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

Weedkiller ingredient tied to cancer found in 80% of US urine samples

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–379 of 379 posts

Re: Weedkiller ingredient tied to cancer found in 80% of US urine samples

#371

Post by camgunz »

tinco wrote: post #359
camgunz wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not well-researched; it has a single Wikipedia link, which it doesn't even represent properly (literally the first thing it says is CTR was founded by David Brock). It's also not informative; it presents a slanted, highly selective case against Clinton and Democratic/liberal/progressive politics. It's the Fox News of comments. It's also not on topic; how is CTR relevant to glyphosate? I do have an opinion: Citiz…

It's a Wikipedia link with 7 references that is utterly neutrally formulated. If you think that's even close to how Fox News presents their abhorrent lies you can count yourself lucky to have not watched it ever. In the meanwhile you apparently hold an opinion that is perfectly in line with the argument of the parent that you somehow assume is in support of Republican/regressive politics for no good reason. If you've…

I think the Wikipedia article is great; no issues with it. What I take issue with is what I pointed out: parent is singling out HRC for founding something she didn't even found, even when the first sentence of his source says someone else founded it, in an effort to make her look nefarious despite the fact that Super PACs are something both sides (first Republicans, then Democrats in order to keep up in this race to the bottom) do as SOP, and as all issue campaigns have done since there have been issue campaigns.

> If you've got a better example of a SPAC that funded internet trolls you could just post a single Wikipedia link to that instead of making vague statements about slant.

Sure, let me introduce you to the Willkies [0] and anti-abortion PACs [1]. Both examples of people pushing their issue opinions into the public square (with doctored content and a lot of money I might add) or directly into getting people elected to make policies they'd like.

> reality is biased against republicans

100% agree. My only thing here was taking HRC's campaign totally out of context. This is how US politics works since Citizens United (ironically also a case where a group of people wanted to release a super negative video about her in the political ad blackout period [3]).

0: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/06/fetal-photos-jac...

1: https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs...

2: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary:_The_Movie

Re: Weedkiller ingredient tied to cancer found in 80% of US urine samples

#372

Post by whimsicalism »

Retric wrote: post #220
whimsicalism wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay I was wondering if you were going to bring ants up because I think that is a good point. > people tossing specific seeds on the ground 20,000 years ago This seems irrelevant to whether farming occurred before people. I don't think the line is very clear cut at all, but it does involve intentional intervention by a species not the plant.

> > people tossing specific seeds on the ground 20,000 years ago > This seems irrelevant to whether farming occurred before people. It gets to if for example squirrels storing seeds underground is possibly farming or not. It's an intentional activity, but takes too long for a specific squirrel to see much benefit from it. IMO, it’s kind of a mind bender when you really dig into it. I think a reassemble argument is sq…

And I am to assume that these animals also do no form of weed killing?

https://cordis.europa.eu/article/id/32461-fungusfarming-ants...

Re: Weedkiller ingredient tied to cancer found in 80% of US urine samples

#373

Post by dahfizz »

mmcconnell1618 wrote: post #345
8note wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indoor or outdoor?

Both. Once filled, they don't generally need additional water unless there is a leak, some evaporates or the pool is drained for maintenance.

We had a pool growing up, and we actually had to regularly drain the water because it rained much more than it evaporated. We didn't live in a dessert though, so YMMV.

Re: Weedkiller ingredient tied to cancer found in 80% of US urine samples

#374

Post by teachrdan »

marc_abonce wrote: post #233
user3939382 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I’m concerned Bayer and Monsanto are like evil incarnate and last time I brought up this lawsuit on HN I was shocked people were defending them. We’re talking about the company that intentionally sold HIV infected blood to people. If it was legal and they could increase profits by lighting people on fire they would do it. Yet people trust corrupt research that they paid for showing their product is safe. We…

> Bayer [...] intentionally sold HIV infected blood to people. I had no idea about this. For anyone else that's curious: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/may/23/aids.suzannego... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contaminated_haemophilia_blood...

I love the fact that Beyer retired the Monsanto brand. It's a real bad sign when a company whose most famous product is Zyklon B tells you that your brand is toxic.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jun/04/monsanto-to...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zyklon_B

Re: Weedkiller ingredient tied to cancer found in 80% of US urine samples

#375

Post by Retric »

whimsicalism wrote: post #372
Retric wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > people tossing specific seeds on the ground 20,000 years ago > This seems irrelevant to whether farming occurred before people. It gets to if for example squirrels storing seeds underground is possibly farming or not. It's an intentional activity, but takes too long for a specific squirrel to see much benefit from it. IMO, it’s kind of a mind bender when you really dig into it. I think a reassemble argument is sq…

And I am to assume that these animals also do no form of weed killing? https://cordis.europa.eu/article/id/32461-fungusfarming-ants...

