Thanks for the links. The consensus among experts cited seems to be that the conclusion is not supported. For the record, I’m not a fan of Monsanto, but I am a fan of evidence.
[quote]
the report stopped short of saying the chemical conclusively causes cancer, because these existing studies focused on a limited population of healthy male workers; they did not include young people or women[/quote]
That doesn’t sound like a valid reason to stop short of identifying causation.
Purely on BB coverage itself - Why note it as a Monsanto weekiller? Sure, they still market their roundup product, but their patent expired long ago, and the majority of glycophosphate on the market today is manufactured by other companies. It seems rather like the vastly irritating “Monsanto as a scare-word” thing, and that’s honestly a bit disappointing.
As for the study itself, there’s quite a few problems with it. Here’s a list -
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It counters an extremely large body of evidence against the conclusion, which combined with point two is a MASSIVE red flag. There are dozens and dozens of animal bioassays, detailed genotoxicity studies, Epidemiologic studies, regulatory reviews and so on which all show no evidence of carcinogenicity. The IARC appears to have ignored this evidence. Regardless, it would have to show some incredibly compelling new evidence to overturn the body of evidence we have against their conclusion, which brings us to the next point.
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No new data has been put forward to reach their conclusion. This is incredibly suspect, as every previous analysis of the data available indicated exactly the opposite conclusion, including many which have stood the test of peer review. This includes studies more recent than some they used, including studies that have investigated exactly the same type of cancers.
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They do not at any point suggest even a vaguely plausible mechanism of carcinogenicity. Which is unsurprising, since Glyphosate doesn’t have the chemical structural characteristics of any known carcinogens, and that would be quite a volume of new data they’d have to present to prove any such conclusion. And as mentioned, they provide exactly no new data.
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One of the participants, Christopher J Portier, is in the employ of the Environmental Defense Fund, Professional lobbyists who were recently caught red-handed ginning up scientific papers to advance their political agenda. Needless to say, their agenda has been anti-glyphosate for quite some time.
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The IARC has previously been strongly criticized for advancing unsupportable conclusions based on flawed methodology. See “False Positives in Cancer Epidemiology”, published in 2012 by Joseph K. McLaughlin and Robert E. Tarone in “Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.” For another example, They also still take quite seriously the almost universally condemned Séralini study, which was retracted in 2012, and they also take seriously the 2014 Séralini study, which contains exactly the same flaws for which the first paper was retracted(and frankly, was only submitted because the first was retracted by the journal after Séralini refused to do so himself.)
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The IARC must have reviewed all the data thoroughly before they came to this conclusion, right? Nope - they reviewed the data for less than a week before they came to this conclusion. Considering the scope of even the very limited data they considered, the expected time should be measured in months, not days.
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Much of the information they did consider does not support their conclusion, and in fact, Seven of the sixteen papers cited by the report have literally nothing to do with Glyphosate in any way, shape or form.
This isn’t science. This is politics, pure and simple, agenda pushing bullshit manufactured whole-cloth and dressed up in a stolen lab coat to lend an air of legitimacy.
All that said, however, I don’t blame you for reporting it, Xeni. To be honest, bloody nearly did, I’ve currently got a column sitting on my hard-drive about exactly this that I almost pulled the trigger on, and by sheer luck(and/or professional paranoia) decided to hold until I triple checked, which is where it all started to come undone. It’s a PR present wrapped up with a neat little bullshit bow for exactly this purpose - to trip people up, particularly journos, pull a fast one on them with a shiny veneer of science so they’ll report it to their audiences under the assumption that the conclusion is backed by scientific evidence.
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I remember a few years ago a study came out that showed organically grown vegetables had the same nutritional value as pesticide-grown vegetables, that there was no nutritional benefit to eating organic foods.
Except a lot of people who eat organic foods (myself included) don’t eat them because of some desire to get more vitamins, but from a desire to not eat a lot of nasty chemicals.
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The True-American solution is to ban labelling.
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I can’t begin to explain how glad I am that someone used that phrase in this discussion. People are generally unfamiliar with the fact that these decisions are made for them every day.
The most common method of water disinfection is chlorine disinfection. The disinfectant byproducts in your tap water are known to marginally increase incidence of cancer. We keep using it because the alternative is massive death and disease from water-borne infection.
