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In glyphosate review, WHO agency edited out “non-carcinogenic” findings (2017)

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Re: In glyphosate review, WHO agency edited out “non-carcinogenic” findings (2017)

#61

Post by craftinator »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #49
emodendroket wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kind of agree. I'm not really swayed by arguments that consumers shouldn't have information because they'd use it to make mistaken decisions. Let them; that's not my business.

The concern is that disclosures can be used selectively, to make unpopular businesses embarrass themselves while favored ones skate by. If we make people slap “contains glyphosate” on produce, is there any realistic chance that organic produce will say “contains blood meal” or apples will say “contains beeswax”?

Thank you for this, I hadn't thought about it from this point of view. One thought is that growers have to disclose all additives? In the wine industry, it's common during particularly bad grape years to sugar dose the wine as it ferments. In France they require vintners to disclose this, and other major modifications. Could we use something similar with growers? It would be AMAZING for a number of data driven sciences, having access to all additives used to grow different items

Re: In glyphosate review, WHO agency edited out “non-carcinogenic” findings (2017)

#62

Post by shkkmo »

rmason wrote: post #11

I've said on here before that Monsanto had bad lawyers and they never should have lost those two cases. I was an agronomist for twenty years and remember when Roundup was first introduced on the market. I worked with the first genetically modified soybeans that could be sprayed with Roundup. One of the biggest selling points was that Roundup was measurably safer than the herbicides it replaced with far better results…

I would point out that bring drenched in the stuff is not really the same as eating food with trace amounts of it.

I would also point out that Monsanto is not being held responsible becauseof the toxicity, but because of the fairly clear evidence that Monsanto put a lot of effort into concealing that toxicity from workers, consumers and regulators.

It is possible for adoption of Roundup to be a net positive for society and for Monsanto / Bayer to be liable for concealing the risks that do exist.

I rather doubt that Johnson's case will be reversed, but I would not to see some other cases fail because they aren't able to show such a direct connection and as extreme an exposure.

Re: In glyphosate review, WHO agency edited out “non-carcinogenic” findings (2017)

#63

Post by gumby »

I consider glysophate environmentally pretty dangerous (e.g. destruction of the subsurface rhizome and mycozome structures/ecosystem) but have never understood the alleged carcinogenic mechanism of action.

A few jobs ago I had a chemist co-worker who’d actually worked on it (manufacturing development, not original synthesis). He was, not surprisingly, a big fan, but we did have Many long discussions as to its chemistry, mechanism, and (lack of?) human impact.

All that being said do note delhanty’s comment which is meta analysis of the posted article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21872497 Just because I don’t understand a particular point (and have some minimal qualifications for such an opinion) doesn’t make me right.

Re: In glyphosate review, WHO agency edited out “non-carcinogenic” findings (2017)

#64

Post by gumby »

emodendroket wrote: post #34
cies wrote: post #26

Any food "additive" (including all chemicals used in farming) should be listed, carcinogen or not. The fact that products can be sold as "cucumber" but actually have a long list of chems on their skin is a very dark practice. See how companies abused their power when ingredient lists where not enforced by law. Or how tobacco comps are still abusing their freedom not to list ingredients. This malpractice disgusts me d…

I kind of agree. I'm not really swayed by arguments that consumers shouldn't have information because they'd use it to make mistaken decisions. Let them; that's not my business.

That cuts both ways. Look at California Prop 65: it’s so widely applicable that the posted signs are ubiquitous and thus meaningless.

I don’t have a fix for this problem and I do have a bias for more info; just saying it isn’t obvious.

Re: In glyphosate review, WHO agency edited out “non-carcinogenic” findings (2017)

#65

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

craftinator wrote: post #61
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concern is that disclosures can be used selectively, to make unpopular businesses embarrass themselves while favored ones skate by. If we make people slap “contains glyphosate” on produce, is there any realistic chance that organic produce will say “contains blood meal” or apples will say “contains beeswax”?

Thank you for this, I hadn't thought about it from this point of view. One thought is that growers have to disclose all additives? In the wine industry, it's common during particularly bad grape years to sugar dose the wine as it ferments. In France they require vintners to disclose this, and other major modifications. Could we use something similar with growers? It would be AMAZING for a number of data driven scienc…

I think that'd be a reasonable rule, but Roundup isn't an additive. It's an herbicide that's sprayed on the plants as they're growing, and isn't supposed to be present in the final product in more than trace amounts.