Squirrels don’t.

As to ants, do you think they evolved that trait before or after they started farming.

Re: Weedkiller ingredient tied to cancer found in 80% of US urine samples

#376

Post by astrostl »

cool_dude85 wrote: post #168
astrostl wrote: post #163

It's been in global use for almost 50 years. I don't doubt that it may produce some negative effects, but it wouldn't concern me even a little bit to discover that some of it could be detected in my urine. If the impacts were that severe I expect that they would have shown up in force by now.

What do you mean by "severe effects" and how are you sure they haven't shown up in force? Let's say the incidence rate of certain types of cancer triples. You still might never meet someone with one of these types of cancer, and you might not even know if you did whether their cancer was caused by glyphosate. But still sounds like a severe effect to me if you're the guy with cancer, right?

I'm most directly referring to the implication in the article: cancer. It wouldn't surprise me if it tripled the odds of rare cancer, but even taking this claim at face value triple a tiny amount is still a tiny amount. And I do believe I'd still think of it that way if I happened to roll snake eyes.

Re: Weedkiller ingredient tied to cancer found in 80% of US urine samples

#377

Post by astrostl »

cameronh90 wrote: post #207
astrostl wrote: post #163

It's been in global use for almost 50 years. I don't doubt that it may produce some negative effects, but it wouldn't concern me even a little bit to discover that some of it could be detected in my urine. If the impacts were that severe I expect that they would have shown up in force by now.

The last 50 years has seen significant increases in the rates of obesity, severe allergies, celiac, heart disease, alzheimer's, depression, etc. There are plenty of other (demonstrated and theoretical) reasons behind that, but it seems a little hasty to say we haven't seen severe health impacts. It might just be that we haven't figured out the link yet.

I'd expect a severe link to be apparent in its deployment, i.e., that regions with earlier and more significant uptake would experience earlier and more significant [problems]. The article and my reply refer to cancer, but I would extend the offer to other subjects.

Re: Weedkiller ingredient tied to cancer found in 80% of US urine samples

#378

Post by mushbino »

tyrfing wrote: post #265
mushbino wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe they mean it's a lot of money to the company, not the plaintiffs. $10B is a lot of money to any company. You should see what Chevron has been doing to Steven Donziger for winning the $9.5B case against them for massively polluting the Amazon.

> The tribunal unanimously held that a $9.5 billion pollution judgment by Ecuador’s Supreme Court against Chevron “was procured through fraud, bribery and corruption and was based on claims that had been already settled and released by the Republic of Ecuador years earlier.” That case? Bayer settled the class action for 3 orders of magnitude less than some jury awards. They don't have to believe it causes cancer, jus…

They put him under house arrest and Chevron appointed their own judge in the case. It was all kinds of messed. That's just how powerful oil companies are. I mean, there's no question they've polluted to a massive degree in the Amazon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Donziger

Re: Weedkiller ingredient tied to cancer found in 80% of US urine samples

#379

Post by Supermancho »

Retric wrote: post #361
Supermancho wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Children don’t clear weeds instinctivly, it’s learned behavior. It's not clear what you mean by "learned" here. You have plants. Other plants grow next to them and they die. It's observed learning (as I showed in the photos), similar to learning fire is hot. You have been implying it's more than that and are flat wrong on this simple understanding of reality. There's nobody that can help you with that.

You just described a relationship that didn't apply to native species before domestocsrion. In effect they where growing weeds. Second you described learning and ignored culture showing children this relationship. Looking at a prepared area doesn't exist without someone preparing the area. Clearly you don't understand what’s going on.

> You just described a relationship that didn't apply to native species before domestocsrion.

> Second you described learning and ignored culture showing children this relationship.

You're ascribing some definition of "culture" when the behavior is intuitive. I can understand if you're making an assumption about how stupid ancient man was, but that is simply a bias within your own imagination.

> In effect they where growing weeds.

Weeds are competing plant life, compared to the cultivation of specific species. The dictionary doesn't do anyone a lot of favors here, but that's the common parlance.

We were talking about Farming, then cultivation, which are strictly different things. Now you've moved to "domestication" all the while leaning on some strange alternate definition, or you're trolling. I don't think I can help you any more.

Post reply on HN