With glyphosate, the answer to the question, “What do we do if we know glyphosate increases cancer risk,” is not necessarily, “Stop all use of glyphosate!” We have bear in mind that is widely used the world over, and we have to keep in mind that the alternatives may or may not be worse. What if other herbicides causes massive environmental issues? What if they are less carcinogenic, but more acutely toxic? Hand weeding isn’t practical for all farming operations.
I’m all for society coming together to make these decisions, because I think the public has a right to set health priorities (acute versus chronic toxins, less vs. more agro output, etc.) but they can’t be made by people who read one news article and suddenly think they understand the problems. Just because you can go to Whole Foods and pick up organic tomatoes at two bucks a pop, it doesn’t mean the rest of civilization has good alternatives.
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Monsanto is an evil company. But as many BoingBoing posts have stated, correlation does not equal causation.
I was making the perfectly valid point that reality is more complicated than your rhetoric. The cause of minimizing pesticide application would be best served by examining particular GMO crops and application strategies on a case by case basis not by painting all GMO crops with the same brush. Regardless, 7% is not a massive increase, particularly because the increase stems mostly from glyphosate, which is still not that toxic. 50% is a hypothetical increase which has not occurred yet. For the record, I am opposed to the increased use of 2,4-D independent of the GMO issue, because, as I have stated previously in this thread, the production of 2,4-D must be very strictly controlled to minimize dioxin contamination. Murphy’s law dictates that someone will screw up eventually. While 2,4-D can be produced with negligible dioxin levels, there have been generic batches that tested high in recent years. So yes, screw 2,4-D resistant GMOs, but screw them for specific, carefully considered reasons.
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Does it stay an inch thick, or do you have to mow it? If it is the former I’d Roundup the grass and let the lespedza take over.
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And how does it feel about drought conditions? I’d rather have a ‘weed’ that makes an effective, compact ground cover than finicky grass. Bonus points if it is tough and doesn’t have annoying seeds.
I find it interesting when research that doesn’t happen to be funded by industry (indirectly or otherwise) often ends up exposing potential dangers that all the other studies somehow missed completely.
Then again, there’s much less incentive to use industry-friendly, stunted methodologies when one doesn’t have industry footing the bill directly or by proxy.
And, on that note: (emphasis mine)
" … Most US research on glyphosate, Benbrook added, has focused on the chemical in isolation. But in the real world, glyphosate is mixed with other chemicals, called surfactants and adjuvants, that enhance their weed-slaying power. Importantly, some of the research used in the WHO assessment came from outside the US and looked at real-world herbicide formulations. … " - source
Yet, so many people keep telling me that stunted, industry-funded (directly or otherwise) research which is often performed by researchers with conflicts of interest is to be trusted.
BULLSHIT.
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[quote=“silkox1, post:14, topic:54174”]
I’m still a little concerned that anti-GMO is anti-scienceish, but it’s not as barking mad as creationism.
[/quote]I happen to agree with the prestigious (mostly pro-GMO) Nature magazine that there should be more transparent, third party research minus conflicts of interest available on GMOs.
Some GMO industry shills counter that there’s plenty of third party research without industry influence, but further investigation shows that’s a farce once one looks closer.
Does that make me crazy that I desire more transparent, third party research before I make up my mind entirely on the subject of GMOs in all cases?
When it comes to climate change, very similarly to GMO research I’ve also had a lot of trouble with the opaque (and often flawed, stunted) methodologies of research spawned from those who are funded (either directly or by proxy) by the fossil fuel industry.
On the other hand, I’ve found plenty of transparent, third party research that shows that climate change is real and very likely anthropogenic. Therefore, I’m not a climate skeptic.
Am I only slightly less barking mad than creationists because of my suppositions here?
If anything, the people that keep trying to tell me that GMOs are perfectly safe (due to a preponderance of industry-funded research that tells them so) seems a bit nutty to me.
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You seem to be going out of your way to take umbrage. You’re no more anti-GMO than I am. I agree that there should be more transparent, third-party research. Actually, there should have been more transparent, third-party research. As far as I can tell, every single bad thing that was predicted to happen when Roundup Ready crops were first introduced (weed resistance, gene flow, etc.) has indeed come to pass.
Now, given how widespread Roundup Ready crops are (>70% of US corn, for example), we’re left with the dubious opportunity of doing epidemiological research like the roundup study I linked to in my post above.
