if you understand enough about the topic where kind pretty clear, i.e. in no way any Monsanto twisted any truth think. So pretty clearly the judge did a decision which isn't based on any facts.

> I think the talk was more about using contacts to shut down the studies while in progress or outright put pressure on the people involved to "correct" the results.

but this doesn't make it okay to not wait for a peer review in any way, also there is a non small well known group of people which are very clearly not in favor of glyphosat and scientist and outside of the reach of Monsanto it's not that you can't cross review their reviews and feedbacks of the paper with other "more neutral" (but maybe Monsanto pressured) people

either way a fundamental aspect of non scientific papers is _that anything in non peer reviewed papers must be seen as not yet proven and speculative_ ((not necessary in exactly that wording)) and a judge ignoring the some of the most fundamental aspects of scientific practice but then basing a ruling on scientific practice is just ridiculous

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

#250

Post by dathinab »

vGPU wrote: post #241
RoyalHenOil wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>nothing against banning this and similar roundups on suspicions of them being bad (actually I'm quite in favor of that) This would be a terrible mistake. Even if it turned out that glyphosate causes cancer (it's extremely unclear that it does), it is still the least dangerous herbicide of its type, which is what makes it the most popular herbicide worldwide. The alternatives are much, much more harmful to people and…

This makes no logical sense. If a heavy penalty is established for the use of roundup, an even more prohibitive one would be appropriate for anything more harmful, making it extremely cost-inefficient to use them. This would drive the development of new farming methods and research into different classes of chemicals.

I think there might be a few problematic ideas in you comment

1. that the people using it [the more harmful roundup] pay the price

2. that the people making the decision to provide more harmful roundup for a high "short" term profits will be penalized in any way

3. that it wouldn't take many years before the more harmful roundup is banned/court rule it to be dangerous

4. that it would increase the development of new farming methods and research into different classes of chemicals

I think given how messed up things are there is a realistic choice a company would push a (under the hand) know more harmful alternative to gain huge short term profit in hope that when court ruling come in they still made a net benefit or at least the people which did the decision back then and now have left the company do.

I mean best example for this would be Teflon pans, long term known to be harmful in many ways but still pushed en mass because they know even with any penalties or damages they might pay it's likely still a huge profit (it was). Then once things went to bad the replaced it with a different chemical composition which supposedly is safe now but is in practice way less researched then what Teflon was made from (or glyphosat). In the end the made a huge profit became marked dominant and the harm done is just a food note forgotten in history.

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