If growers had to disclose everything that makes its way into the product they're selling, insect parts and rat dung would be much higher up the list than Roundup.

Re: In glyphosate review, WHO agency edited out “non-carcinogenic” findings (2017)

#66

Post by wang_li »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #22
dmix wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not a paper of original research but a meta analysis of various other scientist’s research which they selectively edited out the papers and science that didn’t support the agenda they had pre-determined. This was the description of the report that was originally given: >> A Working Group of 17 experts from 11 countries met at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) on 3-10 March 2015 to review the…

PSA: IARC haven’t found a single thing thats is definitely not carcinogenic and lists shit like radio waves or tumble driers as possibly carcinogenic. IARC are bunch of lunatics.

It's a different kind of regulatory capture. Same thing has happened to the EPA.

Re: In glyphosate review, WHO agency edited out “non-carcinogenic” findings (2017)

#67

Post by tomstoms »

jnordwick wrote: post #57
delhanty wrote: post #43

So I read this story and wondered whether there were any undisclosed links between the author (Kate Kelland) and Monsanto. Google led me to sites alleging that this 2017 article and others were written to spec on the instructions of Monsanto. [0][1][2] >Not only did Kelland write a 2017 story that Monsanto asked her to write in exactly the way Monsanto executive Sam Murphey asked her to write it, (without disclosing…

This is about as close to pure ad hominem as you can get.

Try bias and conflict of interest.

Re: In glyphosate review, WHO agency edited out “non-carcinogenic” findings (2017)

#68

Post by saalweachter »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #55
saalweachter wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually haven't seen this brought up for glyphosate but with respect to GMO crops, we've basically run an experiment where we've "autopsied" a billion livestock a year, and there was no observed increase in eg tumor rates when we transitioned from feeding them organic crops to GMO crops. The same data probably applies to glyphosate, since the two go hand in hand (which is also why many activists get upset about gl…

But how old are those livestock? A year? Two? "Didn't cause tumors in the first two years" is a bit lower bar than I want for something that humans will eat long term.

Yeah, the sample set will be highly biased towards young animals. There will old animals as well -- the ultimate fate of the breeding stock is the same -- but I'm not familiar enough with the study I'm referencing to know if any problems in that subsample would be obvious.

It's not obvious to me that you would expect there to be problems that only show up after years but not in young animals with exposure from birth -- young animals are fast-growing, and fast-growing things are very susceptible to poisons of all flavors. (It's the basis of chemotherapy: you give the patient a poison, and the fast-growing cancer dies faster than the rest of the person.) Which is to say, a study of animals fed a substance for only the first tenth of their life is way, way more useful than a study that only looks at the second tenth, because of the rapid development during that time. Whether that makes the full lifespan data "useful incremental data", "vitally important data" or "uselessly redundant" I don't know enough to have an intuition on.

Re: In glyphosate review, WHO agency edited out “non-carcinogenic” findings (2017)

#69

Post by sampo »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #22
dmix wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not a paper of original research but a meta analysis of various other scientist’s research which they selectively edited out the papers and science that didn’t support the agenda they had pre-determined. This was the description of the report that was originally given: >> A Working Group of 17 experts from 11 countries met at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) on 3-10 March 2015 to review the…

PSA: IARC haven’t found a single thing thats is definitely not carcinogenic and lists shit like radio waves or tumble driers as possibly carcinogenic. IARC are bunch of lunatics.

Caprolactam used to be the the only chemical IARC had ever classified in their group 4 "probably not carcinogenic to humans" [1] but in 2019 they moved it to group 3 [2].

[1] https://publications.iarc.fr/_publications/media/download/22...

[2] https://monographs.iarc.fr/list-of-classifications/

Re: In glyphosate review, WHO agency edited out “non-carcinogenic” findings (2017)

#70

Post by perl4ever »

gumby wrote: post #64
emodendroket wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kind of agree. I'm not really swayed by arguments that consumers shouldn't have information because they'd use it to make mistaken decisions. Let them; that's not my business.

That cuts both ways. Look at California Prop 65: it’s so widely applicable that the posted signs are ubiquitous and thus meaningless. I don’t have a fix for this problem and I do have a bias for more info; just saying it isn’t obvious.

Those warnings are useless not because they're ubiquitous, but because they don't specify the reason/ingredient. I'm not sure whether that's allowed by the law, or it's just that the law isn't fully enforced.

So I don't think you're making an argument against disclosure, just against bad law or scofflaws.

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