The problem is, and I know this isn’t news to anyone, that looking for rare effects is really expensive. There are other things, like climate change, that are more worth my time worrying about. That’s why I haven’t scoured the literature, lately, for evidence that GMO related things are hideously toxic. Whenever news of papers containing such evidence does catch my attention, the papers turn out to be flawed for various reasons (see the Update link at the top of this breathless news item, for example).
[quote=“silkox1, post:73, topic:54174”]
Whenever news of papers containing such evidence does catch my attention, the papers turn out to be flawed for various reasons
[/quote]I think that says more about effective public relations techniques and obstructionism, and much less about the overall research methodologies of the overall body of research. There’s also studies against GMO’s that haven’t been properly refuted. There’s also not enough news coverage of flawed, stunted methodologies found within industry-sponsored studies.
The problem (as we both seem to agree) is there’s not enough transparent, third party research. There’s a reason for this situation and that reason is entities like Monsanto are purposefully obstructionist against that kind of research.
We now have a situation where we’re flooded with (often stunted) industry-influenced research and have hobbled third party research.
Even a critic of the study you link to below says this:
“The study needs replicating by a truly independent laboratory using appropriate sample sizes. I agree with the authors that this whole area would benefit from greater transparency of data and improved experimental and statistical methods.” - source
The problem is, and I know this isn’t news to anyone, that looking for rare effects is really expensive. There are other things, like climate change, that are more worth my time worrying about.
In my opinion, there’s not enough proper study to determine which effects may be rare or not. With proper study, we may find out that the prevalence of things like Roundup within our ecosystem is contributing to our cancer epidemic (cancer now strikes 1 in 2 men and 1 in 3 women in the USA).
I mean, where talking about our food supply here. We should be demanding better research for all our sakes, just like we’re (finally) beginning to demand climate change action despite all the industry obstructionism in that regard.
(see the Update link at the top of this breathless news item, for example).
The strange thing about that study is that it’s been since republished (after being slightly amended) and, meanwhile, problematic conflicts of interest from the critics against the research continue to come to light as well. Where’s that “breathless” news item?
There’s also been a huge amount of maintained support for that study as well. And, there’s plenty of critics that think it merely needs to be expanded but are dismayed at the roadblocks the industry puts in front of that situation.
In the meantime, there’s breathless coverage of any and all “anti-GMO” studies that are refuted while not enough coverage of the larger picture. In my opinion, this is how industry is manufacturing a situation and manufacturing public consent for GMOs (or at least attempting to).
When Monsanto wants to stop being obstructionist, I’ll stop worrying they have something to hide. They’re walking in the footsteps of the fossil fuel and tobacco industry. Why?
Fair enough, thanks for the links, and good question. It does seem the industry doth protest too much about GMO labeling.
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[quote=“silkox1, post:75, topic:54174”]
It does seem the industry doth protest too much about GMO labeling.
[/quote]Yes, that seems to go hand-in-hand with their obstructionism of research.
I understand trade secrets and the like, but Monsanto has everything to gain by being more transparent and less obstructionist (and they seem to know this). Or, at least one would think that was the case unless they, themselves, have found something worrisome through internal research and are desperately trying to obfuscate it.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t even go out of my way to avoid GMO food myself. I tend to think it’s safe to consume. But, then again, I try to avoid processed foods (for obvious reasons) and that tends to cut down on my lab-created GMO consumption by proxy. My main concern with the GMO issue is the overall environmental impact, etc.
If transparent, third party researchers are finally allowed to have more access to the raw data and it shows that all GMOs are safe to eat and great for the environment, then I’ll be very supportive of it. I don’t care if it’s “natural” or not as long as it benefits humanity overall.
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It’s like a lot of things, you can get seeds to use it for erosion control. Did you know crabgrass was imported to the US as a miracle plant that grows in terrible conditions and grazing animals love?
But my lawn is a coarse tropical variety of zoysia, so its already requires no maintenance and no water, and the lespedza is just a pest.
Is it too much for an honest label that also lists the rat feces in my peanut butter? OMG, I just realized those rat turds contain rodent DNA. I was OK with them in my peanut butter until that sunk in.
You may have hit on the reason for the labeling reluctance – it could be a very slippery slope.
Keep in mind that peanut butter really is carcinogenic because it is frequently contaminated with aflotoxin which wikipedia describes as “among the most carcinogenic substances known.”
